From Whining to Winning - Ask Your Audience to Give Back

0:00:00.2 Dave Jackson: You know him from many different things, I know him from podcastbranding.co. It's Mark Des Cotes.

0:00:06.5 Mark Des Cotes: Hey Dave.

0:00:07.4 Dave Jackson: You shared a story with me and you were talking about a show you had and you'd been for years kind of promoting certain things and you changed some verbiage and somehow a light bulb came on with your audience.

0:00:19.3 Mark Des Cotes: Yeah, that's my podcast network. I got into podcasting... Now, you know me of podcastbranding.co, I also have my Resourceful Designer Podcast that I'm now at episode 302, doing really well, but I got into podcasting by TV Fan Podcast is what got me into podcasting. So I started doing those, and across nine years of doing podcasting, I never had sponsors or anything, but I would ask for donations, and I would always say like, if you wanna support the show, this show costs money. It's a TV Show Podcast, I only podcast during the TV season, but I still have to pay for hosting and all that stuff during the off-season, if you wanna help me financially, it would be a different spiel every week. I was just basically pleading with my audience saying, hey, this is costing me money, do you wanna help me pay for this?

0:01:11.5 Mark Des Cotes: And in the nine years I did that across four different podcasts, one of them was six seasons, two of them were five seasons, so long running podcasts. And during that time, I collected... I think I calculated, I don't have the numbers right in front of me here, but I think it was something where eight or $900 that I had collected over a nine-year span, then I heard somewhere... And I don't know, I wish I could give credit Dave, but I don't remember where I heard it, but somebody said instead of asking for support, ask your listeners to give back. So I changed my message, I started a new podcast for the Amazon TV show, 'The Rings of Power,' 'The Lord of The Rings' show that came out, it's now... The season is now over, and I remember calling into your show, I was on episode four, and as of episode four, I had already collected... It was, I think at that point, I had collected over $400 in donations.

0:02:10.1 Mark Des Cotes: Now that the season's over, I've collected over $900 in donations, and this is the first season of this podcast, so I've already matched what I did in the first eight or nine years of podcasting for Solo Talk Media in one season, I've made the equivalent and what I changed was, I just... My message now is at the beginning of the podcast, I just tell you, Solo Talk Media is a listener-supported community, if you like what I'm doing, if I bring you value, if you're entertained, if you learned anything and you would like to give back here's the link you could visit, and that's it. I cut it down from a pleading whine, whine, whine, I need money, help me support, I got kids to raise and I can't afford this podcast type thing to, hey, if you like what I'm doing and you wanna give back, here's the link. And as I said, in one season, which was eight episodes long, I've now earned more money on this one season than I had in all the previous seasons I've done.

0:03:13.8 Dave Jackson: Perfect, I'm not trying to get into your wallet, what's the average donation? Like is there... Is it five? 10?

0:03:22.4 Mark Des Cotes: Most people are giving me $25. I did have this season, one person gave $100, most people gave $25, and I've had a few that were just $5. I did have a couple that set up recurring. Now, I don't know, it said here... There's a difference when you get the payment, it says here, somebody gave you a donation of... And then some of them were somebody set up a recurring payment of $5 a month, so I haven't received the second month worth to see whether they kept that going or if they canceled it, but at that point... Yeah, most donations were $25 and I set up two things, I had PayPal already. I've always done PayPal. This year, I set up Buy Me a Coffee as well. And that one there, I think I got about $75 through Buy Me a Coffee.

0:04:11.2 Dave Jackson: Very cool. And if somebody wanted to go listen to that 'Lord of the Rings' show, the website is?

0:04:16.1 Mark Des Cotes: Theringsofpowerpodcast.com.

0:04:18.9 Dave Jackson: And if we need artwork, we go to?

0:04:21.5 Mark Des Cotes: Well, that's podcastbranding.co.

0:04:23.7 Dave Jackson: And last but not least, if I wanted to...

0:04:26.8 Mark Des Cotes: If you're a graphic designer or if you know a graphic designer that wants to run their own business, I talk about running a graphic design business, not about graphic design, about running a graphic design business specifically from home, and that one's resourcefuldesigner.com.

0:04:39.8 Dave Jackson: Thank you, sir.

0:04:40.6 Mark Des Cotes: Thank you.

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