We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Amanda Jacobson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Amanda, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea
The idea for Wine & Crime was born among friends drinking wine and watching old episodes of Forensic Files, if you can believe it! It was 2016, we were reeling from the election, feeling disconnected from each other as friends, and fell into one of our old comfort standby’s- watching Forensic Files and absolutely losing it over the reenactments. We thought it would be fun to create a show where folks talk about true crime the way their friends would talk about it, including the good, the bad, the ugly, and on occasion the laughable absurdity. Podcasts were starting to really grow I popularity and we jumped on the bandwagon! Here we are nearly 10 years later, an established business and name in podcasting, still covering topics that both chill and titillate us!
Amanda, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Our business began on an idea and became a reality through a commitment to learning the ropes, a bit of luck, and the willingness to be our authentic selves! Our backgrounds were not in audio production, tech, even small business. All we knew is that we had an idea we wanted to share with the world, so we started there. We dove into the details of what it took to start a podcast and on our tiny shoestring budgets we got our first microphones and mapped out the first few episodes. We dove in and recorded, and suddenly I was facing my first ever audio editing project. I had no idea what I was doing and if you go back and listen to those early episodes, it absolutely shows. I spent hours learning how to use basic functions in GarageBand to edit audio and in February of 2017 we published our first episode, received so kindly and warmly by the little community we’d started to develop online. As we moved forward we connected with other independent podcasters, shared expertise, promoted each other’s work, and really leaned into the podcasting community for help. With that guidance we adjusted our equipment, learned more about monetization and ad sales, and paid that forward by sharing contacts and what we had learned along the way. Our first advertisers were acquired by simply emailing brands and companies we wanted to work with and asking if they were interested in advertising on the show. We eventually built a solid client base of paid advertisers that consistently grew until we could no longer handle our own ad sales internally. With that growth we outsourced ad sales to our hosting platform (shout out to LibSyn!), and expanded our team. We brought in a professional audio and video editor who helped expand our business from audio only into video. We brought on a producer and marketing manager who not only helped expand our online presence, but helps us create new and exciting content and live events. Our team is small, but mighty, and incredibly creative. We collaborate on day to day operations as well as overall creative vision and we could not do any of this without them! To Jon (our editor) and Andrea (our producer) you are the backbone of Wine & Crime! Lean into your team, throw out the outdated ideas of hierarchy and embrace everyone’s investment into the business together and you’ll see not only growth, but new and exciting ideas that could never be executed in isolation! I am proud of our humble beginnings and how open we have remained to pivoting, collaborating, trying new things, saying YES to opportunities that come our way, with the support of our fearless and talented team as well as our amazing Wine & Crime community.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
Podcasting can be a challenging and fair-weather industry! We launched the show at an amazing time for podcast creators, the ad market was hot, the podcasting space wasn’t oversaturated, and we were able to carve out a spot for ourselves with literally $300 bucks and a dream. We spent the limited funds we had on the equipment we could afford (small mics, and some editing software), and to make up for the funds we didn’t have, chose to pour our authentic selves into the show, knowing that the friendship between us as cohosts was the foundation for the entire project. As we grew and saw success, including increased ad sales, a thriving sponsorship community on Patreon, merchandise sales, and live performances and events, we were so excited to see the growth! And then 2020 arrived and like basically every small business, we could really feel the shifts in the market. Ad sales were no longer the meat and potatoes of the business in the ways we had come to rely on. Listeners habits were changing as they transitioned from listening on their commutes to finding time to listen at home. Folks, just like us, were financially stretched and not able to spend on things like merch. We had an entire tour planned to begin within days of the lockdown that had to be completely cancelled. It was a very challenging transition and we knew we had to get creative. So we created more ways to connect with our audiences digitally to show them that we are committed to making this content and encourage them to invest in that commitment by supporting our small business, and the community has continued to be there for us through every stage of growth and change. The personal connections we have formed with our listeners keep us moving forward, and we always try to pour back into that community with accessible content, immersive events, and opportunities to really connect and form real relationships through the show that was started for that same purpose- to connect with each other as friends around a shared topic of interest.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
Social media has been essential to our business. Back in 2017 when we decided on the name Wine & Crime, the first thing we did was snatch up social media handles on all the big hitters- Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. We used social media before we even had any content recorded to seek out and connect with other podcasters in the true crime space, find listeners who had the same interests, we looked for folks who showed interest in wine, true crime, feminism, irreverent comedy, and just started hitting that follow button left and right. We put out some content to show the world who we were and started connecting with audiences right away. Funny enough, when folks started to engage so quickly we were surprised! We didn’t even have the first episode recorded yet and folks were already HUNGRY for what we were working on. This response actually moved up our planned timeline for episode one and encouraged us to let go of our fears, let go of the expectation of perfection, solidify our format, and get into the “studio” (which of course was whatever room in our individual hones and apartments was quietest, Lucy literally recorded the first episode on a bare mattress in her attic with an old sock over her microphone as a pop filter!) While the early audio absolutely shows how new and inexperienced we were, we showed up as ourselves and put ourselves out there, and the response was overwhelmingly positive. We always take listener feedback to heart along the way and allow that feedback to guide us. Listeners can sponsor their own episodes to have stories told that they are passionate about, folks recommend wine pairings from their favorite local spots, folks come out of the woodwork offering their small business spaces to host shows or events, the collaboration with the communities we’ve built online has been incredible and even now we will look to our community of listeners and ask them – where do you want us to go next? Do you have a venue or business you want to showcase? Do you want to host an event? And as a result we have done some truly fun and bizarre things, including marching in Buffalo NY’s “Dyngus Day Parade,” or hosting a live Forensic Files watch-along with the HLN network. When you put yourself out there you never know who will come across your content, and as they say, closed mouths don’t get fed! So use social media and your online presence to connect and lean into your community to expand and try new things!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://wineandcrimepodcast.com
- Instagram: @wineandcrimepod
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WineandCrimePod
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@WineandCrimePod
