Buzzsprout Conversations
Welcome to Buzzsprout Conversations, the show where we dive into the real-life stories of podcasters in the middle of their podcasting journey.
You'll hear stories from famous podcasters as well as everyday podcasters, just like you, share stories about how podcasting has impacted them and the things they've learned.
Buzzsprout Conversations
Jordan Blair: Secrets to Succeeding With Audience-Driven Content
In this video, I interview Jordan Blair from Dreamful Bedtime Stories about how her podcast skyrocketed to the top 1% globally, thanks to the invaluable input and support from an engaged audience.
Jordan shares strategies for not only gathering feedback but leveraging it to continually enhance the show's content. She also goes behind the scenes of producing a story-telling podcast, from hand-picking enchanting tales to scoring free music for your podcast.
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Everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. Today I'm joined by Jordan Blair. Jordan does a podcast called Dreamful Bedtime Stories. It's consistently a top 1% podcast and we talked about everything how the show evolved from being just for children to being a much larger audience, how she monetized her podcast, how she finds music. But my favorite part was about where we talk about how she incorporates feedback from her audience into the show. Jordan's a really interesting podcaster. Some of you may notice that Jordan has been on this channel before. She is a podcast producer for Buzzsprout, but we almost talk about nothing involved with Buzzsprout at all. We really are focusing on her podcast and I'm so excited to share the journey that she's gone on with you today. So, without much ado, let's jump into it with Jordan Blair ["Dreamful Bedtime Stories"]. All right, well, jordan, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 1:So tell us a little bit about your show and what inspired you to start it.
Speaker 2:Well, my podcast is Dreamful Bedtime Stories, which is exactly what it sounds like, and what inspired me to start it is that I could not find a good Bedtime Story podcast for my kids A lot of Bedtime Story podcasts, you know, few years ago they were very short, so they'd be like seven minutes, 13 minutes long, and then it would be like a really like bright and cheery voice, and tonight we're gonna talk about this, and I was like my kids are not gonna go to sleep to this. This is crazy. It got to the point where I was like I'm just gonna have to do this myself. So I did. So that's what inspired me to start. It was I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for.
Speaker 1:Started out of necessity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did.
Speaker 1:How long did it take you to go from deciding I want to start my own podcast and then getting into actually launching the first episode?
Speaker 2:I kind of daydreamed about it, for I want to say a month and just kind of like was doodling and coming up with names and things like that and created my cover art and talked to some people about it to. We're just kind of like that's okay cool. I don't know what that is, you know what's a podcast, but I so I was like trying to drum up some enthusiasm so maybe I would go through with it. And then I swear on my life, I spent about three months going through Buzzsprouts how to start a podcast, podcast listening to Buzzcast and then listening to podcast and Q&A and also all the YouTube videos. I spent three months doing that and also a podcast and you know, podcast was roundtable all those things.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I spent three months obsessively learning about podcasting before I actually like did it.
Speaker 1:That's a pretty fast turnaround actually, even though if you have three months between, hey, I think I want to start and launching. I mean, I know I've told the story so many times, but the first conference I ever went to was in December 2014. And I remember meeting someone and they were like I'm about to launch. I've been working my podcast. I just wish I'd launched a couple of years earlier, when there was like more opportunity than we were there the next year. And I saw him and I was like dude, how's the podcast gone? And he's like I'm just about to launch.
Speaker 1:I recorded eight more episodes. I'm like re-editing them and I was like dang it, but it's been a year. And then we saw again and I asked him how it was going and he was in the same spot. I recently heard this quote sometimes perfection is procrastination, like disguising itself, and we're really just, we don't want to do something, we don't want to be out there and not be perfect, and yet so we kind of pretend like I'm a perfectionist. I'm just gonna like wait and keep dragging it out and it could take a long time to really launch.
Speaker 2:That's exactly what happened to me, and thank God for my husband. He knows me really well and he knows that I will perfectionate. It's like a mixture of perfectionism and procrastinate.
Speaker 1:Perfectionate. I like it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm a TM TM. He knows that I will do that forever. I will study something for eternity before I actually like jump in and put myself out there and try it. And he finally went and bought all the stuff that I had like wish listed.
Speaker 1:Good for him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he was like here, you have no excuse, do it. And so I think it's really good to have people like that on your side. That can kind of keep you from doing that. I mean, I probably would have been that person that studied for like a year and made sure that I was, you know, eight episodes in before I like and then re-recording those eight episodes.
Speaker 1:I definitely found myself in that boat. So tell us, now you've launched the episode, what were your initial? I don't know how did you see, like, what's your measure of success? You know what are you expecting, and then what was actually the result from launching your podcast?
Speaker 2:I didn't really have a measure of success in mind, it was more just like.
Speaker 1:Maybe getting your children to fall asleep at a reasonable time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was really my measure of success. I was like I'm gonna do this thing, have fun and get my kids to fall asleep and hopefully nobody listens to it. I think was kind of my thought. I think I specifically for I did this for years told people don't listen to it, like whenever they'd be like, oh yeah, I'll listen to it, but I'm like, no, don't listen to it, it's not for you, don't listen to it. So that was kind of my measurement was like I didn't want people to listen to it because I was really self-conscious about it. I just wanted it for my kids and like maybe some strangers would find use in it and stuff like that. So like I kind of put it out there, but not really. And then it was going pretty well for I wanna say like six months and pretty well in my mind was like, oh my gosh, I have like 75 downloads this month. I have a hundred downloads this month and I was pumped. I was just like how are these people finding this? This is incredible. And I was starting to get more countries and I remember making a video like for my Patreon feed and just being like, oh my gosh, it's in like six countries now and all these people are listening and I'm so excited.
Speaker 2:And then the funniest thing happened during 2020, right before like everything shut down, I decided that I wanted to like take a break. I was like I don't wanna pod fade. I've heard of pod fade and I spent so much time working on this podcast, like editing it, and I had, you know, other jobs I was doing and so I was like, okay, I'm gonna take a break. And so I took a break from it. I think that month I was doing really well, so I had like 6,000 downloads on my podcast, and then the next month I got like 20,000 downloads. And then the next month I checked and it was like 75,000 downloads and I was panicking, like I actually had nightmares about this because I didn't want it. And so I was looking everywhere, I was Googling my show, and it wasn't in a list, it wasn't like charting on anything. And then, like the next month, it was like over a hundred thousand downloads and yeah, it just. It was such a weird thing because I took a break and it just went bananas.
Speaker 1:Did you find out where everyone was coming from? How were people finding the show?
Speaker 2:No, I didn't find it. I was not in any lists. I did a bunch of Google searches. I looked for like featured lists on, like, say, spotify or something like that. Like I'd go to like sleep podcast or meditation podcast. I would look at the charts. I wasn't in the charts. Like I could not figure out what was going on. It was just the weirdest thing and I I don't know why, I don't know why it was growing so fast. My thinking is that it could be word of mouth, which is really powerful. Like maybe you know, there was like a daycare that started listening to it and then the kids told their parents about it, or something like that, because I know that did happen. A daycare was doing my show for the kids, so who knows, it could have been a bunch of things like that where it was just people talking about it.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. You've said before that the audience you know. You initially recorded it thinking this is all gonna be children, but then the audience kind of shifted. Can you tell us about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Like I said, I made it for my kids and so in my mind I was thinking like, yeah, this will be for like six to eleven year olds, like my kids age. So I made it with that in mind and it was very like. My earlier episodes are definitely very much like me speaking to like children and then, over the like span of two years, I just kept getting these like emails and like messages from people who were, you know, it was guys who are in college and they're like I know it's like kind of weird for a guy, but like I listen to you every night and then I would get like you know, a seven year old woman that would message me and be like, oh, this has like been so amazing for me. I struggle sleeping and then I, you know, I'd get like grandparents writing in and mothers in their thirties and you know, kids, and it just it made me realize like that everybody was listening to it because you know, you hear in all these things. You hear in all these like podcast, advice, blogs or videos or things like that. People always say like, yeah, niche down, niche down, niche down.
Speaker 2:So in my mind I was thinking that meant audience and so I kind of like peg myself into a corner with thinking that was just for kids and so I was talking to children and then over the years, after I realized like oh no, everyone's listening to this, I started speaking more just generally to how I would speak to like a group of people, like a room of all ages, and then, as I was doing like listener polls and just getting information, like listener surveys and things like that, they started asking for more like mature content, like you know, jane Austen, and they wanted like Oscar Wilde and Sherlock Holmes, and it was things that just wasn't geared towards children and I stopped kind of getting messages from kids for the most part.
Speaker 2:And then I realized like, oh, my podcast isn't for children anymore. It's just kind of like evolved into something completely different and I made a huge decision in taking it out of kids and family and I just moved it over into mental health and my podcast actually did better in the mental health space than it did in the kids and family space, which was a big surprise to me, but I think it was smart for me to just like allow my podcast to breathe and do its thing Made a huge difference.
Speaker 1:So if you could go back, would you start by making it a bit more focused to all age groups, or would you kind of go down the same path where you started, initially thinking this is for six to 11 year olds, because those are the ages of my daughters, and then let it evolve? Which path would you do?
Speaker 2:You know, I think the evolving path is a little bit more fun. It was because it was so surprising and unexpected. I think that that's more fun. And you know, maybe I wouldn't have done so well if I had started out in. You know, the mental health space, like the adult health space, is like very, very crowded and at the time, like children's fiction really wasn't. So who knows, I might not have done as well if I'd started out there. But you know it was my intention with the podcast to make it for my kids and that's just kind of where it started and I think it's okay that it grew up a little bit into something else.
Speaker 1:Do your kids still listen to it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, every night there's been a couple meltdowns, when the tablet's not working, or you know, my daughter will wake up at like three o'clock in the morning and I had turned it off for some reason and she like comes in and I have to get up and put it back on because she loves listening to it all night. So they still listen to it.
Speaker 1:I didn't think about that. I have probably even thought about this in 20 years, but there was a summer where I was probably six and my dad had just graduated from law school so he's studying for the bar and maybe there was like a month or two where we were living in Florida and he was still back at Texas, and so it was the only period as a child that I was away from my dad for a significant period of time, and he was recording books on cassette tapes and then mailing them to us, and so we would do the same thing and listen to our dad read to us.
Speaker 2:That's so incredible. I mean, yeah, that's exactly what that is. That's all it is.
Speaker 1:He was probably violating some copyright by doing that.
Speaker 2:Well, he wasn't like distributing yet, so it's okay yeah that's true, and all of yours.
Speaker 1:you're doing retellings of these stories that are in the public domain, right?
Speaker 2:Some of them, some of them I do leave. It kind of depends on content and how long it takes to get through that piece of literature. There are some stories that are broken up into like shorter stories or something like that, and so I can do like a 40 minute or hour long episode on that one thing. And you know, some of the public domain, like fairy tales, have really raunchy language sometimes or are really like grim and violent. So there's a lot of editing that I do with some of these stories to make them more appropriate for this day and age. But yeah, I do some adaptations sometimes but I try to stick to the original stuff, just because it's easier on my end.
Speaker 1:The Grimms fairy tales, like, if you go read some of those, they're like wildly inappropriate for children. I mean, they're just intense and you're like, wait a second, is this really what we were telling kids back in the dark ages? Or is this, or was it maybe written for someone else? Because, yeah, I can understand that you can't just read that out, as, hey, this might be appropriate for children.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, there's, there's. There's definitely some editing and so, even though my podcast is for all ages and I took it out of the kids and family, I still have some younger listeners. So I'm very thoughtful and considerate of those younger listeners and so I still I still edit things. So you know, maybe I read this one story. I read this one story about like a mermaid that gets caught by humans and in the very end of the story what they do is they stuff her and put beads in her eyes and hang her up in a museum. So I changed the ending on the story completely because it's a really cute story, but then like just that ending. So, yeah, I still do things like that because it's some of these are brutal.
Speaker 1:Did you have a background in writing or storytelling before you started bringing this into podcasting? Because it sounds like it was a pretty quick transition from having an idea to having a podcast that started blowing up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I kind of had like the perfect concoction of experience to do this. I was, you know, always in theater. I was really big in theater forever and I also have a background in art. I've done like a lot of murals and like graphic design and stuff like that, and then I also just was very good at like writing for the most part, and then I also was a children's librarian for like three years. So it was just this like perfect, like cocktail of doing a children's bedtime story podcast and I think it worked out really really well for me to have those experiences of like reading, kids reading, publicly, doing artwork. So it's really easy for me to make like art and stuff and then for promotional materials and then the editing and writing and then also the speaking with the theater background.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, that's kind of the perfect combination for all of it all coming together into one podcast. Yeah, so you mentioned a little bit earlier that you started realizing the show had shifted when people started reaching out to you. How have you incorporated your fans and your audience into your podcast?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's a really hard thing for me to do. I've always wanted to incorporate my fans somehow into my podcast, because I know that with podcasts that I listen to, when they allow fans to kind of be involved, you get like this sense of like ownership with the podcast and you really want to succeed. And you get excited when you get like mentioned in the podcast by the host that you love so much, and so I kind of wanted that for my listeners as well. So I've done a couple things. I didn't do it this year because I was really busy, but every year in April April is Poetry Month, and which I knew thanks to my library and background.
Speaker 2:But every year I would do listener poetry submissions and I would have my listeners submit poetry and then I would do a poetry reading episode of just their poetry. And that was so popular and it got it. I had so many submissions for that and it was amazing. It's amazing how great it is to tap into the talent of your listeners. And then I also love doing shout outs whenever they support the show. If anyone does a monetary donation or pledges monthly, I will do a shout out on the show and that has gotten really big, because they'll do that for birthdays or anniversaries sometimes, which is really fun, and I also allow listeners to vote in polls for some of my bigger episodes that I'll do, like Aladdin or Cinderella, things like that, those big ones that everyone's like. Yes, finally, I'll allow them to vote on which one they want to come out.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's cool. So you said you have the Patreon, but is there another way that you communicate with your audience? Because one of the downsides for a lot of podcasters is they can kind of feel lonely. You are speaking into a microphone, you do all this editing, you put it out, and sometimes the only thing you get back is a number that says 55 downloads and that's it, and you may not even get a review for a few months. So how did you take those downloads and turn those into real conversations?
Speaker 2:I'm really about being available to your audience. So I make sure that on my website I have my podcast email listed. I have a PO box if they want to send me mail. I have the PO box listed and I receive a goodie package from listeners sometimes or a letter like twice a year maybe, but it's worth it. It's worth having that there so they can do that if they want to. I also have an Instagram account and a Facebook account that they can send me messages on. I just make sure that I have that information everywhere that I'm at and put it in my episode footer. Like you know, if you want to get ahold of me or just say hi, like I make sure that it's very approachable and people do take advantage of that a lot.
Speaker 2:For people who don't know what's your episode footer my episode footer is in the episode description or the show notes down at the bottom. I will put in the episode footer. You know the credits. You know this podcast is hosted by, edited by, music by, and then I will also put you know contact us on social media and I'll put all my links that in everything that I will put in every single episode description so that, no matter what episode someone's listening to, if they go, huh, I like this show, I like this show, I want to like learn more about it they can scroll down in the episode description or show notes and see that information, regardless of what episode they're on.
Speaker 1:I love that you're doing a lot to make yourself accessible for your fans, so it's easy for them to reach out. I think it's easy. I do this myself. Or you kind of say I want to communicate with fans, but I want it through a very rigid format. It only can be through like comments on a tweet that I posted, but a lot of people won't use Twitter. Or if it's only Instagram but somebody's not, they don't enjoy Instagram, they're not going to reach out. And it sounds like you've kind of created multiple avenues for people to reach out so that you can get. I don't know, maybe that allows you to get more of your audience. It's not just going to be kids, but you're also going to have people who are a little bit older, people who are in between. Everybody can reach out in the way that they're probably most comfortable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I don't have my podcast everywhere, like I'm barely on Twitter. I just joined, like last year, and I'm really bad at it. I don't have it for my podcast, just because that's not really like a platform that I'm comfortable with. So, even though I might have listeners that do use Twitter and they might be kind of bummed, I'm not on there like too bad, I don't use it. So they have plenty of other ways that are easier for me for them to contact me. So I think also like setting up all those different modes of contact where a little bit of like wishful thinking that someone's going to reach out, you know, because it is like just speaking into a void and you're just like man, I wish someone would tell me that they like this or that it's like made an impact in their life. So I think I'm just like hoping, like willing it to happen that someone's going to reach out to me and you can do it all these different ways.
Speaker 1:Can you give us some stories of people who've reached out that have really impacted the show? I mean, have you had suggestions from listeners that you've used or I don't know things, just really affirming conversations with listeners.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've had several it as far as like impacting the show. I have had some people reach out and they're just like I'm a writer and I wrote this story for the podcast and you know, if you want to read it, you can, and then it winds up being amazing and I love it and it turns into a great story or I'll have. I had a kid that in his class he read this like obscure fairy tale that I'd never heard of before and he wrote in and said like there's this really cool fairy tale that I read. I'd love for you to do it. He's like fifth grade or something like that and I read that and it's one of my more popular episodes.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a fantastic story. So I love having, like I really take into consideration what listeners ask for or say like this may be, think of you. I make sure that I definitely consider it. At the very least, I usually end up using it.
Speaker 2:But as far as impacting like me and my will to continue doing the podcast, I've had so many people right in who you know are victims of like trauma and abuse or just have a lot of like depression and anxiety.
Speaker 2:You know I talk about that a lot on my podcast because I have experiences with depression and anxiety and so I'm very upfront about that.
Speaker 2:And the amount of people that write in and feel so seen and want to share their experiences with it too and share how my show is like help them overcome it. That is the most incredible thing you know hearing stories of people who are stuck in places that they can't get out of and then when they finally do, they will write me an email and say like how every night they just felt safe because they were listening to it. Things like that, I mean, destroy me. It makes me cry so much when I get things like that, but it's also just shows how impactful it is to do something as simple as storytelling podcast. You know, I mean I'm not even, I'm barely talking about myself in it. We're talking like 30 seconds. I'll talk about myself in the show and it's just usually like casual mentionings, or maybe they just listened over such a period of time that they feel like they've gotten enough stories to like piece together what my experience has been. You know, it's things like that that make me just never want to stop.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so powerful when you start to realize you know these numbers are not just numbers but they're people and the people you're impacting, like those are real changes in their life and for some podcasters it can be truly profound, like what you're sharing. I met last year podcast movement a podcaster who he'd been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and started a whole podcast about living with Parkinson's and then was just telling me story after story of people who, when they get their diagnosis, the first thing they did was they started his podcast and instantly felt so much more comfortable because they went OK. This guy is four years further down from the diagnosis than I am and now I can start listening and start understanding what's happening and feel like I'm joining into a community rather than being totally alone. But then there's other podcasters. The only thing that they're getting back is man, you and your friends are funny and I love listening to you play Dungeons and Dragons.
Speaker 1:On a podcast Like it there's value and all sorts of different ways of communicating and sharing your story with your audience. So if you were to give maybe a couple pointers for somebody who they've got a few hundred downloads so they know there's some people listening and they really want some of that engagement. What would you tell them to do? Maybe a couple things they could try.
Speaker 2:They could get their audience involved in future episodes, you know, by you know, maybe like setting up like a pot in box or like an email that they can submit I episode ideas or topics they want to hear in future episodes or maybe guess that they'd like to see on that, you know, getting people more involved kind of like Opens up that communication and you can get, like you can find ways to like contact them through that. Another way and this is a way that I personally love and I've used with my podcast so many times is set up a listener survey and I just use Google forms because it's free and it's easy, and so I'll create like a Google form and I'll just ask my listeners about themselves and I'll ask them, like how many ad reads are you okay with for an episode? What stories would you like to hear more of? What kind of like things do you really enjoy? What can I improve upon in my show?
Speaker 2:And then I will always put the bottom like do you have anything else you want to tell me? And that is the best, because you get people being like I just love you so much, thank you so much for doing this, and I'm just like yes, so you got these like Survey submissions and you can entice people to complete a survey and it sounds really boring. But if you just tell him like it'll take two minutes, it'll really help the show out and you can like kind of put your own input on what the show is going to be. Something I've done in the past to is I've offered up a $20 like Amazon gift card because you can just email them to the listener. So I will say like if you submit the, if you complete the survey, then you'll be in the running for $20 Amazon gift card, and that tends to get a lot of responses to.
Speaker 2:Nice, you mentioned pod inbox, with pod inbox so pod inbox is pod inbox dot com and it is A really great platform by Pat Chung and he has created a way for podcasters to receive like voice messages from listeners. He set it up so they can Give tips, like whenever they send a message. You can do things like that. You can also set up like a chat and he keeps adding these things and it makes it really gamified. So I there's like starting to be like a like scoreboard kind of thing, like he's added so many different things and it's really cool because there is a free tier on pod inbox. You can have a podcast on there on their free page. But the amount of stuff that they have on their paid is like really cool to. But that's definitely when I recommend to people, because those voice messages are really easy for people to leave and you can respond to them. You can you can type in responses or use them on your podcast and that's a lot of fun to you. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:I love those ideas. Well, if you're out there and you're hoping to get some feedback from your audience, hopefully those tips are going to be useful for you. Jordan, earlier you mentioned in your credits. You were saying you put your name for writing, but then you also mentioned editing and then music. Are you doing the editing and music for your show? Is that somebody else?
Speaker 2:I used to do. My husband actually wrote the theme song and I recorded it, and so he he's always on the credit for the theme song by, and then I was doing my own editing for a long time. And then my best friend actually moved back here and she was out of the country and I needed like time to myself. So I trained her on how to edit and she's doing like even better than I did, and so I have her hired as a freelance editor for my podcast too, so she's on the team now. But, yeah, I used to edit my own podcast but I was very slow at it, so like every episode would take me, like I want to say, 15 to 21 hours to do an episode. If you include like the research, recording and editing, it took forever, and so she gets it knocked out in like five hours. It helps when people are focused on one piece of it.
Speaker 1:I think it's a bit easier, rather than the research, the writing, the recording, the editing, the promotion. When you're doing your own editing, when you're doing each piece of it, it can just feel like, man, I put a ton of effort into this episode. It can be kind of nice to have it split up, especially if you do have other people who either can pay or somebody else who's like a co-host that can shoulder have to load.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'm like the queen of bootstrapping, I will do everything myself, I will do it the cheapest way possible and it's going to take me forever, but I am not going to lose any money on this and and I think after about a year of that, I started really valuing outsourcing. There just like comes a point where you're just like okay, like I've bootstrapped this long enough. Now I have people supporting the podcast and I can like start using those funds for things like hiring an editor or paying for stock images. Instead of like trying to do my own thing. I used to like, whenever I'd get like sponsorships, I used to just pitch it myself and do all that stuff myself, and I actually have like moved on to having like an agency, so I outsource that as well. I just I mean, my podcast takes me like maybe two hours a week now. It's amazing.
Speaker 1:Don't don't tell everybody that we're all going to be jealous You're being able to outsource so much of it.
Speaker 2:It took a lot of work, though, but yeah.
Speaker 1:So before we start talking about monetization because you started just touching on that a little bit Can we go back just a second to music? You also do a lot of sound beds as well. So besides the theme music, does your husband also make all of your sound bed music?
Speaker 2:No, I, I use music from a lot of different places. Yeah, he did the theme song and it was funny because he just was like plucking it on a guitar on the porch and I said, all right, you need to get in there now I'm going to set the microphone to do that. So that was like the first time he's ever like done anything that I would actually use on my podcast like lightning struck that day. But you know, the other times I will sometimes work with like indie artists. You know I have a lot of friends that are really great artists and musicians and so I will sometimes hit them up and I'll be like hey, I'm doing a Pekos bill episode. You're really good at like country music. Can you make me like an ambient country song? And they're always like down for it.
Speaker 2:Artists love putting their stuff out there and they love helping friends out. So I do have a lot of things like that, a lot of like collaborations, and I'll talk about them. I'll talk, I'll direct to their band camp account or their Instagram account, things like that. I'll promote like whatever band they're in or whatever projects they're doing. And then I also will use a lot of Creative Commons music.
Speaker 2:There's a site I really love called free music archive org and it has so much Creative Commons music and what Creative Commons is is like it's free for anyone to use and you can also usually alter it however you want, just as long as you like credit whoever the artist is. And that was a really great way. I told you I'm going to boost dropping, so that was a really good way for me to get like very quality free music to use in the podcast and then, once the podcast started, like actually making money and stuff like that. I also I have an art list dot IO account and I have an epidemic sound account and I will also papers and things. I use a lot of music in my show. So, yeah, I definitely have gone away from the searching through like music archives and creative commons things and you know, pick, subay and all those things and just gone straight to the really high quality music instead of having to listen to a million things and like find something good.
Speaker 1:Those are awesome resources. We will link to all those down in the description for anybody who is looking for good music for their podcast. So now to monetization. How long did it take from launching your podcast before it started making some money? Because all these things about hiring an agency and hiring your best friend at it, and all those things are really only possible once the podcast has hit a certain size and you started monetizing.
Speaker 2:There's a hill that I will often just die on, and that is that you should set up listener support out of the gate.
Speaker 2:And I know that a lot of people have really good reasons to not do that, but to me personally it's just like why would you not give anybody who stumbles upon your podcast an opportunity to support the show? And so I had actually started my Patreon page. I think it was a month before I even like launched Dreamful, and then I posted about it saying like this is coming soon. And it was so cool because, like my friends and my mom became supporters before I even like launched the thing and I was so pumped because I had like almost 10 supporters on my Patreon before I even like started the show. They didn't know what it was, but they were like oh, jordan's doing something, so we're gonna support her.
Speaker 2:And it was really wonderful because I was able to kind of cover the costs of starting my podcast pretty quickly, because my friends and family hopped on and we're just like we're gonna support you. And then pretty soon, like pretty quickly, because episode one I talk about like that you can support the show this way, you can donate via PayPal, you can do this and I had it as a call to action in my episode intro, like the first episode I ever did, and I started getting donations, like within a couple months, from strangers and it was very quickly that I was able to start like making money from it, like cover the costs of the podcast and save up some money for equipment upgrades or something like that.
Speaker 1:By the time you started making money. Can you give us an idea of where you are as far as download numbers?
Speaker 2:Well, there was zero because of friends and family at first.
Speaker 1:That's true.
Speaker 2:But if we exclude that, I honestly want to say I was like 75 or 100 downloads for like the entire month before. I was like before I was making money. So I mean, yeah, my audience is like was like small but mighty, you know. They were just like, yeah, we want you to succeed, this is great. So I definitely got lucky with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's the value of good friends and family, supportive husband, everybody who's your husband's buying you the equipment. You've got to do this now and you've got friends making music and you've got other friends donating or supporting even before it comes out.
Speaker 2:But imagine if I hadn't put my Patreon out there before. Like that was kind of a silly thing to do is start my Patreon before I even, like, started my podcast. But if I hadn't put that out, I mean, it would have been like money out of my pocket to start the podcast. So I definitely don't regret that.
Speaker 1:One way I try to reframe asking for donations is that it's not asking for a donation, it's giving people an opportunity to support what you're doing. When you say, do you want to donate, then people are kind of looking at it as like a charity and they're like, ok, am I willing to donate a little bit of money? But the other side of that can be hey, I want to do this project and this project costs money and there's no obligation on your side. But if you would like to support it, you can. And I find myself now, especially when there's a podcast that I'm really enjoying, why would I not want to support it?
Speaker 1:A couple dollars a month, whatever is appropriate for you with the amount of money that you make, you can go alongside your favorite creator and vote with your dollars. This is the stuff I want. I can spend a ton of money or spend a ton of time over on TikTok or I'm reading Buzzfeed articles, but I don't think that's what I really enjoy. What I really love is these blog posts or this podcast will donate and go alongside of the creators that you really enjoy and start influencing things with a little bit of financial backing.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think a lot of people do feel really awkward asking for money. It's weird. It feels weird to be like you can.
Speaker 1:It is weird.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and donate to the show or support the show or pledge a monthly amount to the show. It feels weird, but if you can get past that, there's different things that you can do. You know, one of the things that feels a little less like charity like is if you are upfront with your listeners about what the expenses of the podcast are. Like you can tell them I've done this before where I say, hey, your listener support goes towards paying my paying editor, katie, it goes towards music licensing and like paying for all these other things so that we can continue doing this podcast and you know any amounts appreciated and it's such a great feeling.
Speaker 2:It's so weird when you ask for it. But when you get that money like that email from PayPal that someone sent you some money that awkward feeling goes away pretty quickly and you're like, oh, this is great. And so you're just like, yeah, support the show here. And then you get another one. You're like, oh, this is fantastic. Like they want to see you succeed. Your listeners want you to succeed and they want to help the show.
Speaker 1:That's wonderful. What other ways have you been able to monetize your podcast? So you've done listener support, which would be something like Patreon or Buzzsprout subscriptions. What other avenues have you started beyond that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, listener support is a huge one. And then I also have done sponsorships, and sponsorships is a really great way to make money. I've done the pitching to sponsors myself. You know, just like I would listen to other podcasts in my niche and see what companies are sponsoring their show, because, first off, like clearly, that company is interested in podcast advertising and they're also interested in shows in your niche or topic, so that's a really good way. And then you can find how to contact them. Or, you know, get your pitch email sent to their marketing company. I would use pod corn for that. And then I also, when I got like really busy, I went to having an agency, you know, such as like advertised cast or you know one of those things that would actually pitch my podcast as a group with other podcasts and then get me those sponsorships and they do take like 30% cut of it. But I'll tell you what to not be like spending four hours on my Saturday sending a bunch of cold emails is fantastic.
Speaker 1:All right, let's do some rapid fire questions. You game for a few.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just drink my coffee. Let's go.
Speaker 1:All right. What's a podcast that got you into podcasting?
Speaker 2:Potterless podcast.
Speaker 1:What is Potterless?
Speaker 2:Potterless is is by Mike Schuber and it's so funny and it's a guy who in his 20s he had never read the Harry Potter series before and it's originally.
Speaker 2:It originally was created to kind of like roast the series, which is really funny, to like roast a children's novel but whatever. But he would read it like chapter by chapter and have a guest on. That was like a really big fan. It was so funny because throughout the series it evolves into him becoming really passionate about the series and then like pretty soon he had people like from the movies guesting on his podcast to go over a chapter or to go over like the movies and he had people that were like just really involved in like the conventions and all this stuff on the show. And it was just so funny because he went from like knowing nothing about it and he was like I want to do a comedy podcast about this like kids book because my wife wants me to do it into him being like an expert and like a guest at these huge conventions and stuff like that because he's so famous now it's really wonderful.
Speaker 1:What's a podcast tool you couldn't live without.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's so hard. I don't know what one I couldn't live without and I know that's probably being really dramatic because I'm sure I can live without all of them, but it's gonna sound weird. But I'm gonna say my Mac book.
Speaker 1:My.
Speaker 2:Mac book. I had a. I had a, an azus Laptop. I spent like 900 bucks on it when I first started and I was like, oh, like you know, 900 bucks is like expensive for an azus laptop, right. And I was like, oh, this is like perfect, it'll, it'll work great for, you know, running my Photoshop and my like Audacity software and all that stuff and that stupid thing crashed so much and then, like the hard drive fried after like a year it was actually right after the year warranty gave up and it was toast, like completely toast. And Then I got a MacBook Pro and it was like life-changing and I was like, why did I not do this before? So I'm I'm obsessed with my Mac book.
Speaker 1:What's the most memorable episode of your podcast to you, and what made it memorable?
Speaker 2:the most memorable memorable episode to me is Going to be cosmic lullaby, and it's because it was a collaboration that I did. There's a sound engineer for Microsoft in Seattle and he's incredible and he and then he also Just does tons of things everything all the sounds you hear for like Xbox stuff, like that. He did them all and I I know him and we did a collaboration on a story for his kids. So it was really cool because it was like mutually beneficial, because he and I wrote a story for his children as a surprise for his wife and then he like Sound-designed the entire episode. And it was really early on in my podcast life and I Was so nervous working with him because he was like a really big deal and it was Super exciting. It was great because he surprised his wife and kids with this story Written about them, so it uses his kids names in it and it's like just such a beautiful episode. I mean, the sound design is just like ridiculous. It's gorgeous. So I think that's the most memorable for me.
Speaker 1:What's a podcast? Full podcast that you've never made but would like to a podcast I've never made.
Speaker 2:Are you talking about like episode or like you're talking about a whole shebang?
Speaker 1:like an Entirely new podcast, was an entirely new podcast you've never made. But if you have the time, you'd love to do it.
Speaker 2:Um, I would love to do a podcast on Like cryptids, cryptids, cryptids.
Speaker 1:So they're kind of like is this like a Bitcoin thing?
Speaker 2:Cabbage. No, um, it's basically like monsters or creatures from like folklore. I'm super into mythology and folklore. You know this. I Love mythology and folklore and along with that comes, you know, urban legends or stories like that, like I love like moth man Watch or yeti howler.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, all those different things. I would just love to have a really beautifully produced podcast about those, because usually those Like paranormal or like cryptozoology podcasts it's usually like people just sitting around and talking about it, which is really fun, but I would also like to have a version of it that is more highly produced, like some of those like true crime documentaries, so it's like almost like documentary style and like talking to people who have like seen the thing you know, like. I would love to do something like that because it would be so much fun.
Speaker 1:I think this needs to be called like morning time wake-up stories, like the opposite. These are too frightening or weird to fall asleep to, but maybe you can make them Like so intense. This is like drop a cup of coffee and replace it with this podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it definitely would not be in the, in the dream full Universe. It would be completely separate.
Speaker 1:All right, and then last question if someone's starting on a podcast today, what's one piece of advice you would have liked to have received yourself before you started?
Speaker 2:this is um one that still kind of like hurts my heart a little bit.
Speaker 2:When I first started my podcast, I I Launched with the first episode that I created and what I wish I had done was created a content bank Prior to launching, because you just don't know what's going to happen. I mean, especially if you're able to record things like well ahead of time, you know if you're, if you're doing like a news Podcast or something like that, that's really hard to do, right. But if you're doing content that's evergreen, such as like fiction or just Advice or having guests on, you know, counseling, whatever it is Having at least three episodes in your pocket before you launch, or having three episodes in your pocket before you like move on to other things, is so helpful, because you just never know when you're gonna get sick. You know I got COVID and I wasn't able to record and it really threw a wrench in my plans. My kids being on Summer break it makes things so hard and I'm kind of like I'm really married to my recording schedule and I wish that sometimes I could just take a week off. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:I? I totally understand. That makes complete sense. Well, jordan, thank you so much for spending this time with us and sharing your podcasting journey. If people want to listen to the podcast, we will put links to Dreamful bedtime stories that can check it out. Besides that, what's the best way for people to reach out to you and connect with you?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm finally on Twitter or X, I guess, is called at Jordan pods. I'm not very active on there, but if you send me a DM I might see it, and you can also catch me on buzzcast, which is the podcast we do together, me and Alvin, and you can also find me on Instagram at dreamful podcast, or my website is dreamful stories comm.
Speaker 1:Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, jordan. We really, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me.
