One of the best business decisions I’ve made in the past few years is starting my podcast, “Holly Randall Unfiltered.”
Even though I wasn’t entirely sure where my show was going to go, I knew I had a unique insight into an often-misunderstood industry, and for that reason, I wanted it to be real.
It’s important to keep in mind that podcasting is not a visual medium — it is an auditory medium. You really need intelligent, interesting guests who can hold a conversation.
I think that especially today, authenticity really resonates with your audience. Podcasts are intimate media platforms: people listen to you in their car, in their homes. With their headphones they take you to the gym, on a hike — your voice is pretty much in their head. It’s different from visual media, which requires your rapt attention. You can play podcasts while you do a myriad of other things, like driving! This means that the traffic jams you despise every day on your commute might actually work in your favor — we live in a world where traffic keeps people bored in their cars for long stretches of time. This is bad for your drive, but good for your podcast.
There were other adult podcasts out there, sure, but many of them relied on continuing the facade of being “sexy” — they encouraged their guests to stay in character. However, I wanted my audience to know these people in the same way I knew them: authentic, funny, intelligent, ambitious and, yes, sometimes tragic. There was so much stigma around the adult industry, so much misunderstanding, so much mystery. I wanted to dispel all of that.
My first step was finding someone on the technical side to help me produce the content and publish it. Of course, if you have the knowledge and the time you can do this yourself, but there are two reasons I went with a professional sound engineer who had a studio. First of all, if you know me at all, you know I am obsessed with quality — and if I was going to do a podcast, it was going to sound and look professional. I also believe that the fact that I have an actual studio gives my show a level of professionalism that makes my guests see it a little more seriously than just hanging out in my living room with a Zoom H4n recorder.
Secondly, I knew that, with my shooting schedule, I needed help. Paying someone made the process much more efficient. Consistency with your show is key, and if I tried to do everything myself I’d inevitably fall behind and be late releasing episodes. However, if you want to do this all yourself, there is absolutely nothing wrong with recording in your living room with a Zoom H4n recorder, and you can get some pretty decent mics for an affordable price on Amazon. There are a myriad of places to host your show (the content has to sit on a server somewhere), and many of these are a simple plug-and-play to automatically publish your show to all the major podcast platforms. I use Libsyn myself, and I pay only $10 per month.
So, I knew what I wanted my show to be, and what might set it apart from others. Because my show is an interview show, the next step was getting guests, and this was something that took serious consideration. Obviously, it was really helpful to get big names with large social media followings that could send listeners my way, but I also needed interesting and dynamic interviews. Just because a porn star is popular, it doesn’t mean they will be able to deliver a good show. It’s important to keep in mind that podcasting is not a visual medium — it is an auditory medium. You really need intelligent, interesting guests who can hold a conversation.
Now that I’ve just told you that this is not a visual medium, I want to tell you how important it was for me to record everything in video. Yes, I know I’m contradicting what I just said — and most of my downloads are indeed from audio platforms — but I also considered that it seemed a waste to not record it. Even though my sponsors only advertise on the audio version of my show, and YouTube won’t allow me to monetize my channel, I knew that it was still a good idea which might pay off in the long run. And I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I feel very smug about how it literally did, since I recently signed a contract with AdultTime to have my own “Holly Randall Unfiltered” channel on their streaming video platform this fall.
In terms of promotion, obviously social media is going to be the best place for that. When my guests’ episodes air, I also follow up with an email, thanking them for their time and providing links to their episode and photos from the interview, asking them to promote it on their end. Another way to promote your podcast is to find other shows out there similar to yours, and ask them if they would be interested in either a “swapcast” (meaning you publish one of their episodes on your platform and vice versa), or if they might be interested in running an ad for your show on their platform.
Depending on the popularity of the show you’re looking to promote yourself on, you might have to pay for that coveted ad spot, or they might be interested in doing an ad swap — basically, the same thing as a swapcast, but instead of trading an entire episode, you just run ads on each other’s shows. But possibly the most effective way is to get on other podcasts as a guest, and then use that interview to promote your own podcast. I’ve encountered some resistance on that from popular sex podcasts who had me on as a guest when I didn’t have a podcast, but where I encountered an unexpected brick wall once I had a show that they perhaps saw as competition. The podcast world can be competitive, just like anything else.
Now let’s consider why you might want to start a podcast. Making money is one obvious reason, and I’ll get to that in a minute. But it’s also just an overall bonus for your brand. It gets people more engaged with you and what you represent, bringing more publicity and traffic to your site, while many popular podcasts are also able to sell merchandise, tickets to shows and so forth. It’s a great promotional platform for whatever your brand needs to push. Plus, you should consider that podcasting is a medium that is quickly gaining momentum, and big media companies (think Netflix and Amazon) are purchasing IPs from popular shows that they either develop into a series, movie or book. For example, “My Dad Wrote a Porno” just got an HBO special a few months back. Many popular podcasts end up doing live shows and touring all over.
Now, let’s talk about money from advertising. Sponsors will only be interested if you can give them good download numbers. My podcast host Libsyn has a very easy interface for me to keep track of how many downloads each episode gets. Usually the pitching number for a particular episode is six weeks after its release date. The basic rates are $18 per CPM (one thousand downloads) for a pre-roll and $25 per CPM for a mid-roll. A pre-roll is a 30-second ad before the podcast starts and a mid-roll is a 60-second ad in the middle of the show, like a commercial break. (Incidentally, CPM stand for “cost per mille,” mille meaning “thousand” in Latin.)
Let’s say your show gets around 5,000 downloads per episode. This means your show gets 5 CPM, so for a mid-roll you’d multiply $25 by 5, meaning that you could ask for $125 an episode. I’ve often done discounts for people who invest in long-term sponsorships, as the effectiveness of an ad increases the more times a listener hears it. Now, if you can’t convince a sponsor to simply give you money to advertise on your show, you can always work with companies as an affiliate. This means that the brand provides you with a specific code, which you tell your listeners to use when buying that product (it’ll usually couple with a discount to entice the purchase), and depending on how many people buy that product with your specific code, you get a percentage of the sales. Adam and Eve does this with many podcasts (including mine).
Another very popular way that podcasts support themselves financially is through Patreon, which is like a crowdfunding platform, but your fans pledge on a monthly basis rather than just once (like on Kickstarter). In exchange, you provide them with perks — I offer the ability to watch the shows stream live, access to exclusive bonus interviews, a pass to my private Snapchat, free mugs, shirts and more. One valuable thing I did discover is to be wary of offering too many physical perks: the expense of providing them and shipping them (not to mention the hassle of keeping that all organized) may not be worth it. Anything that you can provide that is digital is much easier (and cheaper) to deliver. Patreon has a wealth of information and advice on building the best platform for you.
Those are the basics. The bar of entry is very low for podcasting, which is why there are so many of them out there. It’s cheap to start and fairly easy to do. What’s not easy is creating engaging, interesting content that will keep your listeners around and attract more. Word of mouth is a podcast’s best friend. Also, keep in mind it takes time to build up an audience — especially if you don’t already have a big social media following. So stay committed and don’t expect instant results. Most of all, have fun! This is your show, baby. Make it your own.
Adult filmmaker and photographer Holly Randall started her podcast two years ago and has interviewed everyone from Stormy Daniels to award-winning journalist Jon Ronson. With more than 1 million downloads, “Holly Randall Unfiltered” is in the top 5 percent of all podcasts currently broadcasted. Follow her @hollyrandall on Twitter and Instagram, as well as her website HollyRandall.com.
