Podcast "Ratings"

[Paranormal Podcast]

I have been a listener and lurker for the last several months and have finally taken the plunge into podcasting. Thanks for educating me!

I am familiar with the top ten on Podcast Alley and the itunes rankings, but I am curious if anyone has ever listed approximately how many subscribers or listeners a "popular" podcast has.

I'm sure there are degrees -- TWIT and DSC are going to have unbelievable numbers while other popular podcasts may do well but not approach these stats.

Any thoughts...I'm just curious.

[ferg]

This topic comes up repeatedly...and the REAL answer is - nobody knows. To much to track - who starts a download, who completes a download, who listens once it's downloaded....

It's a guessing game.

[Paranormal Podcast]

I'm just wondering about the best guesses out there. I have libsyn and am real intrigued by their stats model...it seems pretty cool. My guess is that TWIT is the biggest out there...but DSC has to be close.

One thing for sure is that I have a long long way to go to catch up to you guys who are the pioneers!

[Hittman]

Everybody has to start somewhere. Welcome to the party!

[jeffoest]

Exact numbers are hard to quanitfy as expressed here and in a few other threads - everyone has their own little 'algorithms' for calculating listenership.

The good news is that to get into the top ratings, the numbers aren't 'huge'. Get a couple of thousand listeners and you'll be noticed. The bad news is that even though that number is relatively small, it's still hard to acquire a couple of thousand to enjoy your show.

From what I can tell, if you have a way of calculating subscriptions (libyn or feedburner) I think a 'general' guideline (others may disagree on the details of my classifications but I think it's general enough) is the following:

>10000 subscribers - mega podcast - the likes of TWIT, D&D, and a few select others. This is the 'gold' class. There are only a handful.
1000-10000 subscribers - very successful podcasts - probably 95th percentile or higher...
300-1000 subscribers - 'mid-tier' podcasts - good solid numbers - aren't going to win any 'volume' awards anytime soon but they are doing well - there are a whole lot of these (and a lot of them very good!) - you could call these 'popular' podcasts.
<300 subscribers - the majority of podcasts. some starting out, some highly niche....

Listerns are a multiple factor of subscribers typically (most here report 2 - 3 times). Subscribers are people that recieve your podcast through the XML feed.

[Paranormal Podcast]

Jeff, a great post...very informative...thanks! :D

[dcolanduno]

Minus whatever is being cached by Apple. Which we finally got confirmation, that there *IS* caching of the top 100, and even moreso on the top 20.

We have hovered in the top 20 now for a little over a week.

Our libsyn stats are around 15,000. That is using the LES score they have which eliminates all the duplicate IP's and I think the partial downloads and such.

Now, that is without whatever is stuck in the Apple server. As anyone that has spent some time on the top 100 can tell you, your stats clearly show some kind of cache action is going on when you get up there. The stats are pretty wild when it happens. Also, sadly, you won't know how many listeners you really have.

So, I usually just say 14-20k ... I think that is safe, there might be more, based on our feedback level, and the response to our iPod Contest, which has been insane. But, I couldn't tell you much beyond that libsyn number.