Monetize Your Audience, Not Your Podcast

·1 hr 29 min·5 clips

Dave and Jim argue that new podcasters focus on monetizing an audience, not the show itself, to avoid early disappointment.

Saturday morning starts warm. Dave opens with Max Trescott from AviationNewsTalk.com, marks February 14th, 2026, and brings Jim Collison back into the live Ask the Podcast Coach routine. Jim has been away, so he thanks Glenn the Geek for filling in, jokes about missing the Saturday habit, and slides back into the call-and-chat flow. Then the show gets down to the kind of work podcasters actually face. Dave explains how he handles moving episode players by giving someone limited Captivate access, handing over WordPress access, and recording a quick instruction video. The job itself is simple. The problem is the pile of it. Each episode still needs the same little loop: find the number, grab the player code, paste it, save it, and move to the next one. His URL setup helps because School of Podcasting episode pages use slash-number paths, so episode 400 is easy to find and match against Captivate search. That does not make the work fun. Dave describes it as something to do while watching Netflix, which is about the right level of glamour for a site cleanup. Captivate gets a fair shake too. Dave likes its dynamic tools and the way it changes file names, but that same convenience blocks the clean WordPress find-and-replace fix he wishes he could use. If old URLs could be swapped neatly for a Captivate pattern, the cleanup would move a lot faster. In his setup, Captivate's dynamic handling makes that impractical. So the advice lands plainly. If someone is helping with this kind of cleanup, Dave half-jokes that a Podpage affiliate account might be the saner move. The episode stays loose in the best Ask the Podcast Coach way. Supporter nods, chat energy, platform complaints, and practical fixes all share the room without being turned into a polished lecture. Near the end, Dave points ahead to a School of Podcasting segment on editing for content, compression, voice regen, Studio Sound, and Descript comparisons. Nashville is coming too. He says he may be tired next Saturday, asks Jim to bring extra coffee, and sends listeners to the voicemail page for the next question.

As heard by us

A listener-requested maintenance session that stays useful by naming the tedious parts.

Ask the Podcast Coach treats a listener request as a practical sweep through podcast maintenance before turning to editing for content and compression.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

When you want a listener-requested deep dive into editing without pretending the post-production grind is glamorous.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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