Hey friends! I told you in a previous episode that I was going to release new episodes on Saturdays, but it's a Monday. So I'm sorry about that. I know inconsistency is lame.

I'm going through a weird time right now when it comes to my show. The events of last week got me thinking about the pros and cons of social media, which got me to start thinking about all the time I was giving away for free, doing things that make money for other people.

I spent most of Saturday writing and recording a video about how to get good sound for your podcast, but I didn't get to finish editing it because I ran out of time (I had something else important to do).

Then I started thinking about how I didn't want to keep spending my weekends producing free podcast episodes and videos. So I wrote a farewell episode to tell you that I'm going to stop doing new episodes, but I decided to sleep on it and give it a little more time to think it over.

So then I wrote this episode to share what I'm thinking about now.

It boils down to this: I'm tired of doing unpaid work. Working for free.

I want to make really good tutorials for podcasters, but I don't want to give them away for free. I want to sell them. I want to make money with this.

But I already have a full time job, and I have a lot of other things I want to do too. So I guess I'm currently just bad at planning and scheduling?

I know many of you are thankful for this show and that it's helpful, and I get that and am thankful for it, but I keep writing these long podcast episodes and putting a bunch of hours into producing them, and then feeling bad about it because I'm giving it all away for free instead of working on stuff I could be selling.

So obviously I need to work on products I can sell. Ebooks, guides, classes, online courses, whatever. I need to figure that out, but I don't know how long that's going to take, and if I can also continue making podcast episodes at the same time.

So I want to ask you. What do you think I should do?

Should I put the show on hold until I have a few products I can put up for sale? Should I just not commit to a regular schedule and make episodes whenever I feel inspired?

What I don't want to do is keep spending most of my weekends working on free podcast episodes.

Let me know what you think. Like I said, I'm still thinking about this and trying to figure it out.

In the meantime, thanks to Ktulu72 and dasteini for the 5 star reviews on Apple Podcasts. I really appreciate it.

Let me know if you have any advice or suggestions for me in the YouTube comments or email me aaron@thepodcastdude.com.

Thanks as always for listening, and until next time: Happy Podcasting.

Aaron Dowd

January 11, 2021

P.S. Here's that blog post about social media I mentioned.