James McKinven is an entrepreneur who has succeeded in making money from podcasts - no easy feat. He earns about $12k per month by editing podcasts for companies, hosting the Indie Bites podcast which has sponsorships and making his own leather wallets.
Can you introduce yourself?
Hi, I’m James from Canterbury in the UK (just an hour outside London on the train). I’ve been a full-time solo entrepreneur for the past 2 years with most of my income currently from producing podcasts for clients (around $10k per month). I also have two podcasts, Indie Bites and This Indie Life, which collectively do around 10,000 downloads per month adding a further $1.5k to my monthly revenue.
The final thing I spend my time on is my leather wallet business, Whitstable Craft Co, which usually makes around $500-$1,000 per month. So a few different revenue sources, no MRR in the traditional sense, but my total monthly is around $12k currently.
How did you get into making the Indie Bites podcast?
Indie Bites started in September 2020 as I got more involved in the indie hacking scene. I met a bunch of my lifelong friends at Indie Beers meetup in London and was inspired by their approach to life. I’d always wanted to go into entrepreneurship but couldn’t figure out how. I specifically remember chatting to Grey Baker from Dependabot (acq. by Github) and being astonished that he was making $10k a month from his SaaS.
I already had another podcast at this time called Marketing Mashup, but I found myself less interested in marketing people and more interested in indie hackers. Since I no longer had a commute I was struggling to find time to listen to podcast and was surprised there weren't many shorter shows. So I thought I’d make a 15 minute podcast speaking to Indie Hackers.
My first episode was with my friend Charlie Ward - who started Indie Beers and Ramen Club - to test the concept. I then reached out to some of my other friends from the Ramen Club community who had interesting stories, such as Harry Dry of Marketing Examples and Sabba Keynejad of VEED. I then started sending out DMs and emails to some of my favourite founders one of which was founder of Indie Hackers himself, Courtland Allen.
Courtland was exploring the idea of starting an Indie Hackers podcast network at the time, so he took me and a few others under his proverbial podcasting wing. This got the kickstart the show needed.
How did you start editing podcasts for people?
I’ve been making videos since I was young and so I had transferable skills over to podcasting. When I saw more shows popping up in 2019, I thought I’d give it a go myself. Bought some microphones and started my first show, Marketing Mashup. I was working at a marketing agency at the time so I was interviewing my colleagues and other folks in marketing.
// pop-up with indie acquisitions offer