Discuss Fewer Games But More In-depth

Hi I'm Derreck and I'm the host/founder/creator of "The Blaise XPerience." My podcast is a gaming podcast. However, it is unique from a lot of gaming podcasts because many gaming podcast discuss a plethora of games for a brief amount of time and discuss gaming news as a whole. Here at The Blaise XPerience I do the inverse of this. I discuss a small amount of games in total, but I discuss them much more in depth than you will hear about anywhere else. I break down the mechanics and strategy of these games and help players learn more about key topics involved in those games that only someone with a lot of knowledge about the game would be able to tell you. That is the mission of the Blaise XPerience, to provide more depth and knowledge to listeners on the games we discuss than they can find anywhere else. Thus, that being said our listeners can really be anyone who enjoys the games being discussed on the podcast. Anyone who is passionate about the intricacies of gaming and all the different facets of a game will enjoy The Blaise XPerience.

I listen to a lot of podcasts and Rob Cesternino, creator of RHAP is who really drew me into podcasting the most. I podcast because it is something I have always enjoyed listening to and after I was a guest on RHAP and really enjoyed it I got to thinking that maybe that could be something for me as well. I ran into some medical issues and had a close call with death due to that shortly after I was a guest on RHAP. So this just got me thinking that I wanted to do something I was passionate about and more fulfilling to me in life. So my initial goals and motivations were mainly just to do it...just to start the podcast overall and begin making something I could be proud of and happy to have people enjoy. Now I am looking to expand upon that and grow the podcast even more and just spread the word and get people involved with the show.

I started the podcast March 16th, 2018. It took me I would say a month to get the first episode out because I put a lot of planning in before I even hit record on my first podcast. It was about the start of February 2018 that I really started planning to begin this journey and mid-march is when I released 3 episodes in succession to launch with a bit more content for people to consume at the start of my podcast.

I started out doing episodes weekly, but have now moved to a bi-weekly model and do one episode towards the beginning of the week and one towards the end. It takes me a good amount of time to produce an episode because quite a lot goes into it. There is planning, outlining, research, playing the games to gain the knowledge on the topics, recording, and editing just to name some of the aspects that go into each episode. So overall if I had to guess I would say about 15 hours goes into each episode because I need to be knowledgeable about what I am discussing before I discuss it. I never want to make a podcast where I am clueless as to what I am talking about. I may not know everything, but I want to provide the listeners with valuable that takes time to acquire.

Honestly, having a "day job" (it's nights in my case-I work overnight) makes it really tough to do the podcast. Basically if I'm being honest a lot of days I give up sleep in order to do the podcast. Having my job and a family leaves minimal time free so I cut back on sleep a lot of days to try and free up as much time I can to work on the podcast. I am passionate about this and want to do what it takes to produce it. Currently I spend about $30 a month for the podcast. Mainly this is hosting fees, and money going into the gaming aspect because I need to be able to play the games to talk about them. This is all funded by myself at the moment. Any marketing, editing, etc is all done by me. I can't afford to pay anyone for those things right now so I am just a one man show at the moment.

I don't currently have any sponsors or make any revenue from the podcast. In the future this would be nice to achieve, but at the moment I am purely focused on growing the audience for the podcast and any sponsors or revenue will hopefully come later on. Podcasting benefits me by creating friendships with the people I meet while doing it and also just by providing me with happiness. It makes me very happy when I hear from listeners that my podcast helped them with a game and taught them something they didn't know. After all I am aiming to help people out with gaming as much as I can and just spread the love of games to others so it gives me a lot of joy to be able to do this and I hope my listeners experience that same joy themselves.

I use AudioTechnica ATR2100 for my microphone, as well as an audiotechnica headset. I use a Microsoft Surface tablet for all work on the podcast including the recording and editing. For software I use tryca.st to record and host my podcast. It is exceptional software for recording and you can record, edit, and host all in one place. I find guests by interacting with the communities of the games I play. I find guests that fit the topic I am discussing and can offer something unique to the discussion. I interview the guests using the Cast software which works much better than Skype. It records each person's audio on a separate track and it is a simple as sending them a link and hitting record once they join. I prepare for each episode by making a detailed outline. The outline provides structure for the episode and outlines what topics will be covered. If I do have a guest then I get them a copy of this as well so they know the general direction the conversation is going.

I have a hard time marketing my show at this time. The reason being I am doing all of this myself and it takes a lot of time to create the episodes themselves that it is difficult to find time to market as well. However, much of the marketing I do involves interacting on discord (an app for gaming communities), twitter, and any places I can find people discussing gaming. Discord is the most useful I have found so far. Listeners find my show mostly via iTunes/Apple podcasts, discord, plugs from other communities, and google play I believe, but I don't have specific breakdown numbers for these.

Honestly the best advice I can give is just go ahead and start, and once you start, don't give up. It is important that you don't give up on your listeners because even if you aren't hearing from all of your listeners they are still supporting you with every download and every listen. So if you give up you aren't just giving up on yourself, you are giving up on all of your listeners and supporters at the same time.

You can find out more about me and my podcast in the following ways: 

Our twitter-- @BlaiseXPerience

Our email-- theblaisexperience@gmail.com

Our discord-- discord.gg/kyA9Bq6

Our Current Website/Castette-- theblaisexperience.cast.rocks

Our Mixer(streaming)-- mixer.com/BlaiseXPerience

Our YouTube-- youtube.com