Q&A: How the 2 Women Behind Gastropod Turned a Passion Project Into a Steady Income

One thing you'll hear somewhat frequently when listening to Nicola Twilley and Cynthia Graber is that they are the only staff behind Gastropod, a biweekly podcast that "looks at food through the lens of science and history." No audio engineers. No producers. No backing from a media conglomerate or podcast network. The two veteran journalists are completely independent and painstakingly build each 45-minute episode together. It's a good thing they mention it, too, because otherwise you might mistakenly (but understandably) believe that a much larger team is behind each exhaustively reported and produced episode, covering anything from the origins of balsamic vinegar to the seemingly magical properties of Asian fungus koji. [kickout id="6"] Gastropod began as an ambitious passion project in 2014, and after more than three years and 72 episodes, the duo has amassed an audience of 100,000 downloads per installment, a growing roster of advertisers and more than 580 five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts. Graber and Twilley have approached Gastropod as a startup, building it patiently with a focus on quality while seeking new and innovative revenue opportunities that won't sacrifice their vision for the show. The duo recently launched a Share-a-thon encouraging listeners to share the podcast with friends, with bonus content and other rewards being unlocked as new subscribers are signed up. As this experimental approach built up steam, Adweek chatted with the co-hosts about the podcast's history and future, along with their hard-earned advice for other aspiring podcasters. Here's what they had to say: Adweek: You created a Share-a-thon in lieu of a pledge drive, asking for your podcast listeners to refer friends rather than donate. How is it going? Nicola Twilley: It's going pretty well. We're an independent podcast, and we don't have the benefit of a network, so it's always a question of what we can do to keep growing. The Share-a-thon idea came up because we had done a pretty extensive survey of listeners and we found 20 percent found us through friends, so we wondered if we could incentivize that behavior. It seems to be really effective. The most effective ways we've found to get new listeners are mentions on other podcasts or referrals, so what can we do to increase that? We came up with this idea. It's a total experiment. We soft-launched it in October, just to figure out the mechanics. Anything's a success, but we're hoping for 5,000 new listeners by the end of the year on this. It was super slow at first. Cynthia Graber: People were confused. We weren't getting responses. Then we did get a response. One person wrote in and said, I really want to participate, but I'm a little confused. We wanted this idea of accountability. We wanted to know people were actually subscribing other people, but then we said we needed to just go by trust in our listeners. Twilley: Yeah, exactly. So we tweaked it (requiring only a list of names of friends referred to the show rather than hard proof). Now we're starting to see, ping ping ping ping ping. We haven't got an up-to-date number for you. But it's starting to work. Graber: As Nicky said, this is an experiment. We don't yet have a sense if this is going to be a dramatic increase in listenership for us. We would like that. We're just hoping to increase energy not just from passive listening, but being an active participant in a Gastropod community. Adweek: Why focus on asking listeners to share rather than on asking for money? Graber: We never mention the Share-a-thon without saying we also depend on your financial support. We have done [fund drives], and we're going to do them again. Our Patreon has been steadily growing. We have additional support, either one-time or monthly donation from our website, so listener support is a really significant part of our revenue, and we want people to remember that. Even with that little reminder, we've seen some donations come through that are big or end-of-year type donations. [kickout id="1"] Twilley: It's interesting because we've actually seen this effect before. We did a big listener survey. We had a page of questions like, "Have you financially supported the show? If not, why not?" At the top of the page, we sort of told people the extent our show relies on listener support. It was a survey intended to help us with advertisers, and it was the biggest fundraising success we've ever had! Graber: It was a series of questions: "What do you like about the show? Do you support the show financially? If not, why?" We genuinely wanted to know. This is useful information for us. I think people went, "Oh hell, I should go support the show." And we saw a really major increase in donations after the survey. It was amazing. Twilley: The Share-a-thon is another opportunity to just communicate with our audience and say, "Hey, you love this show. We love making it. Here are the things that need to happen for us to be able to afford to keep making it, and have them be part of that transparent discussion." It also help listeners understand the role advertising plays in supporting the show. We tend to be really creative with our ads. We deliberately work in a snippet of science or history that is related to the thing we're talking about, so we've actually found our listeners don't skip through our ads. "I even love your ads," is a comment we often get. We don't get a lot of complaints about ads the way some podcasters do. But I like to explain to our listeners why we need ads and why it's important and what role this plays in supporting the show they love. Is the podcast profitable? Graber: We're paying ourselves. It's just the two of us. We're not making the appropriate salary based on our age and experience, but we're making salaries. That probably already puts you in the top 1 percent of podcasters. Graber: I think that's true. Twilley: I think we're in a super unusual position, to have a two-woman, independent podcast that is the scale we are and with the financial stability we have, but as we always say, world domination is the goal. There are a lot more people that could be listening to Gastropod and would be loving it, so we just want to reach them. [kickout id="3"] Graber: We genuinely need to grow to be financially stable, to not be nervous to look ahead to the next year and look at our business plan and figure out where all that income is coming from. Twilley: It would be really nice to not spend our entire weekends working. Once we reach a certain point financially, we can bring in folks to work with us and try to remember what the concept of work-life balance even means. How do you balance growing with keeping the Cynthia-Nicky vibe to it? Graber: We don't want to give up our vision of the show in order to grow. We've been successful up until now, and we have a really wonderful, committed audience. We think the limit to our growth is exposure to new audiences, not changing the show. We created a thing we love, that we love doing, that we love what it sounds like, that we think is a great representation of our interests, passions and personalities. Staying true to that as we try to grow is really important to both of us. [kickout id="2"] What are some other revenue streams you're either activating now or thinking about? Events is one you hear a lot about in the podcasting community. Graber: We did a number of live shows last year that were really successful, really fun. We are now working on our third live show at the Boston Museum of Science. We also headlined the Michigan State Science Festival, we performed another show in Wisconsin, we went on tour with Pop-Up Magazine last year. Percentage-wise, it wasn't huge, but it was important revenue, and it's one we're certainly looking to continue and expand. Our fans love it. Twilley: We're lucky to have also received grant support. We're not a 501(c)(3), but because we do such in-depth reporting, it is of interest to various funders. We've been lucky to partner with FERN, the Food and Environment Reporting Network, so that's been a really important source of revenue. The Burroughs Wellcome Fund, they've been a great repeat supporter that's made a huge difference. Listener support, obviously, is huge for us. Graber: Those are the main ones right now. Mostly it's advertising revenue, listener support, grants and live events. [kickout id="4"] What do you wish you'd known when you started the podcast? Twilley: I was a complete novice. I had never done anything in radio, podcasting or audio before. I wasn't a novice journalist; I was just a novice to this world. I had no freaking clue how much work it was going to be. Not one tiny clue. Graber: Nicky would keep saying things like, "Maybe we can do this, and maybe we can do this!" I'd been in audio for nearly two decades by this point, so I said, "Well we can do that, but that's a lot of work." Twilley: I thought it was going to be a side gig, and it's totally not a side gig. Graber: Someone recently asked me what percentage of my time I put into Gastropod. I was like, 130? What are some of the misconceptions people have about podcasting? Graber: Now that there's been a democratization of the equipment you need, everyone's like, "I need a podcast." For one, they don't realize how much work it is. The next thing I always say is: "Who is your audience, and how are you going to reach them? What is your goal? If you want to make money, how much money do you need to make?" There's just a lot more that goes into it than most people think. [kickout id="5"] Twilley: At the start, people said, "Everyone knows you can't make a show that's over 30 minutes, and everyone knows you have to come out once a week." Oh really? Everyone knows that? Not true at all. At the start, people were like, "Wow, I think what you're doing is great, but it's 45 minutes!" Yeah, well guess what? People have 45-minute chunks in their life. You can break all the rules. Because if you're making something good that people like, that's all that counts. If someone came to you and said, "I want to start a podcast," what would you tell them, especially if they said they want it to pay their bills? Graber: We didn't pay ourselves for a year and a half. We looked at this as a startup. If we're the founders of a startup, we're going to take that model and really invest in the growth of the show and creating something people really want so we can then monetize it. We planned on paying ourselves a salary but couldn't do it right away, so if someone said they wanted to make a living off of it, I'd say to be prepared not to make a living for a while. Twilley: It's about knowing what you want to make, and if you want to make something that requires a huge investment of time, be aware of the sacrifices you're going to have to make to get there. Do you see Gastropod remaining a podcast or becoming a larger media company? Twilley: I think it could make a fabulous book that maybe is a way to expand our reach. But I think the podcast is the product that we're most excited about. It's what Gastropod is. People say "Gastropod could be a TV show." Maybe, but I would be concerned we'd lose a lot of what makes it what it is. Graber: I'm not sure we'd love it as much as what we're doing now, and I don't think we'd want to do it to the exclusion of the podcast. Twilley: Hey TV producers, if you're reading this ... do please call us. (Laughs.) It would be an interesting discussion. But the more money you put into a thing, the more hands are in the pot. But at the moment, there are only two hands—well, I guess four hands—in the pot. And that's amazing. You can subscribe to Gastropod on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher, or stream episodes on Soundcloud.

Leadership & Talent

Q&A: How the 2 Women Behind Gastropod Turned a Passion Project Into a Steady Income

And the hard truths they want aspiring podcasters to know

David Griner

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

David Griner