Transcript: Would you podcast for free?

Hey, what’s going on out there? It’s Doug Cunnington and welcome to the Doug Show. I am doing a couple things, just a little bit different today. I did a silly thing and that is, uh, when I have a perfectly good studio and a microphone working really well, I. Changed some stuff. So I’m using the same microphone, but I’m, I’m going through a different pre-amp.

I actually have a pre-amp that, um, I’m testing out here and I think it does sound better, just ever so slightly. And it was like an improvement that was unnecessary. I mean, technically I’ve rec, I’ve recorded on my phone or in like a, a fairly inexpensive, uh, like recorder and. The tool that I use to master the audio, NIC cleans up.

Things pretty well, but I’ve been watching all these YouTube videos about guitar pedals and other recording and studio equipment, and one of them popped up. I’ll tell you more about it. But anyway, let me know what you think of the audio. If you can’t tell any difference at all, that’s totally fine. I halfway expect that to be the case for most people.

As you’re listening on your phone, or maybe, you know, one thing I do, I’ll have just like AirPods in. I have a AirPod Pros, but I’ll like have the phone like setting somewhere in the house and I’ll go around and, and do things. And, you know, the audio is not super important. Um, as far as like the 1% better that I’m talking about here.

Like I said, I, I bet you won’t even be able to tell a difference. But if you do, let me know. If you happen to be listening on like a studio mic or studio headphones or something like that, let me know.

And today we’re gonna be talking about a few things. I have a a few updates, I’m gonna break one of my, one of my pieces of advice for other people, and that’s not to complain, but I’m gonna try to frame it in.

Um, uh, you know what I. I won’t even try to frame it. I’ll, I’ll tell you a little story about something I was working on. It all kind of comes together. I’ll give you a tiny little update on the print on demand, Etsy stuff that I’m working on. I’ll tell you a little bit about my, uh, new preamp over here. It is actually from the pedal company that, uh, I referenced, uh, recently.

I can’t remember exactly, uh, when or where, but I talked about a pedal company called JHS and they make guitar pedals and different effects and stuff like that. And they have a, a pedal here. And like I said, I’ve been watching a lot of their videos and I was like, this is actually something that I, I think I could use on a different, uh, several different levels and I think it could help me out in the vocal area for recording podcasts, but I could also use it for guitar and other stuff like that.

And I, what sort of the main topic of today And that’s, um. You know, the, the shift in my business and what I wanna focus on really, like what do I wanna spend time on and like, what is important to me? I’m looking at it through like a much broader lens than just, can I earn money from this? It’s more like widow wanna spend time on.

Am I learning something from it? Are there other benefits? Non-monetary? Um, not learning specifically. Is it a social thing? So I’ll go into that a little bit. we have a grab bag of stuff today. Hopefully the audio is, is good. I think I have it in the right kinda spot.

Um, but we’ll see. Let me know. Leave a comment, shoot me an email, that sort of thing.

Before I get into the details of, uh, today, I published an episode a few weeks ago and I was like, ah, my business is failing. And I was happy to see the outpouring of support. Like, Hey, Doug, you’re a straight shooter. Like, that’s why we listen and pay attention to the show, even though I haven’t been doing anything super interesting.

My, those are my words. Not anyone that said anything, but I was like. I’m pretty happy to see people, number one, they do enjoy the show and they were like, yeah, you’re not bullshitting us trying to sell like dumb stuff all the time that, uh, perhaps some of my peers are doing or kind of shitty offers overall.

And the thing is, y’all are not stupid, right? Like if you’ve been checking out the channel for a while and you’ve listened to the podcast for a long time, like, you know, things come and go. And I’ve called. People out and companies out. I actually, one of my first videos, I was like, this is like almost, almost 10 years ago now, so just go with me on this.

But like basically people were selling like done for you sites, so niche sites were popular. They were like. Yeah, well, I’ll just, instead of like trying to like build a site and make it successful on my own, I’ll just like build sites and get ’em, you know, kind of like a starter, a starter home. It’s like a little starter site.

I’ll get some stuff on there. I’ll give them a couple hundred keywords and then I’ll get some articles written and then I’ll set up the WordPress site and all that stuff and I’ll turn over the hosting. So these people will basically, and some of them went on to do other, uh, like. Fine stuff, but they were like, oh yeah, I’m going to sell shovels to, uh, the miners in the gold rush versus like trying to, you know, strike gold themselves.

It was a fun analogy. I mean, a bunch of these marketers, hopefully, I never fucking said that, but like a lot of the marketers out there, they were like, oh yeah, I’m gonna sell shovels. And it’s like, all okay guys. Gals. Anyone can say that, but, but anyway, the, the point is they would sell these done for you sites.

One of my early videos is, was like, don’t buy these sites, these people. Uh, generally not everyone okay, but generally they don’t know what they’re doing. That’s why they’re selling the sites. Like if they were able to build the site and then if they were earning money, then they probably wouldn’t have gone that route.

The, there were some legit people that were doing this, and often what happens is someone is like, oh, I’m gonna hire a small team. I’m gonna hire a few people to work on a thing. And then they were. They had someone like doing keyword research, someone setting up WordPress sites, some, some other few people doing the writing, and they had like enough capacity in their team where they were like, I’m, I don’t need sites built endlessly, so why don’t I just use the people that I’ve trained to do the same thing.

So there were a couple legit folks out there, but there were some people that basically they were like rebuilding the same site. With like small changes in iterations. So for example, maybe they found 10 good niches and they had a thousand keywords for each one, which sounds like a, a large number depending on who you are and your experience level.

But basically they would, um, have a, like a set of different keywords for these 10 different sites and they would, um, they would sell it to different people. They would use like the same WordPress, um, theme. They would. They would change the logo and some other stuff. The names would be different, but it would be like generally the same iteration of a site or a different iteration of the same site, and they would like sell it over and over again.

And someone came to me for coaching and they were like, Hey, I feel dumb for this, but like I bought this site. I paid $4,000 for it. And then the company, they said, oh, well we could do link building and we could write articles for you. So I signed up and I was paying ’em like a thousand dollars a month. So they, the person was in for like $15,000 and they were like, yeah, I actually went to look at the other sites that were on.

The same server on the same IP address, and they were alarmed to find that there were many different sites that looked pretty much the same. There were clearly niche sites, several in the same niche, so the company was literally just like selling the same kind of stuff. So there were some lazy, sketchy people out there.

I didn’t do that and I called people out for it. So. Again, uh, the whole point here is like people were saying that they appreciated my honesty and that I was actually, uh, being truthful, uh, with where my business is and like what I’m, what I’m doing and focusing time on. So thank you for that. The other little change, uh, speaking of the business and um, you know, if you have a need for a podcast or video editor, let me know.

My old va Callie short with me for about six years. Crazy six years. And, um, I recently needed to let her go ’cause my revenue, uh, like the rest of my revenue kind of fell away. So if you have, uh, I put her in contact with a couple folks that contacted me already, which is great. But if there’s somebody out there that does need some help in the editing, she produced my show for, uh, she’s done hundreds of episodes and she, um, used a tool that I’m gonna talk about in trash here in a second.

Maybe this is why I’m not, uh, a great affiliate.

So a company which I’m an affiliate for does script. They have a pretty decent tool most of the time, but I’ll, um, yeah, I’ll, I’ll get to that in a second. So, because I let, let Cali go. She did a fine job, just revenue was down and I can’t, you know, look at the expenses and run the numbers and with uh, you know, any sort of confidence, be like, okay, I’m gonna float this for a little while.

So anyway, one of the changes is I’m like, how can I minimize the editing? That I need to do for this. So, number one, never make a mistake. So that’s tip number one. Don’t make a mistake, but this is how I did it in the old days. Luckily, I’m a little bit better, uh, than I used to be. ’cause I, I used to record it on a recorder.

’cause if I looked at a computer screen, like there’s a computer screen and I could see my video down there and the wave form is going around and all this stuff. So it would distract me. But now I’m a little bit. Um, a little bit more focused when I’m recording a show. So number one, no editing. Take that out and that’ll come back around to the script in a second too.

But the other is instead of like. Having an editor and having to put the, uh, like a video editing software and having to put the intro music. I’m just playing it live. I’m like, I’m just hitting record and then I’m clicking that thing and trying to make it as, uh, frictionless as possible. And I’ll do that at the end as well.

So that will, that’ll eliminate the need for me to put this. Video in Descrip and descrip, like I said, a fine tool. I’ve talked about it many times and the, the good part, the reason why I have used it, and I’ll still use it for a lot of stuff, but the reason why I used it for, uh, podcast editing and video editing is because it creates a transcript of the audio, which is super helpful, and then it allows you to edit the video or audio.

Based on the transcript. For example, if there’s a pause, then you can easily tell the software, remove any pauses longer than two and a half seconds, and replace it with a one second pause so you could trim things up and make it a little bit tighter. You could also. Identify filler words and remove those in a fairly straightforward way.

Super effective. If you’re a professional like me, you will not have too many filler words, knock on wood. Truth be told, when I went in, uh, last week and I looked at my transcript, I realized. Fuck I, I have way more filler words than what I expected. That does happen when you’re just going off the cuff. I have not, I don’t have a script or anything like that.

I have a couple bullet points on a list here, so you end up rambling on. I forget what I’m saying. Half the time I start a story and then realize that I didn’t finish it. I started telling a different story and I’m literally doing it right now. But the point is the software is very good. It does a transcript because it has a transcript.

You can have a summary created. They have AI features in there now, and I actually tested one recently that’s like in the beta version. They will. Basically take your instructions. Your text instructions, like a chat ai bot, and you tell it what you want and then it’ll like edit your video and put in transitions and, uh, text and some other stuff.

It’ll, it’ll cut things out and. Do some fairly sophisticated editing. However, when I, when I watched and listened to it, it somehow like mangled my voice. So it also, I, I’m not sure what happened if that was like some of the studio, uh, sound setting stuff that it tries to filter out the unpleasant noises or something like that.

But it kind of fucked up and I was like, okay, this is, this is a non-starter like for me to try to fix. The edit would be way harder than just like scrapping it, but that is one of those things. So anyway, it does a really good job on the transcript, and then from the transcript it can create show notes, it can put all the timestamps in there and that sort of thing.

So for today, most likely I will not use that tool because I was trying to edit, um, just a short portion of a, a video. Uh, all I needed to do. Was tweak the color settings. So I went into the script for this one video. Literally, to change this type of setting, it’s, it should take about 30 seconds. I should be able to go in, select the video clip that I want to change, or the series of video clips.

In this case, it was just like the whole interview, but it was chopped up, so I just needed to highlight all of those and then click update the color settings and make adjustments. Should be very straightforward and it just turned down the saturation for, I recorded it on my iPhone and for whatever reason, I looked orange and my wife looked orange or red.

We looked like mpa, Lupas. It was very odd, and I was like, okay, should be quick. I’m just gonna adjust this real quick. One hour later, fuck sake, I could not adjust the color. So I would, I actually, I went to the help section and they’re like, go to this screen and do this. And I’m like, yeah, yeah. I mean, I know how to change.

Like I’ve used the software for like two or three years. So there was a recent update. I don’t know if they broke the software. And that’s one of my complaints with, uh, the fast software iterations. These. Companies and I don’t know, look, look, half the time it’s fucking user error and I messed up and I like didn’t do something right.

This is such a basic thing and I spent such a long amount of time on it and still never fucking changed the color, right? So I still was unsuccessful to adjust the color. Boggles the mind. Super simple thing that you should be able to do with any video editing software. So Descrip is very good at the transcript portion.

It’s very good with the AI and the summaries and that sort of thing that even have some functionality to help you like, um. I guess write a script and come up with more ideas and blah, blah, blah. It does all this AI stuff, which I think is like totally fucking unnecessary. Like just be a video and podcast editor.

Don’t be this other stuff. Sure. Like use maybe, uh. Be able to operate on the transcript so that you can do the show notes and other stuff. But I don’t need, like, I don’t need my video editor to write a script for me. Like I need it to at least do the most fucking basic video editing tasks. I also, I mean, I.

I kind of don’t need it to be like really sophisticated in the audio, like setting area. I think what they’re burning their time on though is like all the AI bullshit. Um, again, some of it can be helpful, but it’s like, man, I don’t need, I don’t need all those, uh, fake videos. Like, I don’t need that. Like I need to be able to like edit a podcast episode.

So. You won’t get a transcript for this one. I’m sorry. There’s a handful of people that, uh, apparently read the transcript. I, uh, mentioned in a couple emails past like, Hey, if you actually read the transcript, let me know ’cause I’m about to stop doing it. ’cause I basically, I don’t know who’s reading the transcript, but there’s a handful of people that, you know, they don’t listen to podcasts, they don’t watch videos and stuff like that.

So I guess you’re reading it, skimming it. I don’t know. That said, if you’re not on the email list, please hop on the email list. I’ll put a link. I think, um, shit, I, you know, I really need to update the, um, like the lead magnet and stuff like that in there. It’s like, oh yeah, you can get all my templates for Amazon affiliate websites.

It’s like, when was this created? Like six years ago? And that’s, that’s the exact answer. Yeah, it was like six years. It’s like six years ago. It’s been a while. I haven’t updated it. And um, that’s where we are anyway. So script, sometimes there’s bugs when they push out new software and, um, getting to be an old guy.

So when something changes, I’m like, where did they move my button? Where, why did they move this? There was, there’s probably maybe a reason, I don’t know, but I don’t know where the button is. And you’re fucking. Software support. You know, it’s an AI bot, so it doesn’t actually gimme any help. And then when I go to your support page, it’s the old stuff.

You haven’t updated it for the new version that you have. Again, sorry, I’m an old guy now, so this just kind of happens and I hope those kids get off my lawn.

Up next Print on demand with Etsy. So I am, I’m getting a little bit, uh, more savvy with it and getting more ideas, and I see inspiration often and I have ideas for these, uh, you know, just t-shirts in general.

E even stuff like this. I’m wearing a Joshua Tree National Park, and there’s a simple design and. You know, it’s, it’s a cool shirt. I bought it from the park and something like this, like I could totally design something like this. So I put together a few shirts for my other podcast and the thing that I’ve been waiting for, I ordered about five samples in the last week and I got one of them back.

Couple more should be coming in the next few days, but they’re print on demand, so it takes a little while to get here. The. The one that I got was, um, a hoodie and I think like my cost is about 50 bucks. It’s not cheap. I might, yeah, it’s like 48, $50 and I was expecting it to be like a little bit thicker.

It is quite soft and it’s like a, um, it’s a thin fleece material, so it actually feels pretty good. But I think I was expecting like maybe a either a thicker material, um. I’m not really sure, but it’s fine. It’s just, I’m trying to think like if I ordered it, ’cause that my cost is that, so it’s selling for, I think I actually made it like a premium uh, version.

So I think it might be selling for like a hundred bucks. And I’m thinking to myself, well, I mean part of it is like we’ve given away hundreds of t-shirts, so it’s like we’ve given away t-shirts and stickers and a bunch of stuff and it’s like you’re just buying the shirt to like support the show. So like that’s kind of the idea.

I’m not trying to. Get rich selling a hundred dollars sweatshirt. It’s just like you’re gonna wear it at a couple things, at a couple gatherings or whatever. A handful of, I mean, it’s a very niche thing. It’s just like support the show kind of thing. So that said, I, I was just thinking like, if I paid a hundred bucks and I got it, would I be like.

This is a shitty sweatshirt, or would I be like, this is a pretty good sweatshirt. It’s just not as thick as I thought. Turns out it’s like today that I’m recording this, it’s like 95 degrees outside. I’m down in the basement, which is much cooler. It’s probably like 65 degrees down here, but just it’s, it’s warm out there, so it’s not like I want a really hot sweatshirt or something like that.

So anyway, I’m getting samples trying to figure out like what. Each of the materials is actually like, and that sort of thing. And the thing is like as long as the T-shirts are fairly soft, I think that that fits the bill and I’ll be happy with that. I do need to create more products. And I think I’m actually just gonna do really simple stuff where it’s just like the text of some sort of funny, um.

I can’t think of anything funny right now, but some, some sort of funny phrase or um, just a sentence or something like that, like black t-shirt, white letters, straightforward or white t-shirt, black letters. Just real simple. And maybe do like limited runs where it’s just like, I’m gonna sell 10 of these and that’s it, or something like that.

I’m not quite sure. The course that I’m taking, the giftable, the gift lab course is, you know, more focused on not clothing, and I think that’ll be the key. Like maybe I should make journals or something like coffee mugs or high-end water bottles or something like that.

So I. Right. I told you that I was getting obsessed with number one music.

So I have been playing, really, it’s just guitar. Not overall music, but like playing more guitar and I’ve been playing with some friends and, and just jamming and hanging out. Really fun. And at the same time, I’ve been watching a lot of this YouTube channel. JHS pedals and they have this product. If you’re an audio geek, you may have seen the color box.

Um, this is the version two that I have over here. I’m not gonna pick it up. It’ll probably make a bunch of noise if I do. But basically I can hook up a microphone like this and do some pre-amp stuff and that, in fact, I, I will turn a dial or two, like for example, um. I’m gonna turn up the, the trouble here and it’ll sound like a little, a little weird.

A lot more. There’s probably a little noise that comes through too, but I’ll turn that back down. A lot of times having too much trouble is not good, but then the base bumping up the base helps a little bit. So now I’m turning up the base and it can be too much. So now the base is like maxed out and it probably sounds a little weird.

Like my voice is not really that deep. So we’ll bring it back up and it’s just boosted just a tiny bit. But anyway, you could plug in an XLR cable, and then I have a XLR out, which goes into my M audio like little interface. I’ve had this for probably like 15 years, so I. I thought it was a fairly cheap unit.

It’s plastic. I think it is cheap. I think it probably only cost like 60 bucks back then, and you could buy ’em used and there’s a bunch of different kinds. But basically I could plug in an XLR cable and then there’s a USB input and then it goes into my computer and I could use it as an audio source or, uh, like for a video chat or whatever.

I could use it for an audio source for like GarageBand and record whatever. It also has an input for, um, a quarter inch. So that’s what you would plug in a guitar with. So both the M audio, I could plug in the quarter inch for the guitar, and that would just go direct in, and there’s no like preamp. So it’s kind, it’s usually kind of quiet.

And then you would have to rely on like GarageBand or some other recording software or. You know, an amp simulator type thing to boost the levels and give you, you know, the sounds that you’re looking for. The cool part is I can plug in the guitar, the quarter inch cable into the. Color box that is the preamp, and then have an output go into the M audio interface.

So then I could like directly plug my guitar into the preamp, go into the audio interface, and then into the computer, which is pretty cool. And then I have like a direct, uh, input. And then, for example, I have like a resonator guitar over here. There’s two pickups in there. One’s a more traditional humer, and that’s right off the neck, uh, position there.

But there’s also a, um, pickup in the cones for the resonator, and it could be a little bit tinny. I I’ve only plugged it in through that, um, a couple times and it could just be like too much high end essentially. And I was, I was like, oh man. Like I’ll be able. To plug it in to the color box here and play with a EQ and shave off just like I’m doing with my voice here.

I could shave off some of the, the top end so it’s not so like sharp and tinny and harsh and that sort of thing.

So it’s just something I could play around with. And, you know, it’s, it’s kind of a fun thing, but when I was thinking, oh, I could actually improve my audio a little bit, I thought that could be a good thing.

So. Color box is pretty cool. I’ve been really impressed with that. Uh, JHS Pedals channel, it’s super entertaining and they’re, they’re so nerdy about everything. They’re pretty funny, and they, it looks like they’re having a good time overall. good news. We actually have a sponsor today. Cloud Ways hosting reached out and I was like, yeah, let’s do a deal. So we have an ad read for you today if you’re serious about your online presence, whether you’re building an agency, an e-commerce store, a personal brand, or maybe you’re working on an app, cloud ways can be a game changer for agencies.

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at the outro. I’ll, I’ll tell you a little funny thing that happened while I was recording that.

So let’s talk about, I guess, maybe the main part of today. I buried it really deep in here, so I have a note here and things have changed, right? So previously I had.

A few online courses, one main course, and I had a few websites and they were earning money. One kinda cool thing, I earned roughly 50% of my income from websites, and then I earned another 50% from the courses. Actually, both of those are probably smaller. It was probably like 40. 40. And then, um, what’s left?

20%. 40. 40. So another 20% was like other stuff, coaching, but I don’t know, just o other ways that I earned money. So only 40% was like course revenue. And actually if I look back, perhaps, ’cause I sold a couple websites, so maybe like the lump sums, uh, altogether ended up being more for like websites than actually courses.

So anyway, we’re tired of the courses, but the thing is, I had like a, a business running, right? And there were different pieces, but the business was running. So the main reason I started the podcast and the YouTube channel was to be like the top end funnel for the courses. So people would come in, they would learn some information, get to know me a little bit.

Some people just like to listen to stories at this point ’cause I’m not selling anything and. They would maybe, if they were interested, they would buy the course. So that worked really well. And having a podcast, a YouTube channel, it’s a great way to build trust that enables people to take the leap and actually buy a course from you.

It makes sense. I mean, I bought courses from people, actually, I just bought a guitar course this week, but from a YouTuber. That I’ve watched for a few years and I was like, you know what? I’m pretty sure I’ll go through the course. But he put it on sale and I was like, you know what, I’ll, I’ll buy it. I like what he’s doing and I wanna support him.

So anyway, my question here is, I mean, I like the podcast. I like the Doug Show here. I called it Doug Show. ’cause I knew at some point I’m not gonna be talking about the marketing stuff and then. I got pretty entrenched in that, but I named it that way on purpose so I could talk about whatever the fuck I want whenever I want to.

And like it’s, it’s, it’s my show. So I could do that. And the question is, would you do it for free? So at this point, I have two podcasts and the other podcast was earning a little bit of money, had one sponsor, they. And did their sponsorship, which is, which is fine. Like the, I think my partner and I, um, now I’m solo, but, uh, when he and I started the other podcast, we were like, we’re open to take sponsors if they come to us, but we really wanna have freedom to say whatever we want, whenever we want, and we don’t want it to be a hassle in the, the company that sponsored us GhostBed.

They were from the audience, basically like the marketing director, whoever the point of kind, I don’t know what his role is, but he was a listener of the show. So he got it and he asked us a few times like, Hey, like I, I wanna sponsor the show. So eventually we were like, alright, we’ll do that. But before that, we actually tried like a donation model, which our show just wasn’t big enough to actually support, um, and pay for the show.

But I was earning enough with my, the overall business, I basically just like floated that mile hi fi show for a couple years.

My partner and I split the cost, but we floated it and then as the revenue shifted and then the revenue went down over on the, the Doug show side of the house, I was like, oh, well at least there’s a sponsor on the other show and.

The question popped up in my head ’cause like I could stop doing the show. I could stop doing this show. I could stop doing mile Hi-Fi and for Mile Hi-Fi. I really, I enjoy it quite a bit. It’s a newer topic area and it’s. Actually pretty easy for me to get someone to come in to the studio and do an interview.

And I’ve, I’ve been having a little bit of trouble interviewing people on the Doug Show side. Don’t get me wrong. I have pitches. I actually have a, um, one of my friends, Olga, she’s been on the show many times, actually, I owe her an email. I’m just like, I’m shitty with email and scheduling stuff, uh, these days.

But like, basically our time zones are messed up. She’s about eight or nine hours ahead, and we both like to work in the morning, so I don’t really wanna wake up super, I don’t wanna wake up at like four in the morning to like do an interview or whatever. And then she doesn’t wanna like do one in the afternoon.

So we’re, we’re having trouble like scheduling something. The point being for the Doug show, I’m like, there’s no direct revenue coming in except for today with cloud ways. Give them a little, you know, give them a look. Go to their website, check it out. But basically the question is, do I enjoy this enough to do it for free?

So I have to think about that. Do I like doing this enough to do it for free? I definitely did in the beginning. And I know my, my friend Matt, he has his money lab show. He. He likes doing his show. I think, um, I’ve mentioned it before. He gets something out of like, talking through like, what’s going on.

That’s why he’s, why he is doing it. And there’s like, I don’t know how many people listen, but like, I’m just making it up. I, I don’t know. He hasn’t told me how many people listen, but I’m guessing like many dozen, few hundred people probably, listen, he had a pretty big. Following and a few hundred people listen to each one of these episodes.

So it’s not nothing. And I have to ask myself like, is this show still doing what I want it to do? I don’t need to sell courses anymore. So it doesn’t serve its original purpose. Is there another purpose? And the weird thing is, because I have two podcasts now, like I. Get something out of producing content, but am I getting like two x of that benefit?

And it’s a broad range of stuff. It’s social. I have to think through topics. There’s some, uh, so there’s something about just producing content and publishing things on a regular basis and like showing up. But I’ve done this show for six years at this point, and. There’s over 500 some odd episodes and I have to question like, why am I doing it?

What do I get out of it? I already have another show. Should I move over to the other show? Same thing with the other show. I’m not earning any money from it. I can literally can stop. I could stop doing the show, but do I get something from it? I truly do enjoy the other show. I really like the subject area and I get to meet.

New people often, or have very deep conversations about something. I never do a solo episode over there, so, so there’s always a, either a co-host or there’s always a, uh, guest that I interview, so it’s a little bit different over there. So I have to ask myself now that I’m, now I’m thinking even harder, I can stop.

Both of them. And the thing is like, uh, over on the other side, like on the Mile High-Fi podcast, it’s a financial independence podcast. I’m semi-retired, my co-host, he retired like eight years ago, seven years ago, something like that. The people that I interview, they’re retired most of the time, or they’re about to retire.

So the, the Internet’s a crazy place. So on that show. If I’m saying, Hey, can you donate to help us run the show? If people like the show, they donate and if they have the time. Actually, there’s a lot of people that like the show that do not donate, but the Internet’s, uh, filled with mean people that like to leave comments.

So we do see comments where it’s like. Uh, podcasting is cheap. Like, why are you asking for money? Like, this is crazy. Like, we’re trying to save money. You’re supposed to be retired and wealthy. Like, what? What’s the deal? Why are you asking for money? Part of it is we want to cover the cost and podcasting.

It is relatively cheap for what we’re able to do when you compare it to like 20 years ago or 30 years ago. To produce like a radio show. Like we could buy this, um, these microphones in a preamp and like, this is like a pretty good studio that I’m in. And it’s like relatively inexpensive in the grand scheme of things.

So you have those people on the comments saying, ah, why are you asking for money? And I don’t pay too much attention to the comments, but I do understand like it can be a bad look, but at the same time, right. I do have to pay for like the podcast hosting, right? Just like couple hundred bucks a year, something like that.

Technically, the gear that I have is mostly a sunk cost. I didn’t have to get the pre-amp, but I thought it would be a reasonable test and improvement and a body, my body used too. It’s not like people are, I mean, it looks brand new. It’s not like people throw around their equipment. The person didn’t take it to gigs or anything like that, they just used it in their home studio?

I think so. So basically it’s not too much to produce a show. There’s hosting. I am paying for a little software like the script for example, but there’s also hidden cost, much like owning a home. ’cause I was chatting with someone. And they were like, oh, I feel like I’m throwing away money ’cause I’m renting.

And I’m like, there’s a lot of hidden costs. Nobody’s bragging about with their homes, like getting a new roof. Or I had a friend in the neighborhood, they’re like, we have to get a new, uh, AC unit, or you have to get a new water heater. Those big maintenance things, they don’t start for a little while if you get like a new home, but.

Yeah, there’s always something going wrong and big things are not inexpensive. My dad had to put in a new, uh, AC unit, and that was a good chunk of change. I think he said it was like 12,000 bucks, something like that. So I, the thing people don’t think about with podcast, depending on what’s going on in the business, but like there’s other admin going on, like I have, I have, uh, corporate taxes to file too.

Right. No one, no one’s thinking about that. That’s not inexpensive. Like, uh, I think this past year, like I moved to a different accountant and it’s actually much cheaper. In previous years when I was earning more money and selling courses, it was like 1600 bucks to do my corporate taxes. That’s over a hundred dollars a month.

So. People are not taking that into account. Now I’m simplifying some stuff with my taxes and bookkeeping and all that, so I think perhaps next year it should be a little bit cheaper. But like this past year I paid $600 so much cheaper than the previous years. But people are not taking that into account.

And I’m sure there’s like five other things. Like I, I have a website, so I’m paying for hosting there in a domain name there as well. Technically one could have their website on the podcast hosting site, but I didn’t set it up that way. I already had a blog and I kind of, I was coming from the world like, you know, most of us are familiar with.

So I, I was like, oh yeah, I should have my own domain name and my own website and host my stuff there. So I, I own that. It’s not on someone else’s platform. I mean, technically you could like. Put a podcast like just on YouTube. It is a really YouTube channel, but like you could try that route and like really keep your costs low.

But again, I came at it from, you know, running a business and basically like selling courses.

So the question is when I do the podcast for free, which is, that’s what I’m doing now, so I’m questioning my previous assumptions and. The reason why I started things and the fact I have two podcasts now, so in the short term, I actually don’t have an intention to stop producing the Doug show.

Maybe some, some of you were very worried that that’s what this show is gonna be, especially the way that I’m stating it here at the end. I’m convincing myself to quit the show, but no intention. I have thought about. Maybe publishing less or doing shorter shows, which I failed at that today as we’re coming up upon an hour.

But back in the day, at the very beginning, I produced two shows per week, I think for like four years or something. And then I, I was like, maybe I just do one per week. And it was glorious. So maybe I’d do it again. I’m afraid though, if I get off the cadence too much, then I’ll be, uh, real lazy the other route.

This is, I don’t think it’s really that viable. I think it would lead to me like not doing the show at all. I have a friend who had one of the very early financial independence podcast. It’s called The Mad Scientist. If you look at his feed, you’ll see like early, I think he maybe had a more regular publishing cadence, but basically at this point he publishes like one episode per year, maybe two, and it’s whenever he wants to do it.

It is not a regular schedule. He literally just publishes an episode whenever he wants to publish it. Now he has a robust website that probably still gets a lot of traffic. Again, he was one of the original podcast in the space, and because of that. People are still subscribed and whenever he publishes they will go and find, they’ll hear about it and they’ll find it and he’ll send out an email and say, Hey, I published an episode, and people will go and get it.

So I know there’s probably still, you know, if he publishes, I bet it gets tens of thousands of listens and downloads. Like, just like the old days. My show is so small, you know, we gotta, we have a couple hundred people that download. Thank you. For staying subscribed and all that. And then another couple, few hundred on the YouTube side.

YouTube’s a fickle, um, platform in that if I publish something and people should be relatively like. I mean, I, I’ve published weekly for many years, so people should be accustomed to like, look for the video if they really wanna find it. And I think there’s a few hundred people that do, and they, they do watch the video, but the reality with YouTube is like, if you’re not doing great on your thumbnail or the title, or it’s like something people aren’t interested in from a, uh, I guess a topic and key word standpoint.

Yeah, the video is not gonna be suggested or pop up on someone’s feed and someone’s gonna have to go and like, look for it specifically. And the fact is, I’m not publishing stuff for the algorithm, so it, it goes horrible sometimes. I looked back at earlier videos from this year and some of them, I don’t even think they got a hundred views ’cause like some, I mean, it just, it didn’t pick up on the algorithm.

The thing is like, it could be a reasonable title. However, it would be a good video if it was like eight minutes long, but mine’s like 58 minutes long ’cause I have a conversation with someone. So anyway, I also look at, you know, would I do the podcast for free? But it’s like, would I do the podcast and it is a hobby and I would actually pay for it.

Like, do I enjoy doing this so much that I would pay money to do it? And. Without too much reflection. I think the answer is no, I won’t do this if I have to pay money to do it. So sponsors here or there, I mentioned some courses occasionally there’s still little affiliate revenue that comes in through a, like an occasional course purchase, but it’s not like the old days like um, selling software or other stuff when.

We were all building sites and stuff like that. I would send out an email, I would do a podcast. I would say, Hey, there’s this plugin that I like and it does a good job and blah, blah, blah, and it’s a hundred bucks. You could use it on like five of your sites. I’m just making up an example. And I would get whatever, 30 to 50% of each sale, and I would send out an email and I would make like.

1500 bucks or something. I mean, it was, it was crazy. Like, it’s just what people talk about, like if you have an email list and a good offer. And I’m, and, and the thing is like, you could still do that in different areas. It’s just people are not building websites like they were. And like I said, I mean, there was a time where I was paying a lot more to just do my taxes.

I was like, I wasn’t. Like it wasn’t important for me to try to find a cheaper, a cheaper person ’cause everything was fine. I was earning money even though I knew I was probably paying a little more than I needed to. I was like, it’s fine. I can just focus on earning more money. So the, the point is there were a lot of people earning money from their websites and they’re like, oh, if this software actually makes things easier, I’m happy to pay a hundred dollars for that software.

So I would send out an email and sell a bunch of them. And it was like that for years. Like I wouldn’t promote everything. Only stuff that I actually, you know, typically used personally. Occasionally it would be like software that I like, kind of used, maybe I didn’t, I wasn’t like in love with it, but I’m like, eh, some people like it.

Hell I even promoted some of those, you know, done for you sites. ’cause the thing is like people in the audience. Y’all were asking for it. I was like, don’t buy, like, please don’t buy this. Like, there’s a better way to do it. Uh, but you still wanted it. People would be like, where would you buy from? And I’m like, all right.

Like, if you, if you must do this, then at least buy from, you know, reputable people that at least are, um. You know, not reselling the same site like I mentioned before. So that is the question. Friends, would I, would I do this? For free. And then further would I do this and pay money for it? So the fact is, because I have my other podcast, I think I would have to be getting something more from the Doug show.

And the thing is, because it is my namesake, I can keep it going. You know, I could stop if I want to and restart it in the future. I could. I could delete all the episodes in the past and just like started. Started afresh. I have no plan. I’m just making up stuff right now. But when you peel away the assumptions and you start asking the basic questions, why, why?

Why would you do this and pay, you know, a hundred bucks a month to produce a show and spend your time producing it instead of doing something else? And that’s a, that’s a harder question to answer.

The funny thing that I was gonna tell you earlier is I went on and on about the script and I was like, all right, I’m not gonna have to edit this episode.

And then I remembered I gotta do the cloud waves ad. So do check out cloud waves. Appreciate them, uh, reaching out to me. I’m glad we’re gonna be able to work together here. But basically. I was like, oh, I am gonna have to edit this a little bit. And then my voice started cracking and I had to get a cough drop and I had an ad read prepared, but I kept coughing and then I kept misspeaking and then I had to do it like six times.

So I hope you really enjoy the ad read. I practiced it several times. Not on purpose, but just ’cause I kept messing up the whole time. So. Thanks for checking it out. If you have any thoughts on this episode, if you have thoughts about the audio is uh, is my voice too deep now? Do I sound too sexy? Let me know what you think.

Please check out cloud ways. If you dig the show, they support the show and if you let them know that you appreciate them supporting the show, then I will appreciate you. That was a tangle of a sentence, but thanks for hanging in there and we’ll catch you on the next episode. And if you work at script, reach out to me.

I’m curious, is it user error? Did I, did I just goof it up or was this a bad version? And you guys don’t let me edit the color anymore, like what happened out there? Okay, that’s it. That’s all. Thank you.