Making $60k a month from a podcast on software engineering

There are two different podcast listening strategies (which informally seem about equally utilized).

1. Download and listen to every episode of a podcast. For many this would be something like Grubers. Listeners typically keep a much smaller number of podcast subscriptions.

2. Read the title and possibly the show notes for each episode and if it sounds interesting download that specific episode.

My listening habits are very much in mode one here, but for something like software engineering I think it's likely to be much more the second. By producing so much content and on so many topics they optimize their chance of getting at least a download a week.

> A daily podcast that lasts an hour? It's remarkable that he can keep up that pace. Could he make just as much money from having fewer podcasts? would the scarcity make the podcast more valuable to advertisers?

As a listener, you're in a good position to judge - do you think that the content suffers from being so frequently produced? So they're making $2k per episode on ads - would they make $15k if they made one podcast a week? On that time scale, is there a better monetisation model?

Scarcity really valuable to me as a listener - I don't have time to listen to an hour a day of a single show. I have an audible subscription (ca 10-30 hours per book, unabridged), shelves of real books, Netflix, Spotify, a list of TV shows and movies, a girlfriend, all vying for ear-time. Some people solve this by speeding up podcasts, but I like listening to real voices. Remvoving silences can work well though.

Consider podcasts like http://moviesbyminutes.com/ - they look fun, but who has time to listen to potentially 100 hours of content about one film? That's more than all of LOST. Would you rather watch every movie on the IMDB Top 250 or listen to people going through every Star Wars movie minute by minute? I once listened to the complete Wheel of Time - it's over 2 weeks unabridged. Took about 4 months listening to nothing else - commuting, exercise, walking to the shops, flights, trains etc.

SED at least offers listeners the chance to skip episodes they don't care about, but podcasts really have to be impressive for me to listen to them.

> A daily podcast that lasts an hour? It's remarkable that he can keep up that pace.

I've also been very impressed with Jeff's pace and consistent quality/depth. Joe Rogan is the only other podcaster that I listen to who comes close to that.

But the inputs to his podcast are merely time (and one-time equipment costs). As you point out, a car dealership needs to spend a ton of money on the inputs, but that doesn't translate to a podcast business.

> I wish that hour-long podcasts weren't an hour long.

Or at least that more podcasts were better edited. For example, John Gruber writes a blog, which he edits. Whether I agree with it or not, it's readable and terse. But he also does a podcast, which is him and some other person going on random tangents, pausing to cough or let out the cat, etc. I can't stand it.

I guess it's like the difference between talk radio and the nightly news: one is trying to fill airtime, the other is trying to squeeze into 22 minutes; one is meant to be background sound, the other is meant to be watched. I happen to prefer other kinds of background sound, but that's just me.

Structure is an editing problem, but there are lots of people who listen to podcasts sped up, or with silences removed. Apps like Overcast will do this for you.

Some podcasts, like Hardcore History, are worth the 5 hour runtime and they're so rarely published it doesn't really matter.

At the other end of the scale are podcasts that are a few minutes long - daily briefings, the news, etc. I've always found these hard to listen to in normal podcast software since they're meant to be ephemeral and quick, so I've been working on a new approach: http://briefings.fm/

This is a typical work commitment in China. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2016-09/13/content_2677...

It's not luxuriously easy, but it's not ridiculous, and is microscopically different from _average_ working hours 150 years ago.

I do that, I'm not the owner either. My wife just had a son, so I definitely have a family. Add on top an hour and a half commute each way and it can be a little difficult at times to have family time I'll admit.

6 day weeks = 6/7 of 365 = 313 days work per year

12 hour days = 313 * 12 = 3756 hours work per year

Hours per month = 3756 / 12 = 313

Hourly rate if $60000 per month = 60000/313 = $192

Yeah, I got stuck in that sentence. I know lots of people do these hours, but people from Henry Ford onwards have been finding people are more efficient with less hours.

Then again if your job is learning about new tech, cooking and exercise-the sort of thing others are doing in their hobby time, I can see how you can make 12 hours of that a day.

My theory is that entrepeneurship in general, and lean startups especially, relies a lot on "fake it till you make" and sales that rely on heavy bluffing, and poker players are the sort of people that can do that. In web tech, it's especially true, because "lean startup" theory means that you can sell your product before you build it, but you have to bluff to your customers that you have already built it and investors (if any) that you know how to build it... and free-market competition means that since bluffing provides an edge, you must bluff to keep up with your competitors.

I use an app[0] that pre-downloads them, and I listen to them on the treadmill at the gym; while cooking or doing household chores; as background when I'm coding at night; and, sometimes, to help me get to sleep. For every one of those uses except the treadmill I sometimes listen to music instead.

Oh yeah, and I sometimes listen to current-affairs stuff in the morning, but owing to time zone differences that can be tricky.

I'm sure a lot of people listen to them while driving or otherwise commuting, but my commute is by tram and by foot, and it doesn't fit that well.

I don't find it distracts me from cooking, though from coding sometimes yes (then I switch to music). I don't just sit in my living room listening without anything else going on, but I don't think that would be weird. I'd listen to podcasts in the bath if I had a bathtub.

It took me a while to find a set of podcasts I really like. This is different for everyone, but I think it's worth spending some time on. I'm still looking for good ones on a few topics that seem under... undercasted? I think there's still room for a lot more good podcasts, and some of them will even make a good living for the host.

You can download everything on WiFi if you like, but they're just audio files so it doesn't eat that much out of a normal-ish mobile data plan.

Give them a chance, and try a bunch of different ones before making up your mind. I ended up liking podcasts way more than I expected I would.

[0]: https://overcast.fm

So I didn’t do podcasts for a long time.

Now I put one earphone in, go for an easy bike ride for a couple of hours and listen to one. It’s pretty good.

You can’t really do it when you are concentrating on something else (or riding hard!), but commutes or whatever are good.

You download them using a podcast player. On Android I use PocketCast.

you mostly predownload them over wifi. you listen during commute, driving or otherwise. yes you can pay attention while cooking, just depends if you can multitask.

Recall the original iPods. They didn't have network connectivity at all. A desktop computer running iTunes would automatically check for & download new episodes of podcasts subscribed to in it, and they would be synced to an iPod when it was plugged in to charge.

I do feel a little bad about this comment--it's probably overly snarky. Maybe he won that 250 grand playing poker from a small nest egg that he earned at a minimum wage job. And he isn't claiming to be sharing the secret of success--he's just sharing his experience, which is valuable regardless of his beginnings.

I don't know. Something about this rubbed me the wrong way, but it probably says something more about me than about him or life in general.

Hey just want to note that although that sentence makes him look like just some rich kid with infinite resources, I went to college with Jeff and I actually have personally talked to him when he was starting this project. Regardless of what affluence he had in the past/present, he started this idea from near-zero -- the site looked like shit, he worked on it slowly, and from reading the article it looks like he got the right people on his ship at the right time, and kept doing what he was good at.

Also, he's not tone-deaf -- I'm sure it took some consideration to let that sentence fly (I'd be very surprised if he didn't wonder something along the lines of "are people going to think I'm just some rich kid"), I like to think he leaned to the side of honesty.

I can say at least personally that he did NOT have the silver spoon rich kid vibe. Not at all, he was lost just like the rest of us sometimes are, I'm super jealous and happy for him :)

After a bit of digging, I think his story is plausible. He got into the game in 2004; At that time, it was very much possible for a smart, determined teenager to grind a hundred bucks into a quarter mil. Before Black Friday[1] chased all the soft money out of the game, pretty much anyone with an ounce of sense could play profitable poker and some people made a lot of money very quickly. He claims to have blown most of his winnings in that one-month losing streak, which is very much a thing that cocky 18-year-old poker players do.

I think it's fairly clear that Meyerson came from a relatively privileged background and had a lot of advantages - he attended one of the best high schools in the US - but I don't think it's necessarily fair to dismiss him as a trust fund kid who lucked his way through life.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Scheinberg

Are you really surprised that starting a business requires upfront capital and an environment where financial risk can be absorbed?

Does this sentiment have to be echoed every time someone who comes from money talks about their business. There is a class system in the US, you're only wasting your breath trying to be snarky about it. Business is a mix of talent and chance and people with money can buy more chances where others might not even get one. It doesn't diminish this person's accomplishment.

In the past we would poke holes in the start-up idea or the weekend hacking project, but in good fun and there would be solid feedback generally. Having someone execute their idea, and then go out of their way to explain the process to the rest of us should be a source of encouragement. It makes me sad just how personal the dismissiveness on HN has become.

It sounds like that was a bankroll he built up through play, not his initial stake.

It's quite common for people to start with just $1k and do well and get to that kind of money. I'd recommend doing some research before just jumping to conclusions:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-meyerson-05275716/ - "Parlayed a single small investment into a large bankroll." under Online Poker Player

$250k isn't a huge amount of money for a professional poker player. I few successful and/or lucky years and you can build up quite an operating fund.

Not super rich. Just rich enough not to need a job for a while. Which if you don't have kids, means save $5k and live on a mate's sofa or something similar.

Yeah, because only "super rich" people start successful podcasts, blogs, etc.

Like that Neistat guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6Y-ahQFQDA

Or more specifically, be born by rich parents.

Yes :)

By using other podcast players :-) Not everyone uses the SE Daily app, they'll be using RSS/iTunes/etc.