Podcasting for Solopreneurs | Podcasting Tips and Growth Strategies for Online Business, Entrepreneur, and Solopreneur

71. What’s a “Good” Number of Downloads? | Podcasting Stats Tips

Julia Levine | Podcasting Coach (The Podcast Teacher™)

Welcome to podcasting for solopreneurs and FAQ Friday, where I answer a common podcasting question in 5 minutes or less. Today's question is, what's a good number of downloads? This question comes from Jenna of the resiliency redefined podcast. Thanks for your question. Before I answer this directly, I have to point out that downloads are just one data point for your podcast. They are helpful, but looking at your consumption rate or your completion rate in addition to your downloads is super important to get a more well rounded picture. Your consumption rate, sometimes called a completion rate, is simply what portion of an episode is being consumed. If you have 500 downloads for an episode, but those folks are only consuming 10% of your episode, is 500 downloads really truly, quote, unquote, good? Maybe not. There's also a quality over quantity component when it comes to downloads.

If you have 100 downloads and those folks are super ideal clients and they are opting into your freebies, they're joining your programs, etcetera, I will take that all day long Over a 1,000 downloads from folks who aren't really all that interested. Okay. Okay. With all of those caveats out of the way, let's talk about what is actually, quote unquote, good for your download numbers. I'd consider being in the top 50% of podcasts to be good. Wouldn't you? According to the Buzzsprout Global Stats page, you only need 28 downloads in the 1st 7 days of an episode release in order to be in the top 50%, a 111 to be in the top 25%, and 467 to be in the top 10%. These numbers change frequently, and you can see them and other cool info by going to buzzsprout.com/stats. Now, this data is from only Buzzsprout's platform, but they are one of the most popular hosting platforms, so I'm confident that the data is representative of the industry as a whole.

This time of year, downloads tend to take a dip across the board. So if you're seeing that right now, don't panic. And be sure to hit the follow button to automatically get next Tuesday's episode in your feed. I'll be talking in more depth about download trends. If you have a podcasting question, click the send me your question link in the episode description, and I'll answer it in an upcoming episode. Until next time. Happy podcasting.

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