The Definitive-ish List of
Podcast Growth Tools

by Dan Schulz *

I have been doing all of this by hand since before podcasting existed. Now you do not have to.

In 1996, me and a buddy started The Dan and Scott Show on AudioNet out of a retirement home basement in Wisconsin. AudioNet became Broadcast.com, which Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner sold to Yahoo for $5.7 billion. Both of them publicly credited our show. Cuban called us the first internet broadcasters. Time Magazine put us in their cover story. That was over 30 years ago. I never stopped.

Back then, I was calling my buddy Derk in Indiana and asking him to search the show directories for our image. We would change it, check if it stood out, change it again. That became the Squint Test. I was calling our listeners by name and asking them what they thought before we changed anything. That became the Living Avatar. I was figuring out what words people would type into a directory to find us. That became the Bucket Builder.

Every tool on this page is something I figured out the hard way over 30 years of making internet audio. The AI just automates what used to take me weeks. I broke it all down into what I call the three Podcast Grow Gears.

There Are Only Three Ways to Grow a Podcast

Every strategy, every tool, every piece of advice anyone has ever given you about growing a podcast falls into one of these three gears. There is no fourth gear.

Gear 1

Get new listeners. Get found in search, stand out on the shelf, show up when AI recommends podcasts.

Gear 2

Get them to listen more. Bring them back, keep them longer, turn a casual listener into a subscriber.

Gear 3

Monetize to amplify. Make enough money to keep going and invest in paid growth.

The Tools

Foundation

Start Here

Framework Zero

GPT

Answer four questions about your show. Get a file that makes every other tool work better.

Living Avatar

GPT

AI becomes your ideal listener. Ask it anything. It will be honest.

Bucket Builder

GPT

Four types of keywords. Most podcasters only know one.

Gear 1 — Get More Listeners

Rank Tool

Chrome Extension

Where do you show up in search? Five seconds.

Squint Test

Web Tool

One number tells you if your cover art is working.

Transcript Cleaner

BYOK Tool

Your transcription software gets names wrong. AI search pays the price.

Your house is in order. Now find the right shows to cross-promote with.

Gear 2 — Get Them to Listen More

Gear 2 is less about tools and more about frameworks. How you welcome new listeners. How you make them feel like they are part of something. How you turn a casual listener into someone who never misses an episode. I have a specific system for this that I have been refining for years. It is coming. It just takes longer to package because it is not a thing you click. It is a thing you do.

Gear 3 — Monetize to Amplify

This one is taking the longest and here is why. A lot of what I do to monetize goes against what pretty much every other podcasting guru tells you to do. It works. I have the receipts. But I am not ready to hand it out publicly yet because I want to make sure the people who get it actually use it instead of just arguing about it on the internet. It is coming.

* Why "Definitive-ish"?

The asterisk is there because calling anything "definitive" is asking for trouble. I know that.

But here is the thing. I have been doing this since 1996. There are three ways to grow a podcast. Get new listeners. Get them to listen more. Make enough money to keep going. I have looked for a fourth one for 30 years. It is not there. So the framework is definitive. The tools are the "ish." They are just the ones I built. Other tools exist. Some of them are great. Use whatever works.

These are all free. Not strategically free. Not "free until the real offer" free. As I hurdle dangerously close to retirement age and beyond, I want to leave something useful behind. That is it. That is the whole thing. And if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, everything you need is right here on this page.

And also, if you happen to drive buses in the greater Palm Springs, California area, do me a favor and pay fucking attention.

If you want to pay someone to teach you this stuff, go for it. I have no opinion on how you spend your money. I just wanted to make sure there was a free option that actually works.

The tools are always free. But if you ever want to jump on a call and have me look at your show with you, I do that too. It is not expensive and I am told I am occasionally helpful. And do not worry, I get that podcasters do not have a lot of money. I will work with you.

These tools are free to use. They are not free to copy, redistribute, rebrand, or resell.