Welcome to another episode of About Podcasting. In this episode, we dive into the evolving landscape of podcasting with Chris Fischer from Jupyter Broadcasting. Chris shares his extensive experience in the podcasting world, discussing the benefits of Podcasting 2.0 apps, the importance of value for value models, and the challenges and rewards of running a successful podcast network. We explore the intricacies of live streaming, the potential of video in podcasting, and the future of podcasting technology. Chris also gives us a behind-the-scenes look at his home studio setup and the journey that led him to full-time podcasting. Whether you're a seasoned podcaster or just starting out, this episode is packed with valuable insights and practical advice. Enjoy the conversation!
Highlights:
- Chris Fischer discusses the benefits of Podcasting 2.0 apps and value for value models.
- The importance of live streaming and its impact on podcast production.
- Insights into the future of podcasting technology, including the potential of cross-app comments and live tags.
- A detailed look at Chris's home studio setup and the evolution of Jupyter Broadcasting.
- Practical advice for growing your podcast audience and the role of social media in podcast promotion.
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[00:00:00]
Chris Fisher:
Some ways, it's easier now than I think it ever has been with podcasting 2.0 apps because if somebody likes your show and they find it, they can clip it or they can boost it, and then that helps other folks discover it. And that is a self perpetuating cycle that means that somebody else sees it, then they boost it, and then it stays up on the charts for a bit.
[00:00:24] AI voice:
Welcome to About Podcasting, a show for podcasters. We talk about podcasting practices, tools, successes, and failures mixed with interviews and music. Hosted on podhome.fm, the most modern podcast hosting platform.
[00:00:47] Barry Luijbregts:
Welcome to another episode of About Podcasting. And, yes, this is another interview episode. And this week, I talk with Chris Fischer from Jupyter Broadcasting. Now he and his, cohosts have been podcasting for many, many years, and they've been doing a very successful job at that. Now in this conversation, Chris shares a lot of valuable insights from all his years in podcasting. So be sure to listen all the way to the end. You can find Chris and Jupiter Broadcasting and all of the shows in the show notes. But before we start the show, let's thank some people because we got some boosts.
First, we got Cole McCormick with a comment, love the production on this very. Cannot wait to hear more podcasters talk about their process with 5,438 sets. Thank you very much, Cole, and Cole boosts from fountain.fm. And we got Adam Curry coming in with 9,900 sets. And he says, AI is a parlor trick from podcast guru. Well, let's agree to disagree for now. I agree on that, partially. I'd love to talk with you about that. But let's see. And we got a bunch of people streaming sets whilst listening to the episodes, which you can do with a modern podcast app that you can find at modernpodcastapps.com. You can use Trufans, Fountain.fem, Podverse, Podcast Guru, CurioCaster, and many more.
Now on with the interview. Enjoy. So did you look at your look at your setup. That is just awesome. What do you have going on there?
[00:02:38] Chris Fisher:
Jeez. Well, what you can't see is all the screens. There's there's a lot of screens in here. This is here. I don't know if you can see the mixer. We have an x 32 Behringer mixer. Over here, we have a soundboard so we can do, you know, sound effects, and then we have OBS. And then over the on the other side of this of the camera is, my cohost setup, and we have a spot for him where he has, like, just an old table, room for a laptop, a stream deck, and a microphone and headphones. And then we have a standing optional standing, 3rd host spot It's sort of across the room.
So it's you only see a portion of it on camera. Thankfully, a lot of it's a mess too. You know how that goes. But
[00:03:19] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Okay. So this is like your this is a studio that's in your house?
[00:03:25] Chris Fisher:
It is a townhouse that, was my first home. Picked it up, I mean, like 15 years ago. And then, when I decided, okay, it's time to have a family, we moved out, but we rented it for a few years. And then when I started my own business and started doing the podcast thing full time and the kids were growing up and they were quite loud, the wife and I at the time decided, we need to get you out of the house. The renters are gonna be done in about 6 months. So let's convert that into a studio. And so when the renters moved out, we came in and we invested in the power and networking and sound insulation and things like that and kind of built it out to be a studio. So the downstairs, it's a townhouse, so it's 2 stories.
The downstairs is where my main studio is at, where we've done the most focus on sound. Outside of that, there's like a regular old living room and a kitchen that I hardly pay enough attention to. And then upstairs, we have what's sometimes it's 2 offices, 3 offices, a bedroom, and a couple of working spaces, kind of depending on what's needed. But right now, it's a dedicated working space for me. And then we have we've converted, the other areas into, like, a lounge area and then, a bedroom because we'll often, you know, multiple times a year, many times a year, have somebody flying in and staying here and working with us. And so they can just stay in that room. And then they have a, you know, they have a full house with a kitchen and a washer and dryer and their own shower. And so it works really well for that.
The the, you know, the a little far north of Seattle, so it's not like ideal location wise, but, otherwise, it's pretty good.
[00:04:59] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Oh, that's nice. And then you do all your, shows where you have, cohost and stuff. You do all do all that stuff in person, not through the Internet.
[00:05:09] Chris Fisher:
It's a mix. You know, I love doing it in person when we can. So for Linux Unplugged, Wes is always here in studio, and Brent is often in studio, but often remote too. And so some of my other shows, they're fully remote. It kinda just depends on the show and the cohost. So we try to we try to invest in a pretty solid remote setup as well. And then today, earlier today, you know, I was I'm working on just the plumbing so I can be remote. So I can still run the board and soundboard and the stream and record everybody's individual channels and do all of that, but do it from remote with the lowest bandwidth possible.
[00:05:44] Barry Luijbregts:
Right. Yeah. So you you run, multiple shows, as Jupyter Broadcasting. Right? As part of Jupiter Broadcasting. And that is, I think, my guess is, very successful. Right?
[00:06:02] Chris Fisher:
Yes. I'd say it's successful in the turn in the sense of I can have a dream job where I work full time doing podcasting and, you know, provide for my family. It it is not the most lucrative job in the world right now. There's kind of a a podcasting ad winter that's kind of set in on certain types of podcasts and the the really kind of more technical ones that that address a real specific technical niche seem to be the most punished in in advertising right now. And, of course, that's where I'm at. But we've also because I kinda saw that coming, we've also we've converted more to a value for value model. And so that while it hasn't replaced sponsorships, it is growing very rapidly. And if it wasn't for that, I think we wouldn't have made it. So we're not like we're not like doing incredibly well, but we're surviving during a time when some are not. And I think we'll thrive when the market turns around.
[00:06:55] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Well, in any case, it's very it's amazing that you can do it full time and do your dream job full time. Yeah. That's really my main benchmark. Yeah. That that is success. Right? It doesn't matter if if you make,
[00:07:08] Chris Fisher:
shitloads of money with that. Who cares? As long as you can pay the bills. My grandpa told me, you know, there is such a thing as a lifestyle business where and he did this. He he worked for himself, for many years into retirement, and it just seemed really nice. I think they made an impression on me. You know, it doesn't it doesn't have to be a big 30 person, a 100 person, 2 1000 person company. It could be a small handful of people, and, it's just good work and you just plug away at it. That's exactly how I do it myself as well. That's my goal as well. I, with POD home, I don't wanna
[00:07:42] Barry Luijbregts:
be a huge outfit with, I don't know, 50 developers or something. I just wanna be able to keep doing this forever, and so that it pays the bills because I love doing this. That that's my goal.
[00:07:53] Chris Fisher:
Yeah. And and I feel like even if with that, it's like, well, what then technically, what would be retirement? I I don't even know. Maybe maybe retirement is when my voice gives out. I don't know.
[00:08:04] Barry Luijbregts:
I wouldn't I wouldn't stop working. Yeah. Maybe that's what
[00:08:07] Chris Fisher:
Maybe yeah. That's what I picture. I picture less, maybe more travel, you know, taking more time between shows, really, really thinking about things for a really long time, and then coming to on air with, you know, some experience of traveled and thought about it, not having to just stay on a certain clock. That's just not the season of life right now. It's and also I get really bored right now because I, you know, still young enough and I've got the energy. But I I do daydream, you know, kind of retirement would be that.
[00:08:39] Barry Luijbregts:
So so how did you get to this, point? So let's start by what what even got you into podcasting and the the audio business. Right? What attracted you to it?
[00:08:50] Chris Fisher:
You know, I I probably would have tried to go into radio if I could have, which would have been a miss, I think, in retrospect. That wasn't clear for the first few years of my career, but, in the Seattle area, radio was just so locked down. It's just there's no way I could ever have gotten into the business. And I I had an I had a very natural inclination for technology. So I kind of put this as a kid, I'd pretend I was a radio DJ, and I would do interviews with my family and mix it together and edit together using tape. It was really silly. And I just sort of put all that aside, and, well, I I can do technology. And so I went into IT, got pretty deep into that for a while.
And then on the side, I decided to start doing a podcast with a friend of mine because the world was so wrong about something. And young me just could not stand that. This was an injustice, which must be corrected, and there was only one man that could there are maybe 2 men, myself and my friend that could do it. And we had to tell the world about this thing called Linux. It was working so much better for us than Windows NT, Windows NT 4 and early Windows 2000 at the time. Yeah. And we had solved these, for us, massive problems in the workplace that Windows could not address using this free thing called Linux, and I couldn't believe it. And I I just I because, you know, I I grew up in this in the Seattle area, just Redmond's in our backyard, Microsoft's in every school. It's a it's Microsoft country. When I grew up here, it was the it was the windows 95 and and into the, you know, the windows 20,021,003 era. Like Microsoft was a powerhouse in this region. And so the idea that this free thing that you just could download off the Internet and put on a server and it would solve these problems that we were just unable to solve with Windows was radical.
And everybody was telling me I was crazy and that Linux was a scam and that open source was a scam and that you were gonna get sued by SCO and IBM or somebody for using it and that, you know, you gotta go with Microsoft. Nobody ever gets fired for that. And I just felt the need to just demonstrate on a weekly basis the problems I was solving. And my buddy was on board to do that with me, and, you know, we turned it into kind of a show to make it more entertaining and just kinda went from there.
[00:11:05] Barry Luijbregts:
Oh, there you go. So
[00:11:06] Chris Fisher:
you you solved a problem for yourself and you turned that into something valuable for other people. Right? Yeah. It started at first with a blog, and I thought, oh, boy. I'm horrible at writing. And, I can't really spell very well, but I can talk. And also you gotta appreciate too, like, the tooling was super rough and new back then. We didn't really have much because it's like we probably started playing around in 2005, 2006. And so the very first episodes were distributed, you know, on disc. Listeners would download them and burn them to their disc, and then they would put them in their car player. And then later on, car players have the ability to play MP threes, which is a great boom for the show. It was really, I mean, a long time ago. But the idea was just we could we could play around with technology, and we could talk about technology.
And maybe instead of doing this blog, we could help people figure it out through this other medium. Yeah. True. Yeah. Then it just sort of took off because Itunes, right, came along and and the iPad came along. And, yeah, it was we were really lucky on the timing there.
[00:12:06] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. And it's just fun to, you know, be a radio person. Right?
[00:12:11] Chris Fisher:
Yeah. Let's be You had to un you had to unlearn that, actually. You know, that was that was a big part of the first five plus, 6, 7 years of me doing this was learning podcasting isn't radio. And we don't need to emulate radio. We don't need to talk like them, and we don't need to follow their standards. And, you know, we some of that we got pretty quick. But some of it and it took a little bit longer to realize podcasting is its own unique thing.
[00:12:37] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. It it is very unique. And and and now you guys also do, live for most of the shows, right, that you do, and that includes a video element sometimes. What do you think about video for podcasting? Is is that a thing or is that just an additional thing, something else than podcasting?
[00:12:56] Chris Fisher:
Yeah. That's a good question because this question is is, a decade old. I I started doing it because you could and didn't really give much thought if I should. And so then our audio podcast started addressing a video audience, and we started referencing things we could see. We started showing things on the screen. And that was something that took us again. This is, like, 2014. So this is a while ago, 2015. We had to realize we were actually really making an audio podcast and that we needed to not so much focus on the video just because, you know, we might get a 1,000 video views and we'd get 20,000, 30,000, 50,000 audio downloads. And we started to realize, it's like a rounding error on the video side. And we've been accidentally just because we did video, referencing things you can see and talking about video constantly and always plugging the YouTube channel.
Yeah. And so, you know, 2017, 18, we kind of pivot to 2017. I think we kind of pivoted and went audio only hardcore. And we started just only producing audio only podcast, multitrack, local recorded, double lenders, and then we would render out a waveform and post that on YouTube. And that never really did very well, but the quality went up significantly and our downloads for the audio shows went up because of that. Now we kind of take a separate track with it. When we're live, we'll do that as video. So we'll we'll stream the production of the show, and the cameras are on for that.
But and we'll do some switching so you can see our screens and stuff, but we don't make reference to it because our our focus is on the audio show. You know, the predom predominantly all the screens in here and all the gear in here is dedicated to the audio production. Then we have some webcams and OBS and a Stream Deck to switch between them. And that's that's worked pretty well. It does better than the waveform stuff, but I'm still not convinced that people because the live streams are, like, 2 hours. I'm not convinced. There's a large audience for 2 hour content of middle aged guys talking into microphones, wearing headphones that aren't talking about, like, some big sporting event or something that has mass appeal.
Because, advertisers will figure this out. The the reason why I think this conversation has come up is because YouTube has been like a black hole sucking at podcasting advertising. Yeah. And they've also made, you know, motions to improve the podcast experience on YouTube. So the kind of 2 have come together, but this has happened before. And the lesson that I learned last time we went through this is that the for anything to get really good views and monetize well on YouTube, it needs to be built for YouTube. It needs to be created from the beginning for YouTube. Ideally, it needs to have mass appeal. And I mean this when I say this, it should appeal to children. If you really wanna reach numbers on YouTube, it needs to appeal to children too.
So if you're not creating it for YouTube and, if you're not creating it with some sort of mass appeal and if you're not creating it with the idea that perhaps with the intention perhaps children could watch this as well, I don't think you're ever really gonna have success in podcast video. Again, unless it's like a celebrity or some big event or something like that. And I think people will spend a lot of their time trying to make video work when they really, really should be focused on getting good quality audio. But it's like a lesson we have to go through every few cycles. I had to go through it.
I was doing video on YouTube for podcast before YouTube did 16 by 9, let alone even HD. And I try and I and I tried a few different takes at it. And that was really what I realized is the stuff that did well and, you know, get stuff that could crack several 100000 views on our channel. It was always things that we purposely filmed for YouTube. And that's just not a podcast. I don't, I don't think now there's some, you know, and maybe YouTube's getting so big. Maybe there are several 1,000 people that, you know, will fit into your niche that want to just listen on YouTube because it's handy. You know, it's it's everywhere and it's on their TV and maybe maybe their data provider covers it for them or something like that. I mean, there's there's reasons it's and it has a large network effect. So I publish there.
But I just publish the video versions of our livestreams.
[00:17:14] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. So so, basically, it serves a a, a discoverability, need. Right? Because it's it's a it's a huge search engine, basically.
[00:17:25] Chris Fisher:
Yeah. I think that's a big part of it. I think you probably do have people that just prefer it too. They they're they've got other creators. They're watching over there, and they can just slip you in there. And I also imagine there's a contingent of folks that are working at, you know, some day job at their desk. They got a monitor or something like that. They just wanna put up some content that actually is is longer than 15 minutes. Yeah. And so something like a 2 hour livestream that's on, ostensibly, the entire topic is Linux. Yeah. Put that on, and I'll get some work done. And I'm not, you know, sitting there getting distracted every time it switches to a new video. So I think, I mean, but it's not a huge audience, but that's an audience.
[00:18:00] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. But I think the point that you make there is very, is good that creating a high quality video that will get some traction, that takes a lot of time and a lot of effort, a lot of planning and all that type of stuff. And so it takes away from time to actually create good audio as well. So if you wanna do both, you need a huge production, you need lots of time, and that's probably not worth it for most people,
[00:18:25] Chris Fisher:
especially if you do, let's say, a technology podcast or or something like that. Right. And I think, you know, if you look at your new metrics, I bet I bet this is true for most people, 90% of podcasters that post on YouTube and have an RSS feed. You're getting 90% of your downloads, 80%, 95% of your downloads on the audio side, but you're putting 60% of your work into the video side. Yeah. Maybe or somewhere even if it's 20, 30, 40%. It's too much. And so the question becomes, what if every minute you spent focusing on video, you spent on just researching your topic more or reaching out to somebody who knows something more? Like, that's where I got really hung up. So I went, oh, crap.
I cannot only could the show sound better, but I would have more time to get a sort of information on the topics we're talking about, which would be more valuable for the listener. And, you know, that was, like I said, 2017 or so we realized that, and we made that shift.
[00:19:25] Barry Luijbregts:
Okay. And and so what about the live aspect, in general? Is that useful to go live? Do do you see that, people actually tune into that?
[00:19:36] Chris Fisher:
It ebbs and flows. You know, it definitely ebbs and flows on your timing. If you can do it on a on a time where more more time zones crossover for availability, the UK, the East Coast, and the West Coast. If you could somehow find somewhere like a 2 PM or something like that, for me, kinda works well because I'm on the West Coast. So that can help. You know, but there's also another benefit to it besides just having a live feel, which for some shows you don't want. You know, like, they're really kinda low key chat shows. Maybe you don't want live. But there's other shows where you want kind of a momentum. And I think being live inherently brings that momentum to the host. Like, you're you're live. You're you're constantly on air, so you inherently bring a momentum to it. Depends on the show. Yeah. For the right show, I think that's a good thing. But then there's, like, this other element, and it's the show's going live at noon, so you better have everything ready and no excuses.
Yeah. And if you gotta make this show every single week, that is both, the heartbeat at which you live by and also the thing that makes it so you get the show done every week. Like, we all are on the same page. We all know when the deadline is. We all gotta show up. We all gotta show up at that particular time and be ready, which if you work back from that means you gotta get up at a certain time in the morning. You gotta eat the right food. You gotta take your shower. You gotta get your reading on. You have to be a functional adult at a certain time, like say 10 AM on a Sunday, every single week.
And you gotta you do do that for infinity. And if you walk back from that, that means, well, maybe you're not doing something on Saturday. Maybe you're gonna spend a little bit time researching on like, there's a whole life effect it has, both negative and positive. It creates a structure that the rest of your life kinda has to form around because it's live and you gotta be there. You can't have dead air. It's live, and it's live every week at the same time. And so life has to fit around that, where if it's a podcast with your buddies that you're just recording whenever everybody gets together, doesn't really matter when you do it.
It's much, much harder to actually show up every week and get the show done. So it provides both a good and bad deadline that is stressful but useful every week. And so there's even if only a few people show up, there's utility to giving kind of that structure for everybody involved with the show.
[00:22:04] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. That's a very good point, because it can be very difficult, of course, to, keep that discipline and to keep it going every week, especially if you have multiple shows like you guys have.
[00:22:15] Chris Fisher:
A lot of work. Or you've been traveling or somebody's sick or there's some life event. And, you know, that it also it also means that, you end up if you're if you're lucky and it all works out, you end up with a very reliable release cadence, which I think is kinda key to long term adoption for a podcast is that good, reliable release cadence.
[00:22:37] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. So that people can, use the podcast in their life schedules. Right? Like, every Friday, I listen to x, y, z. Every Saturday morning when I wake up, for instance, I download podcasting 2.0 because it was just live. Yeah. And then now It goes beyond that too. It's like, oh, this event happened this week.
[00:22:56] Chris Fisher:
Well, I know Linux Unplugged is gonna come out on Sunday. I can't wait to hear what they have to say about that. Or when something happens in podcasting 2.0, I know they're gonna be live on Friday. I can't wait to hear what they're gonna say. Like, I'm looking forward to it now.
[00:23:07] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. So I'm glad that I built, the live feature. Lots of people are actually using that, right now for for various purposes. And that's great to see, because it just creates more engagement, more people that are act actively podcasting and creating stuff, which is great. So so you have a lot of experience in building successful podcasts, as in successful as in they can support you and your family that you can keep doing this. Creating a a podcast that has a strong following that actually provides value back to you is a very, very difficult thing to do for most people. So how do you do that? Do you promote it on social media? How do you how do you get listeners? How do you grow your audience or your clan or whatever you wanna call it?
[00:24:03] Chris Fisher:
Well, the growth question is always a hard one. Mhmm. In some ways, it's easier now than I think it ever has been with podcasting 2.0 apps because if somebody likes your show and they find it, they can clip it or they can boost it, and then that helps other folks discover it. Mhmm. And that is a self perpetuating cycle that means that somebody else sees it, then they boost it, and then it stays up on the charts for a bit. So that's been really good. And and the really the the key to execution on that, right, is to integrate the value for value model and get the ask right, and, you know, respect the people who boost in and read their boost on air and be transparent about the amounts that are raised because it encourages other folks to boost in, which I think. So that's a very that's a huge, huge, huge win for discovery that has never existed for, like, the last 18 years. And man, I would have killed for that. So that's that's one way.
The reality is you just gotta find a niche that needs a podcast, and you gotta do a really good job. And then you ask people to share it because word-of-mouth is really so far other than, you know, some of the directory discovery stuff. It's really the only way people discover podcasts. You know, if I've got an hour long podcast, boy, it's it's really hard to talk somebody and to listen to that just by a by my album art and my title. But, you know, if Barry says to me, hey. You know, I was listening to this Linux podcast, and I really like you know, they've been talking about Nick's OS recently, and I'm kinda getting into that. You should give it a listen. That person's very likely to give it a listen. So asking the audience to help spread the show via word-of-mouth is really important.
But it really comes down to, you've gotta put yourself in the mind of the audience. You've gotta be able to divorce yourself from the love of what you've created, the the ego around what you've created. I see new creators get swept swept. I'm watching a guy do it right now. They get people love their own creations so much. In some personality types, the types that are drawn to be a little more outward and that are maybe people that are drawn to create content. They're also drawn to really love what they've made, and you gotta get over that. You gotta hate what you've made. You gotta really be the most critical person you possibly can and pick it apart and try to make it better. You need to be able to listen back to your own podcast. If you can't listen to your own podcast, then why would you think anybody else would? And listen to it to figure out how to make it better. And then constantly putting yourself in the position of the listener. When I'm making a show, when I'm just putting together an individual episode, I'm always asking myself, is this interesting? Is this worth their time? Is somebody gonna find this valuable?
Why am I talking about this? What's in it for them? Yeah. Those are the questions you have to always be asking. It's not just a one time thing. It's a it's a constant thing.
[00:26:54] Barry Luijbregts:
So value, word-of-mouth. Do you do any social media promotions? Because lots of people are spending incredible amounts of time clipping things and creating all sorts of album art and all sorts of things that they can share on X or Facebook or whatever to get people. Do you do that?
[00:27:13] Chris Fisher:
I I, technically, I suppose. You know, through, like, automated things. I'm Yeah. I am, I don't know. I peep I wonder if people look at metrics. I tell you every time I have, I see such little traffic generated from social media that, I think it's a rounding error. I it now for some people, they probably have a very strong social media presence. They've got a good community over there they've cultivated. So it could be a different game for them. I happen to think that the silent majority that listen to podcasts are not necessarily the type that spend a lot of time on social media, in Discord chats, in Telegram chats. Some of them definitely do because we've got 1,000 in our in our telegrams and matrix and all that.
But the vast majority, I'm not so sure. I'm not so sure. I've never written a podcast, never emailed a podcast, never joined a podcast chat room. I listen to a lot of podcasts, been doing podcasts for almost 19 years, never ever once. I just listened silently until Boost came along, and then I could start boosting from then I started. That's the first time ever I've ever reached out to a podcast. So I think most people that listen to podcast, probably not huge Twitter users, huge social media users, definitely some of them are. And, you know, the ones that are on those platforms definitely are podcast listeners. But I just don't really see a huge return. I I don't know. I I I guess I just maybe am not really invested much in it. So I when I talk about ways of making a podcast grow, I really focus on podcast native things. You know, your content getting discoverable in the podcast apps themselves. Because when I think about a podcast listener, I think as somebody who's probably finding your app through their podcast app, they're listening there. They maybe never even go to your website at all. Yeah. Right? Let alone go to your Twitter profile.
I think going back to what I was saying earlier, you gotta think about it in a way of people don't care about you, and they shouldn't unless you give them a reason to care. And it's kinda arrogant to assume somebody even wanna go to my Twitter page. Why do you care what I have to say? You know, if I make good content, you'll listen. And so a lot of people that are making content have, they're they just bring a certain kind of ego. They love themselves and they love what they're making, and they just assume everybody's gonna wanna see their Twitter page or their threads or whatever it is. And I'm just saying dial it back a little bit, you know, dial it back 20% or so. And, people, if they, you know, stick with you for a while, will eventually wanna go look you up and find out more and maybe follow you, but you gotta earn it.
Yeah. And it's not about that. It's about, the content. It's about the value in the content. Right? Yeah. Yeah. That's why I say focus on the show, focus on the the experience inside the podcast app. Then, you know, after you get that really nailed, you know, your show's great and the experience in the app's great. They worry about your website. Get a website. And then after you get that figured out, then you can start playing around with social media and, you know, sign it in that order priority, at least in my opinion.
[00:30:13] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. And I see the same. I I can see the back end. Right? So I can see, the the analytics of, of, customers that host at Pothome, for instance. And I see people that are spending tremendous amounts of time on, websites, socials and stuff. And we don't see it back in at least the downloads of the podcast. Doesn't mean that they're not successful in other ways, perhaps, but not by promoting the thing that they are promoting on on the socials. So, yeah, I I I agree. Totally.
[00:30:44] Chris Fisher:
It's a funny thing though because you're right. People get really sucked into it. And Yeah. I'll tell you this too, Barry. I've been in a lot of meetings, and an inordinate amount of time when we're talking about content creation and all that kind of stuff is spent on the social media strategy. Like, a lot of time is often spent in a meeting with a group of people on the social media strategy. And, again, I just say dial it back. Dial it back. Even just 20%. Just focus on something else for a little while and see if that changes things.
[00:31:14] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. That's why also I like now what, what we've done together, what you've done for me with, the, the advertisement in the podcast itself, which is a valuable thing where people are already listening within the app, and those are exactly the people that, that I want to, to talk to, with the if people didn't hear it, it's on the This Week in Bitcoin podcast, which is very exciting podcast. Today was, luckily, was a new episode. Always looking forward to that. And, we got some advertisements going there for Podhome, which is great. Definitely wanna continue that. But it's it's the value of the content.
[00:31:56] Chris Fisher:
Also, I think it's where they're already at. So there it's you're you're right. You're running against valuable content, and the I think the presenter matters. If the person knows the product and they can present the product and they're good at what they do, then it's like it's it's essentially hiring a professional presenter to talk about the product. I think there's a lot of value there, but then also it's people are already there. Right? Like, buying social media ads, you're gonna I don't know. You're just gonna I to me, it seems like such a smaller catch rate. The the the signal ratio there is so much higher in a podcast because the people listening there, especially on a podcast like this week in Bitcoin, that's kind of new or very new. It's just a baby.
They're more tuned in than average folks. You know, they're gonna be more tuned in to even with the concept of podcasting 2.0. They're gonna be more likely to be people that do podcasts too. So it's it's it's it's a the the value to the list to the listener and to the advertiser is very high there.
[00:32:55] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Absolutely. And I've seen that, already, which is great. And and continuing on that, advertisement, you said right now, it's kind of a a winter. Right? It's not going that great for advertisements, at least in in podcasting. But you also alluded to when this thing turns around, then we'll be in a good position. So so why do you think it's not going well now, and why do you think that it will turn around?
[00:33:21] Chris Fisher:
Well, my initial, premise and why I why I really kind of started preparing for the ad winter was it's really it's tied to the macroeconomic situation in the United States. And so when the fed enters a tightening cycle, the first areas that companies are going to cut back even before layoffs is in their advertising budgets. Just always been the way it was. I was here during the 2008, GFC, and I remember the same exact thing playing out during then. And I was just starting to go, ads back then. So I remember that, and I remember that the advertising budgets got cut. And what they ended up doing just like they're doing now is they focus on a few areas that they think they can, like, manage with reduced staff and reduced budget that they can quantify and get metrics on so they can show they're still doing a good job even with their smaller budget.
And that pretty much remains until the Fed starts loosening again. And companies start feeling like their assets are worth more, and they got they got money to spend. When it begins to recover, niche podcasts are such a great market because they're fairly priced, especially by that point. And the signal, again, like I was just mentioning, is so high. The audience value is so high. Like, if you get a good match, like, say, for a long time, we ran Linode ads, a lot of my audience that listens to a Linux podcast is looking for a great Linux VPS. Yeah. So that kind of stuff, they when you get the right kind of advertiser with the right kind of podcast, it can be those kinds of deals can be really great, and they can last a long time for the podcaster, which adds stability.
That kind of stuff is what opens up as the market recovers, and then it just sort of widens up from there. That's my hope is that you'd see that, continue. Because in the meantime, our shows are growing, And so our numbers are even better than they were. Right? Like the podcast audience is is doing really, really thriving. If they don't care that there's an ad winter, that doesn't matter to them. So when we when we do when we do see sponsors come back, you know, we'll have even better numbers. And also, we'll have developed the value for value base more. So we'll be able to say no a lot more, which is huge for us because you'll see some podcasts during this time take crappier and crappier sponsors, and we've just continued to say no. It's hard right now, and that just gets easier with the more value for value funding we have. And to the point of, you know, perhaps we're only working with sponsors to cover special events one day. You know, maybe maybe the maybe there's one sponsor in a show here and there for something special, like, say, we're gonna go to scale.
Yeah. And they're gonna help us get there, and it's gonna it's a it's a $10,000 job to get the whole crew out there because this this is 2 years in the future and California is even more expensive and hotels are now $500 a night. And so, you know, we need to raise we need to raise 10, $13,000 to get the crew out to scale or whatever it is. Maybe that's where a sponsor could step in at that point and things are lucrative enough and, you know, that could work out. I'm not really sure. But I feel like we have a lot of options, and the market will begin to return once the situation turns around at the macro level.
[00:36:30] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. I I feel the same because, podcasting in general is still growing. As in people are still listening and more and more listeners are coming in, and that is the most important metric. And the economy will fluctuate around that. I will go to crap either way. But if I'll recover, you know, they will just print more money or something. And,
[00:36:51] Chris Fisher:
so it will It's only a matter of time. And then that money inevitably will make the corporations feel richer, and they'll increase their marketing budgets. Yeah. There you go. And in the meantime, you can also enjoy value for value
[00:37:02] Barry Luijbregts:
with more realistic, value money tokens. And that's working out well as well, right, in the podcasting 2.9 space.
[00:37:10] Chris Fisher:
Vital. You know, and that's why I'm that's why I'm kind of I'm not nonchalant about what the what happens in the future, but I feel like we have an insurance plan. Like, yeah, they'll figure it out. Yeah. Eventually, the federal loosen. Money will come back eventually. If I if I hadn't adopted the value for value model and if we hadn't adopted boost and memberships, I'd be panicked. I don't think we'd be on the air anymore. I think we probably probably wouldn't have made it out of q 1 2024.
[00:37:41] Barry Luijbregts:
Wow.
[00:37:43] Chris Fisher:
I'm thinking. Right? Just yeah. It's 2023 was rough, and 2024 has been about just as bad. But then we had, memberships tick up, and we had boost tick up. And the memberships give us kind of the solid foundation where we we where we actually know, okay, where this show is making consistently x, y, z, so we can afford to have an editor. We can afford to pay the host. And then the boost support each individual production, and those get split amongst the people involved in those show. Even the host that don't have a technical split in the feed on the back end, we we make sure they're taken care of.
And so that has given a, I guess, you could say, like, a bump in, you know, like, a pay raise, a bump for those hosts where JB could not have afforded to, like, give them a little more to help cover cost of life with inflation. But the splits came in, and they made they made that possible. But, also, the way we do it is the network has has a has a cut, a percentage, and we have the option to sit on those or sell those. So we have a little bit of more optionality there. So if we needed to sell them immediately to fund something, we can, like a road trip, or if we wanna sit on them for a bit and then sell them at a higher value, we can.
And that is very empowering for us. It it kinda goes above and beyond what the memberships can do. Right? The memberships are great because they give us that set cost, and we know what we have covered. But the boost allow us to take advantage of the volatility of Bitcoin. We can we can sell low or we can sell high depending on what's appropriate for us or not sell, and we've just build our treasury. And that is ginormous because it it meant, like, for scale, we could finance the entire trip through Boost. Wow. We didn't have to go find a sponsor for that. And we've we were really kind of not we were really not sure how we were even gonna be able to do something like that. And we did it as cheap as possible. It's not like we we didn't fly 1st class. Like, the 3 of us piled into my car as we drove from Seattle to Pasadena.
So it was, you know, it's a 3 day drive each way. But we were able to do it, and we were happy to do it. And, we did it through value for value funding and not through any particular like corporate sponsorship. And to be able to do something like that, in an ad winter when revenue is down, it's mind blowing. Like, I I I have not figured out a way to talk about what a big deal it is. It's fundamentally enabling, especially when you consider the topic that we're covering is free software and open source. And so when you when you consider that the community, a free software community, enabled the largest Linux podcast to go to these events and cover it with no corporate involvement at all, that's really something special.
[00:40:28] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. And and I think that's also the perfect audience for that because they want to keep this all free and open. Right? And so they they are willing to to put some value, towards that that goal.
[00:40:41] Chris Fisher:
Yeah. It kinda goes back to, like, you do and we work really hard, and it's it's made us think even more about what's valuable. Like, we had we had couple of meetings where we're like, alright. Well, let's think of the audience as our customer for this trip. What does our customer want from this trip, and how do we do a good job for them? And, like, so it just it just kept pushing us while we were there to, like, well, let's let's go get that audio. Let's see if they could let's see if our friend can come back to the Airbnb and come on air with us even though we we know they're super busy. Like, what would the audience want? Because when they are financing the production and the trip, they're the customer.
And so I wanna make my customer happy so that they would consider purchasing again.
[00:41:26] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Again, that's thinking, about the value. What what type of value are you bringing to your customers? To your listeners in this case. Yeah. Yep.
[00:41:35] Chris Fisher:
Yeah. They're but, you know, but talking in a business sense, they're the customer, but they're the listener. And what would make them wanna share the podcast or listen to the podcast? And I actually think it's been a really good exercise for us, and it's it's because because we want people to wanna become a member. We want them to boost. We wanna just keep bringing that value, and that's a great exercise for anybody.
[00:41:55] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. I think so too. And so this is in part of the 2.0 thing. Right? Podcasting 2.0 boosts relatively new, but very successful for you guys. If you think about, the future of modern podcasting, so not only podcasting 2.0, but just podcasting in general, things are modernizing ish. Like if you look at Apple Podcasts, right, they are now doing transcripts also with podcasting 2.0, namespace tag, which is great. What do you think and or hope is going to happen in the near future with the technology around podcasting?
[00:42:33] Chris Fisher:
I'd love to see more podcast go live with the lit tag. I think that's going to be revolutionary because for all of podcast history, we have sent our audience to other platforms and services. And what YouTube has over us is when you go live, you go live in front of your subscribers. You've got, like, a built in base that knows you're live. Right now when you go live in podcasting, it's a ghost town. Nobody knows. You have to build your channels of communication, like a Discord room or a matrix room or social media, your website. Like, you have to build these methods to even notify people to get them to come listen. But now with podcasting 2 dot o, it's just in your RSS feed. So they're already subscribed.
They'll find out about it. They'll see it. They can possibly get a notification. I think that that's gonna bring a new kind of energy and a new type of podcast, and not every podcast is going to be able to do that. So the ones that can do that are gonna have a slight competitive advantage. They'll probably also see a little bit better boost results. And I think just kind of changing things up a little bit, shaking that up, bringing some of that new energy into podcasting, and also at the same time, having a standards cross app way that is alternative to what YouTube is offering, very important to podcasting, I feel.
[00:43:54] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. And does that also include, cross set comments or discussions?
[00:44:02] Chris Fisher:
Maybe. You know, definitely for the livestream. Definitely for the live. Mhmm. Because that that seems that seems critical. And I really like I don't know if you've had a chance to look what, the fountain team are doing. Not yet. Web yeah. Okay. For a chat. Yeah. So they have a a semi prototype, a beta that, is using Nostr for the back end web chat. Now that that's actually a compelling use case of Nostr because you could think of Nostr as a JSON storage relay network Mhmm. That is just passing plain text JSON around. And then you could think, well, that would be pretty simple to integrate into any app, into any website.
And the nice aspect to Nostr is it's one identity that you could use across any Nostr client. So, yes, it's one more account, but then you could use that same account on Fountain FM or Podverse or Cast O Matic or anybody that implements this. Or we could build tooling and bots around that for title suggestions and funny little clip collections and things like that because it's just structured JSON. It's just plain text Yeah. On the Nostra network. You don't really use Noster other than to sign in, and then it's all through a web experience that they're also going to bring eventually to the mobile app.
And I find that to be compelling because it's cross platform capable, and it's tied to that livestream. And, that I could really see. Now as far as just comments on an episode, I I feel like the booths have kind of done, and now it's just a matter of just how you display them. Yeah. But I I mean, I'd I'd be interested to see an implementation that's just standard comments that go across apps. I feel like we are running into, kind of having activity pub do a little bit of this. Lightning Network does a little bit of that. Noster's gonna do a little bit of that. And my hot take there is I think some folks in the podcasting 2.0 community have just kind of spent a little too much time on Activity Pub, and they spend a little bit too much time dismissing Noster, and perhaps those two things should be reversed. I'm not trying to argue that, you know, we wanna use Zaps, and I'm not trying to argue that we wanna replace RSS or anything like that. But notes and other things transmitted through Realize could be very useful for podcasting 2.0.
And, I I don't like activity pub as much as a mechanism. It seems very heavy. It's very bloated. It's also been around forever. It hasn't really gained traction other than outside of the Mastodon universe. But, yeah, maybe maybe, maybe we can make some big compelling case why we need activity pub. We need lightning, we need RSS and we'll need on Noster, but I doubt it.
[00:46:46] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. I'm not convinced either way yet for cross app comments, at least. Yeah. I, I don't know. It, it needs to be for the listener. It needs to be in app and super easy, without an additional signup, if possible. You just open the app and then you just see whatever comments there are. You just leave a comment, and perhaps you sign in, leave your name or whatever.
[00:47:07] Chris Fisher:
It it also sounds like it could be clunky at first. Let's say somebody leaves a comment. You know, they say something that's, you know, extremely offensive to somebody or whoever, the podcaster, I suppose, is all that really matters. And then you go to delete it or try to remove it. How does that work? And will it be reflected on all the apps, and will it get synchronized fairly immediately, especially if it's something pretty egregious? Because, honestly, we have a tie we have a tough time just sinking, like, live status and things like some of the basics that aren't getting across all the apps accurately right now. So now we're also going to add comments on top of that. Maybe. Maybe. And maybe they'll all get implemented in a way that, you know, if I if I somehow can update the activity pub, it'll just remove the comment everywhere at once. Perhaps that'll work.
But, seems like it's gonna be a lot. And as a podcaster, it's like one more area that I'm gonna kinda have to moderate and keep an eye on potentially. Maybe I won't until somebody screams at me that somebody said something super offensive. So I'll be chilling out one night, and all of a sudden have a whole bunch of upset messages rolling in where I'll have to go open up the app and go, oh, yeah. Somebody had said something stupid. Now I have to care about it. And that's kinda how I imagine it's gonna work for me, but maybe the listeners will like it.
[00:48:17] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. Let's see. I I would like to see that in the future. I think for now, at least for, modern podcasting, we have a lot of stuff that already kinda works. I think it would be great if it works, like you said, in all the apps exactly the same, and it is all stable in all of the new apps as well, because they're all pretty new still. Right? And then if the apps then gain some traction and some some, some market share there, and we have all of the things implemented that we have right now, I think then we are very far along. But that's that's still not the case. We have quite some way to go because it's still very new. Right? Yeah. And I also think, even though I've said, you know, really think about the podcast app experience,
[00:49:02] Chris Fisher:
there is gonna be people that will use the web and they wanna listen on the web. They wanna get your show notes on the web. I think we would open up boosting to an entire new group of users if we could boost from the web. There are just people that are not ready to switch podcast apps. They love their podcast app. Yeah. Or maybe they need to use the built in podcast app for some platform restriction reason. And so there's a big group of people we're leaving out. And so if we do cross app comments, we'd probably wanna be able to embed them on the web too. And it'd be nice to get the existing stuff that we already have working on the web. Nobody nobody, except the podcast index, allows you to boost from the web. Oh, and now Truefans.
But they both are dependent on Alby, which is fine, but it it really doesn't need to be. It could just be a QR code that I scan with Striker Cash App or anything on the lightning network with a message that comes up in a web dialogue, and then it sends. But we don't even have that. And I don't have a way to, like, even embed that on my website where I where I could have, like, a little boost embed where I put that on there and it figures out the latest episode from which feed and it, you know, figures all that out. Like, we don't have that. And it's it's not that we should be putting a ton of effort into that, but, man, I'd love to see some of that flushed out so we could get some of that, you know, lower hanging fruit, the stuff that's easier to do for people that aren't willing to switch apps yet.
That kind of thing is, I think I don't know where I'd love to see effort go, but I don't you know, it's a community that decides to scratch their own itch. I don't get to direct that thing.
[00:50:34] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. No. But this is good, this is good. I'm writing along because, you know, these are also things that could go into the bolt home websites, which are these, little websites that I create for, for each show. You know, not a lot of people actually go there because they go hopefully to the podcast apps themselves. But if it's an alternative thing where you can, for instance, scan a QR code and then, do a little payment, that'd be awesome, of course.
[00:50:59] Chris Fisher:
Yeah. Yeah. I think so. That'd be really nice. You know, I do hear from listeners. They're out there. They just don't use mobile phones too. They just don't use smartphones. And I more power to them. You know, like, talk about a line to walk. Like, that is a daily practice. They're not huge, but I get it. And when I'm at my desk, I like having things on the web too. But there's also just a convenience. It's one less hop if you could if you could scan with Stripe or Cash App or whatever you use, then, you know, you're you're moving a hop out of all of that. You you could go right from your local currency, boom, scan the send. It'd be great. That kind of stuff, I think, will happen over time too. I'm just impatient.
[00:51:40] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. But I think, we're getting there, and and podcasting is moving into the right, right place, and we're still growing. So let's, let's end this on, something, positive from, you guys as well. Because what do you think what is your favorite thing to work on right now, and and what do you think it will become in the future?
[00:52:03] Chris Fisher:
Oh, interesting. Definitely the podcasting 2 dot o features. We are we are working on generating an RSS feed in house for the first time ever. We've never done that before. It's always something we've wanted to do because, we have a website that gets auto generated when a show gets posted. And we've currently, thanks to our wonderful community, do that via just scraping the fireside website that gets auto generated when a website's posted. And we're now transitioning to generating that website using our RSS feed as the source of truth. And that is really fun because we're taking ways that we're old ways of doing things and say, okay. What is the namespace in podcasting 2.0 we could use to actually convey this information to the website? And we even had a discussion, like, do we want maybe a small custom Jupyter Broadcasting namespace that we could add things in there to help the feed get generated appropriately?
Or, I'm sorry, the website. So that's that's been a lot of fun. And then, of course, I'm trying to work out my my remote, my remote production setup where it's really solid. All those things I find to be really good challenges. I don't know about the future. You know, that's that's a good question. Down the road, I just never know. I'd I'd I'm always so, I'm always so heads down focused. It's hard to guess, but it's probably more of the same. More of trying to bring the best features to the podcast, trying to make it work on all the different podcast apps, and then always trying to refine our production setup, get it working in more and more remote locations so we can go somewhere, cover something live, be in person. Stuff I'm trying to get back to.
[00:53:41] Barry Luijbregts:
Okay. Excellent. Excellent. We covered lots of stuff and I think lots of valuable stuff for podcasters as well that they can use to, you know, increase their value to their listeners and to, just use in general to learn from your massive experience. So perhaps, you know, don't spend so much time on social media generation and more time on your valuable content. So anything you wanna end with? Anything else?
[00:54:11] Chris Fisher:
You know, I'll mention our Hugo website that does get auto generated from our posts is available on our GitHub at github.com/jupyterbroadcasting. If anybody wants to take a look or fork it or or participate, it's an open project, and I think it'd be really nice. It's you could sit in front of your RSS feed one day and then just automatically build a Hugo site for you of all your various different shows, and we're building it with network support. Something for us, but I could see others finding that useful.
[00:54:36] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. I I already know of somebody that would, love to, to use that. I think Gene Bean would love to use that as well. I think he's also using, Hugo right now. So that would be interesting. Okay. Cool. Thank you very much.
[00:54:50] Chris Fisher:
Thank you, Barry.
Some ways, it's easier now than I think it ever has been with podcasting 2.0 apps because if somebody likes your show and they find it, they can clip it or they can boost it, and then that helps other folks discover it. And that is a self perpetuating cycle that means that somebody else sees it, then they boost it, and then it stays up on the charts for a bit.
[00:00:24] AI voice:
Welcome to About Podcasting, a show for podcasters. We talk about podcasting practices, tools, successes, and failures mixed with interviews and music. Hosted on podhome.fm, the most modern podcast hosting platform.
[00:00:47] Barry Luijbregts:
Welcome to another episode of About Podcasting. And, yes, this is another interview episode. And this week, I talk with Chris Fischer from Jupyter Broadcasting. Now he and his, cohosts have been podcasting for many, many years, and they've been doing a very successful job at that. Now in this conversation, Chris shares a lot of valuable insights from all his years in podcasting. So be sure to listen all the way to the end. You can find Chris and Jupiter Broadcasting and all of the shows in the show notes. But before we start the show, let's thank some people because we got some boosts.
First, we got Cole McCormick with a comment, love the production on this very. Cannot wait to hear more podcasters talk about their process with 5,438 sets. Thank you very much, Cole, and Cole boosts from fountain.fm. And we got Adam Curry coming in with 9,900 sets. And he says, AI is a parlor trick from podcast guru. Well, let's agree to disagree for now. I agree on that, partially. I'd love to talk with you about that. But let's see. And we got a bunch of people streaming sets whilst listening to the episodes, which you can do with a modern podcast app that you can find at modernpodcastapps.com. You can use Trufans, Fountain.fem, Podverse, Podcast Guru, CurioCaster, and many more.
Now on with the interview. Enjoy. So did you look at your look at your setup. That is just awesome. What do you have going on there?
[00:02:38] Chris Fisher:
Jeez. Well, what you can't see is all the screens. There's there's a lot of screens in here. This is here. I don't know if you can see the mixer. We have an x 32 Behringer mixer. Over here, we have a soundboard so we can do, you know, sound effects, and then we have OBS. And then over the on the other side of this of the camera is, my cohost setup, and we have a spot for him where he has, like, just an old table, room for a laptop, a stream deck, and a microphone and headphones. And then we have a standing optional standing, 3rd host spot It's sort of across the room.
So it's you only see a portion of it on camera. Thankfully, a lot of it's a mess too. You know how that goes. But
[00:03:19] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Okay. So this is like your this is a studio that's in your house?
[00:03:25] Chris Fisher:
It is a townhouse that, was my first home. Picked it up, I mean, like 15 years ago. And then, when I decided, okay, it's time to have a family, we moved out, but we rented it for a few years. And then when I started my own business and started doing the podcast thing full time and the kids were growing up and they were quite loud, the wife and I at the time decided, we need to get you out of the house. The renters are gonna be done in about 6 months. So let's convert that into a studio. And so when the renters moved out, we came in and we invested in the power and networking and sound insulation and things like that and kind of built it out to be a studio. So the downstairs, it's a townhouse, so it's 2 stories.
The downstairs is where my main studio is at, where we've done the most focus on sound. Outside of that, there's like a regular old living room and a kitchen that I hardly pay enough attention to. And then upstairs, we have what's sometimes it's 2 offices, 3 offices, a bedroom, and a couple of working spaces, kind of depending on what's needed. But right now, it's a dedicated working space for me. And then we have we've converted, the other areas into, like, a lounge area and then, a bedroom because we'll often, you know, multiple times a year, many times a year, have somebody flying in and staying here and working with us. And so they can just stay in that room. And then they have a, you know, they have a full house with a kitchen and a washer and dryer and their own shower. And so it works really well for that.
The the, you know, the a little far north of Seattle, so it's not like ideal location wise, but, otherwise, it's pretty good.
[00:04:59] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Oh, that's nice. And then you do all your, shows where you have, cohost and stuff. You do all do all that stuff in person, not through the Internet.
[00:05:09] Chris Fisher:
It's a mix. You know, I love doing it in person when we can. So for Linux Unplugged, Wes is always here in studio, and Brent is often in studio, but often remote too. And so some of my other shows, they're fully remote. It kinda just depends on the show and the cohost. So we try to we try to invest in a pretty solid remote setup as well. And then today, earlier today, you know, I was I'm working on just the plumbing so I can be remote. So I can still run the board and soundboard and the stream and record everybody's individual channels and do all of that, but do it from remote with the lowest bandwidth possible.
[00:05:44] Barry Luijbregts:
Right. Yeah. So you you run, multiple shows, as Jupyter Broadcasting. Right? As part of Jupiter Broadcasting. And that is, I think, my guess is, very successful. Right?
[00:06:02] Chris Fisher:
Yes. I'd say it's successful in the turn in the sense of I can have a dream job where I work full time doing podcasting and, you know, provide for my family. It it is not the most lucrative job in the world right now. There's kind of a a podcasting ad winter that's kind of set in on certain types of podcasts and the the really kind of more technical ones that that address a real specific technical niche seem to be the most punished in in advertising right now. And, of course, that's where I'm at. But we've also because I kinda saw that coming, we've also we've converted more to a value for value model. And so that while it hasn't replaced sponsorships, it is growing very rapidly. And if it wasn't for that, I think we wouldn't have made it. So we're not like we're not like doing incredibly well, but we're surviving during a time when some are not. And I think we'll thrive when the market turns around.
[00:06:55] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Well, in any case, it's very it's amazing that you can do it full time and do your dream job full time. Yeah. That's really my main benchmark. Yeah. That that is success. Right? It doesn't matter if if you make,
[00:07:08] Chris Fisher:
shitloads of money with that. Who cares? As long as you can pay the bills. My grandpa told me, you know, there is such a thing as a lifestyle business where and he did this. He he worked for himself, for many years into retirement, and it just seemed really nice. I think they made an impression on me. You know, it doesn't it doesn't have to be a big 30 person, a 100 person, 2 1000 person company. It could be a small handful of people, and, it's just good work and you just plug away at it. That's exactly how I do it myself as well. That's my goal as well. I, with POD home, I don't wanna
[00:07:42] Barry Luijbregts:
be a huge outfit with, I don't know, 50 developers or something. I just wanna be able to keep doing this forever, and so that it pays the bills because I love doing this. That that's my goal.
[00:07:53] Chris Fisher:
Yeah. And and I feel like even if with that, it's like, well, what then technically, what would be retirement? I I don't even know. Maybe maybe retirement is when my voice gives out. I don't know.
[00:08:04] Barry Luijbregts:
I wouldn't I wouldn't stop working. Yeah. Maybe that's what
[00:08:07] Chris Fisher:
Maybe yeah. That's what I picture. I picture less, maybe more travel, you know, taking more time between shows, really, really thinking about things for a really long time, and then coming to on air with, you know, some experience of traveled and thought about it, not having to just stay on a certain clock. That's just not the season of life right now. It's and also I get really bored right now because I, you know, still young enough and I've got the energy. But I I do daydream, you know, kind of retirement would be that.
[00:08:39] Barry Luijbregts:
So so how did you get to this, point? So let's start by what what even got you into podcasting and the the audio business. Right? What attracted you to it?
[00:08:50] Chris Fisher:
You know, I I probably would have tried to go into radio if I could have, which would have been a miss, I think, in retrospect. That wasn't clear for the first few years of my career, but, in the Seattle area, radio was just so locked down. It's just there's no way I could ever have gotten into the business. And I I had an I had a very natural inclination for technology. So I kind of put this as a kid, I'd pretend I was a radio DJ, and I would do interviews with my family and mix it together and edit together using tape. It was really silly. And I just sort of put all that aside, and, well, I I can do technology. And so I went into IT, got pretty deep into that for a while.
And then on the side, I decided to start doing a podcast with a friend of mine because the world was so wrong about something. And young me just could not stand that. This was an injustice, which must be corrected, and there was only one man that could there are maybe 2 men, myself and my friend that could do it. And we had to tell the world about this thing called Linux. It was working so much better for us than Windows NT, Windows NT 4 and early Windows 2000 at the time. Yeah. And we had solved these, for us, massive problems in the workplace that Windows could not address using this free thing called Linux, and I couldn't believe it. And I I just I because, you know, I I grew up in this in the Seattle area, just Redmond's in our backyard, Microsoft's in every school. It's a it's Microsoft country. When I grew up here, it was the it was the windows 95 and and into the, you know, the windows 20,021,003 era. Like Microsoft was a powerhouse in this region. And so the idea that this free thing that you just could download off the Internet and put on a server and it would solve these problems that we were just unable to solve with Windows was radical.
And everybody was telling me I was crazy and that Linux was a scam and that open source was a scam and that you were gonna get sued by SCO and IBM or somebody for using it and that, you know, you gotta go with Microsoft. Nobody ever gets fired for that. And I just felt the need to just demonstrate on a weekly basis the problems I was solving. And my buddy was on board to do that with me, and, you know, we turned it into kind of a show to make it more entertaining and just kinda went from there.
[00:11:05] Barry Luijbregts:
Oh, there you go. So
[00:11:06] Chris Fisher:
you you solved a problem for yourself and you turned that into something valuable for other people. Right? Yeah. It started at first with a blog, and I thought, oh, boy. I'm horrible at writing. And, I can't really spell very well, but I can talk. And also you gotta appreciate too, like, the tooling was super rough and new back then. We didn't really have much because it's like we probably started playing around in 2005, 2006. And so the very first episodes were distributed, you know, on disc. Listeners would download them and burn them to their disc, and then they would put them in their car player. And then later on, car players have the ability to play MP threes, which is a great boom for the show. It was really, I mean, a long time ago. But the idea was just we could we could play around with technology, and we could talk about technology.
And maybe instead of doing this blog, we could help people figure it out through this other medium. Yeah. True. Yeah. Then it just sort of took off because Itunes, right, came along and and the iPad came along. And, yeah, it was we were really lucky on the timing there.
[00:12:06] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. And it's just fun to, you know, be a radio person. Right?
[00:12:11] Chris Fisher:
Yeah. Let's be You had to un you had to unlearn that, actually. You know, that was that was a big part of the first five plus, 6, 7 years of me doing this was learning podcasting isn't radio. And we don't need to emulate radio. We don't need to talk like them, and we don't need to follow their standards. And, you know, we some of that we got pretty quick. But some of it and it took a little bit longer to realize podcasting is its own unique thing.
[00:12:37] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. It it is very unique. And and and now you guys also do, live for most of the shows, right, that you do, and that includes a video element sometimes. What do you think about video for podcasting? Is is that a thing or is that just an additional thing, something else than podcasting?
[00:12:56] Chris Fisher:
Yeah. That's a good question because this question is is, a decade old. I I started doing it because you could and didn't really give much thought if I should. And so then our audio podcast started addressing a video audience, and we started referencing things we could see. We started showing things on the screen. And that was something that took us again. This is, like, 2014. So this is a while ago, 2015. We had to realize we were actually really making an audio podcast and that we needed to not so much focus on the video just because, you know, we might get a 1,000 video views and we'd get 20,000, 30,000, 50,000 audio downloads. And we started to realize, it's like a rounding error on the video side. And we've been accidentally just because we did video, referencing things you can see and talking about video constantly and always plugging the YouTube channel.
Yeah. And so, you know, 2017, 18, we kind of pivot to 2017. I think we kind of pivoted and went audio only hardcore. And we started just only producing audio only podcast, multitrack, local recorded, double lenders, and then we would render out a waveform and post that on YouTube. And that never really did very well, but the quality went up significantly and our downloads for the audio shows went up because of that. Now we kind of take a separate track with it. When we're live, we'll do that as video. So we'll we'll stream the production of the show, and the cameras are on for that.
But and we'll do some switching so you can see our screens and stuff, but we don't make reference to it because our our focus is on the audio show. You know, the predom predominantly all the screens in here and all the gear in here is dedicated to the audio production. Then we have some webcams and OBS and a Stream Deck to switch between them. And that's that's worked pretty well. It does better than the waveform stuff, but I'm still not convinced that people because the live streams are, like, 2 hours. I'm not convinced. There's a large audience for 2 hour content of middle aged guys talking into microphones, wearing headphones that aren't talking about, like, some big sporting event or something that has mass appeal.
Because, advertisers will figure this out. The the reason why I think this conversation has come up is because YouTube has been like a black hole sucking at podcasting advertising. Yeah. And they've also made, you know, motions to improve the podcast experience on YouTube. So the kind of 2 have come together, but this has happened before. And the lesson that I learned last time we went through this is that the for anything to get really good views and monetize well on YouTube, it needs to be built for YouTube. It needs to be created from the beginning for YouTube. Ideally, it needs to have mass appeal. And I mean this when I say this, it should appeal to children. If you really wanna reach numbers on YouTube, it needs to appeal to children too.
So if you're not creating it for YouTube and, if you're not creating it with some sort of mass appeal and if you're not creating it with the idea that perhaps with the intention perhaps children could watch this as well, I don't think you're ever really gonna have success in podcast video. Again, unless it's like a celebrity or some big event or something like that. And I think people will spend a lot of their time trying to make video work when they really, really should be focused on getting good quality audio. But it's like a lesson we have to go through every few cycles. I had to go through it.
I was doing video on YouTube for podcast before YouTube did 16 by 9, let alone even HD. And I try and I and I tried a few different takes at it. And that was really what I realized is the stuff that did well and, you know, get stuff that could crack several 100000 views on our channel. It was always things that we purposely filmed for YouTube. And that's just not a podcast. I don't, I don't think now there's some, you know, and maybe YouTube's getting so big. Maybe there are several 1,000 people that, you know, will fit into your niche that want to just listen on YouTube because it's handy. You know, it's it's everywhere and it's on their TV and maybe maybe their data provider covers it for them or something like that. I mean, there's there's reasons it's and it has a large network effect. So I publish there.
But I just publish the video versions of our livestreams.
[00:17:14] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. So so, basically, it serves a a, a discoverability, need. Right? Because it's it's a it's a huge search engine, basically.
[00:17:25] Chris Fisher:
Yeah. I think that's a big part of it. I think you probably do have people that just prefer it too. They they're they've got other creators. They're watching over there, and they can just slip you in there. And I also imagine there's a contingent of folks that are working at, you know, some day job at their desk. They got a monitor or something like that. They just wanna put up some content that actually is is longer than 15 minutes. Yeah. And so something like a 2 hour livestream that's on, ostensibly, the entire topic is Linux. Yeah. Put that on, and I'll get some work done. And I'm not, you know, sitting there getting distracted every time it switches to a new video. So I think, I mean, but it's not a huge audience, but that's an audience.
[00:18:00] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. But I think the point that you make there is very, is good that creating a high quality video that will get some traction, that takes a lot of time and a lot of effort, a lot of planning and all that type of stuff. And so it takes away from time to actually create good audio as well. So if you wanna do both, you need a huge production, you need lots of time, and that's probably not worth it for most people,
[00:18:25] Chris Fisher:
especially if you do, let's say, a technology podcast or or something like that. Right. And I think, you know, if you look at your new metrics, I bet I bet this is true for most people, 90% of podcasters that post on YouTube and have an RSS feed. You're getting 90% of your downloads, 80%, 95% of your downloads on the audio side, but you're putting 60% of your work into the video side. Yeah. Maybe or somewhere even if it's 20, 30, 40%. It's too much. And so the question becomes, what if every minute you spent focusing on video, you spent on just researching your topic more or reaching out to somebody who knows something more? Like, that's where I got really hung up. So I went, oh, crap.
I cannot only could the show sound better, but I would have more time to get a sort of information on the topics we're talking about, which would be more valuable for the listener. And, you know, that was, like I said, 2017 or so we realized that, and we made that shift.
[00:19:25] Barry Luijbregts:
Okay. And and so what about the live aspect, in general? Is that useful to go live? Do do you see that, people actually tune into that?
[00:19:36] Chris Fisher:
It ebbs and flows. You know, it definitely ebbs and flows on your timing. If you can do it on a on a time where more more time zones crossover for availability, the UK, the East Coast, and the West Coast. If you could somehow find somewhere like a 2 PM or something like that, for me, kinda works well because I'm on the West Coast. So that can help. You know, but there's also another benefit to it besides just having a live feel, which for some shows you don't want. You know, like, they're really kinda low key chat shows. Maybe you don't want live. But there's other shows where you want kind of a momentum. And I think being live inherently brings that momentum to the host. Like, you're you're live. You're you're constantly on air, so you inherently bring a momentum to it. Depends on the show. Yeah. For the right show, I think that's a good thing. But then there's, like, this other element, and it's the show's going live at noon, so you better have everything ready and no excuses.
Yeah. And if you gotta make this show every single week, that is both, the heartbeat at which you live by and also the thing that makes it so you get the show done every week. Like, we all are on the same page. We all know when the deadline is. We all gotta show up. We all gotta show up at that particular time and be ready, which if you work back from that means you gotta get up at a certain time in the morning. You gotta eat the right food. You gotta take your shower. You gotta get your reading on. You have to be a functional adult at a certain time, like say 10 AM on a Sunday, every single week.
And you gotta you do do that for infinity. And if you walk back from that, that means, well, maybe you're not doing something on Saturday. Maybe you're gonna spend a little bit time researching on like, there's a whole life effect it has, both negative and positive. It creates a structure that the rest of your life kinda has to form around because it's live and you gotta be there. You can't have dead air. It's live, and it's live every week at the same time. And so life has to fit around that, where if it's a podcast with your buddies that you're just recording whenever everybody gets together, doesn't really matter when you do it.
It's much, much harder to actually show up every week and get the show done. So it provides both a good and bad deadline that is stressful but useful every week. And so there's even if only a few people show up, there's utility to giving kind of that structure for everybody involved with the show.
[00:22:04] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. That's a very good point, because it can be very difficult, of course, to, keep that discipline and to keep it going every week, especially if you have multiple shows like you guys have.
[00:22:15] Chris Fisher:
A lot of work. Or you've been traveling or somebody's sick or there's some life event. And, you know, that it also it also means that, you end up if you're if you're lucky and it all works out, you end up with a very reliable release cadence, which I think is kinda key to long term adoption for a podcast is that good, reliable release cadence.
[00:22:37] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. So that people can, use the podcast in their life schedules. Right? Like, every Friday, I listen to x, y, z. Every Saturday morning when I wake up, for instance, I download podcasting 2.0 because it was just live. Yeah. And then now It goes beyond that too. It's like, oh, this event happened this week.
[00:22:56] Chris Fisher:
Well, I know Linux Unplugged is gonna come out on Sunday. I can't wait to hear what they have to say about that. Or when something happens in podcasting 2.0, I know they're gonna be live on Friday. I can't wait to hear what they're gonna say. Like, I'm looking forward to it now.
[00:23:07] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. So I'm glad that I built, the live feature. Lots of people are actually using that, right now for for various purposes. And that's great to see, because it just creates more engagement, more people that are act actively podcasting and creating stuff, which is great. So so you have a lot of experience in building successful podcasts, as in successful as in they can support you and your family that you can keep doing this. Creating a a podcast that has a strong following that actually provides value back to you is a very, very difficult thing to do for most people. So how do you do that? Do you promote it on social media? How do you how do you get listeners? How do you grow your audience or your clan or whatever you wanna call it?
[00:24:03] Chris Fisher:
Well, the growth question is always a hard one. Mhmm. In some ways, it's easier now than I think it ever has been with podcasting 2.0 apps because if somebody likes your show and they find it, they can clip it or they can boost it, and then that helps other folks discover it. Mhmm. And that is a self perpetuating cycle that means that somebody else sees it, then they boost it, and then it stays up on the charts for a bit. So that's been really good. And and the really the the key to execution on that, right, is to integrate the value for value model and get the ask right, and, you know, respect the people who boost in and read their boost on air and be transparent about the amounts that are raised because it encourages other folks to boost in, which I think. So that's a very that's a huge, huge, huge win for discovery that has never existed for, like, the last 18 years. And man, I would have killed for that. So that's that's one way.
The reality is you just gotta find a niche that needs a podcast, and you gotta do a really good job. And then you ask people to share it because word-of-mouth is really so far other than, you know, some of the directory discovery stuff. It's really the only way people discover podcasts. You know, if I've got an hour long podcast, boy, it's it's really hard to talk somebody and to listen to that just by a by my album art and my title. But, you know, if Barry says to me, hey. You know, I was listening to this Linux podcast, and I really like you know, they've been talking about Nick's OS recently, and I'm kinda getting into that. You should give it a listen. That person's very likely to give it a listen. So asking the audience to help spread the show via word-of-mouth is really important.
But it really comes down to, you've gotta put yourself in the mind of the audience. You've gotta be able to divorce yourself from the love of what you've created, the the ego around what you've created. I see new creators get swept swept. I'm watching a guy do it right now. They get people love their own creations so much. In some personality types, the types that are drawn to be a little more outward and that are maybe people that are drawn to create content. They're also drawn to really love what they've made, and you gotta get over that. You gotta hate what you've made. You gotta really be the most critical person you possibly can and pick it apart and try to make it better. You need to be able to listen back to your own podcast. If you can't listen to your own podcast, then why would you think anybody else would? And listen to it to figure out how to make it better. And then constantly putting yourself in the position of the listener. When I'm making a show, when I'm just putting together an individual episode, I'm always asking myself, is this interesting? Is this worth their time? Is somebody gonna find this valuable?
Why am I talking about this? What's in it for them? Yeah. Those are the questions you have to always be asking. It's not just a one time thing. It's a it's a constant thing.
[00:26:54] Barry Luijbregts:
So value, word-of-mouth. Do you do any social media promotions? Because lots of people are spending incredible amounts of time clipping things and creating all sorts of album art and all sorts of things that they can share on X or Facebook or whatever to get people. Do you do that?
[00:27:13] Chris Fisher:
I I, technically, I suppose. You know, through, like, automated things. I'm Yeah. I am, I don't know. I peep I wonder if people look at metrics. I tell you every time I have, I see such little traffic generated from social media that, I think it's a rounding error. I it now for some people, they probably have a very strong social media presence. They've got a good community over there they've cultivated. So it could be a different game for them. I happen to think that the silent majority that listen to podcasts are not necessarily the type that spend a lot of time on social media, in Discord chats, in Telegram chats. Some of them definitely do because we've got 1,000 in our in our telegrams and matrix and all that.
But the vast majority, I'm not so sure. I'm not so sure. I've never written a podcast, never emailed a podcast, never joined a podcast chat room. I listen to a lot of podcasts, been doing podcasts for almost 19 years, never ever once. I just listened silently until Boost came along, and then I could start boosting from then I started. That's the first time ever I've ever reached out to a podcast. So I think most people that listen to podcast, probably not huge Twitter users, huge social media users, definitely some of them are. And, you know, the ones that are on those platforms definitely are podcast listeners. But I just don't really see a huge return. I I don't know. I I I guess I just maybe am not really invested much in it. So I when I talk about ways of making a podcast grow, I really focus on podcast native things. You know, your content getting discoverable in the podcast apps themselves. Because when I think about a podcast listener, I think as somebody who's probably finding your app through their podcast app, they're listening there. They maybe never even go to your website at all. Yeah. Right? Let alone go to your Twitter profile.
I think going back to what I was saying earlier, you gotta think about it in a way of people don't care about you, and they shouldn't unless you give them a reason to care. And it's kinda arrogant to assume somebody even wanna go to my Twitter page. Why do you care what I have to say? You know, if I make good content, you'll listen. And so a lot of people that are making content have, they're they just bring a certain kind of ego. They love themselves and they love what they're making, and they just assume everybody's gonna wanna see their Twitter page or their threads or whatever it is. And I'm just saying dial it back a little bit, you know, dial it back 20% or so. And, people, if they, you know, stick with you for a while, will eventually wanna go look you up and find out more and maybe follow you, but you gotta earn it.
Yeah. And it's not about that. It's about, the content. It's about the value in the content. Right? Yeah. Yeah. That's why I say focus on the show, focus on the the experience inside the podcast app. Then, you know, after you get that really nailed, you know, your show's great and the experience in the app's great. They worry about your website. Get a website. And then after you get that figured out, then you can start playing around with social media and, you know, sign it in that order priority, at least in my opinion.
[00:30:13] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. And I see the same. I I can see the back end. Right? So I can see, the the analytics of, of, customers that host at Pothome, for instance. And I see people that are spending tremendous amounts of time on, websites, socials and stuff. And we don't see it back in at least the downloads of the podcast. Doesn't mean that they're not successful in other ways, perhaps, but not by promoting the thing that they are promoting on on the socials. So, yeah, I I I agree. Totally.
[00:30:44] Chris Fisher:
It's a funny thing though because you're right. People get really sucked into it. And Yeah. I'll tell you this too, Barry. I've been in a lot of meetings, and an inordinate amount of time when we're talking about content creation and all that kind of stuff is spent on the social media strategy. Like, a lot of time is often spent in a meeting with a group of people on the social media strategy. And, again, I just say dial it back. Dial it back. Even just 20%. Just focus on something else for a little while and see if that changes things.
[00:31:14] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. That's why also I like now what, what we've done together, what you've done for me with, the, the advertisement in the podcast itself, which is a valuable thing where people are already listening within the app, and those are exactly the people that, that I want to, to talk to, with the if people didn't hear it, it's on the This Week in Bitcoin podcast, which is very exciting podcast. Today was, luckily, was a new episode. Always looking forward to that. And, we got some advertisements going there for Podhome, which is great. Definitely wanna continue that. But it's it's the value of the content.
[00:31:56] Chris Fisher:
Also, I think it's where they're already at. So there it's you're you're right. You're running against valuable content, and the I think the presenter matters. If the person knows the product and they can present the product and they're good at what they do, then it's like it's it's essentially hiring a professional presenter to talk about the product. I think there's a lot of value there, but then also it's people are already there. Right? Like, buying social media ads, you're gonna I don't know. You're just gonna I to me, it seems like such a smaller catch rate. The the the signal ratio there is so much higher in a podcast because the people listening there, especially on a podcast like this week in Bitcoin, that's kind of new or very new. It's just a baby.
They're more tuned in than average folks. You know, they're gonna be more tuned in to even with the concept of podcasting 2.0. They're gonna be more likely to be people that do podcasts too. So it's it's it's it's a the the value to the list to the listener and to the advertiser is very high there.
[00:32:55] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Absolutely. And I've seen that, already, which is great. And and continuing on that, advertisement, you said right now, it's kind of a a winter. Right? It's not going that great for advertisements, at least in in podcasting. But you also alluded to when this thing turns around, then we'll be in a good position. So so why do you think it's not going well now, and why do you think that it will turn around?
[00:33:21] Chris Fisher:
Well, my initial, premise and why I why I really kind of started preparing for the ad winter was it's really it's tied to the macroeconomic situation in the United States. And so when the fed enters a tightening cycle, the first areas that companies are going to cut back even before layoffs is in their advertising budgets. Just always been the way it was. I was here during the 2008, GFC, and I remember the same exact thing playing out during then. And I was just starting to go, ads back then. So I remember that, and I remember that the advertising budgets got cut. And what they ended up doing just like they're doing now is they focus on a few areas that they think they can, like, manage with reduced staff and reduced budget that they can quantify and get metrics on so they can show they're still doing a good job even with their smaller budget.
And that pretty much remains until the Fed starts loosening again. And companies start feeling like their assets are worth more, and they got they got money to spend. When it begins to recover, niche podcasts are such a great market because they're fairly priced, especially by that point. And the signal, again, like I was just mentioning, is so high. The audience value is so high. Like, if you get a good match, like, say, for a long time, we ran Linode ads, a lot of my audience that listens to a Linux podcast is looking for a great Linux VPS. Yeah. So that kind of stuff, they when you get the right kind of advertiser with the right kind of podcast, it can be those kinds of deals can be really great, and they can last a long time for the podcaster, which adds stability.
That kind of stuff is what opens up as the market recovers, and then it just sort of widens up from there. That's my hope is that you'd see that, continue. Because in the meantime, our shows are growing, And so our numbers are even better than they were. Right? Like the podcast audience is is doing really, really thriving. If they don't care that there's an ad winter, that doesn't matter to them. So when we when we do when we do see sponsors come back, you know, we'll have even better numbers. And also, we'll have developed the value for value base more. So we'll be able to say no a lot more, which is huge for us because you'll see some podcasts during this time take crappier and crappier sponsors, and we've just continued to say no. It's hard right now, and that just gets easier with the more value for value funding we have. And to the point of, you know, perhaps we're only working with sponsors to cover special events one day. You know, maybe maybe the maybe there's one sponsor in a show here and there for something special, like, say, we're gonna go to scale.
Yeah. And they're gonna help us get there, and it's gonna it's a it's a $10,000 job to get the whole crew out there because this this is 2 years in the future and California is even more expensive and hotels are now $500 a night. And so, you know, we need to raise we need to raise 10, $13,000 to get the crew out to scale or whatever it is. Maybe that's where a sponsor could step in at that point and things are lucrative enough and, you know, that could work out. I'm not really sure. But I feel like we have a lot of options, and the market will begin to return once the situation turns around at the macro level.
[00:36:30] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. I I feel the same because, podcasting in general is still growing. As in people are still listening and more and more listeners are coming in, and that is the most important metric. And the economy will fluctuate around that. I will go to crap either way. But if I'll recover, you know, they will just print more money or something. And,
[00:36:51] Chris Fisher:
so it will It's only a matter of time. And then that money inevitably will make the corporations feel richer, and they'll increase their marketing budgets. Yeah. There you go. And in the meantime, you can also enjoy value for value
[00:37:02] Barry Luijbregts:
with more realistic, value money tokens. And that's working out well as well, right, in the podcasting 2.9 space.
[00:37:10] Chris Fisher:
Vital. You know, and that's why I'm that's why I'm kind of I'm not nonchalant about what the what happens in the future, but I feel like we have an insurance plan. Like, yeah, they'll figure it out. Yeah. Eventually, the federal loosen. Money will come back eventually. If I if I hadn't adopted the value for value model and if we hadn't adopted boost and memberships, I'd be panicked. I don't think we'd be on the air anymore. I think we probably probably wouldn't have made it out of q 1 2024.
[00:37:41] Barry Luijbregts:
Wow.
[00:37:43] Chris Fisher:
I'm thinking. Right? Just yeah. It's 2023 was rough, and 2024 has been about just as bad. But then we had, memberships tick up, and we had boost tick up. And the memberships give us kind of the solid foundation where we we where we actually know, okay, where this show is making consistently x, y, z, so we can afford to have an editor. We can afford to pay the host. And then the boost support each individual production, and those get split amongst the people involved in those show. Even the host that don't have a technical split in the feed on the back end, we we make sure they're taken care of.
And so that has given a, I guess, you could say, like, a bump in, you know, like, a pay raise, a bump for those hosts where JB could not have afforded to, like, give them a little more to help cover cost of life with inflation. But the splits came in, and they made they made that possible. But, also, the way we do it is the network has has a has a cut, a percentage, and we have the option to sit on those or sell those. So we have a little bit of more optionality there. So if we needed to sell them immediately to fund something, we can, like a road trip, or if we wanna sit on them for a bit and then sell them at a higher value, we can.
And that is very empowering for us. It it kinda goes above and beyond what the memberships can do. Right? The memberships are great because they give us that set cost, and we know what we have covered. But the boost allow us to take advantage of the volatility of Bitcoin. We can we can sell low or we can sell high depending on what's appropriate for us or not sell, and we've just build our treasury. And that is ginormous because it it meant, like, for scale, we could finance the entire trip through Boost. Wow. We didn't have to go find a sponsor for that. And we've we were really kind of not we were really not sure how we were even gonna be able to do something like that. And we did it as cheap as possible. It's not like we we didn't fly 1st class. Like, the 3 of us piled into my car as we drove from Seattle to Pasadena.
So it was, you know, it's a 3 day drive each way. But we were able to do it, and we were happy to do it. And, we did it through value for value funding and not through any particular like corporate sponsorship. And to be able to do something like that, in an ad winter when revenue is down, it's mind blowing. Like, I I I have not figured out a way to talk about what a big deal it is. It's fundamentally enabling, especially when you consider the topic that we're covering is free software and open source. And so when you when you consider that the community, a free software community, enabled the largest Linux podcast to go to these events and cover it with no corporate involvement at all, that's really something special.
[00:40:28] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. And and I think that's also the perfect audience for that because they want to keep this all free and open. Right? And so they they are willing to to put some value, towards that that goal.
[00:40:41] Chris Fisher:
Yeah. It kinda goes back to, like, you do and we work really hard, and it's it's made us think even more about what's valuable. Like, we had we had couple of meetings where we're like, alright. Well, let's think of the audience as our customer for this trip. What does our customer want from this trip, and how do we do a good job for them? And, like, so it just it just kept pushing us while we were there to, like, well, let's let's go get that audio. Let's see if they could let's see if our friend can come back to the Airbnb and come on air with us even though we we know they're super busy. Like, what would the audience want? Because when they are financing the production and the trip, they're the customer.
And so I wanna make my customer happy so that they would consider purchasing again.
[00:41:26] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Again, that's thinking, about the value. What what type of value are you bringing to your customers? To your listeners in this case. Yeah. Yep.
[00:41:35] Chris Fisher:
Yeah. They're but, you know, but talking in a business sense, they're the customer, but they're the listener. And what would make them wanna share the podcast or listen to the podcast? And I actually think it's been a really good exercise for us, and it's it's because because we want people to wanna become a member. We want them to boost. We wanna just keep bringing that value, and that's a great exercise for anybody.
[00:41:55] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. I think so too. And so this is in part of the 2.0 thing. Right? Podcasting 2.0 boosts relatively new, but very successful for you guys. If you think about, the future of modern podcasting, so not only podcasting 2.0, but just podcasting in general, things are modernizing ish. Like if you look at Apple Podcasts, right, they are now doing transcripts also with podcasting 2.0, namespace tag, which is great. What do you think and or hope is going to happen in the near future with the technology around podcasting?
[00:42:33] Chris Fisher:
I'd love to see more podcast go live with the lit tag. I think that's going to be revolutionary because for all of podcast history, we have sent our audience to other platforms and services. And what YouTube has over us is when you go live, you go live in front of your subscribers. You've got, like, a built in base that knows you're live. Right now when you go live in podcasting, it's a ghost town. Nobody knows. You have to build your channels of communication, like a Discord room or a matrix room or social media, your website. Like, you have to build these methods to even notify people to get them to come listen. But now with podcasting 2 dot o, it's just in your RSS feed. So they're already subscribed.
They'll find out about it. They'll see it. They can possibly get a notification. I think that that's gonna bring a new kind of energy and a new type of podcast, and not every podcast is going to be able to do that. So the ones that can do that are gonna have a slight competitive advantage. They'll probably also see a little bit better boost results. And I think just kind of changing things up a little bit, shaking that up, bringing some of that new energy into podcasting, and also at the same time, having a standards cross app way that is alternative to what YouTube is offering, very important to podcasting, I feel.
[00:43:54] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. And does that also include, cross set comments or discussions?
[00:44:02] Chris Fisher:
Maybe. You know, definitely for the livestream. Definitely for the live. Mhmm. Because that that seems that seems critical. And I really like I don't know if you've had a chance to look what, the fountain team are doing. Not yet. Web yeah. Okay. For a chat. Yeah. So they have a a semi prototype, a beta that, is using Nostr for the back end web chat. Now that that's actually a compelling use case of Nostr because you could think of Nostr as a JSON storage relay network Mhmm. That is just passing plain text JSON around. And then you could think, well, that would be pretty simple to integrate into any app, into any website.
And the nice aspect to Nostr is it's one identity that you could use across any Nostr client. So, yes, it's one more account, but then you could use that same account on Fountain FM or Podverse or Cast O Matic or anybody that implements this. Or we could build tooling and bots around that for title suggestions and funny little clip collections and things like that because it's just structured JSON. It's just plain text Yeah. On the Nostra network. You don't really use Noster other than to sign in, and then it's all through a web experience that they're also going to bring eventually to the mobile app.
And I find that to be compelling because it's cross platform capable, and it's tied to that livestream. And, that I could really see. Now as far as just comments on an episode, I I feel like the booths have kind of done, and now it's just a matter of just how you display them. Yeah. But I I mean, I'd I'd be interested to see an implementation that's just standard comments that go across apps. I feel like we are running into, kind of having activity pub do a little bit of this. Lightning Network does a little bit of that. Noster's gonna do a little bit of that. And my hot take there is I think some folks in the podcasting 2.0 community have just kind of spent a little too much time on Activity Pub, and they spend a little bit too much time dismissing Noster, and perhaps those two things should be reversed. I'm not trying to argue that, you know, we wanna use Zaps, and I'm not trying to argue that we wanna replace RSS or anything like that. But notes and other things transmitted through Realize could be very useful for podcasting 2.0.
And, I I don't like activity pub as much as a mechanism. It seems very heavy. It's very bloated. It's also been around forever. It hasn't really gained traction other than outside of the Mastodon universe. But, yeah, maybe maybe, maybe we can make some big compelling case why we need activity pub. We need lightning, we need RSS and we'll need on Noster, but I doubt it.
[00:46:46] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. I'm not convinced either way yet for cross app comments, at least. Yeah. I, I don't know. It, it needs to be for the listener. It needs to be in app and super easy, without an additional signup, if possible. You just open the app and then you just see whatever comments there are. You just leave a comment, and perhaps you sign in, leave your name or whatever.
[00:47:07] Chris Fisher:
It it also sounds like it could be clunky at first. Let's say somebody leaves a comment. You know, they say something that's, you know, extremely offensive to somebody or whoever, the podcaster, I suppose, is all that really matters. And then you go to delete it or try to remove it. How does that work? And will it be reflected on all the apps, and will it get synchronized fairly immediately, especially if it's something pretty egregious? Because, honestly, we have a tie we have a tough time just sinking, like, live status and things like some of the basics that aren't getting across all the apps accurately right now. So now we're also going to add comments on top of that. Maybe. Maybe. And maybe they'll all get implemented in a way that, you know, if I if I somehow can update the activity pub, it'll just remove the comment everywhere at once. Perhaps that'll work.
But, seems like it's gonna be a lot. And as a podcaster, it's like one more area that I'm gonna kinda have to moderate and keep an eye on potentially. Maybe I won't until somebody screams at me that somebody said something super offensive. So I'll be chilling out one night, and all of a sudden have a whole bunch of upset messages rolling in where I'll have to go open up the app and go, oh, yeah. Somebody had said something stupid. Now I have to care about it. And that's kinda how I imagine it's gonna work for me, but maybe the listeners will like it.
[00:48:17] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. Yeah. Maybe. Let's see. I I would like to see that in the future. I think for now, at least for, modern podcasting, we have a lot of stuff that already kinda works. I think it would be great if it works, like you said, in all the apps exactly the same, and it is all stable in all of the new apps as well, because they're all pretty new still. Right? And then if the apps then gain some traction and some some, some market share there, and we have all of the things implemented that we have right now, I think then we are very far along. But that's that's still not the case. We have quite some way to go because it's still very new. Right? Yeah. And I also think, even though I've said, you know, really think about the podcast app experience,
[00:49:02] Chris Fisher:
there is gonna be people that will use the web and they wanna listen on the web. They wanna get your show notes on the web. I think we would open up boosting to an entire new group of users if we could boost from the web. There are just people that are not ready to switch podcast apps. They love their podcast app. Yeah. Or maybe they need to use the built in podcast app for some platform restriction reason. And so there's a big group of people we're leaving out. And so if we do cross app comments, we'd probably wanna be able to embed them on the web too. And it'd be nice to get the existing stuff that we already have working on the web. Nobody nobody, except the podcast index, allows you to boost from the web. Oh, and now Truefans.
But they both are dependent on Alby, which is fine, but it it really doesn't need to be. It could just be a QR code that I scan with Striker Cash App or anything on the lightning network with a message that comes up in a web dialogue, and then it sends. But we don't even have that. And I don't have a way to, like, even embed that on my website where I where I could have, like, a little boost embed where I put that on there and it figures out the latest episode from which feed and it, you know, figures all that out. Like, we don't have that. And it's it's not that we should be putting a ton of effort into that, but, man, I'd love to see some of that flushed out so we could get some of that, you know, lower hanging fruit, the stuff that's easier to do for people that aren't willing to switch apps yet.
That kind of thing is, I think I don't know where I'd love to see effort go, but I don't you know, it's a community that decides to scratch their own itch. I don't get to direct that thing.
[00:50:34] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. No. But this is good, this is good. I'm writing along because, you know, these are also things that could go into the bolt home websites, which are these, little websites that I create for, for each show. You know, not a lot of people actually go there because they go hopefully to the podcast apps themselves. But if it's an alternative thing where you can, for instance, scan a QR code and then, do a little payment, that'd be awesome, of course.
[00:50:59] Chris Fisher:
Yeah. Yeah. I think so. That'd be really nice. You know, I do hear from listeners. They're out there. They just don't use mobile phones too. They just don't use smartphones. And I more power to them. You know, like, talk about a line to walk. Like, that is a daily practice. They're not huge, but I get it. And when I'm at my desk, I like having things on the web too. But there's also just a convenience. It's one less hop if you could if you could scan with Stripe or Cash App or whatever you use, then, you know, you're you're moving a hop out of all of that. You you could go right from your local currency, boom, scan the send. It'd be great. That kind of stuff, I think, will happen over time too. I'm just impatient.
[00:51:40] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. But I think, we're getting there, and and podcasting is moving into the right, right place, and we're still growing. So let's, let's end this on, something, positive from, you guys as well. Because what do you think what is your favorite thing to work on right now, and and what do you think it will become in the future?
[00:52:03] Chris Fisher:
Oh, interesting. Definitely the podcasting 2 dot o features. We are we are working on generating an RSS feed in house for the first time ever. We've never done that before. It's always something we've wanted to do because, we have a website that gets auto generated when a show gets posted. And we've currently, thanks to our wonderful community, do that via just scraping the fireside website that gets auto generated when a website's posted. And we're now transitioning to generating that website using our RSS feed as the source of truth. And that is really fun because we're taking ways that we're old ways of doing things and say, okay. What is the namespace in podcasting 2.0 we could use to actually convey this information to the website? And we even had a discussion, like, do we want maybe a small custom Jupyter Broadcasting namespace that we could add things in there to help the feed get generated appropriately?
Or, I'm sorry, the website. So that's that's been a lot of fun. And then, of course, I'm trying to work out my my remote, my remote production setup where it's really solid. All those things I find to be really good challenges. I don't know about the future. You know, that's that's a good question. Down the road, I just never know. I'd I'd I'm always so, I'm always so heads down focused. It's hard to guess, but it's probably more of the same. More of trying to bring the best features to the podcast, trying to make it work on all the different podcast apps, and then always trying to refine our production setup, get it working in more and more remote locations so we can go somewhere, cover something live, be in person. Stuff I'm trying to get back to.
[00:53:41] Barry Luijbregts:
Okay. Excellent. Excellent. We covered lots of stuff and I think lots of valuable stuff for podcasters as well that they can use to, you know, increase their value to their listeners and to, just use in general to learn from your massive experience. So perhaps, you know, don't spend so much time on social media generation and more time on your valuable content. So anything you wanna end with? Anything else?
[00:54:11] Chris Fisher:
You know, I'll mention our Hugo website that does get auto generated from our posts is available on our GitHub at github.com/jupyterbroadcasting. If anybody wants to take a look or fork it or or participate, it's an open project, and I think it'd be really nice. It's you could sit in front of your RSS feed one day and then just automatically build a Hugo site for you of all your various different shows, and we're building it with network support. Something for us, but I could see others finding that useful.
[00:54:36] Barry Luijbregts:
Yeah. I I already know of somebody that would, love to, to use that. I think Gene Bean would love to use that as well. I think he's also using, Hugo right now. So that would be interesting. Okay. Cool. Thank you very much.
[00:54:50] Chris Fisher:
Thank you, Barry.
Introduction to About Podcasting
Interview with Chris Fischer from Jupyter Broadcasting
Chris Fischer's Studio Setup
Transition to Full-Time Podcasting
Early Days and Motivation for Podcasting
Video in Podcasting: Pros and Cons
The Value of Going Live
Growing Your Podcast Audience
The Current State and Future of Podcast Advertising
The Future of Modern Podcasting
Favorite Projects and Future Goals
