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Making $60k a month from a podcast on software engineering

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Re: Making $60k a month from a podcast on software engineering

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so with your schedule, you would be away from your family from 7:30am to 10:30 pm, 6 days per week. I doubt your spending any more than 30 mins per day with your son on weekdays.

Correct, I'm hoping to move a little closer to work to cut some of that commute off soon. My day off is all about family, so it's daily planned :-)

* very well planned *

Too late to edit haha.

Re: Making $60k a month from a podcast on software engineering

#142

>(Work from 9am to 9pm, six days a week.) Jesus. I'm sure this is small business owner hours but still, this person musn't have a family or any other commitments.

I do that, I'm not the owner either. My wife just had a son, so I definitely have a family. Add on top an hour and a half commute each way and it can be a little difficult at times to have family time I'll admit.

15 hours a day away from home with an infant? Good god, man, stop! Spend some time with your wife and kid, or one day you'll wake up and they'll both have moved out because it's been years since they actually saw you conscious and you no longer have any kind of connection.

(Unless you're doing this just for a very limited time for a very good reason. But don't let it become a lifestyle!)

Re: Making $60k a month from a podcast on software engineering

#143
post #16

How to make $60k/mo from a podcast: When I was 19 there was a month when I played poorly and lost ~$250k. I quit shortly after that. It took me awhile to recover my psychological bearings. Step 1: Be super rich.

After a bit of digging, I think his story is plausible. He got into the game in 2004; At that time, it was very much possible for a smart, determined teenager to grind a hundred bucks into a quarter mil. Before Black Friday[1] chased all the soft money out of the game, pretty much anyone with an ounce of sense could play profitable poker and some people made a lot of money very quickly. He claims to have blown most o…

Sorry but you have to get lucky, too. No way you can turn 100 into 250k no way no how unless you are coming out on the good side of the luck factor.

It's nice, and I'm sure you're a good player, but you definitely got lucky.

" Before Black Friday[1] chased all the soft money out of the game, pretty much anyone with an ounce of sense could play profitable poker and some people made a lot of money very quickly. "

You're best edge in the softest game of all time is not as big as you think it is.

Re: Making $60k a month from a podcast on software engineering

#144
post #120
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Structure is an editing problem, but there are lots of people who listen to podcasts sped up, or with silences removed. Apps like Overcast will do this for you. Some podcasts, like Hardcore History, are worth the 5 hour runtime and they're so rarely published it doesn't really matter.

Structure is an "editing problem" but once you go beyond a fairly straight interview or talk show format, the amount of post-production work increases dramatically. With the help of some automation, I can edit a 20 minute interview in an hour so so. Structuring a 1 hour show from different clips and inserting various breaks etc. would probably add a good day to the whole process.

When I say it's an editing problem, I mean it's not something you can easily change as a consumer. On the other hand cutting out silences and speeding up slow speakers is something you can fix 'in post' using a generic podcast app.

Re: Making $60k a month from a podcast on software engineering

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so with your schedule, you would be away from your family from 7:30am to 10:30 pm, 6 days per week. I doubt your spending any more than 30 mins per day with your son on weekdays.

Correct, I'm hoping to move a little closer to work to cut some of that commute off soon. My day off is all about family, so it's daily planned :-)

so the other person's point is that although you have a family, you're not spending a lot of "quality" time with them

Re: Making $60k a month from a podcast on software engineering

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two different podcast listening strategies (which informally seem about equally utilized). 1. Download and listen to every episode of a podcast. For many this would be something like Grubers. Listeners typically keep a much smaller number of podcast subscriptions. 2. Read the title and possibly the show notes for each episode and if it sounds interesting download that specific episode. My listening habits a…

Most podcasts I listen too (Linux Unplugged, Linux Action News, No Agenda) are no longer relevant after a week to a couple of weeks. The value is very much in the now. That would be a third mode then.

Same with many news/political podcasts. Hearing speculation about things that now have actually happened are 90% pretty boring a few weeks later.

Re: Making $60k a month from a podcast on software engineering

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joe's daily podcast is 3 hours long on average, so he doesn't come close, he exceeds by a factor of 3!

I listen to Joe pretty often, but to be honest the quality of his interviews is hit-or-miss to me. Sometimes it's really great, sometimes he rambles and goes back over the same topic a few times.

I listened to him for a while but I think 3 hours is too long. It gets boring and you know most of the stories and rants already from having listened to 100's of hours of him talk already.

Re: Making $60k a month from a podcast on software engineering

#148
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the other end of the scale are podcasts that are a few minutes long - daily briefings, the news, etc. I've always found these hard to listen to in normal podcast software since they're meant to be ephemeral and quick, so I've been working on a new approach: http://briefings.fm/

I agree on both counts. A 5-10 minute podcast often feels like it's "not worth" selecting and playing--at least as part of a standard podcast queueing and listening flow. At the same time, a straight interview/discussion without a lot of production work to break it into segments, etc. that's an hour feels too long. (And producing a radio show rather than just putting an interview up is a lot more work.) I find the in…

There seems to be a market for all kinds of lengths. I like the 60-minuteish with some banter but mostly on topic. I mostly listen to podcasts while walking or doing the dishes or something like that so I'm not super focused and the longer and slower podcasts work best for that. Running the garbage disposal or a truck driving past won't force me to rewind. If they go to multiple hours I usually rather opt-in for an audiobook at that point.

Re: Making $60k a month from a podcast on software engineering

#149
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6 day weeks = 6/7 of 365 = 313 days work per year 12 hour days = 313 * 12 = 3756 hours work per year Hours per month = 3756 / 12 = 313 Hourly rate if $60000 per month = 60000/313 = $192

$192/hr / 3/ppl = $64/hr/person And that's without considering overhead costs.

Yeah a business where the gross and net income are the same definitely doesn't exist. Taxes, equipment, hosting, setting up interviews, marketing the podcast, selling ad slots...

Re: Making $60k a month from a podcast on software engineering

#150
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My theory is that entrepeneurship in general, and lean startups especially, relies a lot on "fake it till you make" and sales that rely on heavy bluffing, and poker players are the sort of people that can do that. In web tech, it's especially true, because "lean startup" theory means that you can sell your product before you build it, but you have to bluff to your customers that you have already built it and investor…

At high level, maybe. But poker is really about process and discipline. Playing poker to create income is a grind. You sit there for up to 5 hours and do math on odds and make decisions, hand after hand. Every now and then you utilize bluffing or other techniques to bully to win a pot. Then you keep stacking to get a bank roll going so you can get to the next table, the next tier. The college aged poker kids optimize…

Absolutely right. I was terrible at online poker since I wanted to have fun playing it. You can't bluff someone who knows the math in the long run. You'll lose all your money.
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