Where to find your first podcast guesting opportunities.
Thank you for joining me for The Audacity to Podcast.
I'm Daniel J. Lewis.
Podcast guesting is consistently the number one way to grow your own podcast.
This works because it gives you the opportunity to get in front of more ideal listeners,
provide value and demonstrate your knowledge,
And then it's easy for them to follow you over to your podcast.
But how do you find the first shows you should try getting on?
That's what this episode will give you.
Not an exhaustive list of where to find podcasts to be a guest on,
but helping you build that first list.
Or maybe you've run out of ideas,
and maybe this can give you some ideas of new podcasts
that you could try to reach out to be a guest on for those podcasts.
If you'd like to follow along in the notes for this episode,
There is a simple tap or swipe away inside your podcast app or at theaudacitytopodcast.com/firstguesting.
First, understand how in-app podcast recommendations usually work.
And this is really important for you to understand first because everything else I'm going to
mention in this episode builds on top of this.
Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and some other podcast apps have their own proprietary algorithms
and tracking to see what podcasts are listened to by the same people.
For example, Apple can see that Person 1 listens to both your podcast and Podcast XYZ.
Apple may not necessarily know who Person 1 is, but they can see that Person 1 listens
to both of those podcasts and any other podcasts that they have.
So if Podcast XYZ is in your podcast's recommendations, I'll cover that more in a moment, we'll call
it an outgoing recommendation from your podcast.
Then, if Podcast XYZ is including your podcast in its own outgoing recommendations, then
from your perspective, that's an incoming recommendation.
Where are these recommendations?
If you look at your podcast in a podcast app, they're usually going to be probably near
the bottom of the listing for the podcast.
Maybe more likely in the catalog view of your podcast, but maybe also in what we could call
the library view, like when someone has already followed your podcast.
But wherever they are, usually near the bottom, these are outgoing recommendations if you
see other podcasts on your own podcast.
And if any of the other podcasts out there are linking back to yours, those are incoming
recommendations.
Or in other words, is your podcast pointing out to other podcasts?
And are other podcasts pointing in to your podcast?
Outgoing and incoming.
The incoming and outgoing lists are populated based on proprietary algorithms.
But here's the simple way to understand it.
If a significant portion of your audience also listens to Podcast XYZ,
then Podcast XYZ will be in your podcast's outgoing recommendations.
But for your podcast to appear in Podcast XYZ's recommendations,
a significant portion of its audience would have to also listen to you.
Let's imagine that significant portion needs to be 25% or more.
I don't know for sure that that's what it is.
I suspect it's somewhere around there based on some of the data that I see.
And if I get a quotable answer from some of the platforms, I will update the notes for
this episode, both in the podcast app and over on the website at TheAudacitytoPodcast.com/firstguesting if I get that information to get a concrete percentage from any of the
platforms.
But let's just assume it's 25% or more.
Thus, it's possible to see top podcasts like the Joe Rogan Experience or the Mel Robbins
Podcast in your outgoing recommendations because it could be that 25% of your audience, again
that's our made-up number here, also listens to those other shows.
But the only way your show would be in their recommendations is if 25% of their much bigger
audience also listens to your show.
I built Podgagement to track this data for you because finding this is cumbersome or essentially
impossible because you would have to check all of the millions of other podcasts to see
what is in their recommendations.
In Podgagement, I call this the networking feature because the incoming and outgoing
lists are networking opportunities for you and your podcast.
While these proprietary lists are driven by proprietary algorithms, Podcasting 2.0
offers a different way for you and other podcasters to showcase your own recommendations with what's
badly called the pod role feature. I'm not going to explain the name, but I do have a link in the
notes for this episode over to the official documentation on the pod role feature and a
guide for how you can populate this, if it's possible, in your podcast publishing tool. And it
might not be called, I hope it's not called the pod role feature in your podcast publishing tool,
but it would be where you could put in your own recommendations for other podcasts.
And Podgagement will be collecting that information as well too.
So you can see what other podcasters have put you in their pod role.
But the other things that are like from Apple Podcasts, Spotify and such,
those are algorithmically generated and you cannot control what's in there,
but you can kind of influence it.
And that's a topic for a different episode.
So now that you understand how this networking feature works or the recommendations inside the podcast apps when you see other podcasts recommended on your own podcast, now that you've got that foundation, look at your podcast outgoing recommendation section.
That is, assuming you have your own podcast, open it in Apple Podcasts.
And that could be through that Apple Podcasts app if you have that installed or even simply
in a web browser.
You don't have to have the app installed or even iTunes to be able to do this.
Just open your Apple Podcasts link in a web browser, then scroll down to the bottom or
near the bottom, and you'll see a list of other podcasts that's currently labeled,
You Might Also Like.
And just like on Amazon, this is the whole thing of people who buy this also buy that.
This has also sometimes been called in the past, people also listen to, or people who listen to this also listen to that.
People call it different things.
But right now it's called You Might Also Like.
This is those outgoing recommendations on your podcast.
If you have a large enough following to share some crossover audience with other podcasts, those other shows will be listed here.
Currently up to 15 other shows in Apple Podcasts.
No more than that.
You might have fewer than that.
But no more than 15.
This can be your first and ideal place to find other podcasts that you can know have some people already interested in your show because they're already listening to your show and those other shows.
So it's likely if you already appeal to some of the audience for those other shows, you might appeal to even more of their audience too.
Next, a bonus tip here.
Check Podgagement's incoming networking list.
Although your outgoing list of recommendations is currently limited to 15 in Apple Podcasts,
your show could be in the outgoing recommendations of hundreds of other podcasts.
It's essentially impossible for you to check the millions of other podcasts out there to
see which of them have your show in their own outgoing recommendations.
That's why I created the networking feature for you in Podgagement to track this for you
automatically and every day.
So while their outgoing is limited to no more than 15, I've seen podcasts with their incoming
recommendations at hundreds. And each one of those podcasts could be a potential guesting
opportunity for you. So if podcast guesting is important to you, I highly recommend you sign up
for Podgagement's Constellation tier so you can discover all these incoming and outgoing networking
opportunities for you and your podcast. And if you want to do even more digging or you don't even
have your own active podcast right now, then watch for Podgagement's upcoming Pathfinder tier that
will be perfect for you, even if you don't have your own active podcast, because it will allow you
to do some of this research on other podcasts and follow this whole train and this big web of podcast
relations and networking opportunities and the recommendations and the whole six degrees of
podcast separation kind of thing out there. So you can investigate that and research and build your
own list, even if you don't have your own podcast recommendations, an outgoing list or incoming list,
but you could start from someone else's podcast. So that's over at podgagement.com. That is my own
product. I've created that for you. I use it myself and I created it for you to use it too. So check it
out over at podgagement.com. Next, with or without podgagement, check the recommendations section
for other podcasts that you think have your ideal audience. Again, with or without podgagement. Now,
podgagement, especially the Pathfinder plan, will make this much easier. But you could simply think
of other podcasts similar to yours. Maybe you already know what some of those are, especially
if they're more popular than your own or have been running longer than your own. And check their
outgoing recommendations in Apple Podcasts and other podcast apps. Because if enough of those
other listeners also like a podcast similar to yours, they might like yours too. Or they might
like your podcast even more than that other podcast. You might not necessarily be pitching
yourself to that other podcast or the multiple other ones that are similar to yours. You could,
But that's not the point of this step here.
Instead, you're using those other podcasts to discover then the second or third degree
of other podcasts related to them.
So you can use this method to research their outgoing and potentially incoming recommendations,
which might be even better podcasts for you to pitch yourself to be a guest on those podcasts.
And if you want to try to be a guest on the podcast similar to yours,
you could go ahead and do that too. Then how do you even approach these guest opportunities?
Now that you probably have a list of other podcasts, here's how I suggest you try to get
on them. It's very important that you do this with the greatest sincerity and thoroughness.
Step one, actually listen to the other podcasts. Understand their approach to their subjects and
especially ensure they even ever have guests on their show. I get pitched quite often for people
to be a guest on my own podcast, and just by the fact that they're pitching a guest to me,
whether it's themselves or someone they work with, tells me they don't actually listen to my show.
Because I don't have guests on The Audacity to Podcast, so someone would have to be really
impressive for me to even consider it, but still the answer would probably be no, because I just
don't have guests on my show. And if someone listened to my show, they would realize he never
has guests on his show, so I probably shouldn't pitch myself as a guest. But if you listen to
another podcast and discover they do have guests on their show, then you can know, oh yeah, they do
have guests, so it would make sense for me to pitch myself as a guest. Step two, take notes on whom it
seems their podcasts are trying to serve. You could use AI to help analyze this. For example, I looked
at my own outgoing networking section inside of Podgagement and I found a social media marketing
podcast listed in there. So I went over to Magai, my favorite AI toolbox, and I used Gemini 2.5 Flash
and the Assistant Persona. And the reason I used Gemini 2.5 Flash is because it has a really large
context window. So it doesn't matter how much data I feed it almost, I can feed a whole bunch of data
and it will be able to accept all of that without any kind of cutoff, which is great
for giving it lots of information about another podcast. And it's also really fast and really
cheap to use. So if you look at the link in the notes for this episode, I'll show you the actual
prompt that I used and what kind of output that I got back from it. I didn't tweak anything about
it. I just wrote that prompt one time, gave it the link to actually another Apple podcast URL
that I got for one of those podcasts
that was in my outgoing networking section from Podgagement.
So I just gave it the Apple Podcast URL
where then Magai could look at that,
read the description, read the episodes,
read some information about the episodes.
It's not looking at the full transcripts or anything like that,
but it's looking at a lot of top-level information
in the list of topics that have been covered.
And then it gave me a description
of who it seems that podcast is trying to reach.
So the AI can be great at analyzing that for you.
And Magai is my top recommendation there.
And I have a link to that.
It is an affiliate link if you're interested in that.
I don't get paid to talk about Magai.
I earn only if you sign up through my affiliate link.
And I recommend things I truly believe in regardless of earnings.
Step number three, brainstorm what value you can provide to those podcasters
so they can better serve their audience with the content you can offer.
You can use AI for this if you really need to, but here I highly recommend you don't
use AI and instead do it yourself because no AI or large language model, LLM, truly knows
you, your knowledge, and your experience.
But you do.
So you think about what value you can offer and don't rely on the AI to do that for you.
You do it.
Step four, if you followed step one, then you should also be familiar enough with the podcasts
to know how to contact them. If they don't share a contact method in their podcast,
check their episode notes and their website first because there's probably contact information there.
But if you can't find any contact information there, then check the podcast's social media
accounts or the host's social media accounts and ensure that they actually reply on social media
and reach out to them that way.
Or as a last resort,
look for an email address in the RSS feed.
But that's kind of the last resort
because often people put email addresses in there
that they don't mind getting spammed
and they might put lower priority on anything
that comes in through those email addresses.
That may not necessarily be the case,
but I've seen some people do it that way.
So make sure you look for what are the methods they say
this is how you contact us.
And it may even be that you need to go through
some other agency and that's fine. You can do something like go through the other agency and
copy the actual podcaster or mention them both on social media and such. Or even if they're a big
time podcaster, you could ask them, who does your guest booking? I'd love to reach out to them or
can I pitch myself to you? Be personable in all of this. And then step five, with all of these
crucial foundational steps done, now you can send the message to those podcasts. Don't skip these
steps like so many people do that pitch themselves to podcasts or pitch their own guests or experts
that they know that they're marketing for, like that I get quite often, where I'd say 99% of the
pitches I get, they didn't follow any of these steps and they skipped right to step five, messaging
me. Don't be like that. Do all of these steps and then you can send the message to those podcasts.
And what should you even say?
Here's an example.
But make sure you write it in your own voice and that everything you write, you are absolutely
sincere in what you say and what you mean by it.
So here's an example of what that could be.
But please don't copy this verbatim.
It's only an example.
You can start off.
Hi, podcast host's first name or the names of several of the hosts, especially if you
can include their first names of each one of them.
that can help demonstrate that you already know who you're talking to.
And then you could say,
I recently discovered your podcast because I found we already have some crossover audience.
So I listened to an episode or some episodes and,
and then prove you actually listened by praising something specific
that only an actual listener would know.
Don't use AI to just scrape their title in their episode description
and pull something like that.
I recognize it when people do that to me.
I can tell you just scraped the title and you're just quoting that back to me.
You didn't actually listen to the episode.
So you need to prove that you listened to the episode and praise something from the episode,
something that the podcaster did, something that stands out to you, some takeaway that
you got, some tool that you learned about, something you hadn't thought of before.
Something like that that really proves that you did listen.
But don't stop there.
Assume that they already get the, we could call them apathetic pitches all the time from
people who just don't care and who don't actually listen to the podcast.
So you could take another opportunity to further emphasize and further prove that you truly
did listen to their podcast.
And yes, I know this takes work and it doesn't necessarily scale infinitely, but that's fine
because for trying to build your first list
and trying to be a guest for the first time on other podcasts,
you can do things now that won't scale.
So listen to those podcasts.
Write something personalized in your emails to them
because it's not like you're sending out thousands of emails.
You're probably sending out a few, maybe a hundred
if you use a tool like Podgagement and discover hundreds of podcasts,
but you're starting out with a few.
And then your message, you could continue saying something like,
Since we have some similar listeners, I had an idea of some content I could help you share
with your audience and then give your ideas there.
Don't leave it to them to think about what value you could offer.
You offer the value, something that is relevant to their audience, something that you think
maybe they haven't covered yet, or maybe you have a different perspective or something that
can build upon what they've already covered.
And especially if you can point that out and point out, hey, you covered this.
I've actually got an amazing story that I did something very similar to what you were talking
about.
And I thought it might really demonstrate to your audience that you know what you're talking
about and that your methods work if I could come on and share my story of how I did something
similar and the results I got.
See, that kind of thing, what you're basically saying is, I want to make you look better to
your audience.
Or I want to make your podcast reach your audience with extra value.
See, don't think about, hey, I'm so good.
I'm so awesome.
I should be on your podcast because I'm the greatest thing since sliced podcasts.
Instead, focus on how you can help them be better for their audience.
And then back to the message that you're sending.
If you have guests on your own podcast, maybe invite them to be a guest on your show.
And maybe even suggest what subject might be a great fit for them to share with your own
audience.
Again, that further shows that you know who you're talking to and you recognize their value.
You're demonstrating that.
And this makes it so much more relevant, personable, targeted, and I think more likely to stand
out among any of the pitches that they receive.
I think you could sign off with something like, I hope we get to talk soon on the mic or off.
Note that this template, if you could even call it that, really doesn't look much like a template.
I'm really just providing guidance for you for what you should write about.
And I think it's crucial that you do not use an AI or an LLM here because this very email will be a demonstration of your respect for and potential value to the other podcaster and his or her audience.
And since you wouldn't outsource your actual guest content to AI, don't outsource your pitch message either.
Write it yourself in your own voice.
Lastly, this is only the first place to look.
Your incoming and outgoing networking lists might be big enough to keep you busy for quite a while,
especially if you use a tool like Podgagement and you've discovered hundreds of incoming networking opportunities.
But since you can know you already have crossover audience with these other podcasts, these pitches
from this incoming and outgoing list of podcasts, these should be much easier for you compared to
completely dissimilar podcasts, especially because it's highly possible the other podcasters on your
list already know about you too. So they might be more likely to say yes because they already know
about you. They maybe already know you have some crossover audience. Maybe their audience has
mentioned you. That's why this can be your first place to go to look for those guesting opportunities
because you already know you share some crossover audience so you can grow that even more. Be sure
to check out podgagement.com to help you discover your podcast networking opportunities. So a lot of
the stuff like building these lists, trying to find these other podcasts, you don't have to do it
manually. Podgagement does that automatically for you and it updates that throughout the day. So go
over to podgagement.com to sign up for the Constellation tier to try that yourself or look
for that upcoming Pathfinder tier that will be really focused on this kind of feature set
specifically to help you network and help you discover other podcasts. Now a quick peek over
at the community corner. Thanks again to Brian Insminer from Top Tier Audio for streaming
Satoshis to The Audacity to Podcast, I realized I was talking previously about what does this number
mean? Does it maybe mean this? Does it mean that? Well, turns out I realized the numbers didn't
actually mean anything because they were automatically streamed amounts. That's something
you can do with the Podcasting 2.0 app is you can say, I want to stream this many sats or Satoshis
per minute that I'm listening to, and it will do that automatically for you. And so that's
what happened in this case. And in this particular week, Brian streamed 411 sats over to the Audacity
to Podcast. So I really appreciate that. Also, thanks to Cameron Stack from Podlabs.org for
interviewing me for his upcoming mini-series on podcast awards. I'll share more about that when
those episodes are available that you'll be able to check it out. If you love The Audacity to Podcast
and value the podcasting inspiration and education I provide, would you please consider giving back
what you feel it's worth to you.
That could be any amount.
You could do that through TheAudacitytoPodcast.com/giveback through a Podcasting 2.0 app
or something that doesn't cost you anything
is get someone else listening to the podcast,
especially another podcaster
or share this episode out in podcasting communities
and with other podcasters.
That won't cost you anything,
but I would be deeply grateful for it.
And it's one of those ways that you can give back
some value to me
if you feel that what I've given you is valuable.
Now that I've given you some of the guts and taught you some of the tools, it's time for you to go start and grow your own podcast for passion and profit.
I'm Daniel J. Lewis from TheAudacityToPodcast.com.
Thanks for listening.