Entrepreneurial Lessons: How Chris Christensen Turned Podcasting into a Thriving Business
Podcast listenership in the United States has grown, with 47% of Americans aged 12 or older listening to podcasts in the last month, up 5% from the previous year. The average weekly podcast listener listens to 8 episodes per week, and podcast listening is more common among younger demographics. Chris Christensen shares that it has become mainstream and how he turned it into a thriving business.
Understanding Podcast Growth: Audience Building vs. Monetization
In the full video below, Chris Christensen notes that the average podcast only receives around 200 downloads per episode. He highlights the importance of building an audience, especially for B2C (business-to-consumer) podcasts for a general audience.
Chris provides examples of his podcast experiences, including a B2B (business-to-business) podcast focused on travel PR with a smaller but more targeted audience and a consumer-focused travel podcast. The key points are the challenges of growing an audience for a podcast and the different approaches based on the podcast’s target audience and goals.
More About Chris Christensen
Chris is the creator of AmateurTraveler.com. Amateur Traveler is a popular online travel podcast and blog that focuses primarily on travel destinations. The Amateur Traveler is 19+ years old. The Amateur Traveler podcast was downloaded over 2 million times in 2023. Chris also owns Hotel-Scoop.com, where his team of professional travel writers review hotels and resorts.
Chris has won a Travel Creator Award, a Lowell Thomas Award, 5 NATJA awards, and a SMITTY Award from Travel+Leisure as the “best independent travel journalist.”
He has worked for years in technology startups in Silicon Valley. He was formerly the Director of Engineering for TripAdvisor’s New Initiatives group and was the EVP Engineering at LiveWorld where his team built and ran online communities and events for companies including eBay, HBO, TV Guide, Expedia, Marriott, A&E, History Channel, the NBA, NBC, ABC, Disney, Microsoft, WebTV and American Express.
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