How Joe Rogan Built The Most Successful Podcast On The Internet

Lessons from the rise and success of the Joe Rogan Experience

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

If you’re asked to recommend a podcast to someone, I’d wager 90% of the time people would recommend the Joe Rogan Experience. That’s a testament to the popularity and wide reach his podcast has.

The popularity of his podcast was exemplified by the recent $100 million deal he struck with Spotify, which gave the company the exclusive right to his podcast.

The numbers on his podcast are ridiculous. It’s estimated that Rogan earns somewhere between $50 and $250 million in revenue from podcast adverts. This figure doesn’t include the revenue he earns from YouTube, where his videos are known to rack up a million views in under 24 hours.

As of writing, Rogan has 9.74 million subscribers on his main YouTube account, with an additional 5.28 million subscribers on his second channel which offers short-form clips from his various podcasts. In addition, he claims his podcast has 190 million downloads a month, a mindboggling figure.

It’s hard not to look at these figures and assume that Rogan has always had this audience and level of reach, but that wasn’t the case. He started the podcast way back in 2009 when the medium was still in its infancy, and the difference between today and now is stark.

Back then, it was him and a few friends airing their thoughts to a random selection of people on the web. Nowadays, his podcast is a slick operation that features a variety of people from differing fields.

The success of Joe’s podcast wasn’t inevitable. Several factors contributed to the success of the podcast and are indicative of entrepreneurial success in general.

Nothing is inevitable, but if you follow the principles Rogan did, you can make success more likely than not.

Persistence pays off

If you’re a regular listener, or watcher, of the Joe Rogan podcast, you’ll be aware of the format. Joe hosts the podcast in his funky studio, complete with state of the art equipment and his own producer, Jamie, by his side.