Deconstructing Harkendarv
It's not a particularly new point, but creating is hard. Even the little half hour show we do takes up hours of our lives, hours of which I'm pretty sure we have but a finite number. It's the preciousness of this time that forces us to ponder whether the thing we're are doing is worth its time-spend.
People who are better than us at knowing what they want often ask: what is it you want from this podcast? 500 downloads? 1000? What are your success metrics? What would make you hang up your hat, happy that you've given podcasting the best go you can?
I can't speak for my colleague, but I love the stats. I look at our graphs near-obsessively, with all their unanswerable questions. Who is listening? Did they download just one episode, or all of them? Are they enjoying them? Will they listen again? But these are not the kind of stats the internet can easily provide. The internet is a world of disconnected numbers, not people. Even the high numbers can't tell us that itching question: why?
We can speculate wildly about why this or that episode is more popular than another. People like funny, people like relatable, people like movies, not enough people have PS4s. But it's all guesswork. Not even educated guesses, just plain old-fashioned stabs in the dark. We may as well be working by magnetic compass and candlelight.
So where does that leave us? We don't know. Personally I'm looking forward to a straight week with no zero-download days, and if our stats continue, it might be realistic in the not too distant future. Maybe I'll think of another goal when that one's complete.
