Exploring the paranormal, unsolved mysteries and extraterrestrial encounters

My friend Jason and I grew up together, and when I say grew up together I meant it. We were both born in 1993 and spent our early years together at the same daycare. Now in our 30’s we still keep in touch even though Jason has moved away. We like working on various projects together, and when I told him I wanted to start recording and publishing a podcast we quickly formed the format of our show. Which consists of Jason listening to a story or legend that I’ve researched and prepared.

Our podcast is about what I feel are some really fun topics. The Paranormal, Unsolved Mysteries and Extraterrestrial Encounters.

Our target audience is anyone who is open to or willing to entertain or explore other worldly conversations and concepts. Or even anyone who just wants to turn their brain off and hear an interesting story.
 

I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts as I spend a lot of time on the road. I really enjoy the medium and I felt like it was something I was capable of doing myself.

I started working on my podcast in July of 2023. I produced a full episode and sent it to Jason to see what he thought. After realizing I needed a bit more structure, and lively interaction we decided to bring in Jason as another voice. We then worked to create through trial and error for 6 months before we had our “first four”.
 

I work on the research part of the process mostly through the week when I have time here and there between meetings. After compiling this into a digestible outline, we sit down virtually, Jason in South Carolina and myself in Ohio and record. Usually from about 8:30pm until about 10:00pm. Once I have the raw audio, the next week I work to edit it myself. Before publishing Thursday/Friday the second week.

The most expensive part was the initial process, purchasing the mic’s, and buying a new computer that could handle the editing process. I’ve spent a few hundred on advertising as well. Up until this point I have paid for everything out of pocket.
 

We haven’t taken on any sponsors at this point. We’re really just in it to have fun, and keep our relationship strong even though we’re so far away. Jason is like my brother and having something that pulls us together is worth it.

Our last couple of episodes are in the 3-400 listeners range over the month. We’d like to grow and do more. I think we also understand that since we’re producing, editing and releasing our own podcast independently it will take time to grow. We’re mostly in it to have fun right now.
 

Mostly the process begins with a topic that I’m interested in. I buy a couple of books, read online articles and consume any audio/video media on the subject. I create an outline in Microsoft Word. We record using Riverside.fm, and then I edit the audio through Audacity.
 

At this point we have our website TheAnecdotalistpodcast.com, we have social media platforms such as Instagram, Twitter and reddit.

It’s hard to really say where most of our listeners come from. We utilize Google AdWords which drives a decent amount of listeners to our website which has our RSS feed. It seems about 75% comes from there and the rest through various other platforms.

I think our most important marketing channel is the google adwords driving new listeners to our website.
 

I would say now that we have a live podcast, we’ve learned a lot, but we’re also still learning. The most important advice I can come up with is, nothing happens overnight. It took us a long time to craft our fist episodes and find a groove.

The next thing I would say is, from my perspective, have a good website. Have somewhere your listeners can go to. It’s absolutely important to embed a podcast player on the front page. We were driving so much traffic to our website and didn’t see an uptick in downloads until we put the player right there on the first landing page.
 

Our website is the best place to go and find out more about us. It also has our episode catalog. All in one easy place. We have Twitter and instagram as well. We’re trying to be more active on social media. Most of our content is episode specific, but we’re definitely getting there!