From Indie to Full-Time Podcaster 🤠

Tanner Campbell reflects on his podcasting journey

Hello Besties!

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I’m so grateful for all of you. I’m also thankful that Black Friday comes immediately after Thanksgiving because my fiancé and I went to TWO dinners yesterday, and now we need new pants. 😂

And on that note: I have a Black Friday deal for my Besties! Subscribe now through Monday for 20 percent off. If you’re not a paid subscriber, you miss out on subscriber-only threads, our Resident Engineering Bestie Michael Castañeda’s column, AND posts about my audience growth experiments (my Mowpod review is about to drop).

Today I’m sharing a Q&A with Tanner Campbell. Tanner’s been a long-time indie podcaster, consultant, and popular fixture of podcast Twitter. And in recent months, he’s had tremendous success with his new podcast Practical Stoicism, so we’re going to dive into how he was finally able to go full-time.

What's your podcasting origin story?

TC: There are two versions. The first is a little tongue-in-cheek. In the late 80s, my sister Samantha and I would watch the cartoon Pound Puppies, and after the episode ended, we’d record a follow-up discussion on our Playskool recorder. Then we’d take it to our grandmother and make her listen to it. So, in a sense, I started podcasting in the 80s and certainly created the Pound Puppies Review format. The second version is that in 2010 I started a podcast with my partner and fell in love with the medium. I kept podcasting, opened multiple recording studios (one in Colorado, one in Florida, and one in Maine), became a consultant in the space, and eventually left the “business side” of podcasting to become a full-time podcaster myself.

You hosted Podcasting Sucks! (which later underwent a name change) daily for a while, and then ultimately, you sold it to some other indie podcasters. What a wild ride. First of all, how many episodes of Podcast Sucks! did you do, and what did you learn from making that show?

TC: Podcasting Sucks! became Good Morning, Podcasters!, and, in total, it probably had 300 episodes, but it was a daily show, so that’s only a year of work or so. What I learned was that I, as a teacher, enjoy, and even require, engaged and trusting students. The podcasting community has a lot of jaded creators in it, distrusting creators as well, and people who think podcast consultants or podcast “gurus” are all slimy salesmen who don’t offer any real value. More than 5000 students have gone through my (now defunct) courses, Podcast Launch Accelerator and the Certified Podcast Engineer program, but that negativity, the constant misunderstandings of my intentions as a rough-around-the-edges straight-talker, eventually made me feel like the investment of time and energy wasn’t worth it to me anymore. I’m proud of the number of people I’ve helped succeed or progress, but a person can only willingly subject themselves to constant criticism for so long. I got tired of it; it wasn’t fulfilling or fun anymore. That’s why leaving was easy for me.

If you're down to share, I'd love to know how you sold Podcasting Sucks! and how you determined a price.

TC: I had no intention to sell it, but two people I like came to me and said they wanted to buy it. I also had no concept of how to sell something *like that* because here’s the thing: these new guys weren’t going to present the content the way that I did, so they weren’t so much buying the property as they were buying the right to use the name. If they were going to use my likeness, keep my old content, or any of that stuff, I might have been more thoughtful about it, but they suggested a price, I doubled it, they took 50% off of that, and I asked myself, “Do I want to get rid of this?” because that’s the ultimate question right? I don’t want to make money; I have money, and I want to let it go. The answer was “yes.” So I accepted their offer and haven’t looked back. There was no rhyme or reason to the price, and honestly, had they wanted it for free, I probably would have let them have it in the end. I was really very ready to move on.

Our resident Engineering Bestie, Michael Castañeda, met you on Clubhouse during the frenzy. What was your Clubhouse experience like (good and bad), and how do you feel about the future of "social audio" in general?

TC: With the exception of my writing, Clubhouse was responsible for my “rise to influence,” if you will. There was so much technical incompetence on that app, especially in audio engineering and podcast marketing. I mean people genuinely didn’t know what they were talking about but were taking the stage and giving advice, and people were buying it. It infuriated me because I knew the advice was going to lead to pain and failure, and pain and failure can help us grow but to subject someone to that unnecessarily because you’re too proud to admit you don’t know what you’re talking about, that’s wrong. So, I started hosting rooms and giving good advice, and that got attention. In retrospect, if it were not for Clubhouse, I would have never transitioned from studio owner and working engineer to thought leader and consultant. Also, Michael Castañeda is super talented, and I’m glad I met him. 

You’ve done a ton of experimenting with paid advertising for podcasts. I’m thinking of those billboards, the many other strategies I’ve seen you tweet about, and your work as a podcasting consultant. What advice would you give to an indie podcaster with only $300 to spend on ads?

TC: It’s different today than it was even a year ago. Facebook used to be my go-to, but that’s become far less efficacious for a number of reasons. Today I would say in-app advertising on one of the following platforms: Overcast, Podcast Addict, or Podcast Republic. Your category might require a bigger budget than $300, but in most cases will be a large enough monthly budget to move the needle. Cause that’s what it’s about, right? We need to see like 50-100 new listeners a month (which is about what that’ll get you) in order to feel like we’re making progress. If we don’t feel like we’re making progress, we get sad and dejected, and we quit or get jaded and become a negative force in the communities we operate in. Digital billboards are certainly fun and can be effective if you know your most dense market/region. You can try that out at blipbillboards.com.

What advice would you give to an indie podcaster who had $2K to spend on promoting their show?

TC: Player FM. The ROI on ads on Player FM has been, at least in my experience, between 1:1 and 2:1, so a $2000 ad spend will get you 1000-2000 subscribers — not listeners, but subscribers — on the Player FM app. If that feels like too much money to spend in one place, I’d spread it across Overcast, a funky billboard ad in your busiest market, and formal ad placement on other podcasts.

Tell me about the biggest organic audience growth bump you've experienced as a podcaster or consultant.

TC: Practical Stoicism, my daily philosophy podcast, went from zero downloads a month to nearly 1M per month in just ten months. It’s in the top 100 philosophy shows in 175 countries, and I never marketed it, save for $200 on a two-day billboard ad and a one-week Facebook campaign that might have gained me 200 or so listeners in total. Without a doubt, due to the lack of formal effort, this is the biggest organic audience bump I’ve ever experienced. That sort of thing, which I have helped clients accomplish in the past, usually takes a year, so a similar amount of time but far more effort. SEO, social strategies, format audits, split-testing of different sorts, and just… a lot of work. I still can’t account for it. It’s the X-factor I talk so much about; you can’t plan for that sort of thing.

What are your top tips for maximizing organic marketing for your podcast?

TC: Blogging and social audio. You need a website, and you need to keep a blog on it. Write in it weekly, more if you can, and I don’t mean transcripts; I mean writing stand-alone content related to your podcast niche. Give the web crawlers out there a reason, over time, to associate your website with certain queries. I can’t say enough about how important this is. Social audio is also big. Hosting conversations, not even necessarily leading them but facilitating them, leads to people identifying you as the guy/gal/person who knows people and things. The more cemented that belief is in others, the more opportunities will creep your way. You may not succeed with your podcast because of this specifically, but you may find that you suddenly own a company that does larger work within your niche. All it takes is one person to say, “Hey, I want to pay you for your brain,” and then you’re a business owner who podcasts, not a podcaster. And that’s something critical I want people to keep in mind: you’re a podcaster now, but that’s not the limit of your abilities or skills. Be open to becoming more than a podcaster.

What are your best tips for setting up your podcast like a business?

TC: To do it formally. Start an LLC, get a bank account, stick a couple hundred dollars in there, and start making decisions based on the fact that you have limited money and you’d like to make more. That’s not selling out or losing the focus; it’s a very grown-up realization that in order for this to be sustainable, it has to be at least not a sunk cost every month. Create KPIs for yourself (Key Performance Indicators), have meetings once a month with your co-creators, and ask questions like “Are we meeting this goal?” and if not, “Well, how can we?” Building a podcast like a business forces you to think strategically, and most of us need that because most of us are creatives, not business magnates.

Tanner Campbell, long-time indie podcaster and now host of the popular philosophy podcast, Practical Stoicism.

You've given a ton of advice to podcasters, and you're well aware of the ups and downs of the grind. What advice would you give podcasters to maintain their mental health and optimize their mindset throughout their podcasting career?

TC: I would suggest they listen to my podcast Practical Stoicism to get a better understanding of my views on developing a healthy mind and a virtuous character but, short of that, and in as few words as possible: You have a job as a human being and, in my opinion, that job is to be Virtuous. A Virtuous person does not take actions that damage their ability to aim at that high-minded ideal (to become a Virtuous person). We podcasters have a tendency to work against our own Virtue all the time by ascending to false impressions about what we must do and what will happen if we don’t do them. We must never miss an episode, or we will fail. We must not release an imperfect product, or people will hate us. We must never receive a one-star review, or no one will take us seriously. The key to a healthy mental state is not to do this. It allows us to set realistic expectations of ourselves and keeps us from becoming prisoners of the caricature of the future reality we paint in our minds. Listen to the podcast; there’s a lot to say about this.

You tend to gravitate toward daily podcasts. How do you batch or create other efficiencies in your workflow to avoid burnout?

TC: I write seven scripts on Monday, between 10-20K words. I perform them on Tuesday and engineer them on that day as well. On Wednesday morning, I publish them all out. That seems to work for me. Daily shows are a clever approach for a couple of reasons. The first is that, because they’re daily, they can be short. My average episode is something like 12 minutes. The second reason is that it creates more surface area for ads. If you get $5 per thousand listens on a cheap programmatic ad, and you have 1000 listeners, well, if you’ve only got one episode per week, that’s $5. But if you’ve got seven episodes per week, that’s $35. Now imagine you’ve got two pre-rolls and two post-rolls (hard to do a mid in a 10-minute episode). That’s $140. Currently, my podcast’s maxed-out potential is $12K a week. I’m not doing that much, mind you, but in theory, with 100% fulfillment of rolls, I could—surface area matters.

Your new podcast Practical Stoicism seems to have been successful from the start. Where did the idea come from, and what was your launch strategy?

TC: Stoicism is, unfortunately, very misunderstood. It’s a lot like Buddhism in that way. People think Buddhism is incense and Yoga and minimalism and detachment, but Buddhism is a multi-sected religion, and it’s so obnoxious to see Western hippies reduce Buddhism to a trend. But where Western hippies reduce Buddhism to a trend, Western (mostly) white dudes reduce Stoicism to a collection of motivational posters or some reinforcement of “red pill masculinity.” As upset as ascetic Buddhists might get about the caricature of Buddhism that exists in the West, that’s how upset I get about the caricature of Stoicism that exists in the West. It’s especially exclusionary of women because… well, aren’t all dude-bros telling you “emotions are for pussies, be more stoic!” being exclusionary of women? I didn’t like this. I wanted to create something far more real and far more practical, so I did. I had no marketing plan, but I got lucky. I stumbled into an unserved market, and that’s always gold when creating a new podcast.

You've been working in podcasting for a while, but you're now doing Practical Stoicism full-time. What's your advice for indie podcasters who want to make their show their full-time job?

TC: Do everything you can to get your monthly numbers to 100,000 downloads, then start shopping networks. I’m with Glassbox, and I love them. That’s really the only way to reliably go about it if you’re a “podcast is the product” podcaster. If you’re a “podcast is marketing” podcaster, then making it your full-time job comes down to having something to sell, nurturing your leads, and having good systems in place. Before I left my consulting business, I was making five-figures a month (even had one six-figure month!), and my Podcasting Sucks! and Good Morning, Podcasters! podcasts only had about 5000 downloads a month — for a five-day a week show? That’s not that many listens per episode. Commit your effort, time, and money to growing a 100K+ audience and then approach a network or use your podcast as a marketing tool and have something to sell. Those are the only ways I’ve ever known.

Thank you so much, Tanner! Looks like I have some new experiments to try. 🤗

➡️ Check out Tanner’s top 100 philosophy podcast, Practical Stoicism.

➡️ Follow Tanner on Twitter @stoicismpod for more.

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So… ROLL CALL! 🗣

Let’s share some pod-centric gratitude! Drop thanks in the comments to one podcast, podcaster, or industry expert whom you admire and/or inspires on your journey.

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