How Do Podcasters Recapture The Ones That Got Away? [S3E14]

A note of caution before we begin: This was not the topic I had planned to cover on today’s episode. But my brain went on a tangent 15 minutes before showtime, and it’s kind of in control of what I do. So here we are, pontificating on the fly!

One of the cool features Captivate.fm (https://www.captivate.fm/signup?ref=evoterra) offers (I promise this is not a commercial for Captivate.fm, though I am on their Advisory board) is some insight into the number of unique individuals who have ever downloaded an episode of your podcast. 

It’s not a secret that some people will listen once to an episode of a podcast and never listen again. Better said, a lot of people will download an episode of a podcast once, never to download another episode or that podcast again. Harsher reality: They might never even listen to the file they downloaded.

I’m going to share with you the numbers of unique downloaders for my show. Actual, real numbers. Not indexes. No rounding up. The real numbers from today. But I need you to understand that “unique downloaders” is not the same as the number of unique downloads. Advertisers care about unique downloads of episodes where their ads appear. Podcast owners, showrunners, producers, or others who work on the program should care more about the total number of unique people the show reaches. And it’s the latter I care most about and find most puzzling. 

Today’s unique downloaders: 22  - Unique downloaders today doesn't mean a lot to me. I suppose it might give me some insight into how many die-hard fans await new episodes with bated breath each day. But it’s probably too narrow of a window to make much of a difference to me. 

Yesterday’s unique downloaders: 148 - This timeslice is a little more interesting. It’s helping me understand the scale of my “subscribers” or the dedicated people who grab an episode -- either automatically or intentionally -- the day it’s published. But even though I produce a daily show, this is probably a too narrow timeslice for me to focus on.

Last 7-Days unique downloaders: 399 - This is the first viable candidate for a metric that answers the question: Is my show growing? For me, it directionally lines up pretty well with my average 7-day downloads my episodes see, which is about half of that. I just wish I had a historical chart to examine so I could track change over time. Something for the suggestion box!

Last 28-Days unique downloaders: 755 - On the surface, this seems to be a better candidate than 7-Days for the proxy metric for audience size. It’s a big enough timeslice to get all the stragglers in there as well as a few opportunistic listeners. But it’s also starting to point out the problem implied in today’s topic: 755 different people downloaded at least one of my episodes in the last 28 days. Roughly speaking, one half of them didn’t keep downloading.

Last 90-Days unique downloaders: 1,667 - I’m not going to shout that my podcast’s audience is around 1,600 people. A timeslice this wide captures a lot of noise from one-time downloads or other human interactions that resulted in a download that was never intended to be listened to. (Bear in mind that my show was on break for ~70 of those 90 days. So 2/3rds of those tracked were not downloading new episodes.)

All-time unique downloaders: 3,134 - If the 90-Days number was noisy, we’re approaching near-complete signal loss for this timeslice. But it’s a big number, and podcasters like to see big numbers. (Nota bene: I moved to Captivate earlier in the year. So “all-time” for me is like 6 months.)

Let’s rip the bandaid off: Thousands of people download this show, but I’m only converting around 10% of them to regular listenership.

Does that seem troubling to you? I think we podcasters often have this romantic notion that once someone listens to an episode of our show, they’ll likely stick around.

The numbers I shared above refute that. It’s entirely... Support this podcast