#642 - How to Make a Podcast

#642 - How to Make a Podcast Bradley: What's one of the best ways to build your personal or business brand and build a community of fans? It's making a podcast. Today, I'm going to go over the steps of how to make and produce a podcast that have helped Helium 10 podcast get over 5 million downloads. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I am your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that's a completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed, organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world. And that's actually what we're going to be talking about today, the Serious Sellers Podcast. And should you make a podcast? And how can this help an Amazon business? Or maybe you're trying to be an influencer or a We're going to talk about every single one of the secrets of the Serious Sellers Podcast, the AM-PM Podcast, all the podcasts that Helium 10 produces and how it can benefit you as an Amazon brand or even if you have other endeavors. The first question you might have is why should I even be thinking about having a podcast? Like I said, there's a variety of reasons that you could. One is brand building. There are so many podcasts out there that have to do with a certain niche or brand. If you're not sure of the power of podcasts, look what they say politically in the country of the United States the last couple of years about how much different podcasts may or may not have influenced a great number of people when it comes to voting. What about some of the biggest personalities out there, like if they're YouTube personalities or influencers, what do they have? They have podcasts. You don't even realize it's a podcast you're watching from YouTube or others, but you're just kind of like addicted to what they do. I mean, podcasts have a lot of sway over people. It's a great way to build community. If you have a podcast about dogs and pet care and things like that and you all of a sudden built a following of hundreds, maybe it gets to thousands of followers. This is a free community that you then can market to. It's not like you're cold marketing to them or cold calling them or trying to talk about some subject that they don't even know about. No, this is a community who is all interested in the exact topic of the kind of products that you sell, and thus, when you do advertise them, it doesn't even feel like an ad. They're happy to support. Podcasts can be revenue generating. If you get a podcast that actually gets a big following, there's advertisers who reach out to you who want to put their ad spots on your podcast. The list goes on and on of reasons of why to make a podcast. Actually, today, I'm going to be focused not on this other stuff of hypotheticals. I'm going to be mainly focused on exactly what we've been doing here at Helium 10 to build up our own podcast and personal experience. If you guys want to research other things, you can feel free to do that. I think I've got enough information here about how we produce our four different podcasts that is going to help you have an idea if this is something you want to get into and have a pretty good start because we've kind of been through it all over the last seven, eight years or so. You want to know what keywords are driving the most sales for listings on Amazon? To do that, you need to know what highly searched for keywords the product is ranking for maybe at the top of page one. You can actually find that out in seconds by using Helium 10's keyword research tool, Cerebro. Now that's just one of the many, many functions that make this tool my favorite tool in the whole suite and it's the most powerful keyword research tool ever created for e-commerce sellers. For more information, go to h10.com. Dot me forward slash Cerebro. H10 dot me forward slash C E R E B R O. Don't forget to use the Serious Sellers Podcast discount coupon SSP 10. Now, little known fact, you know, some of you OGs might know this. Did you know that the start of Helium 10 was not software? Helium 10, the name of it, was not the first thing that this company did. If any of you see or know my company email address, it actually is not at Helium 10. It's at ampmpodcast.com. The reason is, for the original Helium 10 employees, everybody had at ampmpodcast.com email addresses because that was the first company. The founder of Helium 10, Manny Coats, He started Helium 10, not as Helium 10, but he just started a podcast. He was starting to sell on Amazon on his own. He was a software developer from before. He had commissioned different softwares to be made for the app store. He's like, I want to shift gears. I want to become an Amazon seller, and I'm going to chronicle my journey. Via a podcast this was back in like 2016 2015 2016 around there actually 2015 I'm pretty sure it was and so he started the a.m. P.m. Podcast the whole that's where guys the how cool is that pretty cool. I think that's from the original a.m. P.m. Podcast that was one of his taglines and the whole thing of the show was like hey, I'm learning how to make money in the a.m. And the p.m. All day long, even if I'm not working, and this is just my journey about what I'm doing to scale to a million dollars, which he did within a few months of selling on Amazon. So that was the start of Helium 10, and then all of a sudden he was like, hey, I have experience developing software. So there's a couple of things that I need to do for my own Amazon business. You know what? I wonder if I could offer this for free and then that'll help get the podcast more listeners. And so that's what I did. He's like, let me make this in a 5k checker. It was like an index checker and scribbles this tool that helped him make his listings. And he's like, okay, I'm going to put this on an episode of the AM PM podcast and see if it helps me get more listeners. But that part just blew up. And then he was like, wait a minute. I should be focusing more on these tools for software, so this is a crazy demand, but he would have never even thought of Helium 10, potentially, if it wasn't for starting a podcast first. So just a little personal history of the company history of how Helium 10 got started. It actually owes its existence to a podcast, an AM, PM podcast we still have going down to this day. Now the host is Kevin King. Another reason for a podcast is, it's actually funny, like if you're doing one with a guest, it's a way to get near course level education for yourself. Like I mostly, you know, obviously this episode, it's just going to be, you know, just us Helium 10 employees here, but most of my episodes, as you know, are with guests and these are thought leaders and experts in their space, right? And I'm bringing them on and they're sharing freely their knowledge with me and the audience. I mean, mainly the audience, but I'm learning along with you guys, like the amount of value that I've gotten. From having guests on the podcast and just listening to them and learning along with you guys, that's another benefit. It's like I'm getting a free course that most of these people probably have their own courses with this information that they're charging hundreds, thousands of dollars for, and I'm getting it for free. And then, of course, that's the value you're giving. When you give a podcast, it actually gives value. I know those podcasts are just for entertainment value, which is totally fine as well. You might find that you want to do one of those. If you're able to give this level of value, it just adds to your credibility and how much people appreciate what you're doing because people understand it takes a lot of effort, as you guys are going to see, to produce a podcast. I have never gone to an event where at least three or four people did not come and express their thanks for the Serious Sellers Podcast, the AM-PM Podcast, etc., about what they have learned and some of it being life and business-changing information that they've gone over. That's goodwill. You can't really put a value on that kind of thing. We're not charging for the podcast, but some of you listeners out there might be Helium 10 members for life with a small part of it being because of your appreciation for the podcast. You can't really put a value on the value that you're giving out there. Let's say you decide I'm ready to start my own podcast. Do I just put myself in front of my phone and upload something? You probably could do that, but it's not going to be successful, so I'm going to give you guys step-by-step what we do for our podcast and what you would have to do. First thing to decide is, hey, what's the name of the podcast? You can even think SEO a little bit with the description. It needs to be something that is really going to give an idea about what the show is going to be about. If you're a big celebrity, you can just put your own name on it, the Joe Rogan experience or whatever it's called, but then there's got to be names that kind of really make people interested in it. You know, like one of the most popular podcasts, what's it called? Call Her Daddy. It's like, what in the world is that? Now, it just makes you interested. Ours is Serious Sellers Podcast. Remember AM, PM podcast and then the whole like kind of like theme of it was how to make money in the AM and the PM. So come up with a name, all right, of your podcast and it doesn't have to be SEO related. No, like if I wanted to do something SEO, I couldn't put Amazon in the title of our podcast, there'd be probably like copyright issues there. But you know, like if I was really thinking about Amazon only, I'm trying to rank for Amazon keywords, I would put Amazon in a title if it was allowed, but it doesn't always have to be like that, but it needs to kind of like be a good representation of what the show is about for when somebody's just scrolling around. They should be able to see, hey, this might be something I'm interested in. And then think about your theme. Is it going to be a solo podcast? You're just going to give like educational information in every episode? Nothing wrong with that. It's not as dynamic as having guests, but if you script out stuff and be a little bit creative with it, you can have a podcast that's run all by yourself. Is it going to be a podcast that's going to have guests in? What kind of guests are you going to have? What's the flow going to be? Are you going to prepare 20 questions and ask the same 20 questions to everybody? Is it going to be a different set of questions for people? Is it going to be just fully organic, kind of like this one is? Is it going to be unscripted? Is it going to be scripted? Is it hard-hitting? Is it an expose? Is it kind of like a feel-good podcast? I mean, there are so many different directions you can go, but it's important to think about what your general theme is. You don't want every single episode to exactly be just carbon copies of each other, but you want an overall theme. I think you guys can see that with the Serious Sellers Podcast. It's like, hey, this is serious strategies, for serious sellers of any level. Have a tagline like that. Open up with something. Come up with a couple of phrases that maybe after a while, some of the guests or the listeners like you guys could probably have memorized. I've been saying the same thing for 650 episodes or however many it's been. Serious strategies for serious sellers of any level and that's the vibe that this podcast has. We're not here just to talk about life and things like that. I always bring things back to strategies, whether it's life strategies, business strategies, and it's for sellers out there, people who are striving to be a seller, or you could be an eight-figure seller. You could be a brand new seller. That's why I say serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world, and you guys need to come up with that. What is the theme going to be? What is your tagline, your initial opening, your intro going to be, and what kind of vibes are you going to have? For me, I'm very comfortable just talking extemporaneously. All right. That means I can just, you know, come up on stage or anywhere and just like start having a conversation. That's just what I've been doing almost since I was a little kid. You might feel a little bit nervous on camera or live or different things. No problem. We'll script your podcast accordingly. For me, I'm actually most comfortable just going up there, you know, without scripts like I am right now, just talking, you know, with the guests or just talking to you guys. And that's what's most comfortable for me. And I think that would come across The best. But you might be different. There's no right or wrong way to do that. But again, come up with a theme. Don't make one episode fully organic and let's just have a conversation like we're sitting in a fireside chat and then the other one is just like you're like an IRS person who's auditing somebody asking like 30 very serious scripted questions. The audience wants like the same feeling with a podcast, the Joe Rogan podcast, other podcasts out there. It's a very similar vibe throughout all the episodes even though the subject material might be different. Decide what's the length of your episodes going to be. I've targeted for ours like hey, let's try and keep it between 30 and 45 minutes depending. You don't want to have an hour and a half episode and then the next one is like a 20-minute episode, kind of like have a target time of what you want. Another thing that's important is decide your cadence. We have been doing this 640, 650 episodes. It's actually like 800 or more if you count the Weekly Buzz episodes that we do, which are not counted in the numbers. For six years, we have not missed one. We have not missed one where we are launching on the day that it's supposed to be. Now, Weekly Buzz, sometimes we do it Thursday, sometimes we do it Friday, just depending on how much news there is. Again, that's not even a numbered podcast. It always comes out Thursday or Friday. There are other podcasts every week. It's 52 weeks in a year, so times by six, more than 300 weeks in a row. We have not missed a Tuesday episode or a Saturday episode. There is no right cadence. There are some people who do a podcast every day. It's only 10 minutes if that's what you do, but you got to stick to that. If it's going to be a monthly podcast, well, stick to it. If it's the first of the month, you got to stick to it. Ours, Tuesday, Thursday for a regular podcast and then we do weekly buzz on Thursday or Friday. Set never changes no matter somebody's on vacation. That means we do podcasts ahead of time, etc. So figure out your cadence, what it's going to be and stick to it. Be consistent. Other things to consider that you have to set up is like podcast descriptions. You might have to have some SEO there. Like here, this is our podcast description for Serious Sellers Podcast. You'll see there's a little description. This is all SEO. This is how people can find your podcast. I don't have Amazon in the title, but I've got it here in my description so that people are looking for, hey, give me a podcast on Amazon. As a matter of fact, we need to change this. I'm going to talk to Mhel who's going to be on the show. We need to change to add TikTok Shop here because we talk a lot about TikTok Shop. Now, so put your message here, what your podcast is about in a couple of sentences. Now, once you've got all this ready, you've got to sign up with a podcast distribution channel, all right? So this is the company that is going to distribute your podcast across Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, like every single platform. You don't want to just sign up with all of these different platforms one by one and try and upload, you know, like that. That would take forever. It'd probably be super expensive, etc. So, we here at Helium 10 use a service called Podbean, P-O-D-B-E-A-N. It's actually not that expensive at all. As you guys can see here, it's like, you know, depending on different plans, there's like $9 a month. $29 a month, $79 a month, and with that, you can get like lots of analytics. Like you can see here, we've got 5 million all-time downloads. We haven't been on this platform the whole time, so that 5 million downloads, that's not all of our downloads. Before, for the first 2, 3 years, actually 4 years almost, we were on a different platform and we moved to this one. So the number of our downloads is actually a lot more than 5. 5 million here that that's the platform where that host our podcast and then we upload once and then it publishes to like something like 30 or 40 different platforms or something crazy like that but most of your. Downloads are going to be from Apple Podcasts and Spotify and then kind of like the rest are less than 10%. All right, let's talk about hardware, software. If you really want a high quality, what I have is I've got the RODECaster Pro. All right, these are expensive. These are like $700, $800 for the RODECaster Pro. They've got a newer one that's smaller. That's only $500. But that's important to have really good quality audio. Guys, I cannot stress this enough. There's something you're going to learn today. Good audio quality is the most important aspect of a podcast, even if you're going to do a video podcast like we have. Good audio quality is so key, even for the video part, but especially since thousands of people are going to listen to your podcast. Without video, that just makes the audio so much more important. So, Rodecaster Pro, that allows me to record guests, like if I have a studio, which I did before in the Helium 10 office. But here, I'm just at my home. I do almost everything remotely. I could do without the Rodecaster Pro. So, another thing you could use is the Wave XLR Pro. It only has one input and that's only about $139, but it's still a good audio mixer with preamp that allows you to have some good recorded quality. And so this is important to have. Again, if you're going to do a podcast, it's going to have a studio where you have guests. I highly recommend the RODECaster Pro. You can hook up to like four XLR microphones. XLR is that like microphone cable that's really big. It's not like a USB or anything like that. And like I said, RODECaster Pro, if you're going with multiple guests or the Elgato Wave XLR, if you're just going to do it by yourself, but then you have to get like some other software. Microphone, you know, the microphone that, you know, like Joe Rogan has always used, Michael Jackson used to record the Thriller album and pretty much all serious podcasters use is this one here, the Shure SM7B. So Shure SM7B, this is not a cheap microphone. You can see it's like $300, $400 or sometimes more, but the quality is just really incredible on this microphone. We're not doing too much post-production on the audio quality just because it already gives a lot of good quality. Now, if you want to go a little bit less budget and you still want a professional kind of like podcaster microphone, there's also the PodMic, the Rode PodMic. I've actually used that before when I was in the office and I still do whenever I have guests. Rode PodMic is only about $129. Now, sometimes I record mobily, like on the road. I cannot bring my Rodecaster Pro gigantic thing and my microphone arms and all that stuff to the Prosper Show or to Amazon Accelerate and where I do my remote podcast. For that, I've got this remote sure mic. It's called the MV88+. It's a tiny, tiny thing. It's like this big, but it's so powerful and it attaches directly to your computer. You don't have to have a Rodecaster Pro. It's a condenser microphone, so that's why it sounds good. It's $200, but again, if you want high quality, you don't want podcasts to sound so different. You can probably still tell the difference a little bit when you hear me on the road, like when you've heard me at elite workshops doing podcasts, but the quality isn't that notable even though I don't have that amp. That's because it's a high quality microphone that's got some good software. You want to have a similar experience throughout your podcast whether you're in your studio or whether you're recording on the road and the Shure MV88 plus microphone. I'm going to have links for all these things. I'm trying to be an Amazon affiliate, so I might make some Amazon affiliate links. I'll have some links in the description below for a lot of these products so that you can take a look at them later. You'll notice I'm wearing headphones. Now, I'm wearing headphones right now because I'm going to have a guest on in a little bit, but this is important for audio. When you have guests, If you're doing a solo podcast, you don't need headphones, but I've got some really nice quality headphones. Number one, it allows me to play back my audio when I do a test before I start recording just to make sure it's on the right microphone and how the quality is, that there's no buzzing, etc. So a really good headphones like this actually comes from a DJ friend of mine, Slushy. The intro music for the Serious Sellers Podcast that you hear. He gave me this one, so I don't even know what it is or how much these cost, but any kind of headphones will be good to have, not AirPods or something like that. The reason why it's important, especially when you have guests, is you don't want their audio coming out of the speakers and then your microphone is picking it up and things like some background noise and things like that, and there's going to be some echo and stuff. So important to have headphones when you are recording. Now, with the software I'm using, which I'll talk to you or kind of like subscription, I have web-based software to record this episode. Now, with whatever podcast kind of like streaming service that you are using to record your podcast, I'm going to talk a little bit about that. It records your video and audio, but I always actually make another recording while I am doing that recording, and that's with Adobe Audition. All right, so Adobe Audition is, you know, everybody knows what Adobe is, the same ones who make Photoshop and Peer and stuff. It's a really good Kind of like audio recorder which which even is processing. It's processing the audio as well while I'm recording so that it sounds like really really crisp. And it's you know I have settings where it's going to record in kind of like podcast. Kind of like mode so that I again you don't have to do so much audio engineering after the fact. Alright, so Adobe Audition I'm recording in addition to my audio that I'm recording with a podcast recorder So that I also have a backup to in case one fails, which has definitely happened over over time now for for recording the podcast I usually use I'm not using it right now, but I usually use a service called Zen caster There's a lot of them out there I think Riverside is another one. I've been using Zencastr for years and this is important to use instead of like Zoom and things like that. Now this wasn't available back in the early days. Manny with AMPN Podcast used to use a service called Skype and Zoom. The difference between trying to do Skype and Zoom and things like that and video calls, it's recording in the cloud. So the audio quality, first of all, is not really good. It's condensing it down so that there's a good bit rate. But then what happens is it's also reliant on everybody's internet connection. If all of a sudden somebody's internet gets slow, their bandwidth, like somebody in the other room is recording or watching their K-dramas on Netflix or something, well, it's going to affect the quality of the stream and whatever your internet quality is, that's what it's recording because it's recording to the cloud. With Zencastr and actually StreamYard, which is what I'm using right now to record so that I can do screen share. Zencastr, I can't do screen share. StreamYard, I can do screen share. But with these, it is recording things locally on everybody's computer. So your internet can be on a dial-up modem. I might not even be able to see my guests because the internet connection is so bad, but it is recording in high quality, in 1080p, onto their local hard drive, and then after the podcast is done, it uploads it up. So it doesn't matter if their internet even goes out. Their internet could cut out, but the recording is saved, and so that's important to use. Zencastr or StreamYard is a great way. It's a great company to use and I'll have links in the bio as well for those. Now what about the room that you're in? These are good microphones. So if you do get the Rodecaster and the Shure SM7B, you can almost record anywhere and it's going to sound not bad. But here's the thing. You don't want echo. And so if you do not record in a room with hardwood floors or tile and there's nothing on the walls and things, that's not good. Because there's going to be echo, especially if you don't have a good microphone like this. So like, for example, I'm in a room where I had a carpet already, but then I got like this shag rug that's like this thick. I put it around all around me where I have this podcast. So again, it absorbs the audio. Nothing's going to be bouncing off. I've got these curtains all around. I have windows all around here. But now I've got these sound absorbing curtains all around. I have tiles like special sound absorbing tiles I got from Amazon. That go on the wall maybe you remember some of those from the healing 10 office when you record this podcast there those blue and white tiles. That helps with the audio quality as well but again audio is so important you don't want echoes you don't want. You have to be in a place where there's other sounds. You want a high quality and so that's what I do for my room. It doesn't cost too much money. Now for those of you doing video, if you're going to do a video podcast which is all the rage nowadays, I'm going to talk a little bit about that more. Actually there's more video YouTube downloads than there are audio downloads which has definitely changed over time but you've got to have good lighting. I've got a humongous light here. A Godox light right here. I've got another ring light coming to give effect. I've got a ceiling light that's coming down. I've got two lights on the ground here that kind of like light up the background a little bit. And lighting is very important for anything that you are doing video. It's even more important than the camera you have. Now I do have a DSLR camera I've got here and that is connected via what's called an Elgato Cam Link. Elgato Cam Link is what I use in order to connect the DSLR camera to my computer. I'm not going to go too much into the video aspect. I could probably do a video just on that. But again, it's important to have decent video and good lighting if you are going to do a podcast that's got audio and video. All right. So now you've got all this set up. All right. It's a lot. We just went over a lot. You're ready to do your first episodes. So let's have this in a conversation with our podcast producer and editor. Mel, who's been working here, so let's bring Mel on for the first time. Actually, he's been on the podcast before. I've had him on for little tidbits of the weekly buzz and different things. Mel, how's it going? Hello. Thanks for having me. Where are you based, Mel? Where are you at right now? I'm here in the Philippines in Baguio City. Baguio City, the city with the best weather in all of the Philippines, where you don't even need air conditioning. I've been there a few times. It's really, really, really great place if you guys ever want to go vacation to the Philippines. I know the bee that everybody thinks about is Boracay, but also think about Baguio. Now, Mel, how long have you been working here at Helium 10 now? Unknown Speaker: I've been working with Helium 10 for almost eight years. Bradley: Almost eight years. Good grief. And for like probably six of those years, he's had a lot of different roles. He started out as just like my assistant and he still is my assistant where he schedules my meetings and checks my emails and different things like that. But then a few years ago, he became the full podcast editor here and where he kind of decides what goes in the podcast, what gets cut and uploading it, a whole bunch of things we're going to talk about. Parts of the podcast journey here is he books the guests. So like I come up with a guest like I'll usually have a group chat going and so how do you schedule it? How do you send them the schedule for it or how did you do it before and then what are you using now for them to pick a time that they want to use? Unknown Speaker: Yeah, we just use Calendly and right now we're using Zoom scheduler in order for them to book. Bradley: So then that gets booked, they pick a time that's open that obviously has to be linked to my calendar and then do you go in and like edit like the actual links of when they're recording and things like that? Unknown Speaker: Yeah, we edit the calendar event in order to put the different links like if we use Zencaster, we put the Zencaster link. If we use StreamYard, we put the StreamYard links and we add some additional reminders for them. To make sure that the podcast recording goes smoothly. Bradley: Okay, excellent. And then what goes in the packet you send guests? How do you prep the guests? And this is different for everybody. Like me, I actually don't have much prep because I don't have pre-prepared questions. Everybody knows that it's going to be organic and we're just going to decide what to talk about when we're talking. But there are some things you prepare or ask of them or give them some information. What are some of those things? Unknown Speaker: Yeah, first of all, we ask for their picture for the thumbnail and then For the Serious Sellers Podcast, there are not too many questions from you. We just ask them to prepare some stuff like normal questions that you ask. And then that's about it. It's almost an organic conversation between you and the guest. Bradley: And then we do a kind of release, a form release. That's just basically them saying that we can use their audio and their video wherever we want. That's important. You don't want people saying, hey, you don't have the rights to publish this and use my likeness. And stuff. So we have that. Like you said, we've got the thumbnail. Another thing that Mel, you know, tells them is he's like, like, there's some things like sometimes I want them to prepare like a 30 second tip. And so he'll he'll mention that. So if you guys have stuff that you want the guests to prepare, you've got to let them know beforehand. Also let them know about, you know, We like them to have good audio and video if possible. We don't require it, but it's obviously going to be a better experience if the guest also has good audio and video. Now, we use Monday as kind of like a task management system, I guess, because there's a lot of moving pieces, a lot of people who work on the podcast with us. And so once we schedule the podcast or even when it's just a plan, we'll make a Monday pulse for that podcast. It's going to have the details of who's the guest and then that's where we also upload notes and the files and things like that. I record the podcast by myself. Sometimes if you're not good with technology and multitasking, it might be good to have your own Mhel, I guess, who's helping you. I don't need Mhel to help me when I record the podcast. He's never on there because I'm putting the video up and down and checking audio and things like that myself, but you could have your podcast editor in the background with you. When you're recording to manage some of those things. Now, after the podcast is recorded, most platforms, they all upload automatically. You got to make sure you got everybody's files and then we put all the different files and the links in the pulse, the Monday pulse that I was talking about. And then now, next is the editing step. So then you are listening, Mhel, to the podcast or you're watching the podcast. Are you doing it in 1X speed or do you speed it up or what? Unknown Speaker: Yeah, I speed it up a little to hasten it, not too much. Bradley: What are you looking for for editing, like cutting out and content-wise and things like that? What's your thought process when you're editing this podcast? Unknown Speaker: I've been in the podcast for a lot of years now and since episode 1. We usually look out for content that is valuable to the listener. It provides value and actionable steps that they can apply immediately. We remove a lot of banter out so that the listener… My bad jokes sometimes. Yeah, your bad jokes. Sometimes it slips through. We just make sure that it's tailored to the listener so that they can apply everything in their Amazon business immediately. Bradley: There are some people who just don't have staff or don't have the time and they actually use AI. To edit episodes and the other things we look for is like, hey, is there a dog barking in the background? We got to make a note for and we can try and get that out in post-production or there are long pauses between answering questions. We'll take all of that out. But like Mhel said, there's also editing for content. So that process of making the edit notes that we give next to our editor who's actually editing it in fancy software. How long does that take? Yeah, it depends on the length, but it's usually one hour to two hours. And it's obviously longer for AM-PM podcasts since Kevin insists on making one hour and a half. We have the Serious Sellers Podcast en Español and the Serious Sellers Podcast auf Deutsch. Mhel doesn't speak German and Spanish, so we actually have the host of those shows give their own edit notes and then Mhel just gives it to our producer. You make the edit files and now you give it to our editor, who is now Andre. We had another editor who worked here for years and Andre has worked here for years too, but then we gave him the podcast. Andre records or edits the audio and video. What's the next step after he uploads what he thinks is the final version? The next steps are building out the blogs, figuring out the titles, and we get them published using Podbean and also publish it on YouTube so our listeners can enjoy the content that we produce. We have to put it on YouTube too. He made it sound easy, but another step is having to listen to the whole thing again to make sure the edits went smooth because everybody's human. Maybe Mhel forgot to edit something or maybe Andre didn't see something in the edit notes and so it's got to be changed and so that's another step. And then now I'm looking here on one of our finished podcasts that we've recently done. This whole section up here, what is this called? This is like a description of the episode, like a summary or what is this? Yeah, I think that's called the description of the podcast. And so this goes also for the SEO as well in the podcast like players like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. So this is where we can get SEO and tell people about what the episode is. And then what about this section right here that we're looking at? That section is the timestamps so that the listeners could see the content immediately if they are interested in a single topic or something else. Is AI doing either of these or are you doing this 100%? Yeah, AI definitely helps right now but before I've been doing it myself. So then you let AI do it and then just edit what the AI does to make sure it's okay? Yeah, AI is not perfect but you need to edit some of the words so that it would be more accurate than what they write. What do we use to make the transcript? This is also important. This allows the entire podcast to get SEO'd for the blog version and some platforms like Spotify include the whole transcript there, so that's even SEO'd. How do we make the transcript currently? Unknown Speaker: Let me start with before. Before, we used a different software, but right now, it's 100% AI-generated transcript, but it's still being edited. To make the spellings correct and the sentencing correct. Bradley: It makes a lot of mistakes because it can't pick up things, especially if somebody has a stronger accent or something like that. We've got a team. Nico coordinates on our team to have these podcast transcripts done, and then we have other members of our team, Ralph, Maya, Bill, and Claudine, who go and then do the final look over of the transcript and make all the edits. Now, we've got all the audio. We've got the files done. We've got the transcript done. We've got this blog part done here. We've got the timestamps done. What's the next step? Yeah, we're ready to publish. After that, and then after publishing, like I mentioned earlier, the steps and we will be sending the episode links to the guests so that we could have promotions on their end and on our end. We could with Podbean upload to YouTube. It goes to YouTube podcast, but we actually choose, since Helium 10 has its own YouTube channel, we actually upload it separately. And like I said, the podcasts nowadays are getting Sometimes thousands and thousands of views. By the way, this is another step where we have to pick short titles for the thumbnails and make fancy thumbnails for YouTube. Also, thumbnails for the podcast. We have editors. Nico, another Nico, N-I-C-O, is the one who helps with those, but we get tons and tons of downloads. It's up to, I think, something like 60,000, 70,000, 80,000 downloads a month on YouTube of the podcast and about 30,000, 40,000 on audio. Before, it was the opposite. Before, we would get almost nothing on YouTube. We wouldn't do anything on YouTube and we would have 100,000 audio downloads, but a lot less people listen to the audio downloads now than before. And so we actually focus more on promoting the YouTube part of it. All right, Mel, thank you very much for your insights and your continued support on the podcast. Hopefully you keep up the good work over there. Thank you, Riley. Unknown Speaker: Thanks for having me. Bradley: All right. So now what else are we doing? The important thing is once if you're releasing things to You're going to have a lot of analytics, just like with the Amazon business, analytics is important. Analytics is also important for the podcast. You want to take a look at, hey, what's going on with your downloads? What country are your downloads coming from? Look, the United States is dominating this podcast here, but then let's just go all the way down here. Oh my goodness, I had one download in Lebanon and Latvia. Maybe I want to promote a little bit more. I had two downloads in Andorra, four in Egypt, 20 in Romania last week, 42 in South Africa, 90 in Pakistan, 647 in Australia, etc. By the time of day, when are people listening to the podcast? When do they listen more? That's going to affect when I release the podcast to Podbean. Where are the download sources? 62% to Apple Podcasts, 17% to Spotify, I don't even know what the heck Overcast is, but we got 724 downloads on Overcast. Google Chrome, 463. What's the retention? What's the top episodes? You've got to look at your analytics to really get a good idea of what is going on. And then the next part is it's not just, hey, I recorded one episode. I upload it to podcast. I upload it to YouTube. I'm done. One thing I learned especially from the school of Gary Vee is that you've got to repurpose, repurpose, repurpose. These podcast episodes are good content and you can repurpose clips of them. So what do we do? We take highlights of the podcast. It's another thing that Mhel actually does where he'll take the best three 60-second to 90-second clips. He'll give that to our team, the other Nico, and he's going to make what we call an audiogram. Where do these go? These can go on Instagram. We've got the Serious Sellers Podcast Instagram where it's got these 60- to 90-second clips where people who don't want to listen to the whole episode but want to get some insights On to what the episode was about. You can watch it there. And what happens is people get interested and now they listen to the whole episode. Do we just put the audiograms right there on the Serious Sellers Podcast Instagram? No. We upload them to YouTube Shorts. We upload our videos to other platforms like X. And Rumble and LinkedIn. We'll take the audiograms. We'll put it on TikTok. We'll put it on Facebook Reels. And the list goes on and on. So one podcast, we get like 10, 15 pieces of content that go out and also get thousands of views. When I said we get like 100,000 downloads a month, that was only like the actual full podcast episode of either the audio or the YouTube versions. That does not count the thousands and thousands of downloads we get a month. For our reels and tick tocks and instagrams also that are for our from clips of the podcast So the the reach that you can do I know this sounds like a lot of work, you know We've been talking about here a lot of it was just in prep, but then each episode. Yeah, it takes work It takes mill, you know a couple hours more to produce it. It takes somebody else a couple hours, but Still you consider all of that work where it's maybe eight hours an episode total, based on everybody who works on it, or maybe six hours or less, including the time it takes me to record it. But we are getting thousands and thousands of 100% organic downloads and views and exposure for our brand, our Helium 10 brand, our Serious Sellers Podcast. It's hard to put a value on that. There's not many things you can do out there that only take a couple hours of work and has such a wide reach of listeners and people who are going to consume this content. Now, as your podcast grows, like I said, there might be an opportunity to other people might reach out. Everybody reaches out to me and say, hey, I would love to put an ad on the Serious Sellers Podcast, but we don't do that. Here we only like very rarely. We've taken some ads when there's big events happening and we'll get a placement in. There's good money in that, guys, but we just choose not to do it on a weekly basis. We just put our own little Helium 10 advertisements in, but people are willing to pay big money because they know if you've got one of the top podcasts in the space, which Helium 10 has always had the most downloads, that's a thing that people want to be a part of and they're willing to pay big money for ad spots. You want to grow your podcast? You can pay other podcasts to get on for ad spots or you try and get on as a guest on other podcasts. You can promote your podcast organically on there while you give value to somebody else's podcast. It's not like the rest of the business world. Coke is not going to go and get on a Pepsi commercial. That doesn't happen. We're not really competitors. We don't really consider podcasts as competitors with each other, so I'll go on other people's podcasts. They can go on mine if all they're talking about is it's not a promotional podcast about Helium 10 or it's not a promotional about some other software or something. I love going on other podcasts and others love going on here who have podcasts as well, so this is all just another way to grow organically. This has been a step-by-step process that has gotten us to millions, over 5 million, over 6 million downloads across our podcast. It's still a very great way in 2025 to reach out to new audiences. It's a great way to build your brand, your personal brand, your business brand, etc. So if you're an Amazon seller, think about, can a podcast help you promote your brand and your Amazon or TikTok shop business? Or maybe you're working at an agency and you want to promote your agency, your own personal brand, your consultant. Think about doing a podcast. You might not have the full resources like I have for our production, but you don't have to have such high production quality. Always, like we talked about in this episode, you can just start off a little small, but I highly recommend thinking about podcasts, and so bookmark this one if you guys start, and then, hey, you do start a podcast, let us know. I would love to be one of your first guests on there and maybe have you on as a guest in the future as well. So thanks a lot, guys, and we'll see you in the next episode.