30. 10,000 Downloads: The Story So Far

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Dear listener. Welcome to KeyForge public radio, where I nerd out about KeyForge. I sometimes have some awesome KeyForge friends on and you're here with me and that's pretty great. So this is a bit of a different episode today. KeyForge public radio recently hit 10,000 total. Downloads. And that is actually a pretty great milestone for a podcast.

If you release regularly. And do you have a strong community and you grow, most people can hit 10,000 downloads. But that's not easy. And it's not something that happens to most podcasts. And I mean that in the general sense of most podcasts that are created. Most podcasts and around episode seven on average, some go longer, some go shorter. But having [00:01:00] 10,000 downloads is actually a pretty great. Milestone and one that I'm really thankful for because you all did that.

If you're listening to this, you have participated in bringing KPR to that milestone and that's pretty great. So, something I want to do today is I'm actually going to go over a little bit of the story so far. Kind of an overview of how I got here and then talk a little bit about Podcast downloads actually, and how they're calculated and different platforms actually count it differently.

So I'll talk about that. Just so you have some context for where KeyForge public radio is. And where where I've been, because many of you know me from call of discovery. Some of you might not. And so we're going to put all this in one place, the call of discovery story and overview of it. And then talk a little bit about KeyForge public radio itself and what downloads look like and what those dynamics look like for a serious hobby podcast.

Like this one. So for those who [00:02:00] are uninitiated about call up discovery, call them discovery. It was a podcast launched. In 2019 in August of 2019 by a man named ed polka who lives over in the United Kingdom. He launched it. He made a Twitter account for, it started to have a few people on and in August of 2018, I saw call of discovery on Twitter and I checked out the podcast. And EDS. Attention to detail with the production quality was pretty impressive. As well as his format, the format was to have a guest on to interview the guest. And then in the next episode, which will be recorded all at once. In the next episode, you would talk with the guest about one of their KeyForge decks.

You would dive into it. Talk all about the deck. Talk about the ins and outs with the deck. And ask all sorts of questions about the deck in an episode, following the, the topic interview. And I emailed him, complimenting him on the show.

And then ed brought me on as a guest and pretty promptly invited me on to co-host so that he didn't [00:03:00] have to do it alone, which is always a good move. We announced to my move to co-host on-call discovery in January of 2020, and then two months later. COVID hit and March of 2020. Call up discovery was one of the few shows, the few podcasts that survived the pandemic and kept publishing episodes alongside help from future self and our cons corner.

Especially we interviewed a whole lot of Vault Tour winners, community members KeyForge designers. We got through the entire design team and we also interviewed Richard Garfield who created the game, which was pretty awesome. Eventually, we got to episode 100 and we wanted to do something special for it.

And I pitched a very silly idea that ed, for some reason, said yes to, we decided to do. A musical episode. For a number of reasons, putting this together took a bit longer than anticipated. And after a six month mini high, a six month hiatus. We launched the episode in August of [00:04:00] 2022. That year in June is when ghost galaxy had announced their acquisition of KeyForge. That in a move that few had anticipated, it was very exciting to see the game, a move over to, to a company that would look like they were going to give it more life than fantasy flight was in their current state. So ed and I continued column discovery, and then due to some shifts in our lives, we decided to sunset the podcast in early 20, 23. At the time the podcast had about 59,000 downloads and the metrics used at the podcasting index site.

Listen notes placed call discovery and the top 5%. Of all podcasts by popularity, something that measure across downloads. Reviews. External links and media references, things like that. And so called discovery is still listed on the top 5% of all podcasts by that metric, which I think is something that ed and I are really, really proud of.

Right. That we were able to serve you all that way and everybody responded and liked it. That was really, that was really flattering. [00:05:00] And then after a few months of not creating a KeyForge podcast, I decided to create my own totally from scratch. Totally, totally original, a brand new platforms, brand new feeds and everything. KeyForge public radio. Now those of you who have listened to call discovery, and this joke has been made a few times here on, on KPR know that I have a bit of a competitive side that it started to show up on color discovery.

Call discovery was very much focused on the. The fun and discovery. Of KeyForge and we dipped into the competitive side sometimes as well. But the longer the show went on, the more I got the nickname and it was used, the more it was used the nickname, sweaty, Zack. For me trying real hard to play well. At KeyForge. And so my competitive side was coming out, had that character named sweaty Zack. And as I was considering, once we sunsetted Cod what to do, I said, you know, I want to do something that focuses a bit more on the competitive side. And I don't see podcasts. Addressing kind of this library style of KeyForge strategy. [00:06:00] Where you go over all the basics, the paradigms, they, the frames we use to discuss KeyForge and make sense of it because the systems and KeyForge are so different than any other game.

The dynamics are so different than any other game. It takes a totally different set of skills. It's not like you can take your. You are manna curve knowledge or your resource curve knowledge from other games and apply it here. All the costs are opportunity costs because all the cars and KeyForge are free and none of the cards.

And KeyForge. Are free. So that's why I started KeyForge public radio is because one, I enjoyed it. And two, I wanted to fill that need. And now early in this month, December of 2023, KPR has passed. 10,000 downloads. So that, because that's such a good milestone, something that some of you may be interested in, and if you're not, that's totally fine. So download can actually be measured a few different ways.

There is a set of guidelines by the interactive advertising bureau, the [00:07:00] IAB but these guidelines are a bit open to interpretation and there are a couple of different ways to satisfy them. So they're not very tight guidelines yet. And many different podcasts hosts might measure it differently.

And what I mean by a podcast host is. To be able to have your podcast. Online, you need to have an RSS feed. You might remember RSS feeds from blogs and other. Feeds that deliver content of that kind. They are easy for services and computers to look at and see if there's new content and go get that new content. And if you have a podcast, what you're going to need. As some kind of site where you upload the audio, where you upload the title of the show, the show are that sort of thing. And, and upload all of that. All at once and it lives, it lives somewhere on the internet to be accessible.

And it's organized in a way that the RSS trawlers can look at it and pick it up. And you need a service to host that for you. And these days, these days you can actually get services that of course are specifically for [00:08:00] podcasts back in the day, you might actually grab. An old wordpress.org site, as which has a blog with an RSS feed, then just use that blog. As a, kind of modify it to turn it into a podcast feed.

So now there are companies that just handle podcasts. RSS feeds, which are fantastic. And that company, when, because they're hosting all your files and when somebody listens to it and it requests it from the RSS feed, that's where the request goes to. They have to decide what activity on that RSS feed.

They count as a download. So I am a big fan of the people I use transistor.fm. They're a little bit more expensive than like the economy option, like pod bean. But they are, they filter your downloads pretty strictly. We'll talk about that in just a second, so that, you know, any download really is. A real person. Or as close as you can, we're getting as close as we can to genuine downloads. And they also have all sorts of, of helpful features for putting your podcast out there.

[00:09:00] And a lot of these features, long story short are very good for me in my independent business, where I create podcast and vantage podcasts for businesses who want to use them as content marketing. And so it's a fantastic tool for me. It's what I use on KPR and some of the ways they, so some of the ways a fake download might happen is. There is a computer or computer program that is set up. To a spam download requests from RSS feeds. And so it was very possible that either through a spam bot. Or or just a automatically downloading. yOu know, computer program that goes around just hitting a bunch of hitting a bunch of podcasts that you could get downloads that aren't real PIP people actually listening to your podcast because downloads while they're a great metric, they're the metric.

Everybody talks about. You know, it depends on what your goals are of like what really actually matters to your podcast. For me, you know, I have some [00:10:00] merchandise sell. And I have a Patrion subscription if you're so interested in joining the KeyForge public radio Patrion, that really helps me out.

And it starts at $4 a month and you get a number of goodies for that, and you can check it out at patrion.com/ KeyForge public radio. Of course. And so you want these downloads to be real people because whatever your goal is, whether you want sponsorships or you want to put, you know, point people towards the Patriot, if they're feeling so inclined or you want to pitch them Merck, you want to know roughly how your podcast is doing.

And so fake downloads really. Hurt that. So a few ways that a few ways that transistor combats fake or spammy or fraudulent downloads is a one. The IP address is known to be spam or fake downloaders. They actually block, they don't count. Any requests from those IP addresses. If they're known to be spam, if they're known to be fake, they don't count any downloads from those addresses.

So none of the downloads I get are from the known spammers or fake downloaders. People trying to [00:11:00] be mischievous or her to crime on the internet, and that, you know, sometimes involve these kinds of, of, of spamming a spam downloading or D dos, that kind of thing.

tHe other thing they do is that they filter, they filter a bit multiple downloads from a single IP address.

So when an IP address. reQuests a download from the RSS feed. If that same IP address. E a computer or a phone requests, the download. Again, it still gives it to it, but it only counts it as one download. So for instance, if an episode of KeyForge public radio launches and I sit here and just play the episode. On repeat on a couple of different devices.

I'm only getting as many downloads. And as IP addresses, that's why it's called the download and a play because you might be able to just download the episode and never listened to it. You might you might. You might listen to it a bunch, but only download at once. Right? So, that's why we, that's why we count downloads and multiple downloads from a unique IP address.

Only count as one over with how [00:12:00] transistor.fm. Does it, so they are a bit stricter. They're going to show fewer downloads than other podcast reporting apps might, but that's because they're a bit stricter and they want your data to be more accurate to the number of real people who are actually. Engaging with your content.

So all that being said, there is there is actually kind of a really fun kind of emotional. Truth a conclusion to this is all that those 10,000 downloads over six months. Those are all you. Those are our, by some stricter standards, all real KeyForge fans. Listening to some or all of KeyForge public radio. And the fact that you will do this, the fact that a good number of you have decided to go ahead and support me on Patrion. As I make KeyForge public radio. All of this is just such a blessing to me because I enjoy KeyForge.

I enjoy KeyForge making content for [00:13:00] KeyForge was a part of my journey to leaving my nine to five and saying, okay, am I content creator? How can I hone these skills and then package these skills in a way that's useful for businesses, right. And so this has been such a special part of my journey. And I just want to thank you that if you were listening to this, especially if you've made it this far through the episode, thank you so much for being a part of this journey and being. One or many of my 10,000. Here at KPR. And again, if you're so inclined, we do have the Patrion that definitely is lovely to have some money coming in. Through KeyForge public radio and have some support.

They're always getting that vote of confidence in having that bit of money coming in is always a great motivator. And then I get to talk with our Patrion subscribers about what content is coming up and have them vote on it. I have them give suggestions and feedback on things. There isn't an in fact, an entire lost KeyForge public radio episode. Based around a concept. That I misunderstood. There was a phrase I've been [00:14:00] using for a while. That I thought meant one thing and it meant Different thing, not a completely different thing, but different enough that it was going to be classified as incorrect out on the internet and my very kind. Patrion subscribers, especially Murph shout out Murph. We're kind enough to say, Hey Zach, you use this, you use this phrase differently than I expect it.

Let's chat about it a little bit. And we did. And I said, you know, I'm just going to put that episode. In the bin for now because I made an entire episode around. Using, using a phrase that was not really actually. Intended to be used, how I was using it. So, thank you all so much. We have some more content coming up. This December, I'll be recording all that in a batch as soon. And of course, this is a bevy of topics that our Patrion subscribers voted on last month. And then we're getting some new content votes from them on some, when is this card good at questions to ask about grim reminders cards and I've already received. So many cards that I could cover the first six months of next [00:15:00] year with just talking about. Grim reminders cards specifically. Which is fun. Anyways, thank you all so much for joining me for this special little relaxed. Relaxed December season episode here on KeyForge public radio as always there's KeyForge public radio.com with blog posts and all the episodes.

There's the shop. On there as well, where there's some KeyForge of public radio Merck that you can check out. That would be lovely if you picked some of that up. And of course thank you to our AirWave advocate level listeners. Like Paul Roadrunner. Thank you so much, dear listener. And remember like your radio dial. We are KeyForge skills always be well tuned.

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