Is Live Podcasting Worth it? The Pros and Cons of Live podcasting

Have you ever wondered if going live could be the game changer for your podcast?

Stay tuned as we unpack the pros and the cons of live shows that could elevate your podcasting journey.

Hit it, ladies.

The School of Podcasting with Dave Jackson.

Podcasting since 2005, I am your award winning hall of fame podcast coach, Dave Jackson.

Thanking you so much for tuning in.

If you're new to the show, you're listening to the longest running podcast about podcasting on the planet and we talk about planning, launching, growing and monetizing your show.

Today we're going to look at the pros and cons of doing a live show.

I recently did Dave's Kitchen where I just basically had a bunch of people show up and I said, give me ideas of stuff you would like to hear.

And one of them was from a member of the School of Podcasting, my buddy Ralph over@askralph.com he said, hey, I'm doing a live show.

I would love tips about how to do a live show.

So that is coming right up after I tell you that if you sign up at the School of Podcasting and join awesome people like Ralph, be sure to use the coupon code listnr that's L I S T E N E R when you sign up for either a monthly, quarterly or yearly subscription.

And that comes with a 30 day money back guarantee.

So you're thinking of doing live.

All right, well, let's talk about it, shall we?

So the first question is, are you doing live with or without video?

And I know you're like, what people could do live without video?

You could.

There's a tool.

Back in the day we used to do this called mixlr and I am amazed it is still in business.

This is great for those people that want to do the play by play for the local high school and have people listen.

Mixlr.com is if you want to do audio only, live streaming.

Now for the record, most people, when you say, hey, I'm doing a live, because that's what the kids call it, I'm going to do a live, they're expecting you to be on video.

So with that in mind, I do not recommend starting your show with live streams now unless you've got a large tolerance for learning new technology, for buying lots of equipment and kind of like grace under pressure because now you've got video, you're not just learning how to record, you're learning how to live stream, you're learning how to handle and audience.

There's a lot more Ingredients in this stew that could really be like, ah, I just can't do this.

So I'm just saying, hey, you are diving into the deep end of the pool.

So you might do something like Ralph is doing.

He's been doing a daily show forever, and he wants to try live.

Well, he's already got how to, you know, use a microphone and how to record and how to create content.

And he knows what his audience wants.

See, all that stuff is second nature to him now.

Now he's adding on a new thing.

But when you come in and everything is new, because there's lots of things that you're going to do here.

Let's just talk about video.

Video.

And we're going to talk about gear.

Yes, we will talk about gear.

Yay, gear.

Things to obsess over.

And I'll tell you about a piece of gear that I just bought that was an absolute waste of money.

Yeah, there's a hundred bucks right down the drain.

But the thing with video is we all tend to obsess kind of over how we sound when we're just doing audio.

Right.

There's all sorts of plugins and things like that.

When you do video, I'm here to tell you, everyone, and I mean, capital O, bold, underline.

We obsess over our background.

Like, we just obsess over, which is weird because if your audience is paying more attention to what is going on in the background than what you're actually saying, that's a problem.

That's like, we should not be paying attention to.

Is there a cereal bowl in the background?

There is that.

Hmm.

Yeah.

So keep that in mind when you add video.

You're gonna obsess over your background, and you've gotta just come up with something simple when you first start and just go from there.

So that's the first thing when we're talking video, you know.

And now, for the record, I would stay away from green screens.

You know, you can do this.

And then, look, I'm doing a podcast from the beach now.

I'm on, you know, Mount Sinai or whatever.

You know, like, look at me, I'm in Denver now.

I'm in China.

Yeah, and you have a green halo.

Because if you're gonna do green screen now, you need lots of lights, because any shadow, like, if one light is a little brighter than the other, it's not going to work.

And then also, here's a fun one, because I have a green screen that's very, very dusty.

If you have gray hair and mine is almost white, that when you have all this light, your hair kind of becomes invisible and then it gets erased, so you end up looking like some bizarre Martian with a green halo.

And for me, that's just not something I want as part of my brand.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And just for the record, I will be talking about Dave's Kitchen a little more a little later.

But right now, the first thing you have to figure out is when are you going to live stream?

Because you want it to be consistent.

And by that I mean the same time every week.

So my experience here in live streaming, I, I do a show every Saturday.

It's Ask the Podcast Coach.

And for the most part, 95% of the time, you will find me Saturdays at 10:30 Eastern, and that is a.m. in the morning.

And because I've been doing that over 10 years now, I get about a classroom of people that show up somewhere between 20 and maybe 35 people.

Now, for the record, that is a small percentage of the people that actually listen to the show.

So you.

If, if the goal is I'm going to grow my audience, you may get a different audience, but most people think like, I do my best to never watch live TV because I can fast forward through the commercials if I watch something that's been recorded.

Now, I picked 10:30am on a Saturday because at the time I was married and my now ex wife would still be asleep.

Fast forward.

And I would love to get my Saturdays back, but I've got a group of people who now say, I am the new Saturday morning cartoons.

My co host is not really crazy about leaving Saturday, so I'm doing Saturdays and it's fine because I do it for fun.

The biggest takeaway of Live here it is.

So, like, why would I do this then?

Dave, you just mentioned it's more technology.

There's more to why would I do this?

It is live interaction with your target audience.

And depending on what you're doing, I would leave time for them to just ask you anything.

I know that's a format, but it's a good one because the best way to know what your audience wants is to just let them tell you.

And so I have had many ideas that you have heard here on the school of podcasting that started over there in a live chat during Ask the Podcast Coach, where I'm like, that's a good idea.

I should talk about that more.

And I will take that idea and put it back in the oven and let it bake a little longer.

Do a little more research.

Because when I'm doing live I'm operating off the top of my head and I'm like, let me do a little more research and come back.

So the number one benefit of live is you have a live audience after you do it.

10 years I did not have a live audience when I first started.

I had maybe two people, if that when I first started.

And so that's the thing that you have to keep in mind is just because you go, I'm going live.

We live in a time shifted society.

We don't watch live tv, we don't go to the movies hardly anymore because, well, I can just watch it whenever I want it.

So when you go, hey, I'm going live, there might be some people like, and what am I supposed to care now the die hard fans like, wow, I can actually talk to her like, she's going to be there, he's going to be there.

There's that.

But just because you announce, hey, I'm going live, you know, I got to take junior to soccer.

It may not be the thing.

So when you're trying to be consistent, pick a time that you can do.

And you also want to check with your friends and family to see, hey, you know, I'm going to go live Thursday nights at 7.

Do we have any conflicts with the kids, with whatever's going on that I can every Thursday put it on the calendar.

And if something comes up, the answer is going to be, I can't do it.

I'm going live on Thursday.

That's the kind of thing you have to figure out.

And we'll talk about co hosts.

But if you have a co host, you want them to also be able to put it on the calendar that Thursdays at 7, I'm going live.

So that if somebody says, hey, Uncle Marv's having a birthday party, they can go, hey, well, not actually.

I know a guy named Uncle Marv.

Uncle, you know, shmoopy is having a birthday party, you know, now, of course, hashtag family first.

But you might actually go, can I show up after like 8 o' clock?

Because I've got a show.

You want to be consistent now why is that important?

Because if people have to think about when you're live, you've already lost.

In fact, think about it.

Anytime, at least in my travels, they put a TV show on, they think it's going to be popular and in many cases it is popular.

And then they do the dumbest thing.

They're like, oh, we have this other show that's not doing well, so we're going to Move this show that is doing well before the show that's doing awful so that the audience will follow them over here and then that audience will maybe stick around and watch the show that's not doing very well.

And that usually does not work well for either show.

You want to stay consistent in your schedule.

Now for me, because I travel on occasion, I know that ahead of time.

And when I'm not going to be able to go live, I have done a live one once from a McDonald's parking lot.

Now we just go, look, Dave's going to be, you know, here, I'm going to be going to Indianapolis.

So we'll let people know weeks in advance, hey, don't forget, I'm going to Pot Indy.

We're not going to have it.

So as much as I love to be consistent, that is one like I'm in the middle of an event, I cannot live stream at 10:30 in the morning.

So try to be as consistent as you can with when only things that you can't move can't be moved.

And you're like, oh, we're going to have to call it off.

And so that's where in some cases I've offered my co host to like, hey, if you want to run the show and bring in somebody else to replace me, to which he said, now I'll sleep in.

And so that's how we handle that.

So be consistent.

Pick a schedule.

Think about it.

Check with everybody.

Because once you pick that, you don't want to move.

I mean, you've heard that if you ever get lost, one of the best ways to get found is to not move so that those that are looking for you can find you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And now the big question.

What tool should I use to live stream?

And so I have live streamed for Libsyn.

When I work there, I've live streamed for PodPage and I've live streamed for me.

And here's the thing, it almost doesn't matter because whatever you choose will eventually have bugs in it and then you'll want to leave.

And if you hang around for about two weeks, they'll work out the bugs and then they'll come back.

But this is for me, my favorite easy to use, affordable is restream.

It's $19 a month.

Now if you want all those AI goodies realize.

Have you not figured this out yet?

AI is ridiculously expensive.

So if you want it to do clips and all the other fun stuff, it's basically 40 bucks a month.

I use right now.

I use ECAMM Live, it's Mac only and I use the $40 a month now.

That's because I have people coming in.

But if it was only me and I was doing a solo show, it would be $20 a month.

It's a really great program.

I've never really had a problem with it.

The only problem I have is I use a thing called Stream Deck, which is this little box that I can push buttons and change scenes and all this other stuff.

And there are times and I'm not sure if it's.

I think it's more the stream deck than eCamm.

I've met the ECAMM people.

I went to ECAMM camp last year.

Great company, great product with a huge learning curve, by the way.

The good news is you can make scenes that are absolutely gorgeous and they've really.

I mean I've seen it firsthand.

They really listen to their audience and they make software updates like people lost their mind because last year they added the ability to add like you could send a Zoom link, your guests could join and you could pull them into ECAMM and their target audience in the ecamp.

You gotta watch how you say that now.

Went like ballistic.

Was crazy.

Now if you are on a budget and you're on the pro plan for Zoom and you don't mind digging through help desk articles, apparently there is a way you can live stream to YouTube on Zoom wouldn't be my first choice.

I've used EVMux.

That's the weirdest name for any company, but they have a nice feature set.

And when Streamyard, which is another one at $45 a month, when Streamyard first was purchased by Bending Spoons and everybody went, holy cow, I'm not using that.

It was.

We needed an option on a PC and I said check out evmux and that would be my solution.

But if that's for live streaming again, I might go restream.

EVMUX is a little new.

I did use them.

They have a lot of built in stuff and I know you're probably thinking, but Dave, what about Riverside?

Because Riverside will not only live stream, it'll do the fun filled clippy doo thing and it does the text editing and things like that.

And look, I've met the people from Riverside.

They're really nice.

I love the idea of their software.

I have just had horrible luck every time.

I just started using it for PodPage.

We did a webinar last month and it kicked me out of the webinar.

When I came back in about 30 minutes in.

All of a sudden my guest audio turned into a buzz just like, you know, and then now we were.

To their credit, they have built in editing and their built in editing made it easy to correct all the mistakes.

But it was frustrating and it didn't go well.

When you're on a live thing for your company and all of a sudden your webinar just goes right in the toilet, it's not a good look.

And I have had, I've used it probably five or six times and I've had probably an issue 40% of the time.

And that's just.

And I get it.

They keep adding new features.

Now you can talk to and say, hey, Riverside, edit out the boring parts and it'll do that.

But A, that makes it expensive and B, it kind of doesn't work.

You know, I.

In the.

Especially if you think about it, its job, its primary job is to record a interview.

So it's so much better than Zoom in terms of audio and video.

But it's weird that Riverside and then I could mention descript, but descript doesn't do live streaming.

It's just like, can't we get somebody who does that consistently?

Like, never fails.

And that answer would be Streamyard.

Now, Streamyard is one of those crappy websites that don't list their prices.

That usually means they're too expensive.

So I logged in because I have a free account that I have for, you know, forever.

And when I looked at the upgrade prices, it said $45 a month.

And I was like, well, that's about the same price as eCamm.

It's a little more.

But Streamyard was rock solid, like I said.

And then they got bought and they boosted their pricing.

I know Danny over at Captivate, I've never used this tool.

I know people that used it when it first came out and they said, not ready yet.

But Danny over at Captivate loves Boomcaster.

It's only $20 a month.

So for me, if I'm doing a live stream, I probably right now would lean toward restream just because it's cheaper than eCamm.

And yes, you can't be as fancy with the scenes and how it looks.

But if I just wanted a solid thing that let me restream to multiple locations and I wasn't on a Mac, I would go with Restream or EVMux.

If I'm on a Mac, I'm probably going eCamm live just because it is a really cool program and you can do a whole lot more than just do live streaming.

You can record videos if you're doing some sort of, you know, training, things like that.

It does a lot of really cool stuff.

It is, you know, expensive.

It's.

It's up there above the other ones, but it does a lot of cool stuff.

Just realize there is a learning curve when it comes to ecamm and it's, it's just completely different than any other software.

So you're either going to love it or you're going to hate it.

And that's the nice thing about it being Mac only is it works.

That's the beautiful thing.

You're not dealing with multiple operating systems and things like that.

So those are the tools.

I don't really have a. Oh, you should use this one.

I use ECAMM on a regular basis and I've used Restream and both those.

Never had a problem.

I used evmux for a month.

The only one that I've really had problems with unfortunately is Riverside.

And that's because in a way they are trying to be an all in one thing.

And for me that introduces bugs.

So I know people that I love and trust that swear by Riverside.

Just my personal experience has not been great.

The beautiful thing is many of these have a free trial, so kick the tires on it and pick the one that doesn't make you want to pull your hair out.

In my travels, one of the great things about this is you get to interact with your audience.

And I have taken large steps so that people can call in on their phone.

And for my audience, they do not want to do that.

They want to type their answer in the chat and that's fine.

And most of the live events that I look at, that's how people are interacting with their audience.

So if you want to.

Now I can, I have a link that I use that people could join the video live, which is kind of scary because you never know if people are going to show up with their clothes on, you know.

But I'm, I trust my audience enough to where I'm like, here's the link if you want to join because I would much rather talk to them live than have to chat.

Because there's like a 30 second chat, maybe 20 seconds, there's like a delay and when they're on with you, it's the best.

But again, not everybody wants to be on camera.

So keep that in mind that when it comes to interacting, they're probably going to want to use the chat.

Now in the event you are lucky enough to have somebody Join you live.

One of the skills you're going to have to be okay with, and it takes a little practice, is saying, thank you so much for the call, and then move on.

Because you'll hear this a lot in sports where.

Where somebody will call up and go, man, we need to bench that quarterback.

He's an idiot.

I told that guy.

And you're like, wow, you know Dwayne from, you know, Poughkeepsie.

Thanks so much for that.

Uh, why do you think he's an idiot?

Ah, he's an idiot.

I.

We should have benched him long time ago.

And you're like, yeah, I know he had a bad game, but what else do you think?

Ah, that guy's an idiot.

We should have benched him.

And it dawns on you that Dwayne from Poughkeepsie doesn't really have anything else to say.

And now it's your job to politely go, all right, Dwayne, thanks so much for calling in.

And then you move on to the next topic.

So you have to kick him out because he's said all he has to say.

And there are people, especially in the sports world on, at least on the radio, that like, oh, I'm on the radio.

I'm not getting out until he kicks me out.

So you may have to be okay with saying, thank you so much for the call and.

And then booting them out.

That is not an easy skill to be comfortable with.

So when you go to do it, you're like, you know, I finally got a collar.

I don't want to kick them out, but sometimes you kind of have to.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What about cameras?

Do I need to go 4K?

Well, right now, in 2025, you don't need to be 4K.

But shortly, and don't ask me to look into my crystal ball, 4K is going to be normal.

So if you're going to buy a camera, you might as well go 4k now.

The fun thing is these go all over the place.

There is one I like Tom Buck on YouTube for product reviews.

I should have Tom on this show.

He's a great guy, and he was playing with this thing called the YOLO 3.

It's a 4K kind of streaming camera.

It's like 200 bucks.

I use an Elgato Facecam Pro.

That's a 4K.

Again, about 200 bucks.

There is the Osbot Meet.

Yep, that's the name of it.

That again, 4cam.

It's about $129.

Not quite as fancy as the other ones.

But definitely still looks good.

Logitech has a webcam that's 4K, that's around 180 bucks.

So you're looking at 200 bucks.

Now if you go DSLR, I have a Sony Alpha ZV E10 2.

Oh, listen to all the numbers and algorithms.

Isn't that exciting?

Yeah, but the fun thing is, and this is a cheap1, it's $1200 and yet I don't use it.

Why?

Because I, it's, you know, more than I need.

But if I was really, really, if I was a professional YouTuber, I would be all over that.

But this is why when I say when you first start off.

Because here's the thing.

If you go, okay, I'm going all in.

I'm going to get the Sony Alpha ZV10II.

Okay, great.

It comes with a lens, but then you watch a YouTube video and they're like, oh no, you need to go to the close up wide lens with an F stop of blah, blah, blah.

And just the lens of the camera is like $400.

And that's a cheap one.

So this is why I say when you go video, if you want to do super pro, you're going to put out a lot of money.

But those are some.

He said here in quotation marks.

Affordable webcams.

If you want to do 4K.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Now one of the things you want to do, and just think of this as an actor, think of it as a musician, anything.

You practice a lot before you do this in public.

And I do this every Saturday.

I wake up and if I've done it right, I reboot my computer.

I check all the software to make sure it's up to date.

And then I basically push all the buttons and make sure everything is working.

Cause there have been many times that gremlins come in.

Why?

Because I have more technology now in the process.

I've got this software is talking to that.

I've got the lights on Bluetooth, I've got this, I've got blah, blah, blah.

And that was the other thing.

If you want to do live and you want to play sound effects and things like that, then you probably want a Rodecaster duo.

So I can say that really stinks, you know, and then I can go, well, we talked to Adam Curry and we asked him about the whole Netflix and Spotify and he said this Spotify video podcasts will now be streaming on Netflix.

Who wants that right now notice when Adam first came in, he was way too loud.

So that's another thing of live.

This is why you need to practice, so that you can make sure all your audio levels are the same when you're pressing these buttons and things of that nature.

So you need to practice, practice, practice.

I know when I did my first live stream with Riverside for PodPage, I did a bunch that were.

I used the software, but it wasn't live.

It was just me switching scenes and things like that.

And I was like, okay, I feel comfortable with that.

And then when I went live, even though I clicked all the buttons that said let the chat come into.

Well, the chat, it did not.

And so you want to try these and sometimes you'll just end up doing a live stream that's just called test 1, 2, 3.

And you do it that way, but you want to practice because it's live.

You're now doing a performance in front of people and it takes practice.

I know for me, when I first started, and even though I had a co host, and we'll talk about that in a second, I would be in the middle of a sentence and just leave it and then go over to the chat room.

So I'd be like, yeah.

And for me, the microphone worked great.

Oh, Steve from Poughkeepsie.

I don't know what I always say Poughkeepsie, you know, Steve from Austin is asking about the.

You know, I just.

So if you're somewhat add.

It takes a little practice.

So how do you get to Carnegie Hall?

Practice, practice, practice.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Which leads us to how do I talk as I'm reading the chat room?

And this is something, as someone who is pretty ADHD and any other kind of vowels.

Can I get a vow?

Can I get a I'd like to buy a U, please.

It's hard for me to not do that.

It took lots of practice to ignore the chat room or to kind of read it, but not just jump into it.

And that's when what really helped the show Ask the Podcast Coach is when I was lucky enough to have a guy named Jim Collison from TheAverageGuy TV that said, hey, it looks like you could use a little help here.

Because I started Ask the Podcast Coach, I was going to do it a month.

I was testing a thing called blog talk radio that, thank God, finally went out of business.

It was horrible.

And then we used blabbed and then we used YouTube.

I forget what it was.

And now we're using eCamm.

We've tried many different things and having a co host, I feel is unless you're just doing a webinar, it's almost a.

You need it because you can't read the chat room and talk to people.

So you either need somebody if you're doing it solo, so we might call them a producer who is just watching the chat room.

When I did webinars for Libsyn, I had the fabulous Elsie Escobar and Brian the video guy, and Corey and Sarah.

All these people were in the chat room.

And then they would organize, because we had lots of people on those, and they would organize them into questions.

And so I could just go into an area and look at the questions and keep going.

But if you're doing that yourself, it's tough.

And so what I did, I did it today.

I just went, well, let's see what the chat room is up to.

And it seems like an eternity.

It was maybe five seconds, as in 1001-1002-1003-1004.

See, it is long.

Five, as I read the chat room.

And then if there's nothing there, you're kind of like, well, that's wasted space that you can always edit out later in the audio.

Because here's another fun thing about the YouTubes is I you, in theory, you can go into YouTube and edit out a small chunk here and a small chunk there, but it takes days for them to process the video so that you can go in and make edits.

There have been many times when I've messed up the beginning.

I'll go to hit the intro music and I'll go ask the podcast coach for October 19, 2025.

And instead of hitting let's get ready to pod, I'll hit this one.

You know, and that's just not the right button.

You know, I've got all in, so.

And that's another skill is you have to learn.

Let's get ready to podcast.

And now I'm mixing down the music so it's not too loud, but it's not, like, loud enough.

You have to learn how to mix live.

And then if I'm.

What I normally do is I just slowly fade this out as I'm talking.

And after a while, you don't even think about it.

And it's a slow fade.

It's a slow fade.

And yeah, so that's another skill, but it's hard to do by yourself, is what I'm saying.

So again, when you pick a co host, make sure they are as committed as.

As you are and make sure that they have the same date and the same time and then you have to have the awkward conversation with them, which is, if we ever make any money with this, who gets what?

And I've talked about that in previous episodes about co hosts that you always want to have every detail ironed out, who gets what, who does what, set those expectations so that later we don't hear that Ernie and Bert have broken up and Bert just torched the whole apartment.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And one thing I should have mentioned, mentioned you're going to need two monitors.

I always assume everybody has two monitors.

You're going to want two monitors, one for the live stream and one for whatever you're doing and your notes.

And you can use things like Google Docs so you're actually on the same page with your co host.

And most of these tools I mentioned have a private chat so that you and your co host can go, let's get this guy out.

He's boring.

You know, she's kind of taking over the show, whatever it is, so keep that in mind.

But also, we talked about how there is more technology.

Somewhere along the line, you're going to be in a bunch of people in front of them, and things are just going to break.

And I'm just letting you know that it's going to happen.

And what's kind of great about this, this is a great skill to have where, you know, just things go weird.

I know one week we had a guy that had his camera off, and when I said, hey, you're on with Dave and Jim.

What's your question?

And he turned on his camera and just blew a big bong hit right into the camera.

I've had.

I did a zoom call once where people joined, their cameras were off, and when they turned them on, it was nothing but porn.

And that was embarrassing.

And so I just.

You have to be able to go, okay, well, that happened.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch.

And then you just keep on going.

And so realize that's gonna happen.

And remember, your audience is pulling for you as much as you think.

They're sitting there going, man, what an idiot.

I can't believe he's like, no, no.

Your audience is like, no, I came here to be entertained and educated and whatever, and they're pulling for you to pull it together.

So just remember when it happens, to have a quick little giggle and you can move on.

The school of podcasting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So let's dispel a myth.

And that is.

Well, the beautiful thing about doing a live stream is when you're done, you're done.

And I'm here to tell you no, because I prep a lot before doing a live show.

So any time that I save from editing is now spent preparing because I'm not turning on a microphone in front of people without having some idea what the heck I'm going to talk about.

Now, my show, I go where the chat room goes, but if the chat room goes, I don't care.

Dealer's choice.

Dave, what do you want to talk about?

I better have something sitting there.

So it's really not, I know a lot of people like, oh, it's great because when you're done, you're done.

Yeah.

But don't neglect that time you set to prepare and come up with topics in the event that nobody has something to chime in with.

Or again, when you first start, you might have maybe two people show up.

And this again is where having a newsletter really comes in handy and having social and just reminding people you can use tool.

I use Luma Lu.

It's a weird URL.

Lu.ma.

and the only reason I like it is you can sell tickets on that, but this is free.

Is it's an easy way to have people add it to their calendar.

There are places like Pod News that you can list events and I would, I would believe that your live is an event depending on, I don't know, ask James about that.

But you want to promote this a lot and it's going to take a while for that to really sink in.

And people go, oh, wait, I.

It's, you know, it's 6:30 on Tuesday.

It's time to go listen to Ginger or whoever.

Right.

So it's going to take a while for that to kick in.

And then when people hear the interactive on the show, in theory that should entice them to come talk to you live.

Now, not always.

I listen to a show on Friday.

It is part of my routine because they live stream every Friday afternoon.

But I'm working then and so I don't listen and I listen to the replay.

So here again, I could listen live, but I don't.

And that's going to be the boat for a lot of your audience.

We are not used to having, you know, must see, Thursday was a long time ago.

So keep that in mind.

That one of the kind of perceptions you have to have is when you first start and you go, man, I've got, you know, 400 downloads an episode.

I'm going to do this and I'm going to have maybe 200 people show up to do maybe, you know, five something like that.

Whatever 3% of 400 is, that would be an even dozen.

That's right, 12.

So keep that in mind, because when you show up and you've done all this prep work and you're ready to go, and then nobody shows up, it can really be quite the kick in the, you know, pants.

So keep that in mind.

Now, why would you do this, then?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

One of the nice things.

And again, we said this at the very beginning.

The biggest benefit of this is instant connection with your audience when they show up eventually.

But I feel like I am closer connected to Jeff C. And Chris Stone and Randy Black and Uncle Marv.

And I could name a whole bunch of people that show up.

Jason, who's always letting us know where he is from around the globe as he talks about wrestling.

And, I mean, it's.

There's.

It's the same people show up.

Gary.

I'm sitting here thinking, oh, I'm gonna forget somebody's name.

But I'm here to tell you I appreciate everybody that shows up because they make the show.

It's called Ask the Podcast Coach.

The other thing that's interesting about this, by the way, is I will have somebody who wants to hire me for consulting, and I'm like, here it is.

And then they see my price tag, and they're like, okay.

And I'm like, well, you can get free consulting.

All you have to do is wake up at 10:30 Eastern on Saturday.

You can come to Ask the podcast coach, jump into the video, and get as much free consulting as you want.

And I wake up on Saturday, and they're not there.

So keep that in mind.

But that's the biggest thing I'm not guessing.

Does my audience want to hear this?

Because they're giving me a topic to talk about.

Now, again, there are times when they're kind of like, I'm just here to listen, that I will go out.

And again, where do I get my questions?

I go to Reddit, I go to Facebook, I go to Quora.

I go to other podcasting places to see what people are talking about.

So I'm not guessing what they're doing.

You can use answer the public.

There's all sorts of places that you can come up with topics to talk about.

But in the end, you have to ask yourself, is it worth buying more equipment?

Is it worth the learning curve of learning the technology?

Is it worth the extra expense of streaming software?

Is it worth the extra time?

Well, not really extra, but is it worth the fact that I now have to Spend an hour and a half before I go live to make sure I'm ready to go.

Is that all worth showing up to?

Have four people, 10 people, whatever you do, show up to do the live show.

And so just again, I'm not trying to poo poo this, but I remember when I first showed up, I did live shows to no one, as in zero audience.

There we go.

Yes.

Where's the buzzer?

And it felt weird to be talking to nobody.

But right now, even though there's nobody in here, I always talk as if you are listening because I know you are going to listen, and I deeply appreciate that.

So if you want to check it out, it's fun.

It is fun because there are times I turned Ask the Podcast Coach into a trial of crowdfunding.

So I use Patreon.

I now use Supercast, and I get a decent amount of money.

I'm not going to retire on it from that.

But the biggest thing is, for me is it's fun.

I have, like I said, somewhere between 20 and maybe 30, 35, tops.

Ever in the chat room.

They're fun.

Often the chat room is doing their own show, and I'm like, guys, we're talking about, you know, growing your show on social, and they're over there talking about Scooby Doo reruns or something, and I'm like, wait, what?

So it's fun.

I get to hang out with one of my favorite people, Jim Collison, and we both make each other laugh.

And so that is one where you go, why are you doing Ask the podcast coach?

Well, here's my reasons.

Number one, I am a people pleaser.

So when somebody goes, I can't afford to hire you as a coach.

And I'm like, well, then join the school of podcasting where you get unlimited coaching.

But there's that.

Then it's an instant connection with my audience.

It's ideas for this show and the fact that I get out to hang out with Jim Collison and the coolest chat room on the Internet.

Is it more work?

Yep.

Is it more expensive?

Yep.

And I start that show at 10:30.

I start prepping for it at 9.

I am done with it, and it's published somewhere around three, maybe two, tops.

Because I am letting, in this case, Buzzsprout is where I have a show on just about every host.

And I let Buzzsprout go through and fill out, cut out the filler words, make chapters for me.

I have it do all that AI stuff.

But again, hey, AI saves me Time.

And it takes a lot of money out of my wallet.

And I always say you're going to pay in two currencies, either time or money.

Use the one you got the most of.

And so that's one where it's worth my time to let them do that for me.

How can I forget to talk about lighting if we're going to be doing live streaming?

The most important thing in video besides the audio, Audio is first and second is lighting.

And I like elgato stuff because it works with my stream deck.

But you end up paying a lot for that little, you know, ooh, look, I can push a button where you could get something.

I just bought my first neewer, I guess is how you pronounce it, Neewer.

And they have a pack of lights, key lights, two key lights for $179.

And it comes with a remote control.

And I'm here to tell you I think the remote control might be easier than trying to load the software so your computer can talk to the stream deck so that the little button can work as long as you don't need to upgrade your software.

You know what?

Maybe.

And so I have a knee where light.

And here's the fun part.

I bought this thing.

It is four feet wide.

It's one of those big huge domes that looks like a bunch of waffles are in the middle of it.

And I have a standing desk.

I didn't even think about this because I normally don't stand at it, but when I want to, I can't because the light is too big.

So I'm going to be removing that from my office and I'll just be stuck with what I used to have, which is two key lights.

And like I said, I have elgato key lights, but you can get two lights and and stands that plug in.

You don't need batteries and a remote control for 180 bucks.

And usually you want two lights in front of you and one behind you.

But if you're just getting started, you could have one or you could have two in front of you and that would get you going.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

One last quick tip.

Always make the same URL.

So for me it's askthepodcastcoach.com live that way, if I ever want to change to a different format, it's still the same URL.

This is super easy to do in PodPage.

If you're using WordPress, I'm sure you could come up with some sort of pretty link to point at whatever website you're going to.

But that's another thing I've always done is I tell my audience, go to AskThePodcastCoach.com live at 10:30am Eastern and you'll see me and Jim, I want to thank everyone who showed up for Dave's Kitchen.

If you hadn't heard about this, because I've now dynamically pulled all that content out, thank you, Captivate.

And this is where I basically just showed up and said, hey, I do this show for you and I would love to know what I'm doing right, so I can do more of that.

If there's anything I'm doing that's annoying, let me know.

And it's not like you're sitting across the table from me.

Dave's Kitchen was I want you to come into the kitchen and stand next to me and let's make a meal together.

And I took that recording, had it transcribed, and then had AI go through and I said, list all the ideas that came up.

I have 49 different ideas that I can use now.

Some of them I've tried in the past and they didn't work.

But that was in some cases 10 years ago.

And maybe it didn't work not because it was a bad idea, but because it just wasn't the right time.

But I want to thank everyone who showed up to that and we had a good time and I got some great ideas, I got some great insights.

The hardest part, and I actually want to pat myself a little bit on the back, was not being defensive.

When somebody brought up something that I've done before.

It's so easy to go, yeah, we tried, it didn't work.

Nevermind, moving on.

No, it's like, oh, hold on, let's write that down.

And just letting the ideas come in, we'll write them down.

We'll maybe try some of these.

You know, obviously this one we said, oh, that's, you're right, I haven't talked about this.

So I want to let you know that if you're like, oh, I would have liked to gone to Dave's Kitchen.

It's always open.

Just go to schoolofpodcasting.com feedback and you can leave audio feedback, which is my favorite because you know, it's an audio podcast, video, or you can write it in as well.

Just go to schoolofpodcasting.com feedback Dave's Kitchen never closes and I'm always looking to make the best content for you.

So thank you so much for that in advance.

If you want to leave a testimonial while you're there.

Those are always happy.

And if you want to leave one letting me know just how much I am awful and stinky and, you know, I should, I don't know, fall under a truck, whatever.

You know, trolls, you are welcome as well.

Because here's a way to think about this.

If somebody leaves you a really nasty gram, they still had to get off the couch.

They still had to find their phone.

You still move them to action.

For what it's worth.

And with that, we're going to call it a day.

Of course, if you want to join the school of podcasting, don't forget that coupon code listener.

You can sign up for a monthly, a quarterly, or a yearly subscription and get access to step by step courses, an amazing community, and unlimited coaching with little old me by going to schoolofpodcasting.com start again, coupon code listener, and I will see you on the inside.

I'm Dave Jackson.

I help podcasters.

I've been doing this for 20 years.

Can't wait to see what you and I are going to do together.

And until next week, take care.

God bless.

Class is dismissed.

And now you made it to the end.

Go tell all your friends.

Podcasting sense.

Ow.

I just hit my hand on the desk.

Could you hear that?

Oh, man.

Podcasting, Podcasting.

Podcasting.

Like I play the guitar.

I need those knuckles.

Wow, that hurt.

But I'm excited to be here.

Yeah.

Holy cow.