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Evo Terra was podcasting back when it took longer to find a podcast and figure out how to get it on a device than it did to record one. Today, his company Simpler Media Productions provides everything a podcaster needs to make launching a podcast simple. Evo’s audio life took quite a few turns before he launched Simpler Media Productions. He liked to sit in a room and listen to people record their books to audio, chapter after chapter.
He’s outspoken, wears funny clothes and makes funny faces in his pictures and isn’t afraid to publicly call people out, even if it’s a CEO. We met Evo when he tweeted at us for a headline he didn’t particularly appreciate (he did admit the headline drew him into the story). After he called us out, we called him up. It resulted in this interview which we think you’re going to find entertaining and very helpful if you’re a podcaster now or planning to be a podcaster soon. Here is a transcription of our recorded interview.
By the way, Evo also hosts a daily podcast called Podcast Pontifications. Go figure!
PBJ: Tell us about how and when you got started in podcasting? Evo: My first episode dropped on October 14, 2004. We had the 40th podcast ever according to Podcast Alley, which was the de facto listing of all things podcasting back in the day. Prior to that I had been doing Internet radio since 2002. My partner and I already had a blog where we had been writing the equivalent of show notes that linked to an MP3 file. That show was syndicated nationally as well as on satellite radio. When we discovered podcasting, it looked like we had everything done except this new weird thing called an “enclosure tag”. Once I hacked that into the blogging system we were using: bang! We were podcasting.
PBJ: What was the content back then? Evo: It was a science fiction radio show. We interviewed famous authors like George R. Martin as well as authors you have never heard of. For our guests, it was a way to do promotion, getting their books out there and making people aware of what they were writing.
PBJ: Were you making money? Evo: No, it was a labor of love. It started because my partner at the time was a published author. He was using it as a vehicle to get more sales and exposure. But what it did for me was provide the opportunity to write the first edition of Podcasting for Dummies. That came out in 2005 and I was paid quite nicely. I also wrote the sequel Expert Podcasting Practices for Dummies (which is arguably the worst book title ever). Those were some revenue-generating opportunities, and I recognized early that I could probably make money because of podcasting, but not necessarily from podcasting.
PBJ: Are those books applicable today? Evo: The good news is Podcasting for Dummies was re-released in 2018 in its 3rd edition. My original partner, Tee Morris, and another friend, Chuck Tomasi, have taken the reins of writing it. The latest edition is completely applicable and is still a good place for people to get started.
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“We are way past the era when you can grab the cheapo microphone you put in the middle of the room, invite six of your friends over to start riffing on random topics, and find success. People have discerning ears and there is great content out there, so make sure you can create content at that level.”[/caption]
PBJ: Back when you started, how hard was it for people to find and listen to podcasts? Evo: This was all prior to iTunes, so finding podcasts was a relatively good discovery challenge. We had Podcast Alley where you could find the shows. But once you did, you had to transfer them from your computer (you subscribed through a podcatcher that ran on your computer. I used iPodderX) to an audio player that wasn’t your phone. I had an iRiver, which was about the size of a tube of Rolaids. It was a nightmare! Even though we still grouse about discoverability and listening challenges, it’s a whole lot better 15 years later.
PBJ: What came after the science fiction show? Evo: From my conversations with these authors who were under-published, I recognized that podcasting had something to offer them. I just didn’t know what. What it turned out to be was encouraging authors to make an audiobook out of their self-published book, and then releasing that audiobook in podcast form. I started a website called Podiobooks.com back in 2005 with some friends of mine to to just that. It ran up until 2015. We had over 750 audio books, most of which were narrated by the author. And just like with most podcasts, listeners got one chapter at a time until the book was completed. Ultimately, we were pushing around 2 million downloads of those episodes in a month. It was exciting to help invent how independent authors could take advantage of podcasting.
PBJ: Why did you decide to stop doing that? **Evo: **Because a lot of things changed. When I launched Podiobooks.com, there was no Amazon kindle. And audio books were prohibitively expensive. There was no venue for an author to get his or her book promoted – either in print or audio – unless they went to a big publisher. Amazon changed the game, and now e-books are free or .99. Today it’s easy to make an audiobook and sell it with the help of Audible’s ACX and a few others who didn’t exist at the time. Now an author can write a book, have it professionally edited, publish it on Amazon, and see sales within the hour. That was a prospect that did not exist when we started in 2005.
PBJ: When did you launch your new company? Evo: It was after I shut down Podiobooks.com. I was traveling with my wife on a year-long self-funded sabbatical. We landed in Thailand where my wife became the principal of a private school, so I was living the semi-retired life. I realized I was too young to retire and there is only so much Netflix one can binge before going stir crazy. Some friends I had met in the travel blogging space introduced me to professional travel bloggers who wanted to start podcasting, but didn’t have the time or inclination to learn everything. That led me to an interesting model that not a lot of other podcast consultants were doing, and PodcastLaunch.pro was born out of those efforts.
PBJ: Tell us what that is? Evo: What I’ve discovered after 15 years of podcasting is that a lot of business people or service providers don’t want to read a 266-page book to learn the ins and outs and everything technically required to make a podcast. You know, just like they don’t want to learn how to write HTML, CSS, or Ruby on Rails to have a website. They are looking for someone to not only answer questions, but to provide the technical underpinnings to make it all work. That is what we do. My company Simpler Media, takes care of all the technical hurdles and keeps our clients out of the podcasting weeds. In short, my clients talk into a microphone, give my team the audio files, and we take care of everything else. This allows my clients to have a podcast they can be proud of, but without the worry about all the minutiae to make it happen. They are not worrying about bit rates or the right way to format artwork, show notes, or how to tie it to a website. We answer all those questions, often just doing the work for them, and get them set up with the processes and best practices so they can keep cranking out content. All with my team on the back-end making sure everything works.
PBJ: You’re editing, adding the music, uploading to all the right websites and apps so they can focus on putting the content together? Evo: For some, we do it all. All they have to do is talk into a microphone. For others, we tell them exactly how to do key things like, ‘This is the way you should be writing the microcopy for your episodes. These are the subscribe links your website should have listed.” It’s designed to be a full-service product that works with their business. This year we’re releasing a new service where we’ll even source out a subject matter expert so clients can have a podcast even if they don’t have someone internally who’d make a great host.
PBJ: Why is now a great time to launch a podcast? Evo: If you have read any of the numbers out there, podcast listening is up in a big way. Media attention has never been higher, and the world at large is generally aware of podcasting. Right now, more people listen to a podcast on a regular basis than are on Twitter. As people continue to adopt podcast listening in their lives, anybody – or any business – with a story to tell should be looking at this medium. Not necessarily as an easy way to get your message out, but as a very relevant way to get your content in front of an audience. An audience who is hungry and stays subscribed for weeks and months on end. A podcast can grow as the companies and people who use them grow. It is a very flexible medium.
PBJ: Why is listening up in your opinion? Evo: The proliferation mobile devices as where we primarily consume information. Thanks to our friends at Apple for putting Apple Podcasts as a default and highly visible app on all their phones. That’s one of the reasons iOS dominates podcast listening: Android has been reluctant to return the favor. It’s also what’s now in the news, magazines, and TV. I was watching an episode of the Good Place and they mentioned podcasting.
PBJ: Can the average Joe make money at podcasting? Evo: Probably not. But “average Joes” don’t often make money on their hobbies. Or even half-hearted side-hustles. Podcasting is no more designed to make money any more than the publishing of any sort of digital content is. If making money is your goal and you have an executable business plan, then of course a digital medium like podcasting can make money. But if your dream show is two dorks in the basement talking about your favorite ATV tires, then you may not be set up for monetization success.
PBJ: What is the purpose of podcasting then? Evo: What is the purpose of doing anything in life that isn’t capitalistic in nature? Why do people have blogs, or post on Instagram, or Facebook? We should not be completely focused on making money on every single thing we do in life. We do many things in life that bring us joy and allow us to be creative. Podcasting will allow you to do that. And it also allows some people a way to make money as well.
PBJ: What have you found is the most successful way to make money? Evo: There is no such thing as “the best way”. We have over 640,000 podcasts these days. Trying to find “the best one” it is a fool’s errand, and you wind up chasing things that don’t matter to you. As to the common ways people are making money; most podcasters are trying advertising, which is really complicated. The numbers are against you. A lot of my clients are finding success not from direct sales but by grabbing people’s attention and showcasing the quality of work they can provide. A lot of podcasts use donation services like Patreon successfully if they have large audience of loyal listeners. There are a lot of affiliate marketing programs that some podcasts are utilizing with varying degrees of success. But I go back to this: If you are doing it to make money, then you need a business plan. And you must create content that is worthy of people paying money for.
PBJ: What is your opinion on what is going on with measurement? Evo: I welcome both the IAB and RAD for bringing some normalcy. I spent 15 years in digital marketing, and I know how often numbers can be (and are) fudged. With IAB we have a common standard for measuring a download. It doesn’t matter what platform you are on or what hosting platform the company that you paid for a certain amount of impressions is using. If they are IAB compliant, you can feel confident those download numbers are accurate. That is a good thing. (But I still don’t think it will cause a flood of money coming in from the advertising space because of problems of scale. But that’s another discussion.) We need something much like RAD to get more information on in-app consumption behavior. We really only have it from Apple podcast right now. Honestly, I’m not sure how accurate Apple’s Podcasts Connect stats are simply because we can’t look at how they count. The great thing about RAD in its current implementation is it’s all open source. Anyone can look at the data and see how it is being utilized. I expect lots of third-party tracking servers to pop up – just like we have in digital advertising – that will verify what listening behavior is actually happening inside a podcast episode. It is not perfect, but it’s a step in the right direction.
PBJ: What happens if Apple doesn’t come on board with RAD? Evo: Don’t think it matters, because I don’t think RAD will be the end-all solution. Apple has their own version through their Apple Podcasts Connect data, and RAD will be there to live on top of that. I know there are competing processes for how downloads are tracked and ads are served. But if enough apps utilize something like RAD, we’ll get a good, relevant sample size that lets us understand how the content is being consumed.And that can only be good for the whole industry.
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“If you want to be two dorks in the basement talking about your favorite ATV tires, that may not make as much money as you thought.”[/caption]
PBJ: What is the biggest issue in the podcasting space these days? Evo: Perhaps trying to figure out if we should still think about “the podcasting space”. Are we too big for that now? Podcasting is a distribution method. I’m not sure that’s enough of a connection to warrant a community. There is not an association or a group that cares about how all website owners interact with the world. There are too many different types of websites with little in common. Podcasting is becoming that fractured. There is very little in common between an podcast audio drama and a daily news podcast or a subscription-based audio training program consumed in podcast form. The only thing they have in common is that it is audio delivered over the Internet. And that is just not enough for us to have something in common. One thing that will happen in the future is more “clustering”. People who have dedicated interests in one aspect of podcasting will naturally gravitate to each other, sharing some common best-practices of how things work for that specific niche or application.
PBJ: Are you saying we don’t really need a trade association? **Evo: **I think we need a lot of different trade associations. There is not a bloggers, or website owners association. There is a radio association, because station managers have to make sure they stay compliant with the FCC. But podcasting is just digital media across the Web that happens to be distributed with an RSS feed. And even that is breaking down, thanks to the advent of smart speakers, in-car audio, and more. Podcasting as we know it will continue to change.
PBJ: What advice do you have for new podcasters thinking about launching? **Evo: **There are already 640,000 podcasts out there. But that pales in comparison to the number of websites. Yet people still make new websites every single day. If you have a great idea for a podcast, then you should go for it. But I do caution people getting started with this: Listeners now have more quality content than they can listen to in their lifetime. So make sure you are making content that can compete. We are way past the era when you could just grab the cheapo microphone, put it in the middle of the room, invite six of your friends over to start riffing on random topics, and have success drop in your lap. People have discerning ears. There is already great content out there. So make sure you create content at that level.
PBJ: Why should people contact you or Podcastlaunch.pro Evo: If you are a businessperson and most of your time is spent running your business but you still want to get into podcasting, we can help. I work with businesses who would rather have someone in their back pocket who has all the answers. Someone who can show them how to do some things the right way. And someone to do the things they don’t need to do on their own so they can work their business. If you already outsource your social media, website development, or your content creation because your business is too busy to add that or those skillsets natively, then you are a perfect fit for my company, Simpler Media. Let’s chat.
The website is www.podcastlaunch.pro Evo on Facebook Evo on Twitter Listen to Podcast Pontifications HERE E-mail him if you dare at thisisevo@gmail.com