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By Pam Moore When Jack Rhysider started , he had a blog that got a few thousand hits per day, 3,000 Twitter followers, and a full-time job as a network security engineer. Now, nearly three years and over 70 episodes later, the podcast has been downloaded over 8 million times. The show, which tells “true stories of the dark side of the internet”—including disturbing tales of hacking, data breaches, and cybercrime— is now a full-time job  and pays for a production team. Darknet Diaries “I threw up my hands and was like, ‘well forget this. I guess people are already doing this.’” Rhysider is not only humble about his incredible success—he says you can grow a successful show, too. How? He breaks it down into three steps: Make an excellent show, grow your audience, and monetize it—in that order. Make an Amazing Show Rhysider quickly realized that part of what made his show stand out was not just the stories he was telling, but the way he told them. “We all have different ways that we’ve grown up and the way we look at the world,” he explains. Owning that singularity was one key to Rhysider’s success. When he launched the first four episodes in the fall of 2017, he didn’t see any other podcasters in the high-drama cybersecurity stories space. As soon as he launched, however, he recalls, “I found four shows that were doing the same thing,” which made him “furious” and nearly caused him to quit. “I threw up my hands and was like, ‘well forget this. I guess people are already doing this.’” But he quickly realized he was giving his listeners an experience no one else was offering. any cybersecurity stories were either being told “in very dry and technical ways” or they came out in discrete chunks as the stories unfolded in real time. In contrast, he waited “until the chips had fallen” to let listeners hear the entire story from start to finish in one compelling episode. Image provided by Rhysider Not only was he creating stories with a distinct, compelling arc, he was also very deliberate in his delivery, leaning heavily on other creators for inspiration. As the saying goes, “good artists borrow, great artists steal.” “When I started podcasting I was stealing everything I could,” Rhysider says. He listened carefully to podcasters including Ira Glass, Malcolm Gladwell, and Aaron Mehnke. One of his signature sounds—making it sound like two people are talking, when there is only one—came directly from the true-crime podcast . “They pan to the left and talked with a little filter, and then they pan to the right and talk with a different filter and it was the same narrator.” He remembers thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s so cool. I’m gonna try that.’ Dirty John Podcasters weren’t his only creative influences. At one point, Rhysider sought to emulate the Fight Club narrator. “I realized he’s got insomnia, so I need to stay up till 3 am and then try to record the episode at 3 am,” he recalled. Rhysider is adamant that a quality show depends on excellent storytelling—and that you can cultivate that skill. He recommends buying books on podcasting, taking courses, and focusing not just on the technology but the content itself. He says it’s not just “what mic to use, but how to tell a great story and how to be entertaining.” With practice and plenty of study, Rhysider found his own groove: “By Episode 30 or so I had my own voice and my own style.” Clearly, it’s working. The show, which saw 800 downloads per episode in the first week, was rated among the podcasts of 2019 by Pocketcasts. top 25 According to Rhysider, “if you don’t make something great, you’re gonna lose your listeners, which means you have to get new listeners faster than you’re losing the listeners. And that’s difficult.” When you create a great show, you naturally gain what Rhysider calls “superfans,” people who are so excited about it, who want to share it with their friends and family. “They go into the office and they say, ‘You have to listen to this,’ or they tell their friend, ‘You have to listen to this,’ that’s number one,” he explains. Show Promotion to Grow Your Audience Having spent four months toiling over the first four episodes, Rhysider knew he had something special and began promoting the show right away. He relied on traditional social media marketing strategies, creativity, and, when it came to Facebook, luck. Who is the real Jack Rhysider? Looks like he’s doing something to protect his identity from Google Images. It turned out, Rhysider had a friend at Facebook “who had a budget to play with.” His friend ended up gifting him $4,000 worth of Facebook ads. In return, his friend experimented with running different types of ad campaigns and had access to the analytics data. Despite not being a huge fan of social media, Rhysider felt his show couldn’t have experienced turbo-charged growth without it. He referred to it as “a magic megaphone that you should not squander.” Rhysider, in fact, only joined Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn after launching Darknet Diaries, in order to promote the show. Early on, he invested $500 on paid promotions with Instagram influencers, which he said helped him reach the 5,000 follower mark. From there, he focused on more organic growth on Instagram, continuing to post regularly and interacting with other accounts that were similar to his. He also used Reddit to help grow his audience. Additionally, Rhysider has increased the show’s visibility by taking advantage of other types of networking opportunities. He’s given out Darknet Diaries stickers at the many conferences he’s spoken at, has been a guest on about 20 podcasts, and has successfully pitched his show to journalists who mentioned it in publications including , Vulture, and . The New York Times The Guardian Monetize With a top-notch show, a huge following, and a strategic approach to monetization, Rhysider has nailed the financial aspect of podcasting. Burnt out on his full-time job, he quit work six months after launching and was able to earn a full-time living six months after that, at the end of 2018. By the beginning of 2019, he had the means to hire additional producers, artists, sound designers, an editor, and a writer. According to one of Rhysider’s on Lime Link, he has monetized through ads for the past two years and he’s been very intentional in his approach. Rather than using networks, which wanted to put more ads in his show than he was comfortable with, he uses AdvertiseCast, Megaphone MTM, and Affiliate Ads. “AdvertiseCast does fairly well filling up my ad slots, but because I’m hosted on Megaphone it’s just a matter of enabling MTM and if I have any unfilled ad slots, ads get automatically added in.” Although he said MTM “doesn’t pay very well,” he feels its simple set-up and low-maintenance make it worthwhile. “And if I want to throw in the occasional affiliate deal, then hey why not?” he says, adding,  “I typically go for affiliate deals when the sponsor has one but isn’t interested in paying for ads, they just want to pay for results.” recent blog posts Regarding Rhysider’s three-pronged approach to building a successful podcast, he’s clear about one thing: No amount of social media promotion or attempts to monetize will work if you don’t have the foundation of a fantastic show that retains listeners. Beyond that, he hesitates to attribute Darknet Diaries’ exponential growth to any one strategy. Rather, he likens his success to the effort it takes to complete a cross-country bicycle trip. “It’s like a flywheel that you keep pushing.” This story originally appeared on Timber.fm

How The Darknet Diaries Podcast Scaled from a Part-time Hobby to Eight Million Downloads

Ever since launched, it seems like writers and the craft of writing have lost their value. ChatGPT There have been clickbait headlines on how Google is dead, writing is dead, and writers will lose their jobs. However, recently, ChatGPT has for the third time in a month. And even on paid platforms for content generation (think Jasper, Copy.ai, and others), the forums are full of people complaining that they cannot get these tools to produce the content they need. lost a number of subscribers The issue lies in a few factors: A content generator cannot replace a knowledge of what makes writing good in the first place. And this is true whether we’re talking about content writing, story writing, or news writing. When it comes to original insights and writing about niche information, the best that AI can do is rephrase or rewrite your writing. Talk about double work! AI writing assistants are supposed to make your life easier, not harder. When all is said and done, though, there are right ways and wrong ways to use AI for writing. You can use to make your writing better and be more productive. But you can also use it to double your work and get rejected from publications that do not care for AI-generated content. AI Let’s look at ways NOT to use AI for writing. And in the process, you’ll learn the best practices for making it work. Use AI-generated content without editing For many who struggle to write, it can seem like AI is almost miraculous in terms of how human the content can sound. However, that’s only at a surface level. Once you start reading the content carefully, you’ll notice small things like how certain phrases and terms are repeated, how sentence and paragraph structures also turn into noticeable patterns, or how generic the content is. You also want to watch for tones when editing. When you ask AI to create blog posts for you without a clear command or prompt, you typically get content that sounds formal. The paragraph and sentence structures might be elaborate, and you might get jargon in your content. One workaround is to give the right prompts and ask for a conversational or reader-friendly tone of voice. But you also need to get into the weeds and edit everything and make it sound better. Don’t Sound Like You Another matter to think about is whether AI-generated writing even sounds like you. No matter how good AI gets, your communication style remains unique and hard to replicate. You should use AI to handle simple things like conclusions, , and anything else that doesn’t need a personal touch. calls to action However, you don’t want to lose what makes your content so different and original - your special brand and tone of voice. While editing your writing, ask yourself how you’d say this information to a friend. The phrasing, the choice of words, examples, and so on are what will make your work resonate with your audience. So, don’t forget to make any AI content you use sound like you. Do Your Research Another way to make poor use of AI is to accept everything it generates as factual. People often use AI to create content about matters that need verification from trusted sources and authorities. While you can use AI to write about information that’s generic, common sense, or self-evident, you must be careful when talking about health, finances, factual information, and so on. Always run your own check to make sure that the data you use is based on solid research and verified information. By taking the time to check your content, you avoid getting negative feedback in case the AI generates false information. Use AI to Replace Not Enhance As someone whose business runs on content marketing, I know about the power of good content. I know that AI can be misused, but so can social media, email marketing, and other technology that disrupts. What you don’t want to do with AI is to have it replace your personal efforts entirely. But rather use it to enhance your writing. Today, there are a dozen or so writing assistants that offer a variety of features. Some of them have truly powerful tools that can take your content to the next level if you know how to use them. For example, QuillBot and Wordtune have setups where you can have them add a counterpoint, add an analogy, an example, and so on. Such enhancements are only good for helping your reader get more value. The trick is to treat AI as a means to improve your writing, not replace it altogether. The moment you try to replace real writing with AI is when your content becomes uninspiring, uninteresting, and the opposite of helpful - and remember, Google wants you to write helpful content to rank on its Search Engine Results Page. Don’t Learn the Basics of Content Marketing Too many influencers and success gurus sell AI as this catch-all tool to end the need for hard work, deep learning, and the fundamentals of marketing. And many people will learn, with trial and error, that it’s hardly the case. If you want AI to work for you, you need to know what you want to get out of it. For people who want to grow their business, boost their career, or achieve their goals in any way, they still need to understand marketing and content marketing in particular. This covers doing topic research, researching what you want to say, knowing how to structure your writing, and then writing it down into its final form. And even then, there’s editing and distributing your work to the right people to create the most impact. There needs to be a solid understanding of marketing: what your goal is, who you want to reach, and how best to do it. And when you learn the basics, you’ll be more effective in generating the right content via AI. Over to You AI writing assistants are here, and it’s smart to use them. It is NOT smart to use them as is. And this is why you should learn about the different tools there are and about marketing concepts to know how to get the best out of AI. You’ll give better prompts and, as a result, get improved writing that actually helps people.

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