► Tell us about you and your podcast
We (Amanda and Shannon) met through our daughter's Girl Scout troop in 2012 and soon discovered our shared love of General Hospital. Our podcast is all about . the show. On Mondays, we release a recap of the prior week's episodes and on Thursday we do the Port Charles 411. The Port Charles 411 is where we dive deep into past storylines, character profiles, and interviews with other fans or past/current cast members. Our listeners are other fans of General Hospital, and we've discovered some spouses listen to our show to catch up and know what's going on so they can talk to their partner who is a fan of the show.
► Why & how did you start this podcast?
After a few years of texting, calls, and in-person conversations about the show, we knew we wanted to share our talks with others. Shannon listens to podcasts and her husband has his own podcast about wrestling. It was actually his idea for us to start our own, but it took us YEARS to finally pull the trigger.
The biggest hang-up was what the name should be. One day, it popped in Shannon's head, Pier 54, a location in Port Charles (GH town) where many conversations occur. This was March 2019. They took a look at the calendar and realized that April 1 was going to be a Monday. The significance of April 1 is that is the day that General Hosptial debuted in 1963. The timing was perfect! We quickly put together our first two episodes and released them. We haven't missed a single week since.
► How'd you find the time and funding to do this podcast?
We release 2 new episodes each week, Mondays and Thursdays. Amanda nannies and Shannon is a real estate agent. We record each Sunday afternoon and plan our 411s ahead of time. For interviews, we try to schedule as far out as possible to be flexible for our guests.
We fund our podcast ourselves and right now trying to not spent a lot of money on it since it is not generating revenue yet.
► What do you gain from podcasting?
We would like to get sponsorships. When we used the Anchor platform, we had midroll ads that we earned a little from but when we switched to Podomatic we lost that revenue.
Podcasting has given both of us "our thing" to do. We're both moms with lots of other activities, this is the thing we get to do together. Spending time, hanging out as friends, talking about our favorite show.
We average between 8000-10,000 downloads a month.
► How does your podcasting process look like?
We use WavePad to record and edit. Our host site is Podomatic.
For interviews we have fans submit requests to be interviewed on our show through our website. We also talk with other podcasts, bloggers, etc. To interview cast members we reach out either on social media or try to find their contact information.
We use Zoom to record our interviews.
To prepare for each episode we simply watch the show during the week for our recap. For the Port Charles 411 we do a variety of research in finding different articles, YouTube videos, books, etc to get information about the topic.
► How do you market your show?
We are found on all major platforms, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. We've started to use TikTok a bit. We also have a group on Facebook that we get to interact with.
► What advice would you share with aspiring (new) podcasters?
Don't be afraid to just jump in. Be consistent. Have a plan, but be flexible. There are a LOT of great podcast groups on Facebook to learn from others.