How Many Downloads Is Good for a Podcast? (And Why That’s Not the Only Question You Should Be Asking)

If your podcast supports a business, the answer to how many downloads are good for a podcast is smaller than the internet wants you to believe. Downloads are cute, but they are also the easiest number to screenshot, so they get all the attention.

I check downloads with every client, and I never read them alone. The number that tells me whether a show is working usually isn’t on the dashboard’s front page.

What the download benchmarks say

According to Buzzsprout, 30 downloads in the first seven days of an episode puts you in the top half of podcasts. 335 puts you in the top 10 percent, and about 4,000 gets you into the top 1 percent.

• More than 30 downloads, you’re in the top 50% of podcasts.
• More than 93 downloads, you’re in the top 25% of podcasts.
• More than 335 downloads, you’re in the top 10% of podcasts.
• More than 795 downloads, you’re in the top 5% of podcasts.
• More than 3,994 downloads, you’re in the top 1% of podcasts.

Those numbers help you see where you sit among all shows. They can’t tell you whether the people who listened are people you want to work with.

What I look at instead

When an entrepreneur hands me their stats, I pull downloads at 7, 30, and 90 days for each episode. The seven-day number shows how well your launch pulls. The 90-day number shows whether episodes keep getting found after launch, which is where search work pays off.

Next I look at consumption rate, meaning how much of each episode people actually listen to. A download only records that someone pressed play. Consumption rate tells me whether they stayed.

Then comes the number most people skip: how many leads came in from the podcast this month. That one connects to revenue. A show can have healthy downloads and zero leads, and a show with modest downloads can send a steady flow of people to your inbox.

The “you need 1,000 downloads an episode” myth

The advice that you need 1,000 downloads an episode to make money is nonsense for most entrepreneurs. It holds up for a show with fuzzy positioning. When your podcast talks to a general crowd, you need a large crowd, because only a sliver of it is your buyer.

When your messaging is dialed in, and your podcast SEO is on point, the right listeners are already there, and you need a fraction of that number. A client in my membership gets between 100 and 200 downloads per episode, and her podcast brings her leads. Her room is small, and everyone in it is someone she wants to talk to.

So how many downloads is good? Enough that the right people find you and your lead count moves.

How to increase podcast downloads when you want leads

When a client tells me they need more downloads, I run a podcast SEO audit before I touch anything else. If downloads and leads aren’t coming in, repeat that audit every 90 days. Check out this post about how I run an audit to grow a podcast.

The audit almost always points back to positioning, search, or both. When positioning is off, the show is vague. Nothing in the episodes is specific enough for a listener to feel their own problem, and they can’t tell that the host understands where they are. Search shows the same weakness from the other side. If the right keywords aren’t in place, the wrong people find the show, and a well-made podcast can still fill up with listeners who will never buy. Vague positioning leads to vague keywords, and vague keywords bring in whoever happens to click play.

When I fix the search side, I work in a set order. I start with the podcast-level keywords, since they set the direction for everything below them. Next I rewrite the show description. Episode titles and episode descriptions come last, because by then you know which keywords they need to carry.

In my experience, downloads start to move within about 14 days of those updates, and leads show up within 30 days. Every show is different, but that’s the pattern I’ve seen with clients.

Fix your positioning and search before chasing more downloads

Two pillars of the Podcasting Problem Solver Framework carry most of this: Strategic Positioning and Optimized Attraction. Positioning means each episode speaks to one buyer’s problem. Optimized Attraction covers your titles, descriptions, and keywords, so that buyer finds you when they search on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google. When either one is off, more downloads bring you more of the wrong people.

Check your analytics once a month, not daily. Write your podcast leads next to your downloads, even when the lead number is zero. A zero still tells you something, because it sends you to positioning and search before it sends you to volume.

If your downloads look fine and the leads aren’t showing up, the Get Found Audit is where I’d start. I review your podcast’s search visibility and positioning, then send you the findings in a Notion dashboard with a Loom walkthrough.

GET A FOUND AUDIT