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My First MillionHow Much We Make From A Podcast With 3 Million Downloads/Month (#368)
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Behind-the-scenes promise: numbers, revenue, and growth tactics
Sam sets the scope for a candid “inside baseball” breakdown of the show’s performance: audience size, revenue, and how growth happens. Ben brings in Jonathan as the team’s numbers-focused voice to help explain how the podcast has scaled.
- •Sam frames the episode as a behind-the-scenes look at podcast numbers and revenue
- •The conversation will compare My First Million with Ben’s earlier-stage show
- •Ben introduces Jonathan as the growth and metrics-focused resource
My First Million’s 30-day audience: podcast downloads, YouTube views, and social reach
Sam shares trailing-30-day metrics from their hosting and video platforms and clarifies what they count as “downloads.” He also adds personal social view totals to paint a broader reach picture beyond the podcast feed.
- •Sam defines “downloads” as a combination of podcast platforms plus YouTube consumption
- •MFM’s trailing 30-day podcast-platform downloads are about 1.3 million
- •YouTube subscribers are a little over 110,000, with about 2.7 million views in 30 days (many from Shorts)
- •Sam estimates 1–1.5 million of those YouTube views are longer-form episode views
- •Sam cites additional reach from his TikTok and Instagram views over the same period
How To Take Over The World’s scale: per-episode performance and ad pricing
Ben shares his show’s monthly and per-episode download range, noting how lower publishing volume affects totals. He also explains that he’s now earning a small profit and gives his current rate for ad placements.
- •Ben reports around 80,000 monthly downloads
- •Typical mature episodes are around 40,000 downloads, with top episodes approaching the 50,000 range
- •Ben emphasizes that his totals look different because he publishes at much lower volume
- •Ben says he’s now slightly profitable after being negative and then neutral
- •Ben charges about $1,000 per ad placement
Why MFM shows ‘zero revenue’ right now: HubSpot ownership and the advertiser arrangement
Sam explains that even though the show sells ads, MFM doesn’t directly earn revenue today due to the ownership and advertiser setup that came with The Hustle acquisition. He walks through the original ownership/revenue split and how it changed after the sale.
- •Sam says MFM currently makes zero direct revenue
- •He explains The Hustle owned the podcast under an arrangement where Shaan brought the idea and accepted the company owning it
- •Sam describes a revenue-split structure used when The Hustle sold ads
- •When HubSpot bought The Hustle, it acquired the podcast as well
- •HubSpot is now the only advertiser on the show, so MFM doesn’t receive direct podcast revenue
Estimating what MFM could earn: ad rates, multiple placements, and add-on monetization
Sam uses a friend’s podcast as a benchmark and then estimates what MFM might generate from ads if it were independently monetized. Ben adds that selling their own ads would introduce additional costs like a dedicated ad seller.
- •Sam cites a friend’s health and wellness podcast as a revenue benchmark across ads, programs, merch, and affiliates
- •Sam estimates MFM ads alone could potentially be in a multi-million range if independently sold
- •He discusses pricing in terms of revenue per 1,000 downloads and multiple ad slots per episode
- •Sam mentions additional monetization possibilities like courses or a paid community
- •Ben notes that running their own ad sales would likely require hiring an ad seller who takes a cut
What it costs to run and grow MFM: production team and paid growth experiments
The team outlines the show’s production and distribution costs, including a multi-person editing and clips operation. They also describe optional growth spending, including paid placements, and why some paid channels are harder to justify.
- •A speaker breaks down the production team (producer, editors, short-form clip team, YouTube producer) and pegs production at about $25K per month
- •They describe additional spending on growth, ranging from about $25K/month to potentially much higher depending on aggressiveness
- •Sam summarizes annual costs (excluding hosts) as roughly around the half-million range
- •Sam says a key growth lever is buying ads on other podcasts, though it’s hard to track precisely
- •They discuss testing YouTube ads, questioning subscriber quality and sustainability, and expressing confidence in short-form clips as a long-term play
Ben’s growth approach: fix production, publish more, and choose topics strategically
Ben says he’s not actively running marketing campaigns; instead, he’s focusing on repairing a broken production process so he can publish more consistently. He also notes that topic selection can be a major growth lever in podcasting.
- •Ben says his main growth focus is improving production so he can release more episodes
- •He describes his current approach as largely organic growth
- •Ben believes increased output alone will keep driving growth
- •He also makes strategic choices about what subjects to cover to support growth
How My First Million started: launch spike, decline, then slow climb—and an accidental format shift
Sam tells the origin story: Shaan pitched the podcast, it launched with a big initial burst from The Hustle’s audience, then downloads fell before slowly rebuilding. A no-show guest led to Sam joining for an episode, which evolved into the recurring co-host format.
- •Sam recounts launching MFM to The Hustle’s large audience and seeing an early spike in downloads
- •He describes the typical pattern: strong launch, a drop-off, then gradual growth over years
- •A guest no-show led Shaan to ask Sam to join on short notice, and the co-host dynamic stuck
- •Sam shares that at the time of acquisition they were around 600,000 downloads per month
- •Sam says he doesn’t fully know what drove the later growth increase after that period
Organic vs ‘movie-style’ podcast creation—and what makes shows stand out
Ben describes how his own show began as a personal project to retain what he learned, which he believes is a common path for strong podcasts. Sam contrasts organic growth with highly produced, planned launches, and argues that many podcasts fail due to lack of commitment, skill, or differentiation.
- •Ben explains he started his podcast after reading a Napoleon biography and wanting to retain what he learned
- •Sam says some podcast networks plan launches carefully, while others emerge organically
- •Sam argues podcasting has a tough noise-to-signal problem because many people can talk but few are great long-term hosts
- •He says successful podcasters tend to show up consistently and treat it like a job
- •Sam lists differentiators: a compelling niche/angle, strong charisma/storytelling, or unusual expertise/experience
A framework for a hit show: be unique in at least two dimensions
Ben shares a framework he attributes to Eric Nuzum about four ways a podcast can differentiate: subject, host, audience, and storytelling style. He argues many shows fail by only being unique in one way, and he connects the framework to why MFM works.
- •Ben outlines four differentiation levers: what it’s about, who hosts it, who it’s for, and how it’s told
- •He says a show typically needs to be unique in at least two areas to break out
- •Ben gives an example of an idea being insufficient without credibility or a distinct storytelling approach
- •Ben describes MFM as distinctive both in topic range and in the hosts’ experience and engagement
- •Sam adds an example of listeners caring deeply when hosts have access or a worldview built from major success
Podcast fandom and authenticity: why the medium creates intense relationships
Sam and Ben describe podcasting as unusually intimate: listeners spend long stretches with hosts and build real attachment. They also stress that long-form exposure makes it hard to fake credibility—authenticity becomes unavoidable.
- •Sam says listeners remember small offhand mentions and build true fandom because they spend so much time with hosts
- •He describes podcasts as a place where people feel like they know you well
- •Sam argues long-form talk makes “bullshitting” unsustainable and forces authenticity (or a consistently maintained character)
- •Ben calls podcasting an intimate medium—“in someone’s ears”—creating a strong parasocial connection
- •Ben says building a big audience can feel like slow, difficult work, but the resulting following can be highly valuable
Monetization and recognition: ‘real money’ with tens of thousands of listeners—and surprising real-world visibility
Ben and Sam discuss how podcasts can generate significant revenue even with relatively modest audience size, and how that compares to other platforms. Sam also shares how often he gets recognized and why that surprised him given the show’s scale.
- •Ben mentions someone with roughly 35,000 downloads per episode making about half a million dollars per year from a podcast
- •Sam reacts that additional products like courses could expand revenue beyond ads
- •Sam argues podcasts work best when paired with an existing business “monetization engine”
- •Sam says MFM isn’t huge in absolute terms, yet he gets recognized regularly, often by voice
- •He describes listener excitement and intensity despite the audience being a small slice of the broader population
Which episodes ‘pop’: unique guests, niche topics, and collecting passionate communities
Ben notes that fame doesn’t reliably predict episode performance; unusual guests with engaged audiences can outperform bigger names. He explains how he’s applying that insight to his own show by choosing niche figures with highly passionate communities, and Sam adds analogies about representation driving outsized support.
- •Ben says it’s often surprising which interview episodes outperform expectations
- •He observes that unique guests with audiences that don’t hear from them often can drive big spikes
- •Ben describes pivoting from heavily covered historical figures to more niche subjects with passionate interest
- •He cites an example of a niche episode tracking toward becoming his most downloaded
- •Sam argues topics (and communities) with underrepresentation may rally strongly behind content that feels “for them,” and Ben compares it to collecting niches into a larger audience over time
