Hyperfixed, the podcast I started in 2024, is now six months old, if you don’t count the couple pilots we put out in September, and I feel like that’s as good a time as any to give an update on how we’re doing. The TL;DR is we’re afloat, but struggling.
I have agonized over whether or not to publish this. Well, agonized is a little strong, but I’ve definitely waffled. I think that openness and honesty, even at a level that makes me uncomfortable is, to some degree, what people like about my work. I also genuinely want to help people understand the cost of making real narrative journalism in 2025, after the advertising market has contracted, after the companies like Gimlet have all cashed out. I very clearly see a path to profitability, and those numbers have not wavered since I came up with them before I started the show. I feel very confident that there is a way forward. It’s just taking longer, and requiring me to take on more financial liability than I had hoped.
As a refresher, this is how we make money:
I have been given what amounts to an advance by my website host and payment processor, Supporting Cast. It is being given to us over the course of 13 months at a monthly rate of $13,846 a month. That advance began in November and will be fully paid to me at the end of 2025.
I will not be able to start making money through Supporting Cast until the entirety of the advance is recouped.(I WAS INCORECT ABOUT THIS - Supporting cast will only be hanging on to a small percentage to repay the loan and the rest will continue to flow to me. I apologize unreservedly to Supporting Cast for the mistake!)Each month I am disbursed ad revenue through Radiotopia. They sell my ads and we share the revenue with 70% going to me and 30% going to them That has been shaken out to be between $4,000 - $6,000 monthly since the beginning of the year.
There are a couple other ways I make money in very small amounts, which I’ll talk about more in this article. They amount to about $1,000-$2,000
As another refresher, here are our expenses:
Paying Producers (this is about 95% of my costs)
Music
Social Media/Promotional Support
Tools we use (Descript, Riverside, Mailchimp, a couple others)
There is a “win state” for our audience and ad numbers. An amount that will allow me to pay all our producers what they deserve, provide health care, and still have a little money left over in case I want to do an ambitious reporting project, bring in guest producers, etc. That comes out to roughly 200,000 listeners an episode and 10,000 premium subscribers. That may sound like a lot on both counts, but a 5% conversion to premium members is considered kind of a reasonable expectation. Also at its peak, Reply All had a million downloads an episode, so I just need to harness 1/5 of the goodwill built up over the course of the show. But we’re running into some difficulties, and I am going to share them with you now. I’m not going to lie, I go back and forth on this because sharing listener growth numbers and monthly revenue info feels like getting spotted walking around my house naked. It’s embarrassing and vulnerable, and I can’t tell whether it endears people to what I’m doing or makes me seem pathetic. But this is a new venture for me. But I also worry about how it comes off to potential listeners. Do I sound whiny and desperate? Do I sound like I’m asking people to prop up a sinking ship? I have no idea the “right” way to talk about it or whether I should talk about it at all, but oversharing with strangers has never really steered me wrong yet, so until it does, here we go.
Listener Growth
We saw some early victories as far as listener growth goes. Among them, the kind folks at 99% Invisible ran one of our episodes, and then we had a slightly buzzy episode that I think brought new people in. But for the past few months, listenership has been flat. We are topping out at about 85,000 listeners an episode, which is nothing to shake a stick at! But it’s also about 40% of the sustainability goal.
Listenership since January 30, 2025
Discovery in podcasting is notoriously difficult for a bunch of reasons — no one has really figured out how to make recommendations work in podcasting apps, and especially with longform audio it doesn’t go viral in the way that video or articles do. Audio defies easy summary, or the ability to dip in and out in the way other media does, so in order to get someone on board, they need to invest around a half an hour into listening to an episode, which is a big ask in a post-pandemic world where our attention spans are essentially the length of a TikTok.
Another problem I haven’t really figured out a solution for is that I think many former listeners of Reply All that would be happy to listen to the show don’t even know it exists. I have done press and generally agree to appear on any podcast that wants me — we even ran an episode of our show down the Reply All feed, but almost three years on, I am pretty sure a huge percentage of people are no longer subscribed to the RA feed. I have tried a bunch of different things, up to and including making Cameo-style videos for anyone who can show evidence that they have made a friend download the show, but so far, we haven’t made a ton of progress.
The most reliable way we found to grow Reply All was to collaborate with other shows — pitch them an idea, have some interaction on mic, and then present our story in full on their show. We had great success doing that with This American Life, Radiolab, and, of course, Startup, but that is a big endeavor that requires a lot of coordination between shows, and the resources around here are tight! We’re working on a couple, but things are tough all over.
Subscription Growth
Subscriptions to premium content have trended slightly better in that we had an initial big signup period when we released our pilots, and we continue to pick up about 200-250 members a month, and we are currently at 2,520 members, Just over 1/4 of the way to my goal. I try not to be overbearing with requests to become a premium member because I don’t want to turn people off, and honestly, I’m still not used to asking for money. It's not a world I’m used to living in because there was a time when ad rates were much much higher than they are now, and this wasn’t a going concern. So I’m still trying to do it in a way that feels true to me and not insufferable.
Unfortunately for me, I guess, I think that sustainability is largely going to rest on growing our subscriber base, and I’m having a hard time figuring out how. We did a promotion where people would get a button if they signed up at a higher rate which netted us a couple hundred signups, but those opportunities don’t always present themselves. We’ve also sent surveys to listeners asking “what do you want from a premium membership” and overwhelmingly the answer we got back was that people don’t want anything. They just want to support the show. So it’s difficult to figure out a value add to get people subscribing. I don’t want to ask more out of you who have already supported, but if you did want to go beyond your subscription, you can also gift a subscription to a friend - which would be amazing, but totally not expected!
That said, for as much as I don’t like asking for people to sign up, I do love the community of listeners that has sprung up on our Discord. There are currently 800 people on there and we occasionally do events that everyone seems to enjoy. For example, a couple weeks ago we did a watch party of a piece of lost media that we talked about on a bonus episode, and got about 70 people riffing on how weird this movie was. The premium subscriber Discord is full of kind, funny, thoughtful people. We have three listeners who are volunteer moderators, but the bulk of their moderating is just adding features to the Discord because everyone is very chill there!
A big and unresolved problem I see on the horizon is that I am unable to access any subscription revenue beyond what Supporting Cast is paying me monthly until my initial loan from them is entirely repaid. And if we reach the end of them giving me a monthly amount and I haven’t repaid them, then, well…I get nothing until repayment happens. The first couple months brought in some big numbers because people were excited to see the show come back, but we are now leveling out at about 200-250 patrons a month, and my current position vs. the amount that was guaranteed me by Supporting cast continues to widen. It’s not insurmountable, I can definitely pay it back, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t make me a little uneasy!
Ad Revenue
Ad revenue for podcasts is what is called a CPM (or “Cost Per Thousand” - the M is the roman numeral for 1000, don’t ask me why they do this) model. For every thousand listeners that get served an ad, we make some amount of money, usually between $25-$35, and that is split 70/30 between us and Radiotopia. There are a couple limiting factors here in terms of revenue. If listener growth is flat, so too is the ad revenue. I could try adding more ad spots, but Radiotopia has told me we’re selling about 60% of my preroll (ads before the show) inventory and just over 70% of my midroll inventory, so who knows if adding more ad slots would result in higher revenue.
How Else To Make Money?
The only thing left to try is stuff that I have never done before. What the geeks call “diversifying your revenue streams.” For example, if you’ve listened to the show recently you might have noticed that the episode that follows the most recent Hyperfixed episode is always from some other podcast now. That’s cuz we are working with a service called Podroll that pays us to let them do that. They give me a little list of podcasts to work with. I think we’re making about $1,000-$2,000 a month from this so far? And sure, we’ve also gotten some complaints about it. Which I get, it’s kind of annoying! But right now every little bit helps.
One thing we’ve thought about to juice numbers is essentially doing sponsored episodes of Hyperfixed. Instead of a listener coming to us with a problem to solve, we manage something for a brand. Like, say HP Printers or something. As opposed to coming out in our normal slot, they would come out in the off weeks, and I would say at the top that they are sponsored and paid for, but for all intents and purposes it would have the same cadence and reporting as a normal episode. The idea makes me feel kinda icky, but if I’m being totally candid, if the opportunity arises, I’m probably gonna take it.
There are other ways to make money in the margins that I’m also exploring — newsletter sponsorships, merchandise (COMING SOON), but really the core of the show’s budget is coming from subscriptions.
So What Now, Alex?
Hahahahahaha great question!
We’re going to test out a few new ways to generate revenue, and nothing is final just yet, but a few ideas we’re exploring: raising the price of memberships for new members (not you all!), giving out referral codes to pass along a free month of premium to a friend, and probably more new, hopefully interesting, ways to drive up subscriptions.
😓 I have enough money on my own and through the advance I’m getting through Supporting Cast to make it at least until the end of 2025. And things could definitely turn.
But, I could also have to go get a real job, instead of telling stories on the internet. And if I do, hey, I had a good run of almost 20 years! I feel very fortunate! And I’ll never stop making stuff. I guess we’ll just have to see. Wish me luck.
If you’re interested in subscribing to Hyperfixed, you can do so by following this link. if you’re an advertiser (or some kind of wealthy benefactor) who would like to chat, my email address is alex@hyperfixedpod.com. Onward and upward.
It was really interesting to get an inside look at the numbers behind making a podcast, and I appreciate the sincerity and transparency. You might want to edit the end of the post to include an explicit link to become a premium subscriber to Hyperfixed, because I almost just upgraded to a paid Cool Dude Zone subscription instead, thinking it was for the podcast. Admittedly, I am very sleep deprived at the moment, so I’m not sure how many other people would make that mistake, but just FYI!
Sponsored episodes sounds like a potentially fun move to bring in money. As long as the brands want the Hyperfixed voice, can find ways to be vulnerable like someone with a question, and the stories are still interesting, I don’t see a downside. If anyone wants to stand on artistic integrity against this, I hope they’re willing to share their trust fund with you.