$727 Per Podcast Episode With Only 2000 Downloads 🎙️

Harry Duran launched the Vertical Farming Podcast in 2020, he had zero experience or connections in the industry— he just wanted to learn more about vertical farming.

Fast forward just over three years later, and the part-time project has generated over $80,000 in revenue.

He reached out to initial guests like David Farquhar of IGS (Intelligent Growth Solutions).

After recording with David, he asked if IGS would be open to sponsorship.

David connected Harry with the CMO, Jeff. Harry pitched a 13-week “season” sponsorship for $9,000—about half the cost of a conference booth.

This secured Harry’s first $9,000 before publicly releasing a single episode!

Instead, he focused on securing high-value, B2B sponsors willing to pay premium rates to reach this niche but engaged audience.

New sponsors often come through introductions from past guests.

I think what was interesting for me is how I went from zero visibility… to now being seen as someone that's respected, that people are coming to for guidance on the industry…

I came at it from the perspective of an outside observer and a fan of something that I wanted to learn more about.

Just keep moving forward, the universe rewards momentum as an entrepreneur. I fell down a lot [and] I really feel like you need to have those failures so you can quickly figure out what does not work…

Just keep moving forward, keep taking that imperfect action daily.

I was working in a marketing team. We were spending [$1000's] on Google ads and Facebook ads. One day we hired an agency [to help] get more leads… and they basically split out our long boring form into multiple steps… this was like 5+ years ago… 

[I remember wishing] there was a form builder that just let me do nice multi-step forms and I kind of put that idea back in my head… three years later, when I actually knew how to code, I built my first form.

I was spending a few hundred dollars a month just bidding on words like "form builder" and that was really valuable to collect those first few customers and learn some lessons.

And to be able to say… if I invest X amount, I actually have a kind of repeatable engine here.

I would definitely advocate that approach and If you know a little bit about Google ads or Facebook ads

If you're building a form builder or a landing page builder or an email tool or something [complex] like that, you really do need 6-12 months to work on it.

So [quitting my job] enabled me to go full time and basically build the tool because you're just constantly getting bugs in or it doesn't do X, it doesn't do Y. So it just let me build for a year or so.

Yeah, absolutely. That's a really good point. And it's kind of a valuable learning lesson for indie hackers, because you've had guests who are making good MRR from basically doing the same thing over and over again.

When you look at what those [other] form builders do…

Typeform does one question at a time very well. It is brilliant for surveys.

Tally is a really nice, clean, Notion-like experience.

Growform is great for lead generation.

Mike has developed a theory that he applies to almost all of his [Fiverr] gigs, he calls it “Rapid Prototyping.”

What this means is, setting up and testing a gig inside of a lunch break — in just 1 hour.

Not getting hung up on analyzing and tweaking things. Mike said if you’re taking longer than an hour to set up a gig, you’re losing time. You can also go back later and refine your gig if it’s not working, and even optimize it further if it is working.

Real World Guidance for Real Estate Investors.

After working as a land investor for a few years, in 2012, I discovered Pat Flynn.

After paying attention to him for a while, I recognized I could follow his example and create a similar online community for real estate investors, making epic content teaching everything I knew.

[Pat] was a real person and he provided insane amounts of value without charging thousands of dollars for the information. At the same time, he was also managing to make a great income, even though it never felt like he was selling anything.

After writing my first blog post and making my first video, I realized I loved the process. When I was writing about things I cared about, I had a newfound passion.

Most of my content ideas come from my own experiences in the real estate business.

These days, our gross income fluctuates between $30k and $60k per month.

About 50% of this income is from the courses we sell.

30% is from affiliate sales for various products and services we review and recommend.

10% is from advertising revenue (YouTube, the podcast, etc.)

10% is from various one-off digital products we sell in our online store.

As far as traffic goes, we get around 40k visitors per month.

At one point, we were getting close to 200k per month, but our traffic took a huge hit when Google updated its algorithm a few years back.

Interestingly, though, this drop in traffic hasn’t had much of a noticeable impact on revenue.

Content marketing is our one and only marketing strategy.

I absolutely love what I get to do. That doesn’t mean there aren’t hard days.

There are plenty of tasks I have to do that are monotonous, difficult, or simply aren’t fun… but I’m still happy to do those jobs because they’re a small part of a much larger whole.

[You should] always have that 21y old mindset.

You should always have the belief that my whole world is in front of me, that my best days are ahead of me, that anything is possible and that I can reinvent myself right now.

We want to make our way up to a black belt in the game of success.

You should be looking at how do I do more things, show up to more events, publish an analysis of something on the internet… maybe somebody smart will read it and think hey this guy's awesome I would love to meet him.

I would go on Upwork or Fiverr, or I would look at other agencies that are already existing.

I'll try to figure out what is an agency or consulting service that people are willing to pay 10K a month for on a retainer, on a recurring basis, that either I could do myself or I could hire people overseas.

I would do some basic envelope math. I would say, well I want to have 10 customers paying me $10,000 a month.

Now $10,000 might sound crazy for a business to spend, but that would be my benchmark: 10 customers paying me $10,000 a month, that's $100,000 a month.

Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up. Discharge your duties faithfully and well. Systematically you get ahead, but not necessarily in fast spurts. Nevertheless, you build discipline by preparing for fast spurts. Slug it out one inch at a time, day by day.

At the end of the day – if you live long enough – most people get what they deserve.