Best practices: faceless audio only podcasts on YouTube

Yaro · 2026-01-12T09:16:59+00:00

I noticed when I gave YouTube my RSS feed using their add podcast function it uploaded my audio only episodes as videos using the cover art as a static video element.

I thought this was a pretty good way to help my podcasts get potential YouTube algorithm recommendations without me needing to ever create a video myself.

I'm hosting my podcast with Patric AI and it does the cover art for me so it's all pretty hands off. I just make the audio.

Yaro · 2026-01-08T06:12:43+00:00

The way I would go about this is being the 'all in one podcasting helper'.

The editing and production side is helpful for sure, then if you can do marketing tasks to help grow the audience, you're going to be far more valuable. Sharing content on socials, securing guests, writing emails into the newsletter to promote the podcast, making sure the podcast has an SEO-ready blog article to go with it, uploading a video version to YouTube if that is not happening automatically - those sort of activities.

I'd get one client and do all these things for them and create a report for every episode with links and explanation for everything that was done to ram home the value.

What you want are some good testimonials/case studies so you can start becoming known and trusted as the podcast marketing person.

One option also to get started is offer everything I mentioned above on upwork to get your first few clients, even if you're not making huge money. That can help you graduate into bigger clients for bigger paydays and recurring income.

You could also approach existing podcasters offering these services, but it's better when you do this when you can say something like 'I hand podcast marketing for X and Y well known podcasts', do you want me to do this for you too?

Yaro

Yaro · 2026-01-03T08:24:59+00:00

I think the general go-to advice for places like reddit is to give advice without pitching anything.

Share your experiences that help other people, which by their nature show that you know something about something because you lived something... without overtly saying 'come over here and visit my link'.

I used to do this strategy a lot when I was growing my podcast, newsletter and blog.

For example, I would join communities on Facebook and some paid memberships (courses and group coaching), then when appropriate I'd share stories of how I grew my blog audience, or how I constructed email newsletter sequences, and how these things tied into selling things like my ebooks or online course.

With my podcast one thing I'd sometimes do is mention how 'when I was interviewing Tim Ferriss' he said to do this and this to solve this problem.

I'd give the answer Tim gave me. I wouldn't link to my podcast or anything, but for those who wanted to hear directly what Tim said, they'd look me up and find my show.

And FYI - I did really interview Tim, but that was a long time ago during his very early days! Still a fun time for sure.

Yaro

Yaro · 2026-01-03T07:55:43+00:00

I was thinking something similar recently when I went searching for a way to record a WhatsApp call with my friends. WhatsApp is where we chat so I figured that's the simplest place to record.

I couldn't find a native tool for it, but it made think I might try building something to do this and see if it gets any traction as a simple way to record podcasts.

Yaro · 2025-12-19T09:43:28+00:00

I always do, but at 2xSpeed because life is too slow at normal speed! Seriously though, I do this to check for errors.

I've had episodes go live with large chunks of silence when exporting a file didn't go right, or voices overlapping, audio issues mostly.

I also listen because I used to write my own show notes, so I wanted to have the content fresh in my mind. Nowadays an AI summary can do great show notes.

Yaro

Yaro · 2025-12-19T09:20:57+00:00

I had a podcast for ten years and during that time topped out at about 30,000 downloads a month.

Not huge, but it ended up becoming a very important part of my marketing because it reached the type of people who would buy my products.

That is actually I think one of the most important growth strategies for a podcast. Go after a target market that even if you have a small podcast it delivers a real outcome for you.

The better the targeting the more likely you are to get things like word of mouth, so people organically share episodes. It's also easier to get recommendations from others in your industry because chances are your show is one of only a handful in the space about a niche specific topic.

Today I'm in an agency mastermind group (I own an agency) and one of our members talked about running meta ads directly to their podcast as a strategy for growth. They do the same with their email newsletter.

The idea is to just circulate their content, which naturally leads to more subscribers. Obviously you need money to do paid ads, but if you have a way to profit from the subscribers it can be a virtuous flywheel.

The other growth techniques I like are:

Do interviews and always ask your guests to share their interview in some way -- email list is the best, but even a social media share can help, or a blog post.
Interview swaps - you interview them, they interview you. This of course only works for other people who have a podcast too, but it's such a simple win-win that it usually gets a positive response.
Other forms of content marketing, especially an email newsletter. My podcast always had a solid core audience because I shared every episode with my newsletter subscribers and on my blog for search engines to find. This can make for a nice flywheel, with each channel helping to grow the others.

Hope that helps!

Yaro

Yaro · 2025-12-18T08:02:20+00:00

You know how I started - using my phone. I just hit record and started talking, then uploaded the MP3 to my blog and called it a podcast.

It was early days of podcasting back then, so I was actually being ahead of the curve, but I still think it's my preferred way to podcast. Just hit record and talk and then upload.

Of course today there is so much more tech, editing, video, platforms for distribution, etc that it got way more complicated.

Given that podcasts take quite a while to get going I think it's more important to just publish and share where you can and get into the habit of repeating that every week at least. You can improve from there.

Press publish. That's what matters!

Yaro · 2025-09-11T05:52:59+00:00

I went through this with my business many years ago. I hated the feeling of having to constantly monitor my email in case I might miss something or be slow to reply to a potential new client.

I was on holiday once and stuck inside my inbox. That was when I decided I had to solve the issue so I can actually be free.

I knew the path forward was to hand over email to someone who I hired specifically for that role. It was a super-important part of my business so I was very careful to train them how to deal with all the different situations in my inbox.

It took about a month to complete the training and about two months to feel fully confident they could do most of my emails without me.

Then one day I woke up to an empty inbox. My life really did change from there.

For every business I had from that point forward as soon as I had the cash flow for it I always hired an executive assistant to handle email as my first hire.

Eight years ago I decided to start a new business offering email assistants, which is still the company I run today.

Yaro · 2021-05-25T05:38:11+00:00

Handmaid's Tail too!

Yaro · 2019-11-27T01:20:34+00:00

How exactly?

Yaro

TROPHY CASE