The Tim Ferriss Show - #296: How to Build Popular Podcasts and Blogs

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Starting point is 00:02:39 special deals, or anything else that's very limited, I share it first with Five Bullet Friday subscribers. So check it out, tim.blog forward slash Friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out, if the spirit moves you. Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where typically it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers of all different types from different fields to tease out the habits, routines, etc. that you can apply in your own

Starting point is 00:03:20 life. This time around, I am going to answer questions myself. I have had some modicum of success with the podcasting and blog worlds. Remember those? Weblogs, blogs. And recently received a number of questions via text and email, which I requested from Mari Takahashi. Who is Mari Takahashi? Atomic Mari. You can find her on Instagram at Atomic Mari, M-A-R-I. It's mo osewa ni natte orimasu. And she has had a lot of success on platforms that I am less familiar with, like YouTube, for instance, video, all sorts of different things. She's a very accomplished ballerina, gamer, and content creator in her own right. So I thought that I might answer her questions as a podcast episode, because these are informed questions, and they are questions that I sometimes get from other people. So the podcast, this podcast that you're listening to has almost 300 million downloads now and is the first business interview podcast to cross 100 million downloads.

Starting point is 00:04:31 So we have that in terms of data and lots of mistakes and trial by fire. And then the blog, that is Tim.blog, receives between 3 and four million unique visitors per month. So there's certainly bigger podcasts, there's certainly bigger blogs, but doing pretty well in some top percentile, I would say, and operating with a very, very lean team. So I have one, maybe two, depending on how you define it, full-time employees, and a handful of part-time assistants for various things. And it is in comparison with many of the shows you would recognize otherwise in, say, the iTunes Top 50, a skeleton crew. Many of these shows have 20, 30 different staffers working on shows in various capacities. This is particularly true with more complex

Starting point is 00:05:25 productions like some of those from NPR, for instance. And you can just listen to the credits at the end to get an idea. So I have kept this format very, very simple with this podcast to facilitate working with a lean team. All right, so let's jump into it. So Madi, again, you can find her on Instagram at Atomic Mari, asks a number of different things. And I'm going to modify some of the questions here just to broaden the application. And if you hear me unzipping my jacket, it's because I'm getting really hot and excited about this. Number one, what equipment do you use when you're on the road? Does it differ from what you use at home? It does not differ at this point in time. I travel with a number of pieces of equipment. And generally speaking, we're talking about the Zoom, Z-O-O-M-H-6,

Starting point is 00:06:14 which I use as a recorder. It could fit in a large pocket. It is not a gigantic device. And this allows me to connect as many as or more than four XLR cables. So very basic. I think I typically get three to six foot XLR cables, which then connect to the mic that I'm using right now. And this is the Shure KSM8 microphone, which is fantastic for voice recording, even in loud environments. I have used and still have the Shure SM58s, microphone, which is fantastic for voice recording, even in loud environments.

Starting point is 00:06:50 I have used and still have the Shure SM58s, which were introduced to me by Brian Callan, stand-up comedian and podcaster extraordinaire in his own right, the fighter and the kid, along with Brendan Schaub. And this is a very simple setup. It's very hard to break. And I would encourage that you also use, this is a new addition, took me a while to find the proper tool for this, but rechargeable batteries, Eneloop, Panasonic Eneloop, E-N-E-L-O-O-P, for AA or AAA. In the case of the H6, it's AA, and I would encourage that you buy the charger, which charges in three hours, and it can sustain up to 70% of its charge for up to 10 years. So this is, after some vetting, the best, what I would say, rechargeable batteries that you can use. Otherwise, a piece of advice is to always

Starting point is 00:07:43 use new batteries, because you will find, this is advice I received from a very experienced interviewer, if you try to squeak out the last bit of a battery, you will find very often that you stick it into a recorder like this and it shows that it's three quarters full and then 10 minutes into the interview, potentially with someone you really do not want to piss off with having to do an equipment change, it drops down to the very last bar and then you find yourself in a bad position. So new batteries every time and these rechargeables I find very, very helpful. So that is the basic setup. There are a few other options and a few things that I travel with. When in doubt, if I'm not bringing this, even if I don't think I'm going to have to record anything, I will bring the ATR 2100, which is an Audio-Technica mic that is USB connected to a laptop, for

Starting point is 00:08:32 instance, and I can use then a quick time to record anything I might need. That is the ATR 2100 Audio-Technica mic, which provides an incredible bang for the buck. And you could use that. And I use that for all of my remote interviews, whether over Skype or some other platform, Zencaster and so on. There are many different options that you can look into. I tend to just use Skype and Ecamm Call Recorder. Ecamm Call Recorder is the software and it's very simple. There are downsides, but nonetheless, it is the software I most consistently use. There are others, like I mentioned, Zencastr that record a copy locally and then automatically upload to a service like Dropbox so that you have high quality audio from both sides that you can then access as the interviewer. Okay.

Starting point is 00:09:24 Another piece of equipment that I used for many years, and it served me very, very well, but then recently gave up the ghost is the IXM Yellowtech. And this is an all-in-one device from Germany that is self-contained in the sense that you have the batteries, the SD cards, everything in the mic itself, and you can record playback, insert a headset, and so on all from this one mic. And that you can put in its case, stick into a backpack. It's about the size of a tiny, tiny fold-up umbrella, in effect. And that served me very, very well. I use that to record, I would say, 60 to 70 intros. I used it for intros specifically because I always record my intros

Starting point is 00:10:11 after the interviews. All right, let's move on. Those are the basics in terms of equipment. And I am experimenting with a number of mics from Shure and other manufacturers for using the lightning port on, say, an iPhone to record from a directional mic. I have not yet made much progress in those tests, and I really like my setup with the H6. It's extremely, extremely reliable. Number two, I'm going to move the order around a little bit. Any pointers on being a good interviewer? All right, I get this question a lot lot and I would suggest, this is a great question, but I would suggest that we start with a different question and that is pregame. How do you set yourself up for a successful interview, which is different from being a good interviewer?

Starting point is 00:11:00 Few suggestions. Number one is that you chat via video, even if you're not going to record video. I typically don't. Say via Skype and ask a number of questions. Make a number of points and ask a number ofwee, if there's anything that you want to cut out afterwards, just let me know. This is not live. We can cut anything out that you want to cut out. And what that means is I encourage you to be as detailed, as raw as yourself as possible. Cursing's fine. I curse. I'm from Long Island.

Starting point is 00:11:39 And we can always cut things out. We can't put interesting things back in. So please be yourself. Number two, if you need to take a break, go to the bathroom, grab some water, just let me know at a pause in the action and we can stop it. All right. Number three, that the general structure is the following. And I might say, well, bounce around.

Starting point is 00:12:00 It's not going to be chronological. I will probably start with a question about X. I like to tell people the first question that I'm going to start with. And that's something that I very often ask, say TV interviewers or others when I'm being interviewed. I don't need to know all the questions. Just tell me what the first question is so that I don't stumble right out of the gate. So I tell them, probably going to start with this question. First third is going to bounce all over your bio. We're going to talk about your life life you will have a chance and i will bring it up certainly towards the end to talk about your book your movie whatever it is that they want to promote or talk about and i generally say we want the audience to fall in

Starting point is 00:12:36 love with you first the messenger and then the message and selling whatever it is that you would like to encourage them or persuade them to buy, do, et cetera, is much easier. So we're going to bounce around first, say first third, assuming it's a 90 minute interview, which is kind of how I set the expectation typically. And then the second third will be very often some of my rapid fire questions or questions from the audience. Then we will talk about your book, movie, whatever it might be, and then close up with some additional rapid fire questions. And at the very end, I will ask you, do you have a final ask or recommendation, next step,

Starting point is 00:13:16 suggestion, whatever it might be for my audience, any parting thoughts, right? So I set the stage. You notice that I'm really laying out a map of the territory for them and enabling them to the greatest extent possible to be comfortable. This is before I hit record or ask the first question. There are a few other things I like to ask. Number one, is there anything you would like to avoid talking about? Anything that you're tired talking about? Anything like that. And we can certainly cut it out later, but I can also make an attempt to avoid it if, uh, if you would like, and I'm not going to get into politics. I'm not going to touch on any supposed scandals or whatever. This isn't a gotcha show. This is a show about tactics

Starting point is 00:13:57 and routines, favorite books, things that my readers can use, things that will inspire and help my readers get through their own challenges, recover from their own mistakes, et cetera. This is not a gotcha show. And I put people at ease with that as well. And then last, what I'll very often ask is, do you have any greatest hits stories? And I will very frequently pose this question before we ever chat. So I'll send something like this via email, but are there any cues that I could use such as, you know, tell me about that time in fourth grade when, you know, your teacher threw your chair across the room or whatever it might be. Are there any cues I can use to bring up stories that you have seen audiences respond extremely well to that are really powerful, really funny, whatever it might be. And folks who are interviewed or people

Starting point is 00:14:46 who talk for a living or do a fair amount of talking will over time, just like standup comedians work on their material. And the smarter of them or the smart of them will keep track of this, of course, and naturally do this. So they will know that they have three or four absolute guaranteed hits for almost any audience. So I'll ask them if they have any of those and any cues that I could use to bring them up. And if they're having trouble with that formulation, I'll say any particularly funny stories that people enjoy hearing. And I will then have two or three of those that I will front load somewhere in the first third of the interview, right? First 30 minutes.

Starting point is 00:15:28 And this guarantees, A, that the interviewee gets to work on or rather repeat a story that they're very comfortable telling that they know will work, which tends to put them in a good mood and also acts as a confidence builder. And B, I know that I will have at least one to three hooks so that I grab the listeners in the first 30 minutes and very often in the first five to 10. Okay, this is all before I ask the first question. And then when we ask questions, I'll have no more than, say, a two-page spread in a notebook open with three to five points on either side. So for a 90-minute to three-hour interview, I'll have no more than 10 points. And very frequently, I will follow then the thread of conversation with

Starting point is 00:16:23 follow-up questions, and we'll only hit half of those. Maybe. All right. Do not come into an interview expecting to ask 20, 25 questions. It's just not going to happen if you are actually listening to the answers and not rushing through things, which leads me to a few other suggestions. Number one, ask questions that you actually fucking care about. Ask questions you want to know the answer to. All right. And some, now some interviewers, for instance, James Lipson inside the actor's studio, he knows the answers to every question he is going to ask. And he very rarely deviates from the order of the questions on these blue cards. They also, this is where I got it from, allow their guests to

Starting point is 00:17:06 have final cut. They record for about three hours, I want to say, and then cut it down to whatever it is in its finished form, 45 to 60 minutes. I would rather have a slightly more awkward conversation, but not know the answers. Otherwise, it's boring for me. So I may know the answers to a handful of questions, but very rarely. And I tend to spend as little time as possible on something you could read in Wikipedia, unless I'm digging into a particular aspect that wasn't covered or that might be fun to explore. I also tend to start with questions that they don't expect about perhaps a side interest. You'll notice that, for instance, in my interview with Edward Norton, we started with surfing. Why? Because

Starting point is 00:17:50 Edward's a very smart guy. He spent a lot of time with media. If I start with asking about a specific role, for instance, that or the beginning of his acting career, he will go, he might, I'm not saying Edward would do this, but he might go on autopilot. I would. And a lot of people do when they're asked about the topics that they've covered a thousand times before. They have an automatic response very often. So I'll start with surfing, which is what I did in that case, or start with, say, in the case of Terry Crews, the interview with Terry Crews, one of my favorites in the last six months, and certainly one of the most popular, huge, huge episode that continues to get downloaded hundreds of thousands of times per month, began with talking about his artwork,

Starting point is 00:18:38 something people are not very aware of, and something that really blew me away, because he's an extremely, extremely gifted and developed graphic artist. All right. So there you have it, uh, to avoid people going on autopilot and ask questions you care about. Next, let the silence do the work. This is advice that I received from Cal Fussman, interviewer extraordinaire. He's interviewed everyone from, say, Gorbachev to Clooney to, I mean, Muhammad Ali. You go down the list, he has interviewed just about all of the cultural shapers of the last 50 years. I mean, it's an incredible list. And Cal is a true Jedi of the craft. And when I meet someone and develop a friendship with someone like that, this includes, for instance, at one

Starting point is 00:19:31 point I hired a researcher who had worked on Inside the Actors Studio. I will ask them very nicely something along the following lines. I know you're probably too busy, but if there's any chance I could send you a transcript of one but if there's any chance I could send you a transcript of one or more of my episodes, I would really appreciate any thoughts or comments or feedback that you might have, because I know I am probably missing the boat or wasting opportunities that come up or rushing or doing something that a novice is prone to doing. And I really want to make the most of these opportunities when I'm speaking with these incredible people. It would really mean a lot to me even if it were just a few lines of feedback, but I totally understand if you're too

Starting point is 00:20:16 busy to reply. And Cal, very kindly at one point, read through a few of my transcripts and his, his most important feedback was let the silence do the work. And this takes some practice because in normal conversation, which is not the same as an interview and people have different approaches. Certainly. I mean, Joe Rogan is spectacular. He has a very conversational style. James Lipton has a very, very strict, I would say interview style. I'm somewhere in the middle, and that suits my personality. In this context, let the silence do the work means if you ask a question and there is silence, awkward silence, for a few seconds. A few seconds is a really long time in conversation.

Starting point is 00:21:02 Try to just sit still for say five seconds. All right, let's, let's actually pretend that I'm asking you a question. So what was it like when that happened? That's about five seconds. It's a fucking long time. And my instinct, which is true for millions and billions of people was to jump in and try to help the interviewee and i'd say well put another way or we could come back to that and ask another question and cal's advice was let the silence do the work just wait it out and this is easier via skype than it is in person in my experience but let the silence do the work. And those are a few pointers to start with. There are many more. Study. Treat it as a craft. Treat it as a class. I collect questions that

Starting point is 00:21:54 other people ask. I collect questions that I see in in-flight magazines and interviews. I test these, and if they don't work, I take them out. So for instance, early on, I would ask not only the question, when you hear the word success, who's the first person you think of, which Derek Sivers, another guest rightly pointed out on the first go round seldom produces a very interesting answer. Often it's either my parents or Elon Musk or Steve Jobs. These are the three most common answers. So I would have to say, I started then saying, aside from your parents, Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. And I stopped asking that question because it rarely produces the story or insights that I want my readers to be able to apply. I also used to ask the question, when you think of the word punchable, whose face

Starting point is 00:22:46 comes to mind? This is a really problematic, bad question because it puts people on the defense. They don't want to say things they might regret. It's not a good question. But I borrowed it from someone else because it seemed very clever. Now, I did once get an amazing story that kind of made it worth it up to that point, fumbling with this question with Tony Robbins in the first interview, also one of the biggest episodes I've ever published. Uh, so if you want to check that out, Tim.blog forward slash Tony probably goes to the right place. And, uh, he talks about a meeting with Obama, uh, which is hilarious. So that's, that's certainly worth listening to. And one of those times when I wondered, Oh God, I hope my audio equipment is working. It's very funny. All right, moving on because I know we go really, really deep on that.

Starting point is 00:23:30 And I would say that if you want to understand how I craft questions, how I test questions, what makes a good question in my opinion, then I suggest going to tribeofmentors.com. The introduction is there for free. And in the introductory chapter, the how to use this book chapter, I talk about crafting questions. So you could check that out or you just buy the book. It's whatever it is, 10 bucks or something. Okay. Next question. How far ahead do you get with banking content or episodes? Uh, this depends on when you catch me. Very often, I will bank, I would say, several weeks in advance minimum. I tend to record, and this comes back to the batching concept in the four-hour workweek, I tend to record and have phone calls, this would include interviews on Mondays and Fridays. So Mondays and Fridays are my audio days, whether that's just walking outside and making 10 phone calls or recording podcast episodes. So I schedule people on Mondays and Fridays so that my

Starting point is 00:24:37 week isn't interrupted with scattered recording periods. That's point number one. Aside from that, I also schedule content creation weeks once a quarter where one of my teammates will fly out. We will meet here in Austin and we will record a week's worth of audio, video, etc. for various purposes. We will also make editorial decisions for the coming quarter and then front load not only in terms of recording audio for podcasts but also video for social and make editorial decisions about guest contributors and so on for the upcoming three months and that that really covers a lot of ground for us so So I'd say in general, I like to have at least four episodes in the bank pre-recorded because I'm publishing on average six episodes a month.

Starting point is 00:25:35 And I decided on that frequency because I found two episodes per week, so eight per month, to overwhelm me when listening to long form audio. And I found six to be just enough to support the number of interviews that I want to do, which are all very personal. I'm reaching out to all of these interviewees to solve very personal problems or improve aspects of myself. They're always personally driven. And that's roughly the cadence that I want to sustain. So six per month, that means you have two weeks per month with single episodes and two weeks per month with two episodes. Decided on that, I like to have at least four ready to rock and roll in case I get sick, in case I lose my voice, I get a sinus infection, whatever it might be. And very often I'll have more than that. Sometimes I get caught on my heels and then have to do something last minute. But that is also my nature and not something I recommend emulating. Okay, next question is, how do you recommend seeking out a podcast network? What

Starting point is 00:26:41 are the advantages, disadvantages? This is really a question of how much of an entrepreneur or business owner, manager you want to be. There are many friends I have recommended seek out or contact different podcast networks. And these podcast networks offer various services that range from production assistance, post-production editing, guest recruitment, in some cases, to advertising sales. The focus tends to be on advertising sales because that is how they are incentivized to make money. Sorry for the sniffling. That is cedar fever. The advantages are you're offloading a tremendous amount of labor, assuming that they do their job and do it well and on time. The disadvantage is that you tend to make a lot less money, and that is a fair trade. There are also some issues if you, and we'll come back to this, if you are positioning your podcast as I position mine as very high end and premium, I will be charging a CPM rate that's cost per thousand

Starting point is 00:27:54 mil, right? Cost per a thousand downloads. That is very, very high. Uh, and, uh, by high, I mean $60 to $100 CPM. That is extraordinarily high and you have to make it worth it. And based on renewal rates for sponsors, that is certainly the case for this podcast. However, most podcasts, including many NPR shows, are billing out at say $12 CPM, $15 CPM, so 25% or less of what I am charging. And you can run into an issue if you are trying to create a premium product with, say, a very highly educated audience with high average household income, which this audience certainly is, that the podcast networks are unaccustomed to selling premium products. They are more accustomed to selling $10 to $20 CPM. And you will get pushback if you try to position in a premium fashion and they will, or they might agree to it. Then after the fact, say we can't sell at $60, $70, $80 CPM, we can only

Starting point is 00:29:05 sell at 12. And then all of your financial predictions go out the window because you are estimating your percentage gross or net based on an assumption of premium. And then the feedback is we can't sell at premium. So those are some of the disadvantages or risks. But I have many friends who are fantastic interviewers. They're not organized enough in a entrepreneurial or finance capacity to actually train up internal staff for ad sales, if they decide to do that, for instance. And might as well touch on this point, which is ads. Okay. Ads are not something, monetizing is not something I'd recommend you focus on off the bat. And if the reason you're doing a podcast is for that, I don't think you're going to last very long. Generally speaking, you really have to have an itch that you are scratching something you need to get out into

Starting point is 00:30:00 the world because it is less painful, more enjoyable, but often less painful for you to get it out into the world than to keep it in your own head. Okay. This is certainly true with books as well. And I write a lot more about this in an article that I have on the blog, tim.blog. And you can just search how I built a number one ranked podcast with 60 million downloads. The funny part about that, of course, is that 60 million at the time was huge to me. Now it's closer to 300 million. But the principles still apply. And I talk a lot about if and when to monetize.

Starting point is 00:30:36 Generally speaking, I would recommend that you monetize only after you have at least 100,000 downloads on average per episode. Because this gives you the leverage and the reach to interact with sponsors who can grow with you. Who have the company size and the marketing budget to increase the price per episode or their ability to pay an increased price per episode, even if you double in size. If you try to monetize really early, you're going to be doing in many cases, sketchy affiliate deals or a good affiliate deals with moderate payout. And you'll then, if you're dealing with people who are paying you per episode, and I would suggest no terms, I don't use any terms. So everyone's paying upfront. It's another thing you only get if you've established a reputation. Most of the time they're going

Starting point is 00:31:28 to ask for net 30, net 60, which can create cashflow problems. For all of those reasons and more, develop a solid product, a solid audience before you attempt to monetize. You know, would you rather make a thousand dollars a month now or $500,000 a month later? And the difference between those two is often one of delaying the compulsion to monetize for when you actually have leverage. Okay, now let's build on that because I get so many damn questions about monetizing that I'd like to encourage a few different approaches. The renewal rate of sponsors for my show, despite the pricing, which is very high, is I want to say at least 70 to 80%. It may be more. So why is my renewal rate so high and why is that important? It's important because A, I'm lazy and I don't want

Starting point is 00:32:25 to have a high churn rate that necessitates pitching new sponsors and converting new sponsors endlessly. That is very high labor and not something I have any desire for. Second, I want happy sponsors. Happy sponsors, happy podcaster, assuming they're not high maintenance in other ways. So I do fire sponsors if they're high maintenance. But the key here is that I vet the sponsors very carefully and personally use them. So there have been delays of two to four months for sponsors who want to, in this case, write $250,000, $500,000 checks to pre-book episodes. Actually an important nuance. So I don't offer any discounts on episodes if they buy more episodes because the popularity of the podcast as it ramps up increases the price

Starting point is 00:33:20 that they pay per episode. So the way that a sponsor gets a discount is by booking in advance, because if they book, say, six episodes for Q2, and we're in Q1, the podcast is going to continue to grow and they've locked in a current price when the price is inevitably going to go up, because the popularity continues to grow. Just as a side note, again, one of many policies that keeps my life and maybe your life very, very simple. Okay. There are two different ways that I vet sponsors. Number one, I personally use the products when possible. In some cases, say B2B products, that's a little more challenging, but for that reason, you'll see a strong preference for consumer products of different types of services that I use myself. And I also pull my audience late at night on social media and will ask, has anyone out there used fill in the blank from zero to 10? How much would you recommend it to a friend? 10

Starting point is 00:34:18 being the best. And I do this late at night because I don't want the companies to notice this and then spam the shit out of the feed with their employees, friends, fans, et cetera, which does happen. So I do it late at night to test and then we'll look for the patterns and I will have an assistant do this or I'll do it myself. It can usually be done really quickly. The average must be seven or higher. All right. The average for how much would you recommend this to a friend has to be seven or higher. So some of you who are familiar with the net promoter score, this is a very simplistic way of approaching that on social media to try to get something that is resembling statistical significance. All right. So I do those

Starting point is 00:35:00 two things and end up rejecting about 90% of the inbound sponsor inquiries. So that's about it. If you're interested in other policies that I use or interested in looking at what sponsorship of a podcast like mine looks like, you can go to tim.blog forward slash sponsor and check it out. If you are not interested in sponsoring the podcast, please do not submit the form. There's nothing fancy or exciting or anything that comes after it and you're not going to receive anything. So don't spam the shit out of us. Thanks. Uh, frequency. I mentioned briefly before six episodes per month,

Starting point is 00:35:34 the more you publish, the more it appears that you are favored by the iTunes algorithm. So if you are trying to pop in the rankings, it makes a lot of sense to put out, say, a preview episode of a few minutes. And this is very standard practice for people who look into this. Put up a preview episode. Hey, here's what's coming with season one or whatever it might be. Use that to then build up the subscriber base. And in the first week that you publish your podcast, put out at least three episodes in rapid succession, say Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and drive as much traffic as possible to subscribe. Uh, that is one tip. If the, uh, pissing contest of iTunes ranks matters to you.

Starting point is 00:36:21 And who are we kidding? We all have healthy egos if you're doing this kind of thing. So why not have fun with it? Okay. So next up, we have some blog questions and I'm going to try to jump through this pretty quickly. Is it better to name a blog after yourself for recognition or to use a company name to reach a broader audience. This is from Murray. This depends a lot on what outcome you're optimizing for. My blog has my name and face all over it. This is good if you have no desire and no intention and 100% certainty that you are not going to sell the blog as part of a media company later. But if you use a brand name or a company name

Starting point is 00:37:08 like Wirecutter, for instance, which was created by my friend Brian Lamb and later sold for a very healthy chunk of change, having Brian's name, if it was the Brian Lamb show, is problematic because he may have a lot of trouble selling that company as a sort of key man. And it's very difficult to, say, have that company be acquired and continue with that name in bright lights on the marquee if Brian himself does not continue on at the company. And he might say as part of the acquisition agreement,

Starting point is 00:37:49 need to vest over time to receive some of the payout. Very, very common. But in any case, it makes it a little tougher. There is a book called Built to Sell that I would encourage you to check out by John Warlow. And there are others. But if your goal is even 10% potentially to sell, then making it your personal name is problematic. But that's a decision I made. I don't regret it.

Starting point is 00:38:13 Excuse me. Uh, let's see. There's some questions about platform. All right. And it seems that WordPress is kind of the go-to any suggestions suggestions on platform? I am biased towards WordPress. There are many options. I am biased towards WordPress for the same reason that I'm biased towards email. Let me explain what that means. I'm biased towards WordPress because it is open source. So if, say, Automatic, Automatic, M-A-T-T-I-C, which is a company I now advise, they run wordpress.com and the paid services associated

Starting point is 00:38:49 with hosted WordPress blogs, they kind of handle it all for you. If for whatever reason they disappeared, went out of business, got bought by a company you didn't like, whatever, WordPress as a platform continues to exist and you can port your site from place to place to place and find people to help you with support very easily or development. This is not true for closed box systems, right? So WordPress does not have any single point of failure, in other words. So if I spend years building up this blog, I don't have to worry about suddenly it being non-viable if a company goes bankrupt or something like that. That is one of the appeals of WordPress. Another appeal, highly, highly appealing element is that out of the box, it has some of the best SEO possible,

Starting point is 00:39:38 or at least it does not do anything, in my experience, terribly offensive to Google. So it tends to get my content, at least, and over time this improves as your page rank increases and so on, tends to get indexed very, very effectively for search engines. That is another benefit that I found of WordPress. There are other options. Now I mentioned I favor email. So why email? Email compared to social media. That is what I mean. Because as many people have experienced with, and this isn't shaking a stick at these folks, this is perfectly predictable based on their incentives to sell advertising, that Facebook or other companies that have, say, fan pages, publisher pages, and so on. This is true for Instagram as well and every other platform. If they want at any point to change their algorithm or reduce organic reach, they can do so. So I asked, I remember at one point, someone I met who had a very successful business based on

Starting point is 00:40:35 Facebook, what it was like. And he said, it's like owning the most profitable McDonald's in the world on top of an active volcano. You just don't know when it's going to change, when it's going to erupt, when your business is going to vaporize. And a lot of people have seen that. And I still use Facebook. I think it's tremendously useful. It has 10 times the click-through rate of many of the other social platforms that I've experimented with. So it still has a very, very high utility for me. However, as someone who focuses on risk mitigation and controlling as many variables as possible, I like email. And in the last few years have doubled and tripled and quadrupled down on that focus. Why? Because that direct means of communication cannot easily be

Starting point is 00:41:17 taken away from me. And I can switch email service providers. There's a flexibility and a persistence with that that you just don't have as a guarantee on social media platforms. Despite that, of course, I am investing resources and time in certain platforms such as Instagram. All right. Pointers on just doing the damn thing and not getting worked up about it being perfect when getting started. And this is something a lot of people have trouble with. Uh, I would write posts for talking about blogs specifically that, uh, you can target to one or two of your friends. Don't try to be an empathic, super genius. If, uh, that poses some type of challenge for you, uh, don't try to write anything for the world. If you try to write something that everyone will like, no one will love it. So feel free to polarize and write for one or two of your

Starting point is 00:42:10 friends. When I write articles, I effectively want 10% of my audience to love each post. That's it, 10%. And my audience is about 70% male, 30% female, maybe 65, 35, but predominantly male. And I'm looking for 10% of my audience to love it, period. What that means is over time, say each six months or something like that, everyone in my audience will see a post from me that they say, holy fucking shit, this is the best thing I've read in ages. Let me share this with 20 of my friends. All right. I don't care about everyone loving each piece. And that removes a tremendous amount of pressure for you to figure everything out and play the kind of Switzerland of editorial and please everyone. Do not try to please everyone. Try to create raving fans that comprise maybe five to 10% of your audience for each post. That's my goal. I don't care about the rest.

Starting point is 00:43:05 They'll have their turn later. But for now, if they're like, what, a post on microbiome and da-da-da-da-da, that's boring as shit. Well, that's fine. It can be boring to you, but 10% of my audience is going to love this and go completely bonkers over the details.

Starting point is 00:43:19 So that's fine. You'll get your turn. That's how I think about it. What are things that are easily outsourced and should be outsourced to save time? Uh, logos, interest podcasts, uploader, scheduler, et cetera. Uh, I, despite my proclivity for outsourcing and delegating, uh, do not delegate writing. So if there is a blog post that is certainly longer in editorial, uh, with my name on it, then I've written it. I just don't ethically feel okay with not doing that. Many people have no compunction about that, and that's fine.

Starting point is 00:43:50 That's their decision. But a lot of folks you know as famous bloggers have not written on their blogs personally in years. I know this for a fact. Anything with my name is written by me, with the exception of some very basic, say intro text for podcasts, which is really more procedural. That stuff I might have an editorial assistant help with. And logos, certainly I'm not designing myself. I'm hiring someone whether one-on-one or through 99designs, which I do use quite consistently. And intros of podcasts, for sure, the music and so on, I will hire someone else to handle. And that can range from royalty-free music on many different sites, which you can find out there,

Starting point is 00:44:34 to hiring someone to compose, which was the case for the new Tribe of Mentors podcast. And some people may notice on the Tribe of Mentors podcast, which I pushed out, which had shorter content much more frequently, right? Stayed at number one across all of iTunes for about a week straight during book launch. Very useful. That's another story. That the music was the same music I had had originally composed for the 4-Hour Chef video trailer. So if you want to see the movie trailer of the 4-Hour Chef, you can take a look at that on the YouTubes. All right. Next question. If you run ads on your blog, upload or schedule, there are things you can use for social, for instance, whether it's Edgar or others that can be very, very helpful for that, particularly if you're

Starting point is 00:45:16 going to take a vacation or travel. For WordPress, the scheduling and so on can be done within the UI, within the dashboard of WordPress. So for any editorial that we're scheduling out in that way, we simply use that. For the podcasts, because the quality assurance is so important to me on that, I have several sets of eyes and ears who double check and confirm everything before it goes out. All right, next. If you run ads on your blog, I don't run ads on my blog, but I'll try to answer the question. Roughly how much revenue does 1,000 visits on the blog per month equate to? 5,000, 10,000, 20,000. This depends on CPM, all right? Cost per thousand that I mentioned

Starting point is 00:45:57 earlier. And that varies very widely depending on the nature of the advertising and the nature of your blog, your editorial, who are your customers, right? So if you're selling, if you're selling infomercial products, then the price is probably going to be much, much lower cost per thousand if you're selling, or if you're able to help, say, Mercedes sell their highest end units or Omega or Rolex sell watches, you're going to be able to charge a very high premium CPM. So it depends partially on the nature of your audience. But CPM can range from $2 CPM all the way up to $100, as I mentioned. But the pricing changes constantly. And you have to look at, say, display.

Starting point is 00:46:42 Contextual is separate. You can look up contextual advertising to learn what that is. And then there's something called native advertising, which leaves a really bad taste in my mouth, which is basically hidden advertising disguised as editorial. I just don't like that at all. And there may be varieties of that that I would find perfectly fine and unoffensive. But in generally, I find that to be code for tricking audience into thinking something is editorial when in fact it is an advertorial, but not explicitly disclosed as such or disclosed in such a way that it's really ambiguous. So I do not do that. Do you find that users stay on blogs for longer when there are no ads? I don't think so. I don't think it matters unless the ads are, say, of a pop-up variety or really interruptive

Starting point is 00:47:30 to the read. Is it more strategic to focus on embedded affiliate income than ads? It depends on your strategy. So it depends what you're optimizing for. Embedded affiliate income, I would just be very careful with. You need to make certain disclosures if you're going to do that to be on the right side of the law. For instance, particularly if you want to secure any type of insurance policies to protect you against libel claims and so on, which I would encourage if you're going to take this seriously and build it out. And that is the reason if you go to Tim.blog, you can search disclosures. And I think it might be right up in one of the top nav bars. It almost certainly is. And you'll see all these FTC related

Starting point is 00:48:11 disclosures that I make, which are really just insurance policies. Otherwise, it's like if someone takes you out to lunch and tells you about their product, and then you cover the product on the blog, you could run into a conflict that could actually put you into some legal gray area at best. So you want to be very, I'm very, very conservative with that kind of stuff. So is it strategic? Depends on your strategy, right? I would recommend reading a book called the blue ocean strategy to make some decisions on that, uh, really comes down to creating your own category that you can dominate and own versus trying to compete in a pre-existing bloody category. The affiliate income, one other note on that, if you are going to also use email, you have to be very, very careful about not using affiliate links in email. And you can look into the regulations related to that. At what point

Starting point is 00:48:59 is it necessary to seek out guest editors to contribute to your blog. Never. You don't have to ever do that. Look at Tim Urban and Wait But Why. There are many, many blogs, many different content creators on different platforms who, from start to finish, will only produce things themselves, only write things themselves. And that can be extraordinarily successful and profitable. So you don't have to do that. I occasionally bring in guest contributors on my blog because I enjoy reading long-form content. And by the way, if anyone's wondering, well, should I write things that are less than 500 words, less than 1,000 words? Some of my blog posts are 10,000 to 20,000 words. And many of them are my most popular posts that end up being perennially

Starting point is 00:49:47 revisited. And much like real estate, this is one of my goals. I want a blog post I put up to be more valuable two years from now than the day that I publish it. And that relates to Google juice and other things. But my most popular posts are all years old at this point. And they appreciate over time. So I go super long form. Tim Urban takes it to a whole new level. And I did a podcast episode with him. If you just search Tim Ferriss show, Tim Urban, listen to that. Oh my God.

Starting point is 00:50:16 Some of his posts, if you want to call them posts, are like 70,000 words. That's a book. It's bigger than some books broken up into sections. So you don't ever need to get guest editors. Let's see. Next question. What are, if any, must-have widget recommendations? Really nothing for the blog that I can think of other than,

Starting point is 00:50:36 based on everything I just said about email, I would encourage you to have something for email capture. It does not need to be a pop-up or anything like that. But optimize for email capture, even if, like me, you don't email anything for the next two to three years. Of course, you need to follow the rules and regulations related to reactivating such email, but think about email very, very closely. That would be my recommendation. And really, that's about it. We had the same question about backlogging content. The editorial, particularly if I have guest posts,

Starting point is 00:51:09 I can actually spec out for the next three to six months in many cases. And then comments. This is not a question from Madi, but a question that I'll add. What to do with comments? I have comments, and if you go to Tim.blog and scan down to the end of any blog post with comments, you will see that I have comment rules. If people violate those comment rules, that's like they're coming into my house for dinner, kicking off their shoes, putting their filthy feet up on my table

Starting point is 00:51:32 and like spitting on the ground. I boot them. I have no problem blacklisting people. You're gone. It's a one strike you're out policy, period. And if people seem to be getting escalated, I'll say, play nice. I'll sometimes jump in and just say, Hey guys, play nice. And usually that's enough, uh, to, to correct behavior, but I'm, I'm cultivating a neighborhood. You are the mayor of a town. So if you want to let people break windows and shit on each other's porches, Hey, that's up to you. I don't allow that shit at all. I have a zero, zero tolerance policy for all that stuff. Look up the, I think it's the broken windows theory of crime. And, uh, of crime and you can understand why other people like Seth Godin, massively, massively successful blog, zero comments.

Starting point is 00:52:10 So you don't have to have comments. I just like the feedback and my, my commenters will often catch little mistakes that I did that I've made, or they will chime in and I'll have a post on swimming, let's say, and it'll be like, Hey, I'm the national team coach working with Olympians just had two things to add. Holy shit. That's fucking rad. So I love that kind of interaction. Uh, and, uh, it is my personality. It's my fit. Uh, but really all of these things should be an outgrowth of your strengths and your interests. In my opinion, if you want it to be sustainable, you're going to need endurance to do this over time and to have endurance, you're going to need enthusiasm. You're going to need to be excited about what you're doing. And if you get

Starting point is 00:52:53 into podcasting blogs, whatever it is, just to make money, you're going to be competing against people who have the enthusiasm and they're going to bury you. They're just going to out maneuver you and outlast you at the very least. So find something you're stoked about. Life's too short to do otherwise. All right, guys, that's it for now. I hope you have found this useful. And that's about all I have to add to this. Please let me know if you enjoyed this episode,

Starting point is 00:53:21 if you'd like more tactical stuff on content creation like this. If you enjoyed this episode, if you'd like more tactical stuff on content creation like this, if you have other questions about these types of themes, these types of topics, please let me know. Probably the easiest place is on Twitter, at Tferriss, T-F-E-R-R-I-S-S, on Twitter. You can also hit me on Instagram or Facebook, Tim Ferriss on both of those. So, T-I-M-F-E-R-R-I-S-S. And I would imagine there'll be some show notes on this. So if you want to find links to things I've mentioned, just go to Tim.blog forward slash podcast and find this episode along with every other episode.

Starting point is 00:53:57 And as always, thank you so much for listening. I love doing this show and it's because of you guys. So thanks. I'll talk to you soon. Bye. that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend. And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do.

Starting point is 00:54:41 It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com. That's 4hourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by FreshBooks. Man, oh man, do a lot of listeners of this podcast and readers of mine love FreshBooks to the extent

Starting point is 00:55:16 that I ended up meeting with the CEO not very long ago. Why are they so popular? Well, they are the number one cloud accounting software designed exclusively for self-employed professionals. That's many of you and used by more than 10 million people. You can send invoices, track your time and get paid very, very quickly, which suits the needs of a lot of freelancers, a lot of entrepreneurs and beyond. You can take pictures of receipts. You can link your credit card and debit card. So all the things you buy automatically appear in your FreshBooks in the right category. So on and so forth. Makes taxes easy, makes invoices easy, makes your life easier. And also, in fact, I would recommend a PDF. They didn't ask me to read this part, by the way. They put together a PDF a while back

Starting point is 00:56:00 called Breaking the Time Barrier, subtitle, How to Unlock Your True Earning Potential. So you can search for Breaking the Time Barrier. A lot of people ask me, how can I get a four-hour work week with a service business? And the story in that ebook, it's a PDF, is the short answer. It's really, really good. So I think you should also check that out.

Starting point is 00:56:18 So Breaking the Time Barrier, check it out. But also, why not test out FreshBooks? Claim your 30-day unrestricted free trial at freshbooks.com forward slash Tim and enter Tim Ferriss, two R's and two S's, in the How Did You Hear About Us section. That sounds like we're going to get very little tracking. That's a lot of work. But just go to freshbooks.com forward slash Tim and try it out because it is a very good product and I think you will find it simplifies

Starting point is 00:56:46 your life. Enjoy. This episode is brought to you by Four Sigmatic. You might remember Four Sigmatic for their mushroom coffee, which was created by those clever Finnish founders. And when I first mentioned that coffee on this podcast, the product sold out in less than a week. It lights you up like a Christmas tree, which can be really useful. However, recently I've been testing the opposite side of the spectrum, a new product, and that is their reishi mushroom elixir to help me end my day to get to sleep. As you guys may know, longtime listeners, at least I struggled with insomnia for decades. I have a largely fixed that, but still shutting off my monkey brain has never been easy. It still isn't easy very often.

Starting point is 00:57:26 And I found Reishi, which I've been fascinated by for a few years now, has been very, very effective and calming. Their old formula, however, Four Sigmatic's old formula included Stevia. And I like to avoid sweeteners, all sweeteners, for a host of reasons. And I then just pinged them and asked, Hey guys, I would love to experiment with this and maybe actually suggest it, but I'd like a version without sweeteners. If you'd be open to it, if too much of a headache, don't worry. And they are always game for experimentation. And so they created a special custom version without the Stevia, without sweeteners. Now it is part of my nightly routine.

Starting point is 00:58:06 Their Reishi Elixir comes in single serving packets, which are perfect for travel. And in fact, I'm about to leave the country right now and I have a packet in front of me that's just going to sit in the end of my carry-on bag. You only need hot water and it mixes very, very easily. Here's some recommended copy that they put in the read. So I'm going to read it, and I'll give you my take. Quote, a warning for those in the experimental mindset. Reishi is strong and bitter, in parentheses, like any great medicine. So if the bitterness is too much, I recommend trying it with honey and or nut milk, such as almond milk. End quote. So I'm going to say, no, you should suck it up and you should drink the tea because it's not that bitter.

Starting point is 00:58:47 And maybe you should take the advice of all Chinese people when they're criticizing youngins, when they say, which means you're not able to eat bitterness. Bitter is, in many cases, an indication of things that help liver detoxification and so on. I'm not saying that's the case here, but I've tested this ratio lecture on family members, on friends. Everybody has liked it. It's a little bit earthy. It's not that hard. So I would just say suck it up and no, don't put in honey or nut milk or any of that shit. Just drink the goddamn tea. It's delicious. I think, right? If you like pu-erh, that kind of stuff, that type of tea, you're going to dig it. So just try it. Okay. Back to then my read. If you'd like to naturally improve your sleep,

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Starting point is 01:00:00 So do me a favor and try it out so that they continue to be open to experimenting with me to create products for you guys specifically. do me a favor and try it out so that they continue to be open to experimenting with me to create products for you guys specifically. Check it out for Sigmatic. That's F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C dot com forward slash Ferris F-E-R-R-I-S-S and get 20% off the special batch. And you must use the code Ferris to receive your discount F-E-R-R-I-S-S. So again, go to foursigmatic.com forward slash Ferris, and then use code Ferris for 20% off of this rare, exclusive, limited run of Reishi Mushroom Elixir for nighttime routines without any sweeteners. Enjoy.

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #296: How to Build Popular Podcasts and Blogs

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #296: How to Build Popular Podcasts and Blogs

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