The Red Thread This Week:
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool."
– Richard Feynman
I got an email last week from a reader named Robbie from Michigan.
He's starting a podcast, mostly for fun. If it turns into something great, awesome. If not, he figures he'll have a good time finding out.
He'd recently found services that pay people to review your show and pad your download numbers.
He doesn't trust Amazon products with suspiciously perfect reviews, so the idea didn't sit quite right with him. Still, he had to ask: is this wrong, or is this actually a smart thing to do in the podcast world?
It's a good question, and it has two sides.
The first is about the world around us. Shortcuts that work tend to become “the way”, given enough time. SEO used to feel like a trick, something you did instead of building a website worth finding on its own.
Now it's a mature industry, and being upset about it is like being upset with the weather. AEO, the work of getting your company named when someone asks an AI for a recommendation, is on the same path.
People have paid to land a spot on the New York Times bestseller list. When I was playing in bands, we used to get pitches to make our digital download numbers move for a fee.
We never took them, but plenty of musicians I know did, and in some corners of the music business, that's just how it works.
You don't have to like any of it. It's the environment builders work in.
So the real question is what you want to do about it. Podcast reviews haven't become the way yet. For Robbie, this is still a choice, which brings up the second side: what does the shortcut actually buy you?
Years ago, a friend I used to work with told me about a girl he knew who seemed sad one day. He asked what was wrong.
"I'm going to have to go negative," she said.
She had a rule for Instagram: never follow more people than follow you. There were new accounts she wanted to follow, and following them would tip her into the red.
He thought this was hilarious. So for her birthday, he bought her ~20k followers. It cost him $149.
She loved it. No harm done. She could follow anyone she wanted for a good long while. His $149 bought exactly what she needed: a number, and the feeling that came with it.
In a perfect world, follower counts and customer reviews would be real receipts. They would signal you've made something people care about enough to stick around for.
But if we just buy the signals and receipts, our attention gets diverted from the harder part that needs us: making the thing matter to someone.
For her, that was fine. For Robbie, I'm not so sure.
Every builder has numbers they watch, numbers they hope will move up and to the right. What are yours?
My two cents, Robbie: skip the review services, and don't spend much time counting the reviews you do get.
Make something 10 people choose to listen to, and ask them to tell 10 more. Do that for 30 weeks, and you'll have built something people would miss if it were gone.
Which is one thing nobody could have sold you.
~ Jaime
Co-host, Slackers podcast
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P.S. But what do you think? Hit reply, let me know.
And thanks as always for being on the other end, I’m glad you’re here.
Want to share this issue? Just copy and paste this link: https://jmedia.beehiiv.com/p/going-negative
The B-Side
Other places my attention went this week.
Stay Close to the Work
Viktor from The Ascending World with a thoughtful piece any leader or product person will appreciate. Especially his take on the right altitude to apply AI in your work.
Celeste – Strange
Beautifully sad song, stuck in my head all week for some reason.
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