658: 160k Talking About Australian Fantasy Football

AI transcript
A hundred sixty grand talking about Australian fantasy football now you know nothing warms
my heart more than listener success stories and for some odd reason the more obscure the
niche the better right so today’s guest started a podcast on the side from his teaching job
not about football not about even fantasy football but about a very specific flavor
of fantasy football for a very specific flavor of football that being Australian rules football
that’s a niche within a niche within a niche if I’ve ever heard of one it’s a really fun
illustration of how you can monetize just about any area of interest from the keeper league
podcast and keeper league pod.com.au have your lock welcome to the side hustle show thanks Nick
for having me it’s a absolute pleasure to be here I’ve been listening to this show for probably
five years now and got plenty of good ideas so it’s pretty exciting to come on here and be
able to kind of you know maybe help some other people get some ideas and doing similar sorts
of things with their side hustles I’m excited to learn as well stick around to hear how
have built his audience from the ground up and the different ways he’s monetized this online
business over the years now if you’re interested in starting a podcast of your own make sure to
download my podcast starter kit with resources on choosing the right software and equipment my
production process marketing your show and of course all the different ways that podcasts can
make money that’s at sidehustle nation.com/heff or just follow the show notes a link in the episode
description and I’ll get you right over there but take me back to the beginning the side hustle
days of like hey I know why don’t we start a podcast about this keeper league flavor of fantasy
football. So yeah it dates back to 2018 just after I had my son at the time I was teaching full
time I’d been about probably I know five six years into my teaching career and I wasn’t really sure
if that’s what I wanted to do full time if that’s the thing that kind of you know filled my desires
I guess I thought it was when I started but you know once you kind of hit that sixth or seventh
year it starts to become a bit of a grind I guess so I was listening to a lot of podcasts at the time
it was probably my favorite thing to do was after work go home go for a walk and listen to a podcast
and because I was listening to so many podcasts it’s basically just I wanted to start my own
I’ve always been a fan of audio and technology I guess my job was teaching music and technology
really and a lot of that was around kind of studio recording teaching kids how to use microphones
record bands and things like that and I’ve always had a bit of a studio set up at home so I thought
why does might as well put it’s a good use start a podcast and here we are about six years later.
Here we go time time flies here so was anybody else covering this topic or were there multiple
different topics that you considered before saying now this is the keeper league is going to be the
one no it’s we never actually really went elsewhere we’ve had our fantasy league and our keeper league
what we’ll call it we’ve had that going for since about 2013 so like you know five years before we
started the podcast and it’s something that we just talked about on whatsapp groups and group chats
every day anyway and it’s kind of the one thing that we’ve we felt like we just knew the most
about we could talk about like a you know we could talk about a few hours type things that’s
like your listeners in in the USA are probably very familiar with draft fantasy like NFL draft
NBA draft and that sort of thing where we go like different I guess is like we play what we call a
keeper league and I think it’s sometimes known as a dynasty league over in the USA as well is like
where you keep players from year to year so instead of picking a new team each year it’s
kind of built like you’re actually like a a team coach or a team manager and you’ve got to think
about at the end of the year who you’re cutting who you’re delisting who you’re trading to other
players in your leagues and then you yeah you do a draft and you pick up the new younger players
and stuff like that so we found that there was no one else talking about that version and we
figured like if we’re that we’re not the only ones in the country that are playing this format
because you know I got the idea from another person and we figured there must be more people
out there doing what we do and it’s been pretty interesting to kind of hear the way different
listeners were we’re doing it like on spreadsheets and stuff like that just totally different ways
people have been doing it but yeah we figured that no one else was doing it that way and
you know I want to start a podcast that was like a niche topic that no one else was really doing
and yeah so we thought we’d run with it and give it a go well I like this niche selection of well
what do you never get tired of talking about hey we were you know we had this group chat going
for years and it was just something that you enjoyed doing and kind of finding this white
space in the market where nobody else is really covering it in the way that we would want to
cover it and you know it’s kind of an upcoming trend towards this keeper league format or this
dynasty type of format and you know those two things kind of combine you know with maybe the
combination of well I already have some level of you know audio production knowledge or interest
or experience and they’re like okay we can kind of find the at the center of all of those concentric
circles is you know this keeper league podcast so what happens next record an episode launch it
to the world instantly internet famous what what’s going on in the early days of the show
not quite not quite internet famous I don’t think we’ve actually reached internet famous yet to be
honest but maybe one day that’s in the pipeline but no we recorded it at my friend’s house around
his dining room table at the time with my audio background like I had decent microphones I kind
of understand acoustics in spaces and stuff like that so how to make things sound good even in the
worst areas we recorded our first episode just kind of introducing ourselves I think we gave
five players each that we think because the whole the whole premise of the podcast is not
talking about the superstars that everyone already knows about and that everyone always talks about
we talk about the next up and coming guys in the fantasy world type thing or guys that haven’t
even played yet they’ve just been drafted haven’t played a game or they’ve been playing in the reserve
leagues to try to get into the main team and to the A team type thing and kind of following those
type of guys so we picked five guys each and we just kind of talked about players that weren’t
really well known okay fantasy I mean AFL fantasy and so that was the kind of premise of the first
podcast and I think because the audio quality was so good like quite often you hear like new
podcasts come up and the audio quality is not good and it can be sometimes a bit jarring to
actually listen to and stuff like that but I think that was probably the main thing like the fantasy
world kind of oh what’s this new podcast we’ll have a listen to it and it’s like oh it actually
sounds professional and so what actually happened was the the guy who runs the official AFL fantasy
podcast for that salary cap version he actually retweeted it and said hey great new podcast good
to see the fantasy community growing and he did a did a retweet and then he actually DM’d the page
on our twitter page and said like great work love the podcast let me know if there’s anything I can
do to help promote it and this is a guy like I’ve been listening to for warning his name is I’ll
I’ll mention his name on the podcast because he’s actually become a really good friend of mine
since doing it but this is a guy I was listening to since I was in high school you know I’m just
following the youtube content or whatever well okay so it was actually like a bit of a I was kind
of starstruck at the time when he kind of got in contact supported the show yeah um so yeah that
was probably the first bit of traction and then you know from there we’re probably getting a few
hundred listeners per week just on the back for our first kind of season just on the back of um
yeah the the main AFL fantasy guys kind of supporting us and retweeting our stuff and
kind of promoting us to the to the wider world I guess okay so did you see some you know download
growth as a result of this retweet or is that I don’t know sometimes you feel like hey you know
with or your boat on social media but I didn’t really move the needle no I think we did I think
I actually did because um but I’m talking like we probably went from like a hundred listeners to
maybe 400 listeners you know like not a huge amount but hey you even find first hundred people to
listen to the show is not nothing correct well that was the assumption that there was enough people
out there playing this format and the kind of at the time and I think it still is like the twitter
I guess the twitter sphere um the x-phere now whatever you want to call it it was where these
people were hanging out I guess talking about because it’s the information you know like people
were going to training and they’re seeing who’s like playing in different positions and stuff
like that and they’ll tweet that to the world and that’s kind of where the community was hanging
out so I think you know having that there was pretty pretty handy but like on the back of that
though then the following year the AFL fantasy platform the official one because it’s like
kind of hard to explain but like before when we were doing this there was no like real official
platform we could play this kind of fantasy on people were either running out on spreadsheets or
we were hacking other platforms kind of doing half on a spreadsheet and then inputting our
teams to these other platforms to kind of play it in a certain way so okay there was no real way
to play it so the big kind of move I guess happened at the end of that season where AFL actually moved
to put keepers into their platform and so they wanted some content around that what is a keeper
league how do you play them what are some strategies what are we looking for all that sort of stuff
and they actually came to us to write some content for the official league website so if you’re
thinking of like you know mba.com nfl.com in america it’s like the equivalent in australia wow yeah
yeah yeah okay so by virtue of being you know one of the only voices in the space is well we need
we want to add this there’s a growing interest or demand of people wanting to play this but we don’t
know what the first thing about or we need some qualified people to come and write for it write
about it for us correct so that’s how it kind of started so they I think ended up writing four or
five articles over five weeks that went on the official AFL website which probably I would
know the numbers but I’d say millions of people I view that in australia so that got some decent
traction there and um yeah since then like you know we’ve done live shows with the official AFL
fantasy people even though we’re not part of the official AFL world or signed to a contract with
them or anything they’ve brought us on to kind of open for their their live shows that they do and
stuff like that and just do like a 10 15 minutes and stuff so we’ve actually moved into like
doing live shows and things like that um yeah so they’re probably like the the main things that
have kind of built traction over the years I guess no that makes a lot of sense it’s it’s I
mean it’s marketing 101 it’s like go where the you know go where the cash is already flowing go
where the the customers already are and in this case you know the official fantasy podcast the
official fantasy platforms if you can get on their radar and kind of you know get exposure to that
audience in an organic way obviously that’s going to be a huge growth driver and I like your point
about well you know the audio quality had to be respectable had to be good enough that people
wouldn’t immediately just dismiss the show as two dudes and you know sit around their kitchen table
and I think that’s probably one of the things that has changed over the last 10 12 years of
podcasting where early on especially in my case you know people were willing to forgive less than
stellar audio and and you know I’ll take ownership of that I’ve made some steps to try and improve
that over the years but it’s becoming a more competitive landscape in people’s earbuds so
trying to step up the production quality a little bit yeah absolutely and the fact that we’d known
each other like the main guy I started with K’s his name is we’ve known each other since we were
little kids as well so everything was very natural the chemistry that sort of stuff yeah all those
few bits and pieces as well as like just doing something that no one else was doing I think
is what probably set it apart the most yeah that it’s helpful to find some some blue space but
also helpful to you know make it entertaining for people tuning in I think that makes sense
since you’re in studio are you doing YouTube syndication with it as well or primarily audio
initially it was primarily audio and I think it was about when TikTok came around so it was a pretty
similar time I kind of realized the the importance of video as well mainly more so just for like
Instagram reels or TikTok videos essentially like essentially is where we kind of started
just even taking clips from the podcast or just doing two camera kind of pieces and things like
that talking about certain players initially yeah it was audio only and then the more I kind of
looked at what the big people were doing in the in the space it was very much leaning towards
video so spend a lot more time investing in video I think we started with GoPro just mounted to our
mic stand so not the worst video quality but not the best either but it was a bit of a pain to
sync up all the high quality audio with the GoPro footage and all that sort of stuff so we did kind
of move toward buying some decent cameras camera switches monitors just looking around at all the
stuff I’ve got lights in here and that’s kind of where the the money that we generated from
we’ll talk about the guest the way we drive money and monetization and stuff in a second but
that’s kind of what all that money went to is to buying all the equipment and stuff like that to
kind of just keep producing quality content and keep improving in that space I guess more with
Heff in just a moment including how he monetized the show after just a few episodes and everything
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show terms and conditions apply hiring indeed is all you need all right how many episodes or years
or let’s talk about the monetization side before you start to you say like well this is something
I love talking about but now I’ve got equipment expenses you know I how do I justify continuing
to do this so it talked to me about what what you did to monetize the show it kind of happened by
accident so we’re doing all this talk on players that not many people know about and I guess the
key thing with a lot of fantasy and anyone who plays it in any format agrees is like having
data and statistics is very key like you can watch them as many games you want but sometimes you
don’t see the whole picture and don’t see everything unless you’re seeing kind of all the stats and
everything so because we’re talking about guys that aren’t even playing in the main leagues yet or
that haven’t even played a senior game they’re only playing high school football or it’s a bit
different over here they’ve kind of got like underage kind of talent academies and stuff like
that that they go play in I guess but like you’re not seeing them on TV or anything like that it was
very hard to actually kind of understand who was good and who was who wasn’t good and all that sort
of stuff and who was suited for fantasy and that sort of stuff so I kind of began scaring the internet
and looking for stats and data and stuff like that on players and I found a few um few sources online
that kind of had individual games um for for players and stuff like the stats there but it
wasn’t kind of collated into a nice easy to use format where you could kind of track these players
and have a look so what I essentially did was found a way to kind of bring them all into a
spreadsheet using um power query um like a Microsoft XL program and that way then I could
work out like what players average what their high scores were what their low scores were what their
trends were which players track in right directions which kind of players play certain roles that tend
to fantasy scoring all that sort of stuff so essentially just built this kind of big data
warehouse of underage stats okay kind of what we call reserve stats so the guys who aren’t playing
the main leagues they’re playing the reserves leagues reserve stats so we could actually just
like look at it and go this guy averaged this kind of number at this level and if he was playing AFL
that might indicate he would be averaging similar type thing at that level type thing and no one
else really had that kind of data at the time so our podcast was quite like renowned for having
this data that no one else had I guess so what kind of happened was um I was like well why don’t
people wanted to release it and we’re looking at Patreon and stuff at the time so I thought that
might be a good way to kind of give people something without having to do a heap of extra work
was just put the data on the Patreon so I was literally uploading the spreadsheet as an attachment
to Patreon kind of you know weekly or whenever I had some new data or whatever I would chuck it up
there and the users would download it started at $2 a month but I think in the first month we had
about a hundred people sign up at $2 a month so that kind of is how we started I guess funding
the uh the podcast and started to you know build on our equipment there I guess okay and this is
almost you know right out of the gate or this is several months down the road when when does this
probably a couple months two or three months in I reckon we started the end of the year once the
preseason got to full swing so yeah probably about two or three months in we started doing that and
that’s kind of how we kind of generated or monetized for the first year or so and I think we had a
we built it up to a five dollar tier and I don’t think there was anything else added in um other
than you just wanted to support the show more and quite a few people signed up to that as well so
kind of generating you know not heaps but enough to kind of pay for our um pay for our hosting
platform and then I think by the end of the year we maybe bought a couple GoPro’s to kind of sit on
there sit on the mic stands and record us while we did it yeah do you think you are still around
that like 400 listeners an episode audience size at that time yeah probably for that first year
the funny thing with our podcast is so it’s a it’s kind of difficult to kind of keep relevance
because in the preseason everyone’s getting ready to draft everyone wants to know about the new
players whatever but once you hit the draft there’s not a lot you can do with your teams
in this format you kind of draft a big squad of players and then it’s locked for the rest of the
year type thing so yeah we have like a huge influx of listeners um in the preseason so like when I
say 400 listeners it probably averages out through that over the year but we could be getting a few
more and we do get a lot more in the preseason than we do after the kind of season starts because
that’s when everyone starts playing there’s not a lot you can do with your teams got it no I was
just gonna say I like was really impressed with okay we got a hundred signups after we put this
offer out into the world and if we only have 400 people listening we had a 25% offer to conversion
rate like I mean I get that it’s a low ask like two bucks a month for this you know early early
patreon level but that’s still that’s great that you had a listener base that was willing to support
you and take action well you say that 25% because it’s actually like it’s remained pretty consistent
about that 25% I think if not even more conversion rate can when you compare it to podcast listeners
throughout I guess I’ll build on how I expand we expanded from there so um with the with the
patreon with the patreon thing I guess um it was uh like they do take a bit of a cut like in another
life I should have been like a um a computer programmer or a um software developer but I’ve
always had this passion for technology and um learning coding languages and I’ve always wanted
to build websites so it was a bit of a project for me to kind of build our website with and build
in a payment gateway and you know and essentially it’s just wordpress um with a plugin on it that
kind of you know builds a membership site so I kind of went away from the patreon and um moved over
to our own website which is what you mentioned at the start um keepleagepod.com.au and from there
we kind of felt like we we found we could host a whole heap of different things not just spreadsheets
like we started doing our own rankings in kind of user friendly tables and stuff like that and
people could adjust things and stuff from there um started hosting bonus podcasts from there as
well so you could do extra episodes I know you could you do this with patreon but I guess it was
more just like a a project to um to kind of help me build a website and stuff like that instead of
charging monthly we just charge charge a yearly subscription type thing so um I guess that kind
of helped because instead of people signing up for one or two months at the start just to kind of
scrape all your resources and stuff like that they sign up for a full year and I guess that helped
kind of build the um conversion rates a little bit higher as well from there especially for
something so seasonal where it’s like okay I got it for my you know draft period and now well
why am I still paying this every month but yeah I’m blocking in for the year don’t have to think
about it they don’t see that on their statement until the following year or say hey your renewal
is coming up like yeah I want to keep playing yeah I want the latest update so yeah it makes sense
yeah because we’re finding like people could literally sign up a few days before their draft
to the patreon grab everything off there for that we’ve done for the whole pre-season and then
yeah cancel again so we moved to the website made it a yearly subscription instead I think
worked better for everyone and it did work out cheaper for those who were committed and were
staying long time because we’d actually charge less per month but more in full if that makes sense
and then from there like really like we’ve kind of just gone way deeper on the I guess um software
development kind of developed a few apps like a mock draft simulator um that is specific for
keeper league so a lot of people have mock draft simulators but in Australia especially up until
recently we were the only one that had one that you could remove players from specific to your
league so you could just kind of mimic how your league looks which players are already kept and
then you can practice drafting with only the players um that are left in the in the draft pool
and we’ve also built this I’ve also built this new tool called um community rankings where it’s
like it’s kind of like a game where you get presented like three options three players
and you’ve got to choose which player you would prefer in a keeper league and the kind of responses
from that kind of build a full list of rankings for users to use just basically on the community
sentiment type thing and so the members kind of you know for the free version you get the top 100
players but then the if the paid version that the members get the full version of every player in
the league and how the community ranks them type thing um and then of course we’ve got our own
rankings and stuff on top of that too so yeah and this might be a little more of a of a technical
challenge to build out but like is there a way to claw out the the keeper league from AFL like
people wanted to like just run their leagues on your platform is there is there an opportunity to
build something like that and really be the central hub for this well there was I guess because like
even the AFL fantasy platform once they brought keeper leagues in it probably wasn’t to the standard
that people wanted I guess um and just this year actually there is a new platform that’s just come
out called keeper fantasy um which is basically built to do for what keeper it’s called keeper you
know it’s for it’s for keeper leagues um I guess and it has caused a bit of confusion because I get
a lot of their emails directed at me or social media questions coming to me instead of them
but there’s a new platform called keeper which I’ve been involved in I guess with since the
inception in a bit of like a consulting kind of way um and doing a bit of marketing for them and
you know helping promote them as well so there would have been but probably I’m probably not
quite at the level to build something of that scale I’m very much a self-taught hacker I guess
I’m not a guy who’s studied it or anything like that so to the scale of this but there is a new
platform now that’s come out which I am involved in which I’m pretty happy to be because I think
it’s going to kind of elevate this format a lot as well okay so we switched to an annual
billing we switched to hosting this membership on our own platform inside the membership it’s this
you know collection of curated data on these up and coming reserve league or like high school
type of league players that are um are new you know not a lot of information out there on them so
it’s kind of this unique uniquely sourced to go a little bit broader for a second I think this
business model of selling curated or interesting data is uh is one that has been proven out you
know over and over again from trends to industry reports to like there’s definitely value in in
selling data and it’s cool because it’s one of these things where you can sell the same
data to a bunch of different customers it’s you know once you have a kind of
automated way to collect that it’s something that could be really really valuable I think on the
on the back of that too as well it’s not just the um it’s not just the data is one part of it
the self but it’s also the analysis we’ve been able to do on that data and put out the findings
of that as well I think has been a big part of it as well just kind of not just like this is the
numbers it’s like these what the numbers mean you know players playing in this position or getting
this many stats in this kind of spot indicates they’re playing in this position and different
positions can be valuable some positions are more fruitful for fantasy that sort of stuff as well so
kind of goes that step further as well right and then you have some members only content it sounds
like you’ve got the mock draft simulator and then you’ve got this community rankings component so
just try to build up that value stack for people who are going to sign up for this annual membership
is there anything else behind the p-wall there’s certain stats like this thing’s called like cba
analysis so like what that really means is like every time someone kicks a goal there’s a center
bounce so the balls bounced in the middle and the game starts again and the players that generally
attend the center bounce are generally the best players so if you see some of the the lesser
known players start going to the center bounces maybe it might be one might be two it’s always a
good indicator that they might be on an upward trend pretty soon so we kind of do a bit of like
analysis on that as well like look at those cba numbers and go hey this guy’s never been to a
center bounce before and he’s suddenly starting to go are they planning on using him more in this
position because that’s where you kind of get the most points and he might be a different position
that doesn’t score very well but because he’s kind of moving into another position he might start
being one of the better players yeah he might be undervalued in the marketplace is like the money
ball analogy yeah yeah correct so like a few things like that as well that are on the website too
very cool and what do you charge for it these days the gold membership is uh $59 Australian
and then the silver membership is $49 then we have a bronze membership that’s $39 which is
base level not a lot of people tend to sign up for that one it’s usually the silver and the gold
that people go for okay and then just like parsing out well at this at this tier at the silver tier
you only get this this and this at the goal to get everything plus you know just kind of parsing
out features based on those different tiers yeah yeah correct like the the gold members do get
slightly more like silver is definitely probably the best value one that we give away and then the
gold membership you get access to the mock draft simulator plus you get your name read out in the
podcast as well so it’s not a huge difference and we kind of did that intentionally just because
like it’s more for people that because the whole thing is built around support i find it’s more
so than just like having these you know amazing resources to kind of sell like a lot of the time
if i look at the numbers like throughout the year i don’t know how often some people some members
actually using them like i do think there is a high number of like members out there that just
sign up to support the podcast as well to make sure it keeps going because i do kind of say on
the podcast and it’s it’s so true like i can’t actually like being a bit being able to collect
the membership money has been basically allowed me to kind of take a day off work and you know
now two days and now more days off work to actually do all the stuff that i’m doing and it wouldn’t
be the product it was if i didn’t have the time yeah to actually put into it so i think the members
really understand that they kind of allow this podcast to thrive and all the bonus resources
and all that sort of stuff to actually thrive because if they weren’t there like i wouldn’t
be able to do it at the same time so a lot of the members because i’ve i’m pretty much in constant
interaction with my membership group especially my gold members as well i’ve got a discord group
and they’ve got like a members gold members only chat as well which i’m pretty active in there and
they kind of really understand that i think and they a lot of people are just also they don’t
they do get used out of the resources don’t get me wrong but they’re also there just to kind of
ensure the podcast survival and ensure it keeps going because there’s not a lot out there doing
the same type of thing that’s really cool that you’ve got the people who want to support like
they found enough value in this thing we love what you’re doing we want to support the show and
support all the the community around it and so what’s like if you’re comfortable sharing
like the size of the annual membership at this point yeah so right now we’ve got around 1200
members i’m kind of ranging about half of them a gold half of them about silver i think from there
as well yeah okay so doing the math that would be i’ve sworn off trying to do public math on
on the internet i’ll call it like a 60 thousand 65 thousand dollar a year side hustle slightly
less um yeah but then on the back of that like i pay all my guests that come on the show pay all my
riders then there’s obviously hosting fees and all that sort of stuff as well sure it does take like
a fair chunk out of it when you add up in the year but um at the same time you know you can kind of
claim a lot of stuff that you would probably be buying anyway like for microphones and stuff
like that that i’ve always had an interest in or you know i can claim my football tickets on tax
and stuff like that as well so yeah that’s right so it’s a business expense exactly so like you can
kind of you can kind of um yeah like it’s then the number does sound nice but then also there’s
a lot of expenses that go with it but then you kind of get some of it back in stuff you would be
spending on anyway which is kind of good as well yeah and it’s interesting because it’s like not a
huge audience and yes you know percentage-wise like you’ve been able to convert um a really
in my mind like what seems like a really high percentage of listeners into customers which
i think is cool i think on the back of that like the some of the resources that are on the website
kind of transcend the three different kind of formats like you’ve got the the classic format
which is the salary cap one the single season draft where you’re picking a new team each year
and then you got the keeper league like a lot of the stats actually kind of go beyond our kind of
realm of keeper leagues i guess and so that probably drives a few extra membership sales
because i do advertise a little bit on through the meta ad platform and stuff like that so
and i just basically for every um for every resource i have a have an ad for it and so i
think kind of target Australian rules football fans afl fantasy fans all that sort of stuff target
those kind of demographics and so i think you do get a few extras which is probably why the um
the listener rate to membership conversions look so good i guess got it got it yeah so if it was
just the podcast itself um and this is what people always ask me like how do you make money off of
podcast um and if it was a podcast itself it probably wouldn’t make any money you know um it’s
just having the website there that kind of you can direct your listeners to to see more or understand
what you’re talking about in greater detail plus you get kind of the other people from the other
communities coming towards it because there’s some value there for them as well in some of the bits
and pieces of stats also yeah it took me a long time to realize that like a podcast does not a
business make it is you know the idea of making a full-time living just from sponsorship especially
in the early days of the show where the listenership was not anywhere near where it is today it’s like
oh this is going to be a long a long slog yeah correct um yeah and that’s uh if you have a big
audience there are ways to monetize we had to think of other ways to kind of do it and kind of
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months free yeah do you see like outside of these meta ads other ways of growing the audience growing
the customer base like we’re doing a lot more doing a lot more work with that new fantasy platform
that’s coming up in our kind of ads are all over that now as a bit of an exchange for
the help that we’ve done but we’ve done like lots of different things really like we have had some
very good and generous sponsors in the past another fantasy platform that opened up for a
while jumped on for a couple years but we do live shows and things like that and I guess in the way
that kind of I’ve been starting to generate I guess more revenue streams with this is like
because I’ve actually just left my job teaching this year to kind of focus on this a bit more
and that’s not to say I’m anywhere near a level to kind of live off it full time
but who knows what I could do if I put more time into it but I’ve started actually like
doing a bit of consulting for other podcasts producing other podcasts recording other podcasts
helping other businesses and companies with their social media in terms of tiktok reels and
instagram reels and stuff like that I’ve been doing a few running a few ad campaigns through the
meta platform which is the second nature for me now to kind of build their websites as well so
it’s kind of like all the skills I’ve learned through doing this I’ve now been able to kind of
apply to other bits and pieces to kind of help me get to that point where I can live off doing
this sort of stuff full time and move away from the kind of high stress environment that is teaching
I guess okay so yeah starting well could I do my day job one less day a week could I do two days
less a week or you know now could I piece together an income from these side sources
whether it’s directly from the podcast business or is it you know the skills I picked up along
the way I think that makes sense yeah and that’s been it’s it’s been good fun like it’s something
I’ve always genuinely loved doing and not let’s not just say there wasn’t a point where I did love
teaching it just kind of I think it’s like any kind of career you do it for long enough and
you kind of want to move on to something new or try something else but no like this is sort of
stuff that I’ve you know I get to look at fantasy stats and talk about fantasy and analyze it and
stuff that I’ve always kind of lived and breathed or myself anyway and now I can kind of do that for
living plus combining my love for technology and learning new things I guess and kind of
helping other people you know thrive as well it’s been really rewarding I think.
On Facebook on Meta you know are you you’re you’re driving traffic directly to like a membership
sales page you’re driving traffic to like you know a free you know opt-in sampler of what the
membership is look like what is what’s the visitor flow. So for every page I’ve got for every like
what we call premium resources bonus content on our website I do have like a landing page that
kind of gives you a sample and even those like landing pages are pretty useful to people like
so you have the top 100 players to target and if you’re starting a league it’s a really good idea
to know what the top 100 players are so it can be helpful in that respect and then if you want to
get the full version then it’s signed up as a member so with my meta ads I generally target to
like I’ll do a video ad essentially me using the resource talking about it what you can find
in it and then it tracks into a landing page where they kind of get a sample of it and then
the next part is if they want to sign up they can continue on and sign up from there and then
I use the pixel and stuff like that to track conversions and stuff like that through that
and then you can kind of see what the marketing value is actually worth and you know you can see
which ads are actually converting and which aren’t which resources are in art and that sort of stuff
too and then you can work out whether you’re whether to put more money into advertising or
you know bring it back because it’s not working so well there’s lots of ways you can kind of look
at it from there is there a target cost of acquisition where you like to be at as close to
zero as possible sure but yes right now it’s if I can spend a dollar and get two back which is kind
of where my ads are almost at yeah it’s not too bad so I don’t know like it’s at a bit of a sweet
point I’m not sure if it’ll convert in the same way if I did ramp it up too much more but yeah I do
try to be a bit conservative with it as well like not try to spend too much but yeah kind of that’s
where I where I like to be no that’s and if I had a money machine where I could trade a dollar for
two do it all day long correct I’m not sure how much further I could push it than that I’ve tried a
few times but at the kind of level I’m spending I seem to get that kind of money back so you kind
of run into the ceiling of well how many people are actually interested in this this type of fantasy
league it’s so maybe the audience the total addressable market is only so big it’s so once you
kind of saturate that it’s like well well now what yeah correct and I think playing the classic flat
platform you can kind of see on the back end there’s a few a few numbers there and like ownership
percentages and stuff like that so I think there’s around 150,000 people playing one format which is
there for fantasy there’s also another version called super coach which I think has about 300,000
people playing but then most of those people are also the type that would do a draft and maybe do
a keeper league as well like if they’re not very few people I think are just playing keeper leagues
they’ve kind of got to keep leagues from playing these other formats and going a bit deeper but
they kind of keep going on the other one there so the number would probably be significantly less
and yeah that’s the thing I might hit a point where there are no new more players but we are actually
kind of pushing younger generations to actually start as well like that’s the the whole idea
behind the TikTok growth was to actually kind of target not target but just put it out on a
platform that where there is a younger generation with the keeper platform that I’m involved in
which is like the new fantasy platform that we’ve put together yeah and we’ve actually made it free
for students as well and so if you’re a high school student or a university student you get
access to this new platform for free and it is in my opinion and many other people opinion the
best for the best platform out there to do this on because it’s been custom built for it get them
get them hooked while they’re young yeah and do you see a future where you build out a a podcast
network of different shows targeting different fantasy formats or you know where do you want
to go with it I feel like the the space is quite saturated anyway we like especially not in the
keeper league space I guess but in the main kind of other fantasy formats there’s already kind of
a lot of people doing it in Australia and I don’t really think I really need to add a voice to those
kind of areas and obviously it’s honestly it’s probably not something I’m as passionate about
as well like I genuinely love doing this you know and if I had to do it to some of the other
formats which I’m not as kind of into I’m not sure if I’d kind of bring the same kind of enthusiasm
and make it as good as it would be I think more so like perhaps I would like to expand out into
kind of just producing more podcasts that aren’t maybe even related to this kind of topic as well
but just kind of getting from on the production side of things and maybe consulting and helping
other people build up their podcast and stuff like that as opposed to kind of starting the network
myself got it I mean that’s the risk of expanding it’s like well maybe the lighting doesn’t strike
twice or the magic sauce isn’t the same because you’re not as interested or excited about it and
like yeah there’s there’s a risk and expansion there I was going to ask mentioned hey the
membership is now hosted on WordPress what was the membership plugin that you’re using for that
memberpress which I think is a pretty popular one out there cool anything else on the tools and tech
side no that’s about it in terms of the tech lights the microphones I’ve got a tv behind me
that now that I’m doing more podcasts with other people and stuff like that I can change the branding
behind me which is it was a bit hard doing it before when I had posters on the wall that were all
football stuff and if I’m doing something about I don’t know fashion or something like that it’s
a bit weird to have football stuff behind me so yeah if you fancy I need to figure out how to
change the change the background on the closet doors back here correct yeah so yeah chuck the tv
behind me to do that so just a few little bits and pieces in in terms of the tech how often do
you publish a new episode what’s the what’s the release cadence from pretty much the start of
january all the way up until the end of the season which is the start of september we’ll put out one
episode a week one one hour episode and it’s essentially just a deep dive who the undervalued
players performed well and what their outlooks are for the for the rest of the season that sort of
stuff from that week in the preseason it’s very much just like trying to unearth all the players
that could be breaking out in the season or undervalued and stuff like that and we also do I’d
also do a bonus waiver wire podcast on monday mornings so some leagues play waivers where you
can pick up excess players so I kind of just do a 10-minute thing of the players I think that are
the valuable that are under-owned in a lot of leagues you can see the kind of ownership percentages
so any player that’s under 40 owned I’ll go through and just talk up a few that I think are
worth picking up and then yeah that’s generally the frequency once a week and then one bonus episode
and then kind of take take the off season off or or slow down a little bit the off season is a bit
funny like yeah I like I should slow down but I always find ways to kind of fill it up I guess
something else that I haven’t didn’t mention on the revenue stream I guess as well is um I built
like a I built a game in related to AFL football as well that went kind of viral last year it was
called footy numbers and essentially all you did you get a team and you get a number and you have to
guess the player that wears that number and the whole idea is to get the best streaks of how many
players in a row you can get right and it was just something I built to kind of learn how to use
JavaScript and set up applications and stuff like that and I just tweeted out on Twitter and by the
end of the day we had all the commentators playing it in their studios and putting out social media
videos and stuff we had AFL players doing it with people playing on the radio um there’s like a
segment on the radio and that sort of stuff so within a day that kind of went um viral as well
so I just put some ads on that some Google ads on that as well and um that kind of it was in it just
ended up earning like an extra couple hundred dollars a month as well on the back of that
okay okay but that’s kind of what I spent my off season doing is kind of learning ways like like
building things like that I can use in the either on my website for the next season or um learning
kind of new skills and learning new languages or learning new programs and stuff like that to
actually kind of enhance the podcast um I also in the off season where all the draft happens and
also the trades the trade period and all that sort of stuff where players switch teams so that’s
also pretty relevant for for our format as well because that might mean some player leaves a team
it’s usually a star or whatever but that means there’s an up-and-comer that might take their spot
in that team who could be a good fantasy player as a result so we have to kind of talk about that so
we do a bit of content around that in the off season um we also have the the draft whether
all the young players get picked up out of high school so we kind of need to know be on top of
all them and know which players are going to be the ones that are going to make their mark pretty
pretty quickly and the ones that are going to um take a while so the off season’s kind of spent
yeah if it feels like I should take it off but it doesn’t feel like I ever get an off season
you know what I mean like it feels like it just keeps going um because there’s always something I
can do to kind of improve or make it better or learn something new I guess and I think that’s
probably what your listeners and members have come to appreciate is like you you’re one of them
you’re in the space you’re analyzing all this stuff and it’s just from the outside looking in it
seems like very very underpriced it’s everything I get that it’s a hobby niche like nobody is really
like you know learning to make extra money maybe they win their fantasy pool or something they
win their league as a result of you know your information but it does seem like maybe I’m leaving
some money on the table by charging as little as I do that could be the case um and like well
there’s something to think about now that I’m probably not working full-time at the moment and
that might not be the case like I might have to look for a job again in the near future but we’ll
wait and see what happens there um that might be something that we can look at but I want to keep
it accessible and I don’t know like I’m always kind of fearful I guess as well that if you start
charging more maybe some of the people that you have do drop off as well and and the fact that I
guess I haven’t gone backwards any year in fact every year I’ve kind of made big inroads um in
terms of growth usually you know upwards 25 30% each year type thing so I guess at the at the time
I’m just at this time I’m just going to keep writing that until it stops really and then kind
of make a decision what to do from there whether I start charging more or whether I start just kind
of building more products to get people on board or you know spread the revenue streams out in other
ways um we’ll kind of you know get to that when we when we come to it but um at the moment like
yeah I think my listeners appreciate the kind of how accessible it is um in the way it is
and so I’m going to keep it at that for now anyway yeah you five six years into it what’s
surprised you the most along the way probably like personal stuff really like how much you kind of
need to not worry what other people think as much more so like if you if you stuff up the website
like you stuff up a page or something like that or you break one of the apps and it doesn’t work
and you kind of realize that a few hours later you kind of realize that like you know I used to
why I stress so much and worry about it and obsess over it and um think like something’s
broken I had to rush to my computer and fix it if I woke up in the middle of the night and realized
I did something wrong I’d have to rush to my computer and go fix it type thing before anyone
noticed it happened and I guess what surprised me like as much as like no one actually notices
like no one really cares that much or that I’ll get some surprise by every how lenient the community
is like oh yeah that didn’t work for two days and you didn’t realize but that’s okay like
we understand like type thing like I’ve never really had any backlash hey you you got a little
bit of a different audience yeah you said send an email out with a typo and your people are quick
to let you know yeah I think like and another thing I guess that surprised me was like I used to do
this with another another guy and he had to leave because of family reasons essentially um and I was
left on my own to kind of do this and that was a pretty kind of I guess I was really worried if I
could still do it on my own um and keep going with it and you know and and and what surprised me really
was like how much it’s grown since then and it’s not really because like I’ve changed the host or
anything like that it’s because I’ve been able to get more voices on the podcast as well like my
old co-host still comes on once a month but it’s just surprising how much the community is just on
board the kind of the whole brand um and I guess it kind of reaffirmed that it’s more the the content
and the quality of content that comes out and not just the kind of people that are on it if that
makes sense as well that’s great well you’re doing this full time now even though like you said the
income may not be at the full time level just yet but what are some of the top projects or priorities
for this year what are you excited about yeah basically just want to try to scale as much as
possible so I’m coming into like the um the busiest month I guess of the podcast in terms of membership
signups because the season starts in about um about a month from now it starts so um yeah it’s
probably the the busiest time for signups so basically I’m just excited to put out as much
content as I can now I’ve got at the moment I’ve got five days a week to actually put into this I
can put out as much content as much useful kind of resources that kind of help I guess scale and
drive members as much as possible well fair enough half this has been great thank you so much for
joining me and again KeeperLeaguePod.com.au or KeeperLeague Podcast go check them out if you are
an Australian fantasy football fan let’s wrap this thing up with your number one tip for side
hustle nation it’s never too late to learn something new I think I look back at all the stuff like I
didn’t know when I started this like and now fast forward five six years you know semi-literate
I guess in three or four coding languages can build websites I never knew I’d be able to do
build games that go viral build new apps to help users all that sort of stuff none of that stuff I
knew how to do before I started this podcast it was more about the necessity to learn it to kind
of move forward and I guess that’s probably the key thing for anyone out there is if you think
you don’t know something um or you think it’s too challenging it’s not that hard like if there’s enough
resources out there and you can follow instructions as well and read you know different articles or
even now with you know chat GPT and AI and stuff like that can really break down things and help
you learn even better like it’s just never too late to learn something new I reckon and I guess the
other the saying that I’ve always loved is if you can’t figure something out figure out how to
figure it out has always been a big one for me as well so like if you can’t get to the end goal
break it down into small steps um and try to gradually learn that way so I think that’s probably
my my tip for the side hustle nation absolutely no those those are great you gotta if you don’t
know how to figure it out we’ll figure out how to figure it out that’s that’s great and it’s
never too late to learn something new it’s that’s something that hits me it’s like if if you knew
how to do it you probably would have done it already and so it’s like well you gotta figure
out you gotta learn how to do it and so I know that that definitely resonates a couple takeaways
for me um everyone you can really see how have like lives and breathes this stuff he’s like a part
of the community the audience detects that it’s not like some uh you know private equity firm coming
in with some you know puppet co-host trying to speak the language like he’s been in it he’s
been in it for years um on the marketing side it’s going where the audience already is it’s
like these other fantasy platforms these other shows like trying to bring some of those listeners
and players into your ecosystem and and try and be that helpful resource and I mean guesting on
podcasts another way uh to pick up more podcast listeners really like the idea of selling data
and to have some point about selling it alongside some analysis or just you know numbers are one
thing with like well what you know in our quote unquote expert opinion what is that what do the
numbers mean so like that idea of selling data I like the idea of a smaller show having some kind
of membership community where it’s like on a you know a cost per thousand listener bases like
sponsorships may not make a ton of sense but if we can bring our community together with some
compelling offers behind the membership paywall I think that makes a lot of sense
plus you know recurring revenue in exchange for recurring value I definitely all like like all
of that if you’re interested in starting a podcast of your own a challenging medium to grow but a
really powerful one like we’ve both experienced like for relationship building and all that
I want to invite you to download my podcast starter kit it’s got resources on choosing
your right uh software and equipment for recording uh what my production process looks like after we
stop hitting record how to market your show how to climb that listener pyramid so to speak
and all the different ways the podcasts can make money again that’s at side hustle nation
dot com slash heff heff or you can just follow the uh show notes link in the episode description
and I’ll get you right over there big thanks to heff for sharing his insight thanks to our sponsors
for helping make this content free for everyone you can hit up side hustle nation dot com slash
deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place thank you for supporting the
advertisers that support the show and that’s it for me thank you so much for tuning in if you’re
finding value in the show I’d love your help in spreading the word easiest way to do it is just
fire off a text message to that friend of yours who could benefit from hearing this maybe that’s
your friend who’s got you know an obscure hobby that you know maybe they should start a podcast
about until next time let’s go out there and make something happen and I’ll catch you in the next
edition of The Side Hustle Show. Hustle on.

Heff Gerlach started The Keeper League Podcast on the side from his teaching job.

It’s not about football, not just about fantasy football, but about a very specific flavor of fantasy football for Australian Rules Football.

That’s a niche within a niche within a niche — where fans don’t just draft players, they build teams that last for years.

And now it serves as the hub for player data, draft tools, and expert analysis for football keeper leagues.

Full Show Notes: 160k Talking About Australian Fantasy Football

New to the Show? Get your personalized money-making playlist here!

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