Voxalyze: The Google Analytics of Podcast Stats
One thing that's as sure as the sunrise during the Christmas season is that kids and adults alike will look at the gifts under their tree and wonder what's inside. They'll stare at the box hoping to will an answer into existence without opening it. Before the gifts are open, they could be anything. It's left up to our imagination. Podcast stats can feel a lot like that sometimes. That's why today, I wanna tell you about a tool called Voxalyze. I like to call it the Google Analytics of podcasting. Here's why.
Welcome to Podcasting Workflows where you get daily tips to improve your process, grow your show, and maybe even make some money. Each week, I also do a deep dive into the process of the world's most successful podcasters and reveal their tools, processes, and systems to help you simplify the production of your own show and reclaim hours in your day. You can improve your own podcast production process by seeing how the pros do it. I'm your host, Joe Casabona, and for the 7th entry in Podcast Advent 2023, I wrote about Voxalyze, because podcast stats are hard and Voxalyze makes it easier.
As a quick reminder, none of these episodes are sponsored by the tools I'm telling you about. These are tools that I use and legitimately think are helpful to podcasters. And while sometimes I will use an affiliate link, there are no affiliate links in the show notes or article for today's entry.
So what makes Voxalyze so great?
First of all, it has visibility stats. It makes it very easy to see your visibility in Apple Podcasts and Spotify. They'll give you a rank and score and what percentage of all podcasts you rank in. I am usually between 1,3% depending on how last week's episode did.
In the screenshot for this article, I was down over the last few weeks. That tells me that I need to look at what I was doing back in mid-October when I was consistently in the top 1% and make adjustments. How would I make such adjustments? Well, that's where the other tools for Voxalyze come in.
On top of visibility, you get deeper analytics. It will give you an objective look at your episode stats and include to the best of their estimation downloads versus unique listeners. I say objective because you're not relying on any specific host stats and they're pulling from multiple sources. So you can see exactly how many downloads you're getting, and then they figure out unique listens based on a number of devices and things like that. There's some secret sauce in there.
Looking at my stats, again, I share a screenshot, multiple screenshots in this article which I will link in the description for this episode. But looking at my stats, I can see 2 things. First of all, I know exactly when Apple's iOS 17 downloads changes took place because my daily downloads tanked, went from 2 to 3000 downloads per day to 1 to 2000 downloads per day. That change though, and this is the second thing it tells me, appears to be achieving the supposed goal because downloads are much much closer to unique listens now. And the change that Apple Podcasts made in downloads was if a show lies dormant in a podcast player, it's only going to grab episodes published within the last 7 days, not every episode the user didn't listen to. So, in a way, this is a more accurate representation of your downloads versus unique listeners.
They also give you some great stats on audio players broken down by apps and web players. So looking at my top audio players, I realized it's according to Voxalyze 90% Apple Podcasts. That graph made me realize that it would be prudent for me to offer a pro version of my show through Apple Podcast subscriptions.
If most people are listening there, I wanna make it as easy as possible for them to upgrade to the pro feed. There's also geographic stats and download events, which I really think are cool. I can see where and when episode downloads are happening. So I can see in the download events section that there are people downloading it from California and from Boise, Idaho and from New York City, which is pretty cool.
And at this point, I know what you're thinking. My podcast hosting platform already has at least most of this. Right? And you're right. But they don't have the killer feature that Voxalyze offers. On top of great analytics, Voxalyze has this killer feature to help you with discovery. Keyword research. On a per-show basis, they'll give you keywords that could help you rank better and get discovered. They'll give you search volume and how easy it is to rank for those words. Using this data, you can figure out what episodes and topics to cover on the show. On the higher tier plans, they also do this on a per-episode basis so you can go back and optimize episode titles and descriptions.
If you're looking to get serious with your podcast in 2024, Voxalyze can be a valuable asset for you to help gain and keep new listeners. So I highly recommend you check it out over at [voxalyze.com]. That's [voxalyze.com].
If you like this episode, you can get every entry in Podcast Advent 2023 delivered directly to your inbox by going over to [podcastworkflows.com/advent]. You'll get daily emails with tips and tricks, of course, recommended tools, and giveaways from now to December 24th. You'll also be able to view the archive over there.
Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, I can't wait to see what you make.
Hey. Before you go, I want to tell you about a free resource I have called my Podcast Process Templates. They are a set of Notion documents that give you a full podcast planner, a show planner, and even some AI prompts to help you get the creative juices flowing. You obviously want to improve your podcast workflows and save time and these templates will give you a basis for all of your other processes. Through my Notion and Airtable templates, I am able to automate a number of things as well as stay organized so that I am using my podcasting time more efficiently.
If you wanna get your hands on these templates completely for free, you can head over to [podcastworkflows.com/templates[. That's [podcastworkflows.com/templates] to get your free podcasting process templates today.
