Dan Mainwaring is a well travelled Brit sharing stories of the most fascinating people and places of past and present

I am a writer for the UK and operated an entertainment website www.bestbritishtv.com for many years. But my greater love is of history and culture and that is what Fascinating People, Fascinating Places is all about. I have very eclectic interests and this is reflected in my topics which vary from one episode to the next. I've interviewed NASA astronauts who I greatly admire as the modern-day explorers. I've interviewed controversial figures to understand them and counter their views. I've covered historical figures of notoriety and shone a light on obscure places like Wagga Wagga from where remarkable stories come from. I just love learning new things, and sharing truly remarkable stories in a simple, easy to follow way that assumes no prior knowledge.
 

I enjoy listening to a variety of different podcasts especially quirky ones about weird occurrences and stories. But I also enjoy documentaries and this podcast is done in the style of a documentary as it is scripted with edited interviews inserted into it.

The first episode came out last September (2021) after 9 months of work. By that time I had recorded a lot of both solo content and some interviews. The first season was just on European history and six episodes but season three branched into the contemporary with interviews of political and religious figures, UFO researchers and a variety of university professors. Being English, my tendency is to cover European or English-speaking countries but I've done a lot of research on African history in my private time and several episodes cover topics related to that fascinating continent. Basically, I do this because I find things I am amazed by and want to share that knowledge through my research and the input of guest experts.
 

I release episodes weekly. My process is that I plan the next six episodes, research those, set and record interviews, then edit everything so I have six ready to roll. As those air, I work on the next batch of six episodes. That way I am not in a time crunch trying to finish an episode the day before the release.

I do have a day job and initially, it was challenging to manage both but I've become more efficient over time, especially around editing. I've also got an intro I use each time and a source for music and sound effects I can quickly draw from so that saves time.

In terms of cost, it's difficult to know because I have funded it myself as and when needed. So microphones, software, advertising etc. The equipment etc probably hundreds but early on I wasted a lot of money, probably a few thousand on ill advertised advertising as I really didn't understand how and where to promote a podcast or where my audience was. I regret that but you live an learn. As of now the biggest "cost" is labor, meaning the time it takes me to do it versus other work I could do and command a fee. In that respect I probably spend about 20 hours a week on podcast related activity so multiply that by your hourly wage to get an idea of the cost.
 

I have been offered sponsorships but have declined them so far as none really captured the eclectic mix of my topics and I didn't want to bore portions of my audience with paid advertising that might be esoteric. I have also run ads at points in time but again I have been kind of picky because I want ads that would be of interest to all the listeners and not just ads that I get paid for but half the audience have no interest in.

I haven't actively sought out sponsors but the offers I have had have come from people contacting me presumably either because the like the show or feel it has enough listeners to be worth their while. But so far, none of them have hit the spot as it were.

Downloads per month is thousands but it varies because some of my topics are pretty obscure -- deliberately as I cover what I want to cover and don't just try to cover things I know are well known. That being said, I just did an episode on a very, very obscure topic: the Songhai Empire of Mali from the 16th century and that got 3,000 listens in a day. The other thing is that my topics are evergreen so all of my prior episodes pick up new listens each week, plus luckily I seem to have attracted some binge listeners who will suddenly listen to 30 plus episodes in a short time which is funny because I'll suddenly climb to the top 10 or 20 in rankings if I attract a crowd of binge listeners in a particular country.

The main thing I gain from it is the opportunity to learn and speak to amazing or highly educated people. Personally, I am in awe of anyone who travels into space to speak to two guys who have done so was both an honor and incredibly interesting. But, I've also spoken with a lot of professors from top universities and for me it's fantastic to speak to a subject matter expert who knows more about a particular topic than I ever would. To get their insight and expertise is brilliant and what I do this for.
 

I usually use Audacity for editing cause its free and pretty good. For interviews I've used RiversideFM, Skype, Zoom etc Honestly, I've had variable experiences with them all whether they are free or paid. I do a lot of interviews with people overseas and some platforms seem to offer poorer quality outside the US for whatever reason. So I don't have a favorite it's more about trial and error.

I always begin with a synopsis. If I have a guest, that is used to develop questions. Usually, an hour of talk or 45 minutes yields 20 or 30 minutes of content. If I don't have a guest, I use the synopsis to produce a script, proofread it, and do various takes until I get it right. Then once that is done I add in music, sound effects etc as needed.
 

My listener breakdown is 70 % from Apple, but the other 30% is variable. For a long time Spotify was at 25% with others bringing in negligible numbers. But lately, I've started to get more traction on Amazon, Samsung podcasts, all kinds of sites including ListehnNotes so now Spotify (while the total number of listeners is still increasing) has dropped as a percentage to around about 14% with these other sites making up the difference.

For marketing, I've had success with putting out 30 second clips with images on TikTok. Likewise, on Yotube some clips and full episodes with a static picture have picked up 3,000 to 5,000 views which is pretty good as I haven't put a huge amount of effort into those or that channel at this point. I have had varied success with Facebook ads. Some particularly episodes relating to Australia and Africa have done well with targeted advertising there, others have not. I engage on reddit, Facebook etc not actively promoting but just interacting on forums about podcasts and or history and that has also helped but it's just very time consuming.
 

Don't blindly accept those offers for Google and Facebook advertising and waste them because you do not understand how to promote and target. If there's free stuff use it e.g. Audacity, Anchor. Be patient. It is a crowded market so even if you have the best podcast ever it's going to struggle to be heard above the crowd unless you have a massive advertising budget. But if you produce quality, consistently then you'll build an audience.
 

I have a podcast website www.historypodcast.org where you can see all my episodes nicely organized by area (e.g. Australia, Europe etc) and in chronological order based on history as opposed to release date. I also have a personal website www.danielmainwaring.com where you can learn about my other work including my recent historical fiction novel The Treacherous Exhibit. I am on Twitter @AuthorDanTheMa1.