Are You Promoting Your Competition for Pennies? - The Blind Side of Crowd Funding

There are some things you may regret doing in podcasting.

Compare your show to others (always a bad idea - instead focus on your podcast
Track how much time you are actually spending creating an episode (it's longer than you think)
Use "Shoutouts" as a reward. This takes up time in your episode that used to be content, and in my case, I hadn't stipulated who could or could not be someone I should shout out.

You always assume everything thinks like you. They don't. I would never go on a podcast where someone is a podcast consultant and attempt to get people to sign up for the School of Podcasting. Now, I have been on many shows about podcasting because the host asked me to be a guest. Even with an invite, I try to provide information that will help people be better podcasters. I rarely feel I blatantly ask people to join the School of Podcasting.

However, other people (and I don't believe this was malicious) wanted to support me by promoting their service that was in direct competition with my services. I've never seen a McDonald's advertisement that ends with, "And if you like onion rings - check out Burger King."

As these people are my supporters (and in many cases friends) this gets awkward. Consequently, I've added a line that anyone who can be considered a competitor to what I offer, I reserve the right to not accept your support and not promote my competition on my own show.

When I Did The Math

Someone was paying $20/month or $5/episode where they were consumed by 700 listeners. If this was an advertisement that calculates to $7.14 for 1000 downloads. The average right now is around $25. They should be paying me $18 an episode, not $20 a month.

As always the choice is yours. I just wanted you to consider:

"shoutouts" don't scale and take up valuable space in your episode
Your competition may choose to advertise on your show ( so put a disclaimer in place)

Work With Me

You can buy my book Profit From Your Podcast.

You can schedule a podcast strategy call.

You can join the School of Podcasting