206 | This One Click Trick Boosts Podcast Downloads (Ethically!)

[00:00:00] What if I told you one single click could count as a podcast download, even if no one actually listens? Yeah, it happens every day. And in this episode, we're exposing the shady side of downloads and how to use the same trick to ethically grow your show.

[00:00:23] Sound matters. Be heard. Welcome to the podcast where you get exclusive behind the scenes tips to make your own show sound truly spectacular. This is Podtastic Audio. What's happening? How are you doing today? Thank you so much for being here. I am Chris and you clicked on the right show at the right time at the right point.

[00:00:50] This is Podcasting Audio. The one, the only. That's right. Here I am. And I love podcasting, obviously. And I love creating content, obviously. Hopefully you do too. I love podcasting so much that I actually listen and I create and I listen to things I create. Do you do the same? Maybe you do.

[00:01:12] And us indie podcasters, we're always looking for ways to make our show sound amazing, look amazing, compete with all of the big name shows that are out there right now. Because when you look at podcasting, at least for an audio format, really, not talking much video because videos all over the place, but just talking audio podcasting exclusively. You know, people really think of like two types of podcasts when they get into podcasting.

[00:01:41] They think of like the big name celebrities talking to other celebrities, you know, doing those celebrity stuff. Or they kind of think of more of like the business entrepreneurship, maybe, you know, think peace, deep thought leader in the business space. So I got like the business side of podcasting and the making money and it's for your business and things like that. And then you got the big celebrity piece of podcasting, which celebrities talk to other celebrities.

[00:02:09] But us indie podcasters, we don't really fill either of those places. Not really. I mean, we kind of can dabble a little bit into that stuff if you wanted to. I mean, as an indie podcaster, yeah, you possibly could interview somebody that might be a celebrity or semi-celebrity. And also as an indie podcaster, you could do a show that's about your business or how to teach others about their business and your business. Yeah, you could do that too. Great.

[00:02:38] But what about us? The regular indie people that love doing this just because we love creating something. We love creating content that we can share to everybody else out there. And I understand and I do understand that if you are not making any money on this and you are not getting any return on your investment, whether it's likes or downloads or people commenting or something like that, or even money itself,

[00:03:07] if you're not getting any kind of return on the investment of podcasting, then I can see where a show would in fact actually podfade and disappear and shut things down. Especially if you're using a free platform like YouTube or Spotify. Either or pick your poison. If you're not paying for any kind of monthly charges or monthly costs at all, then yeah, I can see where possibly you're like,

[00:03:35] well, it ain't going anywhere. The show ain't growing. I'm not getting any new downloads. I'm not getting any new people listening. Then why continue doing it? And I understand. I get it. But today we're going to talk about podcasting growth. And there's a little secret that I came across just recently. And I mean recently, I mean like yesterday. And it's probably nothing new to some of the big podcasters that have been doing this for a while.

[00:04:04] Like Chris, we know about this secret forever. We knew how this worked for a long time. Well, I didn't know about it. I just figured it out just recently. Now, before I go any further today, I want to let you know that one, you can podcast about anything you want, however you want to do it. It's your show. Do it however you feel comfortable doing your podcast. And the second thing I want to say today is that what I'm about to tell you today is something that could be seen as completely unethical.

[00:04:35] And it's up to you to make the best choices and best decisions with the information I'm about to give you today. This is your fair warning right now. And on that note, do you know how they kind of count downloads when you look at your stats on your podcast? Assuming you have an IAB certified host that counts downloads in a certain way.

[00:05:00] When a download is counted on your media file, media host, whatever host you use, whether it's Libsyn, Captivate, Buzzsprout, whatever. When somebody actually presses play on their player, it actually starts downloading the background, feeding it down to your phone or device. And when it downloads it, it needs to download a certain portion of the file

[00:05:25] to count as an actual download back at your podcast media host. So, for example, if you press play on an episode and chunks of the data started downloading in the background, but it starts playing. Now, if it downloads, say, you know, a good chunk of the episode, let's say half the episode gets downloaded already, and you only listen to a little bit of it, well, it counts as a full download to the device.

[00:05:53] And also, too, if you're subscribed to some shows on some devices, on some apps, they will download without you having pressing play, which means it can be downloaded to your device. It can show a download back at the media host, and you may not even listen to the episode. So, it also counts as a download. So, something to think about. And this also means that just because somebody, you know, shows they downloaded your episode,

[00:06:22] does not guarantee that they listened to the entire thing. There's a good chance they did not. There's a good chance they may have listened only for five seconds or for halfway through the episode, whatever, they turned it off. It all counts as a download. And when you see it on your stats, you're like, oh, great, I got another download. Fantastic. That's great. So, if you want to download on your episode, you have to have somebody else listen to your episode. It kind of makes sense, right? But there's also another thing.

[00:06:52] If you want them to physically download that MP3, download that file to whatever device they have, whether they listen to it or not, that's also going to count as a download because obviously it just downloaded, right? Makes sense. So, that's why they called downloads versus plays. But I like plays better, but everybody goes with downloads because that's kind of like the standard for podcasting is like downloads.

[00:07:18] So, now you know how a download actually shows up in your host where you get the downloads from. The question is, how do you get somebody else out there in the wild to physically download your podcast? I mean, we're doing all the marketing, right? We're pushing it out on social media. Maybe you got a newsletter. We're pushing links in there. We're telling our friends and family. We're doing everything we can to get somebody to press play on our show, to listen to our podcast.

[00:07:47] But what if I were to tell you there's another way you can get somebody to download your show? And this is where things get a little dicey, a little complicated, and a little unethical if you do this the, you know, kind of shady way, really. So, I've noticed this on Captivate, Buzzsprout, and Libsyn. Sorry if you're on Spotify. If you're on Spotify for creators or podcasters or whatever they call it these days,

[00:08:16] if you're hosting your show on Spotify for creators, this feature is not there. So, what I'm talking about is that they have as an option per episode on Libsyn and Buzzsprout and Captivate a sharing feature. You go in the sharing folder. When you have an episode up, there's like sharing options. You can share it to Twitter, X, or whatever, Facebook, maybe LinkedIn. And there's your standard,

[00:08:44] share the actual website player. You're going to share the website, which is going to pull up a page, which has the episode on there. You can listen to it right on that website, on that page. Great. It looks like any other web player you've ever seen. It looks like any other thing you've ever done when you share your podcast. But there's another button. Another button that most people don't really know what it does because they don't really touch it. Now, this button downloads the MP3 file

[00:09:13] directly to your device, and it shows up in a new browser window and starts playing automatically without even having to go through an app, without even having to go through a player thing of any kind. It automatically, with one click, starts playing and downloading in the background automatically. Now, I just pulled up Buzzsprout right now, and I'm looking at an episode I did for Ace,

[00:09:41] and it says here there is a share link to the episode, which gives you a link page to the episode. But directly below that, there is a call. It's called direct link to MP3. Now, when you click that, it's going to give you a brand new link. It's going to be like www.buzzsprout.com, bunch of numbers, random, whatever. When somebody clicks that link, it starts playing the episode in the browser,

[00:10:10] in its own little like browser player thing, and it automatically does it without having to go through any hoops, without having to go through any kind of like anything at all. Now that you know that, this is where things can get a little shady, and this is exactly how all of those podcast promoters you see, every service that does some kind of podcast promotion, where you pay them to boost your downloads,

[00:10:40] you pay them to give you more downloads, or whatever. This is exactly how they do it. So what happens is this. Now that you know that by just clicking this link, it automatically downloads the episode in one shot, right? So click the link, it automatically starts downloading no matter what you do. So what people do, shady people do,

[00:11:08] is they will embed like hidden iframes of the MP3 playing invisibly on these websites. So when you land on a website, or click a banner, or click an ad, or click something, it automatically starts downloading in the background, and you don't even know it's even there, causing like a fake download. It's a real download, but no one's actually listening to it. And you being the podcaster, you see downloads on your side.

[00:11:37] It's kind of how they fake the system. So also, they've got these bots involved. You know, of course, bots run the world. Bots are online everywhere. Bot farms and phone farms and things like that. So we got all these things set up to click thousands of fake clicks, you know, on rotating IP addresses, going around and around, clicking on something that's automatically downloading your files in the background using that special link.

[00:12:06] And of course, also, people will do lots of clickbait, like put something out that's not really what it's supposed to be. Hey, click on this cool thing right now. Click on this ad or this cool thing. And you click on it. And then maybe it's promising like a free PDF or something, right? And you click on this thing. And then what happens is that that podcast is actually being downloaded in the background behind the thing. You don't even know it's even there. You're like, where'd this come from?

[00:12:35] Kind of like a virus, I guess, so to speak. It's like you're being a virus for people when you do things this way. And this is exactly how those scammers, those podcast promoters, it's exactly how these services do this. You think you thought it was possibly like real people listening to this stuff? No, this is how the podcast promoters do it. Now, it's kind of like stuffing the ballot box with fake voters,

[00:13:04] except the voters are bots and your podcast is actually really growing. So if you ever wonder how a random show with like 12 followers has 20,000 downloads per episode, well, now you know. And now that you know the unethical way to use this system, to actually cheat, to manipulate people to think you have a million downloads when you really don't,

[00:13:32] well, you can still use this to your advantage. You can still use this to promote your podcast, but you got to do it in an ethical way. Now, this is how you can do it in an ethical way that actually makes sense. So when you grab that player link, whether it's Buzzsprout, Lipsyn, Captivate, wherever, I think they all have it. Sorry, Spotify. Sorry, you who are on Spotify. I'm sorry. This doesn't work for you. I'm just sorry. They don't have it available. And I think the reason why they don't have it available

[00:14:00] is because Spotify doesn't want you leaving Spotify. They want you to listen to everything within their own little Spotify universe. So having the actual link to download lets you listen to it in other places, like the browser or wherever. So that's probably why they don't want you leaving Spotify. But anyways, back to podcasting here. So when you do get the actual link to download the episode, you can post it on social media.

[00:14:29] But here's what I would do. I would say things like, listen here now, no app needed. Press play, whatever, something like that. So that when you do press play, they know exactly what they're doing and you're being open and honest about it. In other words, it's no different than posting a link to the episode. Say it's a Spotify link or a GoodPods link or an Apple link or anything like that. It's virtually the same thing. It's just the actual file itself being played right there

[00:14:59] in the browser. So it doesn't look very fancy, but it does play and it does download. So you got that. It's a quick way for somebody to really play your episode immediately without having to go through all the hoops. Because some people will say things like, well, find my show on Apple or find my show wherever or this, and they'll send you some weird link or whatever. So if you want someone to press play on your show and actually listen to it immediately, because I can tell you this much, if you are sending somebody

[00:15:29] somewhere to a site or a link tree or through a bunch of like different hoops they have to jump through, people will tune out immediately. I know I do. Every time I have to go somewhere on a website and they say, fill out this form or fill this thing out or enter this or enter that, I am checked out. Especially if it's a credit card. Oh my God, I'm definitely checked out. I'm like, forget this crap, close the page, hit the X, I'm done. So I can see where this could be a very powerful tool to share your episode quickly

[00:15:58] to the user, especially on social media because people rarely click things outside of social media. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. But if somebody clicks something outside social media, takes them outside social media and they have to jump through a bunch of hoops, they're done. But if it was one click and things start happening immediately, like it started playing immediately, that's why when you're on social media and you're watching, say a video or a short form video, for example, and it's already playing, it's already right there,

[00:16:28] you don't have to leave the site to go watch the video. It's already there. It makes it so much easier to watch it because you're already on the platform. Very similar with this because they click it, it already starts playing. Now, other than social media, you can do the same thing with say an email. If you do an email blast out to all your followers or whatever, you can say, check out my new episode, you can play right now, no app needed, click this link, here you go. That is another way you can do that. Hey, look here,

[00:16:58] I'm not trying to say that you're trying to force people to press a link and click your stuff and force them to click the link. No, but I am trying to tell you that if somebody wants to support your show, give them an easy button. Give them the one click way to do it that actually counts. Okay, so now that you know the right way and the wrong way to use this cool little feature that is baked into most of the cool podcast hosting platforms, here is your to-do list if you want to use this.

[00:17:28] So, go get your direct episode link from your host. This will be for each episode that you want to promote. So, obviously, you're probably your latest episode. That would be one to start with. Use it that. Get the link for your latest episode, the episode direct link from your media host. Post it with a bold CTA like click to stream or click to play or play now. No app required.

[00:17:57] Basically, something that doesn't look too shady like click here to see a cool puppy picture or something completely obvious that's not what it's supposed to do. So, obviously, say this button, you click it, it does play the episode. Great. Now, you can add this to your link in bio, perhaps maybe on social media, say like, you know, Instagram or, you know, Twitter X or any of those kind of places, Facebook, whatever. You can put it right there if you want. You can email this

[00:18:27] and you can even post this. But when you do this, be cool about it and say, hey, this is what this thing does. So, when somebody sees it, they have the option, they have the choice to press play or not press play. And you can use this to actually test which platform gets the most click traffic. Now, you probably should know that based on your engagement and based on things on social media. Most of these social media platforms, I think all of them for the most part have some kind of like metrics

[00:18:57] you can look at and see the data, how much interaction you get on this post or that post, how many views you get on this post or that post. Most of the things have that. So, based on that, you can play around with which one has the most traffic and then probably use that to promote your podcast. It's pretty much, you know, standard practice across all social media, really. And then you want to do is you want to actually watch your download numbers and see what kind of works. This might work for you.

[00:19:27] It might not work for you. But, you know, you should never, ever, like ever, resort to any kind of like shady shortcuts. One click equals one download when it's from a real person. But, at the end of the day, you really should not get obsessed with the stats. I know we all do. It's hard to get away from it, but we should not like really obsess over the stats. But, if you're going to track them,

[00:19:56] make sure they're actually real. That's how you build a podcast that actually matters. And, if you're actually going to try this method, actually going to use this method with your podcast marketing, let me know. Let me know if it actually works out for you. If you saw an increase in your numbers or not, maybe you didn't. Maybe you do. I don't know. It's really up to you. But, that would be cool. And, if you found this episode helpful, if you found this information insightful, if you found some value from this episode, then, you know,

[00:20:25] share it with a friend. Share it with another podcaster. Let me know. You always can contact me right on my website at podtasticaudio.com. Everything you want to know is right there, podtasticaudio.com. This has been so much fun, and I love learning new things and playing around with things in podcasting, and hopefully this helps you out. And until next time, happy podcasting. I got a mic and a story to tell in a world of noise. I'll ring the bell,

[00:20:54] podtastic audio, breaking through. A voice for the many, a guide for,

[00:21:29] to the stars above. Wrapped in care, I'll be right back.