Chris Stone's Secrets to Generating Income as an Amazon Influencer

Chris Stone [00:00:00]:

It's always kind of interesting.

Dave Jackson [00:00:02]:

When I did all my research for the book, profit From Your Podcast Proven Strategies to Turn Your Listeners Into a Livelihood, I ran into a lot of people who are making money with their podcast, and the goal of their podcast when they first started was not to make money. And by that I mean, like, I'm going to start a podcast and I'm going to get ads. One of the benefits of podcasting is it helps you position yourself as an expert. And today we're talking with Chris Stone from Castahead Net. If you need any kind of video. He's also a podcast consultant. But I look at Chris as the video guy and a marketing guy, and his background comes from the music business, where, again, he is a musician. But primarily he was the marketing guy.

Dave Jackson [00:00:50]:

He was the guy making the T shirts and the bumper stickers and everything else. So he did get a start in the music business, but that's also where you start to hear the heart of.

Chris Stone [00:00:59]:

The servant come out.

Chris Stone [00:01:01]:

My history in the music business had to do with making other people look.

Chris Stone [00:01:06]:

And sound their best.

Chris Stone [00:01:08]:

And so I really was comfortable being sort of behind the scenes and managing the dials and the knobs and all the stuff that content creators, musicians, don't really care about. They really just wanted to do their craft. So as I transitioned out of the music business, I thought, well, I could do this in the podcasting space, because really, content creators are musicians, podcasters are content creators. And in a lot of ways, people just want to get their message out, and they get tripped up by all of this stuff. There's plenty of people that can do a podcast by themselves, and if they can handle all of the stuff and click all the buttons like Dave's doing today, then cool, that's awesome. Go do it, and I can help you.

Chris Stone [00:01:59]:

But if you want somebody to do.

Chris Stone [00:02:00]:

All of that stuff for you and you just want to come out of your trailer and be a superstar, I can do that for you, too. Just chill out, and we'll do all.

Chris Stone [00:02:08]:

This stuff for you.

Dave Jackson [00:02:09]:

And I first ran across Chris when he asked me to be on his show.

Chris Stone [00:02:14]:

Our third guest ever on Dealcasters was the gentleman you first heard when you pushed Play on this particular podcast was Dave Jackson. Here we were nobody, and we said, you know what? Maybe if we ask hall of Famer Dave Jackson to be on our show because he's got a new book, he'll be on our show. And he said yes. And ever since then, it's just been nothing but well, not superstardom, but it's been okay.

Dave Jackson [00:02:38]:

Hey, an okay is a great place to start. So Chris and his co host were remote video producers, and they heard about this thing called the Amazon Influence Program.

Chris Stone [00:02:50]:

We had done some virtual conferences with.

Chris Stone [00:02:53]:

Some clients and we're like, we have.

Chris Stone [00:02:55]:

To figure out a way to do a show.

Chris Stone [00:02:57]:

And one day he called me and.

Chris Stone [00:02:58]:

He said, hey, I watched this video.

Chris Stone [00:03:00]:

From Ross Brand and it was how.

Chris Stone [00:03:03]:

To get yourself set up as an Amazon influence.

Chris Stone [00:03:06]:

And I was like, what? You mean Amazon influence?

Chris Stone [00:03:10]:

That sounds weird. He goes, Well, I applied and I was approved.

Chris Stone [00:03:14]:

So let's start a show on Amazon.

Chris Stone [00:03:16]:

And literally, I said, yes. Not only know, why not do another.

Chris Stone [00:03:23]:

Show, right, but this was the place where we could go live in the.

Chris Stone [00:03:27]:

Middle of the biggest mall in the.

Chris Stone [00:03:29]:

World and demonstrate what we do.

Chris Stone [00:03:32]:

We were always like in these conversations with clients about what's the mic you use and what's the best lighting should I use?

Chris Stone [00:03:39]:

And they don't want to hear about.

Chris Stone [00:03:41]:

Mic technique and all of those other things.

Chris Stone [00:03:44]:

They just say, tell me the mic I need to buy.

Chris Stone [00:03:47]:

And you're just texting them an affiliate.

Chris Stone [00:03:49]:

Link, you hope they're clicking on it.

Chris Stone [00:03:51]:

And you hope you're getting the dollar 27 or whatever from the mic they bought, right? And so it was just this clunky.

Chris Stone [00:03:56]:

Process that was like, why not be.

Chris Stone [00:03:59]:

Able to do this in the middle of the biggest mall in the world? We'll do this stuff and we'll demonstrate. We'll teach people about mic technique. Why you need headphones when you do these things for us that have been in this industry and Dave for you much longer than I have, like, putting headphones on when you do these things is like a dur, of course, right? But most people don't know about this.

Chris Stone [00:04:22]:

Most people don't even know what live video is.

Chris Stone [00:04:24]:

They don't understand any of this stuff. And so we're like, why not just show up and do this? Then we can take the content and.

Chris Stone [00:04:31]:

Just spit that out everywhere and it.

Chris Stone [00:04:34]:

Would show what we can do for other people. The intention really Dave, was for us to get business as remote producers.

Chris Stone [00:04:40]:

That was it.

Chris Stone [00:04:41]:

We were know, we knew like, let's turn this into a podcast. Let's have conversations with interesting people like Chris Kermitsos and Dave Jackson and Jennifer Watson and all of these people. Let's have them on here. If they've got a book to talk about and it's available on Amazon, what.

Chris Stone [00:05:01]:

Greater place to have a podcast than.

Chris Stone [00:05:05]:

On Amazon where someone has a book?

Chris Stone [00:05:07]:

It's a differentiator, right?

Chris Stone [00:05:09]:

So we had a lot know nobody comes out of the gate with guests like that on their podcast.

Chris Stone [00:05:14]:

They just don't.

Chris Stone [00:05:16]:

So kind of the carrot for us.

Chris Stone [00:05:18]:

Was to have a really good looking.

Chris Stone [00:05:21]:

And sounding show where the guests really felt really great about being able to do what they needed to do to promote their book, but also be a differentiator it's just not like a zoom call that gets recorded. This is an actual show that we can make someone feel really good about and the first time we had Chris.

Chris Stone [00:05:40]:

Cremitzos on, he was like, guys, I.

Chris Stone [00:05:44]:

Have to get you to Podfest. I have to get you to head up an entire day at VIDFEST and talk to everybody about Amazon, what they could be doing. Let's really try to make this work. And that was the second show we ever had.

Dave Jackson [00:05:56]:

Chris and his co host were remote producers. They were familiar with video, they were familiar with live and they were positioning themselves as experts. And Chris Komitsos is the founder of Podfest, one of the largest podcasting events. And he's saying you got to come and do this kind of stuff at my event. So I asked know, a live show is a little different. What kind of goes into it and what can you do during the show because it looks like the Home Shopping.

Chris Stone [00:06:27]:

Network, the UI is basically it's all run from your iOS device or your.

Chris Stone [00:06:33]:

Iphone in our case.

Chris Stone [00:06:35]:

And before your show, you fill your carousel with products that you're going to talk about. So what we typically do every time is we put the microphones that we're using, the interfaces that we're using. If it's a thematic show, we'll put products from that theme. If it's somebody that we're interviewing, all the products from that person. Before the person gets interviewed, we ask them. We give them a link which goes to their Amazon account that they can only see that says, here are the last ten things I bought on Amazon. So we can say, hey, give us the last click on this. Tell us the last ten things you bought on Amazon.

Chris Stone [00:07:14]:

Now, do we bring those up in the interview? Mostly no, but we might. But if somebody is watching the show.

Chris Stone [00:07:22]:

And asks a question about it so if Dave, if you were on and maybe you bought a charger that you.

Chris Stone [00:07:29]:

Really like for your iPhone, for instance, somebody might chime in and say, does.

Chris Stone [00:07:36]:

This charger have this capability?

Chris Stone [00:07:39]:

And then we'll kind of weave it into the conversation.

Chris Stone [00:07:41]:

And we weave that into the conversation. Will it make the audio podcast afterwards?

Chris Stone [00:07:47]:

Maybe not.

Chris Stone [00:07:48]:

I think once you're x amount of minutes in on a particular podcast, I think it's fine to leave that stuff in just because as long as it doesn't get in too much of a visual conversation, I think it's okay to leave that stuff in. Because if they're listening 28 minutes into.

Chris Stone [00:08:01]:

A podcast, they're probably going to be okay.

Chris Stone [00:08:04]:

If you're answering a question from somebody live and they're probably also going to hear that you're talking to somebody live.

Chris Stone [00:08:10]:

And go, these guys have a live show, I think I need to go check it out.

Dave Jackson [00:08:14]:

And as we're talking Amazon, we have to talk about FTC disclosure. Meaning when you are sending someone an affiliate link, you have to let them know that you might earn a commission in the event they buy something. So how do you do that on a live video show.

Chris Stone [00:08:32]:

Yeah, there's nothing that drives more traffic to a live stream than the FTC requirements. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Dealcasters. Everything you see here, we could make some money at no cost to you as far as the live streams are concerned. And when we repurpose audio, we're very careful about links because that's really what they're so anytime we have something that's sending someone to Amazon, we have to let them know this is where it's going. And so, like Show Notes, if you ever go to our show notes, there's all kinds of little disclaimers that we're putting in there because we want to make sure, hey everybody, this is going to go to Amazon potentially and at no cost to you. We might make a little change to.

Chris Stone [00:09:16]:

Pay for the RODECaster pro, whatever.

Chris Stone [00:09:19]:

So we do that. But in terms of live video and.

Chris Stone [00:09:22]:

What we say on audio, if say.

Chris Stone [00:09:25]:

For instance, we're talking about the Shore SM Seven B, which I'm talking to right now, I would say we'd like to thank our friends at Shore who sent us this at no cost, but our opinions are all our own. We'll say that and that basically is.

Chris Stone [00:09:41]:

Like, okay, sure sent these guys this SM Seven B microphone, but he's talking.

Chris Stone [00:09:48]:

About something that he believes in and hopefully they don't go they don't say, I don't like this guy or whatever, but it happens. And so that's really kind of most of the disclosure that we have in.

Chris Stone [00:10:02]:

Terms of video and everything else.

Chris Stone [00:10:05]:

We can go down this road as.

Chris Stone [00:10:07]:

Well, Dave, but we don't talk about.

Chris Stone [00:10:10]:

Stuff that we don't already use. And so it's important that from the onset, jim and I didn't have relationships with companies like sure and other companies that we have relationships with.

Chris Stone [00:10:24]:

We didn't. But we used their stuff and we believed in their stuff.

Chris Stone [00:10:28]:

And there were times where those companies were calling us. And one of the companies that we work with, one of the first things.

Chris Stone [00:10:35]:

That they said to us was, listen.

Chris Stone [00:10:38]:

We love the show and it's great.

Chris Stone [00:10:39]:

And everything, but it was like, you.

Chris Stone [00:10:41]:

Know what I really like mostly you.

Chris Stone [00:10:43]:

Guys already used our stuff, right?

Chris Stone [00:10:46]:

And it was like, that resonated with me. And there's a ton of influencers that may have tens and hundreds of thousands of followers and all this great stuff.

Chris Stone [00:10:54]:

But they don't use the stuff.

Chris Stone [00:10:56]:

So why would these companies shore Road, you can name Logitech, we can name all of these companies.

Chris Stone [00:11:05]:

Why would they just send you free stuff if you don't really know what you're doing yet? And for us, our currency really is trust.

Chris Stone [00:11:14]:

So we make a little money if somebody buys stuff that we're doing.

Chris Stone [00:11:18]:

And that's all well and good, but.

Chris Stone [00:11:20]:

If somebody has a question about headphones.

Chris Stone [00:11:25]:

And they want to understand what the.

Chris Stone [00:11:27]:

Difference is between this pair of headphones which has all this added bass in it, and these other pair of headphones.

Chris Stone [00:11:34]:

That are more for monitoring and what.

Chris Stone [00:11:36]:

The difference is and what they should use. We can have a conversation with them and not go we really want you to buy these because this company pays us this. We want to be able to have that conversation and have people trust what we're saying.

Dave Jackson [00:11:54]:

Exactly. The one thing that every podcaster has when they start is integrity. And once you lose it, it's almost impossible to get it back. Another side effect, I guess we could call it that, of being an Amazon influencer, is you get your own.

Chris Stone [00:12:12]:

Yeah.

Chris Stone [00:12:13]:

So if you go to Dealcasters Shop, you'll be able to see that and basically it's kind of like your YouTube channel but more like a flea market than an actual YouTube channel. So you'll get a banner that you put across the top, but then on.

Chris Stone [00:12:28]:

There you can have your shoppable videos.

Chris Stone [00:12:32]:

Your live streams and your idea lists and photos as well, which we don't do a ton of photos just because it hasn't really done much for us and we're not super photogenic.

Chris Stone [00:12:44]:

But the one thing we didn't touch.

Chris Stone [00:12:46]:

On Dave was product videos.

Chris Stone [00:12:48]:

And quite honestly, in terms of the.

Chris Stone [00:12:51]:

Amount of revenue that you can make as an Amazon influence, going live is.

Chris Stone [00:12:57]:

Something that helps out a little bit.

Chris Stone [00:12:59]:

But you can actually be an Amazon influencer, be a podcaster, whatever, and not go live, just create product videos.

Chris Stone [00:13:07]:

So if you want to do a.

Chris Stone [00:13:08]:

Product video for your rode pod mic and you want to just do like a quick two minute video on it, why you like it, the components of it, maybe unbox the new whatever that you got, do a video, put it together. It doesn't have to be super amazing. Remember, these are people that are right there at the precipice of hitting buy and add to cart. You just need to answer a couple of questions, solve a few problems that they might have when they're in the process of buying it and you put that there and that's a nice way to make a little money while you sleep as well in terms of affiliate commission for that.

Chris Stone [00:13:45]:

And then you could take that if.

Chris Stone [00:13:46]:

You want to put it on your YouTube channel. What a lot of people do is if their brand is one thing, let's just say they're a coach of some sort, but they'll get themselves set up as an Amazon influencer and they'll do a bunch of product videos and it could be everything from the blender to whatever, nothing really related to coaching. So they'll start another YouTube channel where they put all of their product videos up on.

Chris Stone [00:14:12]:

So they have the that and then.

Chris Stone [00:14:13]:

They end up getting monetized on YouTube as well.

Dave Jackson [00:14:15]:

And so, as you heard, monetization on another platform. So Amazon doesn't hold you to some sort of weird exclusive contract.

Chris Stone [00:14:23]:

But the question we all want to know is, is it working?

Dave Jackson [00:14:29]:

And remember, his goal wasn't to make money. It was to position himself as an expert.

Chris Stone [00:14:35]:

It's a fun sandbox to play in, Dave. We get to do all kinds of weird and crazy stuff. But one of the clients I have actually, when we were in the conversation.

Chris Stone [00:14:45]:

He pulled it up and he said.

Chris Stone [00:14:48]:

On this episode right here you did.

Chris Stone [00:14:50]:

With Kirk Nugent, and right here, and.

Chris Stone [00:14:53]:

He pulled his little he scrubbed the video to the he goes, that's what I want.

Chris Stone [00:14:57]:

How much?

Chris Stone [00:14:59]:

I look at that as somewhat of a success. I also look at it as like, again, we have a lot of fun. And if we didn't have any fun, Dave, I don't think we'd do it.

Dave Jackson [00:15:09]:

So he's having fun doing what he loves making videos. But we talked about that whole affiliate.

Chris Stone [00:15:18]:

You know, how much you marketing there, Chris?

Chris Stone [00:15:20]:

It's enough to pay attention to as a stream of revenue for a content.

Chris Stone [00:15:24]:

Creator, is what I'll say.

Chris Stone [00:15:27]:

If you think it's something you can.

Chris Stone [00:15:28]:

Just not just hit an easy button.

Chris Stone [00:15:31]:

And not pay attention to it. And every day you're going to make a couple of $100.

Chris Stone [00:15:35]:

That's not true either. If you want to make 300, $400 a day, then you got to work at it.

Chris Stone [00:15:43]:

Just like any job that you would make $300 a day at, you got to work at it. And that means paying attention to how your content is working, but also investing in it. There's software that is made for Amazon sellers. One's called Helium Ten. Another one, I forget the name of it. It's got a big bumblebee on the.

Chris Stone [00:16:02]:

Logo, but it's basically made for you.

Chris Stone [00:16:06]:

To be able to say, here is all the stuff that's selling really well on Amazon.

Chris Stone [00:16:11]:

And it kind of puts you into.

Chris Stone [00:16:13]:

A situation, like when you get approached by brands with products that may or may not make sense for you, and you can kind of say, should I do a video on this particular product? I can put it in the software.

Chris Stone [00:16:26]:

And it'll say, no, it's not a.

Chris Stone [00:16:29]:

Good idea because they don't have video on the product page. They don't sell well, they don't have good reviews. So it's a way to do that.

Chris Stone [00:16:37]:

But that software is not cheap.

Chris Stone [00:16:40]:

But we invest in things like that because for us, Amazon is one revenue stream. For us, our bigger businesses are what we do, like for what I do for Cast Ahead and what I do for remote production.

Chris Stone [00:16:53]:

But we can't ignore the amount of.

Chris Stone [00:16:55]:

Money that does come in for Amazon. And it's also our show.

Chris Stone [00:16:59]:

And honestly, if we didn't make that.

Chris Stone [00:17:00]:

Much money on Amazon, we'd still continue to do our show because we love to do our show. And the reason why we did our show was not to make money. If your reason to start on Amazon.

Chris Stone [00:17:11]:

Is to make money, it might not be for you because it's going to ebb and flow.

Chris Stone [00:17:17]:

There are days where you're going to be, you know the week of prime day is like right now it's down. This summertime is down. People aren't buying as much, believe it or not, of lots of different products.

Chris Stone [00:17:31]:

Now school gets back in here in.

Chris Stone [00:17:33]:

A couple of weeks and things start to cool off a little bit. We start to head in the fourth quarter.

Chris Stone [00:17:38]:

Boom.

Chris Stone [00:17:38]:

Things are going to go that way.

Chris Stone [00:17:41]:

But you got to work at it.

Chris Stone [00:17:42]:

It's just like when I was in the music business we would sit down every year and it drove me nuts and it's like, okay, here we are, we're in July.

Chris Stone [00:17:51]:

Okay, what are we doing around Back to School? Like what do you mean what are.

Chris Stone [00:17:55]:

We doing about back to School?

Chris Stone [00:17:56]:

It's July. We should have been talking about that in February.

Chris Stone [00:17:59]:

In July we should be talking about.

Chris Stone [00:18:00]:

What we're doing around Christmas and every.

Chris Stone [00:18:03]:

Year Christmas comes the same. Know, halloween's always the end of October.

Chris Stone [00:18:08]:

Why are we talking about Michael Jackson Thriller in July? Right? I think in any sort of content.

Chris Stone [00:18:14]:

Creation you got to study what are buying habits, what are streaming habits, what are listening habits, what are the ways that I can shift my content and develop things around that and not be.

Chris Stone [00:18:30]:

Just always thinking about the money?

Dave Jackson [00:18:33]:

And speaking of money, if you want to start doing video, what kind of budget, where can you start? If you don't have a large budget.

Chris Stone [00:18:41]:

Your phone the best camera.

Chris Stone [00:18:44]:

And I've gone live with my phone. I still do. I mean I have a Sony A 6100 that I use for my main.

Chris Stone [00:18:51]:

Camera but I use my phone with.

Chris Stone [00:18:53]:

Camo as an app sometimes and go live with that.

Chris Stone [00:18:57]:

The cameras that they have in these.

Chris Stone [00:18:58]:

Iphones, believe it or not, as much of a mic nerd as we are.

Chris Stone [00:19:03]:

The microphone in the iPhone is not too bad. I've had people like they have a.

Chris Stone [00:19:09]:

Blue Yeti microphone and the sound is just awful. I said, do me a favor.

Chris Stone [00:19:13]:

You're using your phone camera right now, right?

Chris Stone [00:19:17]:

Because that's what they have. It rigged. I said let's just use the microphone.

Chris Stone [00:19:20]:

In your phone, not the earbuds microphone.

Chris Stone [00:19:24]:

Because that's just going to scrape up against your collar and make all kinds of clicking noises and it's really just.

Chris Stone [00:19:29]:

Going to be annoying. But your phone's just fine.

Chris Stone [00:19:33]:

And if they're already a podcast or doing audio they know this audio is most important. It always will be the most important.

Chris Stone [00:19:39]:

Thing with video and if you've got.

Chris Stone [00:19:42]:

All the clickies and just terrible audio and you sound like you're in a.

Chris Stone [00:19:46]:

Reverberry whatever, people are not.

Chris Stone [00:19:50]:

You're annoying people and you're tuning people out.

Chris Stone [00:19:53]:

So pay attention to mic technique and.

Chris Stone [00:19:55]:

Pay attention to making sure you're in.

Chris Stone [00:19:58]:

A small dead room.

Chris Stone [00:19:59]:

Put some fluffy stuff around you and make sure that the sound is the most important. Then worry about the stuff that's in the frame of your phone and whether or not you're at 1080 or 720 or things like that. I recommend getting a dynamic microphone. You can get a great one for $50. It's a USB, and you can like a Samsung QTU or an Audiotechnica 2100 or something like that.

Chris Stone [00:20:25]:

You can plug right into your computer.

Chris Stone [00:20:27]:

And you sound like a podcaster. That's the number one thing is from a Gear perspective, is just a couple of quick things.

Chris Stone [00:20:36]:

Doesn't cost a lot of money, but.

Chris Stone [00:20:38]:

Worry mostly about what you're saying.

Dave Jackson [00:20:40]:

And so we've got our audio down, but it is video, so we need to talk a little lighting.

Chris Stone [00:20:45]:

Yeah, I mean, have a light in front of you. Nobody likes to look at a video and see it looks like somebody's in the witness protection program, but not everybody has an extra couple hundred, $300 or whatever to worry about the lighting. So open a window or whatever and get some real natural sunlight. If it's nighttime, obviously that's not going to work, but get a lamp and.

Chris Stone [00:21:09]:

Get it in front of you and.

Chris Stone [00:21:11]:

Then just kind of adjust it. Get it a little bit off center so it gets some depth in your face. It's really not necessarily lighting as much as it is.

Chris Stone [00:21:19]:

How you align yourself on a I.

Chris Stone [00:21:24]:

In my do, you know, a number of shows a week.

Chris Stone [00:21:28]:

And it just kills me, and I.

Chris Stone [00:21:31]:

Even see it Dave on the news. Sometimes when they're interviewing somebody at their.

Chris Stone [00:21:35]:

Home, they've got a laptop down, and for some reason, people feel like, this.

Chris Stone [00:21:40]:

Is the new look, right? You put the laptop down in front of you and you tilt the laptop camera, and all of a sudden the person you're staring into their nostrils, you're seeing the spinning ceiling fan above them. Take a look at somebody that's doing that. They look like they're 12ft tall and.

Chris Stone [00:21:57]:

You'Re a toddler looking up at them.

Chris Stone [00:22:01]:

Why would you approach somebody like that? You would never do that.

Chris Stone [00:22:04]:

So align yourself.

Chris Stone [00:22:06]:

Get your camera, whatever it is, if it's a laptop, get something underneath it. It could be a box, could be.

Chris Stone [00:22:12]:

A pile of books, whatever.

Chris Stone [00:22:14]:

Get it lined up and make sure that it's not on a desk where your laptop screen is flapping back and forth, because that's flapping your camera back and forth.

Chris Stone [00:22:23]:

It's annoying people.

Chris Stone [00:22:25]:

I think eye contact and alignment is.

Chris Stone [00:22:28]:

Actually a little more important than lighting.

Chris Stone [00:22:30]:

Just get a light in front of you so they can see your face, but make sure that they can see your face, not your nostrils and your spinning ceiling fan.

Dave Jackson [00:22:39]:

And Chris has already mentioned his camera and a couple other things. What's his actual workflow once he gets done recording the show?

Chris Stone [00:22:47]:

This is Tool talk with Chris. I take the content and I throw it into Descript. That's the first thing that I do.

Chris Stone [00:22:53]:

Is I take the isolated videos and.

Chris Stone [00:22:55]:

I put them into Descript. I'll make notes during the show and say, OOH, this was a nice little thing that I'm going to use. This was a nice little thing. But sometimes I miss those. It happens. But Descript is a really great way. And for me, I'm a very read the words visual kind of person. I can kind of go through and say, oh, this is where Dave Jackson said this, and I can highlight something like that and then plop it aside and there's just a whole bunch of stuff for it.

Chris Stone [00:23:23]:

And so by the time I get to the end of an hour long interview, I've got like 15 or 20 potential clips that I can use on a particular interview. And so out of those ten or 15 potential clips, I can take those and put them all into 59 seconds.

Chris Stone [00:23:41]:

Or less and put captions on them.

Chris Stone [00:23:43]:

Do different things with them. And the right answer, I think, is the right answer to everything in terms of podcasting, right, Dave? It depends. So there's a different video that probably resonates better with TikTok versus Instagram versus YouTube.

Chris Stone [00:24:02]:

But the only way to really find.

Chris Stone [00:24:03]:

Out what resonates is to put it there. Sometimes we're putting up a bunch of stuff and go, wow, how did that.

Chris Stone [00:24:09]:

Thing get that many views and then.

Chris Stone [00:24:12]:

Get nothing on this platform? Well, maybe it's the type of video, maybe it's our platform that's just not the platform for us, right? Who knows? It's not like we're posting a lot of stuff on Pinterest all the time. I think the only real way to find out whether or not your content, short form clips, whatever, is going to.

Chris Stone [00:24:30]:

Work on particular platforms is to really go at it and see if it.

Chris Stone [00:24:36]:

Does, and if it doesn't, then curtail it. Or just like podcasting in general, we.

Chris Stone [00:24:43]:

Make our own analytics, but you need.

Chris Stone [00:24:45]:

A larger sample size to say, hey, these types of shorts don't work for me on YouTube. I did like ten of them, but these do. And so I'm going to start to focus and I'm going to use that to create better content for that platform and I'm going to do something different or a little bit different and pivot.

Chris Stone [00:25:04]:

Here on this other platform.

Dave Jackson [00:25:07]:

So different platforms, different strategies, different videos. When you try something new, how long.

Chris Stone [00:25:13]:

Do you let it go before you.

Dave Jackson [00:25:16]:

Go, yeah, it's not working.

Chris Stone [00:25:17]:

You really should start seeing something in about six months. And when I say something, I don't.

Chris Stone [00:25:22]:

Mean like thousands of downloads.

Chris Stone [00:25:25]:

When you start your podcast and you're coming up with these KPIs of what, you determine success for your podcast, if it's additional clients or getting more speaking gigs or whatever, you should start to.

Chris Stone [00:25:37]:

See some activity, maybe not huge activity.

Chris Stone [00:25:42]:

In about six months. 20 plus episodes is kind of like my gauge.

Dave Jackson [00:25:48]:

And so I've made all these cool shorts using Descript. How often do I publish this on social?

Chris Stone [00:25:54]:

We don't go nuts. We literally maybe three or four posts per each one of these platforms a.

Chris Stone [00:26:02]:

Week, is what we're because I feel like if you go every day on.

Chris Stone [00:26:06]:

Some of these platforms, I feel like.

Chris Stone [00:26:08]:

You'Re annoying people, too, right? So this allows us to be more tactical. You start looking at about 50 or.

Chris Stone [00:26:17]:

So posts over the course of three.

Chris Stone [00:26:20]:

Months, maybe is kind of the general flow.

Dave Jackson [00:26:24]:

And since Chris has a vast background, he's worked in audio, he's worked in video, he's worked in marketing. I wanted to get his take because some people are not sure. Should I add video? I haven't even started yet. Should I do audio? Should I do video? Do I do both? What is Chris's take on the audio versus audio?

Chris Stone [00:26:45]:

Audio podcasts are still more far reaching. I use this word all the time, underrated, and people think it's a bad thing. It's not.

Chris Stone [00:26:57]:

I think, you know, having video is.

Chris Stone [00:26:59]:

Super important, I believe, but not essential.

Chris Stone [00:27:02]:

Having audio is essential.

Chris Stone [00:27:04]:

Like, you can't have a podcast without audio. There's no such thing as a silent podcast, last time I checked. There are far more ways for people.

Chris Stone [00:27:11]:

To listen right to that.

Chris Stone [00:27:13]:

I mean, unless, obviously, if you're hearing.

Chris Stone [00:27:15]:

Impaired, there's no question this is why.

Chris Stone [00:27:18]:

Audio is the most important thing and always will be. And I know YouTube, quote unquote, got.

Chris Stone [00:27:24]:

Into podcasts, but are they numbers wise, it's always audio.

Chris Stone [00:27:31]:

And I don't know if they're reading the headlines or whatever. They're looking at YouTube subscribers. They're looking at views, and they're looking on that. And I was like, did you look at your statistics? Did you look that you were in 98 countries and that somebody in Kazakhstan listened to you today? It just blows my mind. I mean, one of the clients that I've got, Dan Rodan, he's called the sales energizer, and he called me, and he wasn't weeping, but he was emotional. And he said, I just wanted to thank you.

Chris Stone [00:28:00]:

He said, I got a call from some person in India, and I ended.

Chris Stone [00:28:07]:

Up getting business from this person. But he says that's beside the point.

Chris Stone [00:28:11]:

He said, I just called you to.

Chris Stone [00:28:14]:

See if you were the same person.

Chris Stone [00:28:16]:

That I heard on the podcast.

Chris Stone [00:28:18]:

And he said, there's no way I would have gotten that business unless we were doing and that was an audio podcast.

Chris Stone [00:28:24]:

And as Chris has been doing this.

Dave Jackson [00:28:25]:

A while, I asked him, Would you do anything different if you started today?

Chris Stone [00:28:30]:

I think out of the gate, when.

Chris Stone [00:28:32]:

We started to see the revenue come.

Chris Stone [00:28:34]:

In, we were shouting it from the rooftops.

Chris Stone [00:28:38]:

And we still tell people that they should be doing this. But I think we thought that Amazon.

Chris Stone [00:28:45]:

Live Amazon influence program felt like the.

Chris Stone [00:28:49]:

Early days of YouTube. If you remember the early days of YouTube. It was like, it was hot garbage, it was blending iPhones. I'm watching a fish tank for 4 hours. What is this? This is terrible.

Chris Stone [00:29:01]:

But now there's a hundred million YouTube channels or whatever, and we all wished.

Chris Stone [00:29:06]:

We had started a YouTube channel way back when they were blending iPhones.

Chris Stone [00:29:10]:

And so I think we thought that.

Chris Stone [00:29:13]:

This thing was going to be massive, so we just shouted it from the.

Chris Stone [00:29:17]:

Rooftops and things changed.

Chris Stone [00:29:21]:

And so I don't really have a.

Chris Stone [00:29:24]:

Regret that we did that.

Chris Stone [00:29:27]:

I wish the content was better on the platform, and we really did our.

Chris Stone [00:29:31]:

Best to kind of evangelize for the platform to try to get better shows.

Chris Stone [00:29:36]:

And better content on the platform. And I think what it did was it really got a lot of people.

Chris Stone [00:29:42]:

That were thinking it was quick money, and so it just got a bunch.

Chris Stone [00:29:46]:

Of people, and so there was just so much content, and right now it's.

Chris Stone [00:29:49]:

So crowded with that just below average.

Chris Stone [00:29:54]:

Content that it's frustrating.

Dave Jackson [00:29:57]:

And of course, if you have someone who worked in the entertainment business, in this case working for record labels, you got to ask them what they learned.

Chris Stone [00:30:04]:

The bottom line is, I got really used to treating people like anyone else.

Chris Stone [00:30:11]:

And ultimately most of these huge celebrities or musicians or whatever, that's really what they want. They don't want the people that are working around them to treat them like superfans and all of that stuff, and you treat them like humans. That's really the way to connect with them and to be able to do whatever you can. My, one of my favorite stories was I was working an in store where at tower records, remember record stores?

Chris Stone [00:30:43]:

Oh yeah.

Chris Stone [00:30:43]:

Sarah McLaughlin, who was signed to arista records, canadian artist. Massive Canadian artist. Her new album fumbling towards ecstasy, came out and she was doing an in store performance at tower records. And she did like, I don't know, four songs acoustically. And all these girls were weeping in the front and it was all just very just whatever. I knew that I was going to have all of the 700 people that were there in that record store were going to have to get in a line, and I would have to orchestrate them getting through so Sarah could sign every single one of those CDs and cassettes to all those people as they went through. So when she ends, my job was to escort her to the table and get things going.

Chris Stone [00:31:27]:

So Sarah's about to finish this music.

Chris Stone [00:31:31]:

A business executive I didn't recognize, came up.

Chris Stone [00:31:34]:

With this little woman next to him.

Chris Stone [00:31:37]:

And he said, hey, I wonder if you can do me a favor.

Chris Stone [00:31:39]:

And I was like, okay.

Chris Stone [00:31:40]:

He goes, I have a new artist that's coming out with a record. She's a really big fan of Sarah.

Chris Stone [00:31:46]:

Can I have Sarah meet my new.

Chris Stone [00:31:50]:

You know, listen, we've got a lot of people, we've got a lot of stuff we got to do. Can we make it really okay?

Chris Stone [00:31:55]:

Okay.

Chris Stone [00:31:56]:

And so Sarah gets off the stage.

Chris Stone [00:31:59]:

Sarah, really quickly.

Chris Stone [00:32:00]:

And I looked at him and I said, can we do this right now? He said yeah.

Chris Stone [00:32:02]:

He says, Sarah, this is my new artist.

Chris Stone [00:32:06]:

She's got a new record coming out called Tuesday Night Music Club.

Chris Stone [00:32:11]:

Her name's cheryl Crowe. And I was standing there when Sarah McLaughlin met Cheryl Crowe, which I thought was pretty cool.

Dave Jackson [00:32:18]:

That is pretty cool. And as we saw in today's discussion with Chris, here's again, exactly what I recommend. Don't just have one stream of income. Chris and his co host are positioning themselves as video experts. They get to showcase their talents in their podcast while they're also earning additional affiliate income. So, Chris, thanks so much for coming on the show, sharing your insights, your story, your workflow. Thanks for everything, buddy.

Chris Stone [00:32:45]:

Thanks, Dave. Appreciate it, man.