How To Succeed on Insight Timer in 2025
In this solo podcast episode I share 9 things every teacher should know to make the most of Insight Timer and thrive on the platform in 2025. Whether you’re new to Insight Timer or a seasoned teacher, these practical tips will help you create impactful content, increase engagement, and build a sustainable meditation and coaching business.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
The key strategies to grow your audience and stand out on Insight Timer in 2025.
How to create high-quality content that resonates with your listeners.
The importance of focusing on both free and premium content to build long-term success.
Tips on creating courses that attract and engage listeners, turning them into repeat visitors.
How to grow your brand beyond Insight Timer with coaching offers and corporate workshops.
GIFT FOR YOU
If you’re a meditation teacher or coach who wants to create unique meditations people listen to over and over again, enroll in my free course Meditation Script Mastery
Music Credit: Nova by River Roots - https://www.youtube.com/riverroots
Podcast Transcript
Hello. I am so excited to share with you today. It is the end of 2024 and we are approaching a new year and you might be asking yourself, what do I need to know about insight timer in 2025? How can I approach this app with the greatest amount of contribution and success? How do I make my business, my work, thrive on the app? And if that's you, you're in the right place. A little quick background on me. I've been on inside timer since 2016. I have 2 million plays on the app and I also have courses that have over, I think like 70,000 students. So I've been around, I've done a lot, I've learned a lot. And I hope that I can share with you today some things that might be helpful. I'm going to be giving you nine things to think about to bring into the new year. Some of them are going to be practical, some of them are going to be philosophical, and some of them are just straight up mindset. Just the way that you should be approaching this app and approaching your work in the new year. Before we get fully into it, it's important to acknowledge that in 2024 there were some big changes with Insight Timer in that they shifted their pay scale from 50% teachers, 50% insight timer to 60% insight timer, 40% teachers. They also stopped paying us for comments on tracks and courses. In lieu of that, they added what is known as the ROR or return rate bonus that you'd get on your tracks. Now, how to publish and create content for RoR is still uncertain. We'll talk a little bit about that in these steps. But overall, I just need to say that Insight Timer did this in the most generous, kind and thoughtful way way. The way that they went about slow rolling this out into the world, the way that they talked about it, they were transparent about it, and they had a fund where they actually helped teachers with that lost revenue over a few months is just incredible. So I know there's some people that have a lot of negative things to say. I can only say positive things about how they did this and understanding that just as you are a business that has to look out for how are you going to thrive in the long term? Insight Timer is a business looking out for how they're going to thrive in the long term. And guess what? Inside Timer, thriving in the long term is how we thrive on the app in the long term. So while I've taken about a 30% to 35% cut in my revenue so far, I am Hopeful that in the long term it is going to continue to grow. So I won't say too much about the specifics around. Personally, the hit that I've taken, many teachers have taken the hit. But I hope that this video gives you some hope, some inspiration, some motivation to step into 2025 with a different view and a more long term view. Which brings us to number one, publish your content on Insight Timer. Not as if it's 2025, but imagine that you're publishing it for 2030. We are in such a great position. This app, the mindfulness, the meditation world industry, if you would call it that, is still young, it's still budding. And although it seems like there's so many teachers on the app, comparing it to a YouTube or an Instagram or, or any other social media platform, it is minor. And with that, Insight Timer is so generous in how they pay their teachers. Even though there's been a loss in pay, they are still generous in how much they are paying their teachers. Let's compare. If you were to put your meditations on Spotify, Spotify for a million plays pays their artist $3,800. That's less than $0.01 per play. Insight Timer pays their meditation artists $0.15 per play. Which means if you have a million plays or a million premium plays on Insight Timer, you are going to make $157,000. A million plays on Spotify, 3,800. A million plays on Insight Timer, 157,000. This probably doesn't even make your month end revenue goal. This is a full year of revenue. So it's still such a generous place. And as it brings in more money, as it grows its users, this is only going to grow. And so take the long game approach. Publish in 2025 with the intention that you are setting and planting the seeds for 2030. Which brings us to number two, quality over quantity. I was in one of the Insight Timer Facebook groups and someone was complaining how in one month they were made less money than they did the month before, even though that they published two courses that month. Now, I don't know the full background story to this person's course, but my initial reaction is if you publish two courses in a month, they're probably not good courses. You might be like, Lou, what do you mean I publish? You know, we're trying to get more content, we're trying to get more courses out there. I really want you to start to look at courses specifically as a book. Imagine if someone said I published two books last month. You'd be like, there's no way those two books can be of deep substance. Because if you know book writing, you know that it takes time, heart, energy, care, craft, just publishing courses, just publishing more content is not the answer. There's more content than ever. And in order to stand out from the crowd, you, you need to really create quality. Quality doesn't mean the best edited stuff, by the way. Quality means there's some lived, embodied, substantial experience, some energy, a transmission, your gifts that you are giving, your care, your love, your heart. Only you can know what quality is. And it's the quality content that is gonna stand out, not more. So think quality, not quantity. And the, the benefit of creating stuff that you put more energy into is that you're going to actually want to market it more. You're going to want to talk about it more. And people, when they listen to it, they're going to want to tell other people about it. That's how you're going to spread. You're not going to spread on Insight Timer by getting in front of more people. You're going to spread and getting in front of the right people who are going to then tell their friends. And it will spread by word of mouth because it's that good. Number three, consider the return rate. When you are creating any new content, whether tracks or courses. I say consider because again, it's not clear around what actually makes for better return rate. But it's worth asking the question because it's the reality that we're living in. So when you're actually creating something, ask yourself, if I were to optimize for return rate, how do I engage this differently and see what your intuition says? Now the obvious answer says, come back tomorrow. You know, doing those things or creating kind of challenges where people are coming back to your content or to other people's content. Now, we don't want to overdo it because then every track on Inside Timer is just going to be like, yeah, come back tomorrow. Like just, just being annoying like that. Don't do that. And you might consider it. And I know people that are very successful in the app that literally have said, lou, I'm not doing anything different than what I've done. I'm going to create content like I create content. If I have good rr, great. If I don't, whatever. And that's also an idea to go. But just asking the question, if I were to optimize for ROR in this track, what would I do? See what happens. Number four, consider creating shorter form content, specifically shorter form talks where you are giving people something substantial in a small amount of time and they're getting a chance to really engage with you. I have one friend who has maybe one of the most successful courses on the app right now and it's just simply six minutes a day for 88 days and it is absolutely crushing. You guys might know Charles. Charles Freilai that's working really well. I noticed in my own tracks that are six minutes where typically talks, they're typically like blogs that I have written really kind of inspirational to the point, really crafted talks that do really well that actually get a better ROR overall. Again, not totally, but mostly they get a pretty good ror. And the real benefit is there's so many people that have come to courses or have even found me to work one on one because they've listened to a five, six minute talk. It gives them a chance to really get to know you. It's different than if you just say, okay, welcome, my name's Lou, close your eyes and we're going to breathe. And yes, we're about guiding meditation, but they're just there getting the meditation. And if there's not an introduction to more specific themes or you're not talking more, they don't get a chance to know you. And I think that's going to be the X factor in building an audience is really when people feel a connection to you. And so consider think about if I were to sprinkle in a three to seven minute talk every now and then, what would I speak about? And what's great about talks is they're an easy introduction to your content and they're an easy way to talk about courses that you have that relate to the theme. For example, I have a talk, I believe it's called how to love your life. And at the end I'll say I have a course on Insight Timer about happiness and fulfillment, your daily guide to happiness and fulfillment. Go check it out. If you like this talk, you're going to love that we go deeper into this topic. And so short talks are a great way to to promote your courses and other premium content that you have on the app. Number five if you're newer to Insight Timer, consider posting much more free content. The amount of free users on Insight Timer is vastly bigger than the amount of paid users. And so if you're new your job, your idea, especially if you're posting for 2030, is not to make your living on Inside Timer this year because that is good to be pretty much impossible. But it's to think about if I'm building this for the long term, my job and my goal is to get in front of as many people to do that free content. So if you're newer to the app, please, I would only post free content. Before the app had a paid version, you only posted free content. So I was doing this for years. And so at this point, I think that's the way to start because your goal is to grow and then you, yes, still create courses. But similar to what I just said at the end of your free content, if it's something that's similar to a course, you can then say, oh, I have a course on this topic, go check it out if you're interested in. And that might be the move. And if Insight Timer ever pays for this, I hope they do. I have something I've told them that I wish they did is pay you if you were the reason your content was the reason that they paid for the app. Because maybe someone takes that talk or that meditation and they say, wow, I really want to take this course by this person. I think I'm finally going to go premium. So that might come, that might not come. But regardless, you are building more of an audience. So when those audience members do go premium, hopefully they're going to want to take your courses. Number six, how to succeed on Inside Timer in 2025 is to learn how to succeed off of insight timer in 2025. That means that you have a business, you have, you have something where you're not reliant on Insight Timer to be your main revenue stream. I would say if you are reliant on Inside Timer to be your main revenue stream, your intentions, your energy, it's going to come from not that generous giving place, it's going to come from a need. And I've said this in previous content on here is that I don't believe Inside Timer was built on that foundation. It was built in a generous spirit foundation of giving. And that is still, I think, how it's growing. And to think that you need to have it make your income is just going to put too much pressure on the app. It's going to put too much pressure on you. And so learning to succeed on Inside Timer is learning to succeed off of it. And so that means really getting clear on what are your offers off of the app, whether it's corporate work, whether you're doing mindfulness workshops, learning how to figure out that game of your business, or whether it's having a really robust one on one offer that you sell at a price that you can actually make a living. And it's not, notice this, it's not pushing people from the app to your other things. I don't want to, don't want to say this like you're meant to push people from the app. That is a clear rule on Inside Timer. I do not. I am so grateful for Inside Timer that I really want to keep in respect and integrity to not tell people, hey, go find my coaching. But it's going to be a natural byproduct when people resonate with you, they're going to say, whoa, I really like this person, or whoa, you know, I talk about my coaching, I talk about working with clients, I talk about things that I'm doing on my talks, but that's just part of the content. And so if they say, whoa, this person does coaching, okay, I'm going to go to their website and then they'll seek me out for coaching. And so I still think meditation courses are the greatest way that people can start to build trust with you. And if you really create a transformational experience, they're going to want to hire you as their coach. So it's doing the work on getting your other stuff really solid so that it's so easy for people if they do go and follow you off the app, that they know what you have to offer and they go and they purchase coaching with you or they purchase other products or other courses that you have off the app or other programs that you have. So it's really learning. I was told this once. I've taken it to heart and I really believe it. Every successful entrepreneur, they have about three solid income streams. And I've done content on here before where I've told you my income streams and it's helpful to not have to. It's like three pillars of a house. And if one pillar goes down, the two pillars can kind of hold it up. Or if one pillar shifts, like inside timer changes the revenue model again. Oh, the other two pillars can hold it up. And so figuring out what are those core pillars for so many people who do healing work, obviously a one on one offer tends to be the easiest. But I also encourage you to get into companies and if you're in companies, please don't charge anything less. If you're doing any kind of mindfulness workshop at a company, please don't charge less than $1,000. Honor yourself, honor the time, honor the work. It's a company. I know you might be like, lou, that's crazy. It's like a thousand dollars for like an hour meditation. That sounds insane. I promise you, you are sharing to one way more people and it's coming out of a corporate budget and you're already probably undercharging yourself. So I'm just, just putting that out there. For anyone who's like charging like a couple hundred bucks to go do a meditation at a company that to charge more, I'll say that I'll talk more about charging things at some point, but really figure out what you need to make a living. Reverse engineer that set your offerings off of it so that Insight Timer can be a bonus. If Insight Timer is just a bonus, you are in a really good place with it because you're, you're free with it and you can just give to it and it can be a bonus and it can grow and it can go out of that generous spirit. Okay, enough about that. Number seven, consider the retreats important. This is a new offering on Insight Timer, new opportunity. If you have a successful retreat business or if you have a retreat business already, maybe it's not the most successful, but you've done retreats before, you've worked with it already. Please, by all means, go put your retreat on Insight Timer. See what's going to happen. Now, if you got invited to do a retreat but you've never done a retreat before and you think just because you're going to promote it on inside time or that it's going to fill, I would caution hard on doing that. As someone whose wife runs a retreat company who has been involved in many retreats, it's not the easiest thing. It's probably the hardest thing that you could do. And if you don't already have an audience established, it's the thing that people need the most. Trust. Like people need to really trust you to give you a ton of money. Not only that money's one thing, but then to shift their schedule to get on planes, to go to places. You know, there's so much involved in a retreat that if you don't already have the established audience that I wouldn't even, I wouldn't even worry about, I would just say, let's see what happens here. For me personally, I probably could pull one off, but I just don't have any interest at this moment. I don't love logistics. I don't want to deal with the headache of it. And I'm just curious. I just, I don't know if it's going to work. And so for me, I'm just hanging back. I know a couple of friends that are doing retreats on there and I'm just going to be like, let's see, I'm just going to see what happens if, if it's a time where, you know, if people, if the demand is there and people are really purchasing it from that storefront. Amazing. And then maybe I'll reconsider this for 2026, but I'm hang and seeing what happens on this one. Number eight, how to succeed on inside timer in 2025. Consider, I'm saying consider a lot because that's what I want. I don't have all the answers. I'm just saying, hey, consider this. Think about it. Consider joining a mastermind group or starting a mastermind group. What is a mastermind group? A mastermind group is where people that are on a similar journey, working on similar things, maybe at different stages, they get together and they help each other grow. I have a mastermind group of five people. All of them are Insight Timer teachers. And we meet every week and while we don't always talk about Insight Timer stuff or you know, we're talking about other business stuff, but Inside Timer is part of it. Sure. And it's just really great to have that support, have that energy, have people that get what you're going through. Now I need to plug Insight Timer groups on Facebook or specifically I need to plug teachers with insight on Facebook and Tom Evans. Tom is really so generous with what he's doing on that group where he's having people come meeting on Zoom and he's kind of running a Mastermind in his own way, completely free. And so if you're not on there and if you're looking for like the lowest cost thing, go check out what Tom's doing because he's doing a really great job. Go join that Facebook group and connect with other people. But I'm sorry because I know people on the Facebook group are going to watch this, but can we do a little less complaining? Just a little less complaining. Just, just, just, just see what happens. See what happens, please. We're not entitled to anything on Insight Timer. Less complaining. Deal with negative reviews. I have a video on here on how to handle negative reviews on Insight Timer. Watch that and do a little less complaining. But beyond that, thank you, Tom. If you end up watching this for the work that you're doing. Now, I also have a paid mastermind group of teachers, coaches, people that are doing this work too. I've talked about it before. It's called Meraki Mastermind. And while it's not again, it's not all just an it's not an Insight Timer mastermind. It is a mastermind group and my heart and soul is deeply into it. So if you're interested in joining a paid group that I have going on, please reach out to me or start your own group. Find two, three other teachers that you really resonate with, that you want to spend time with. The only thing with having like 30 people or 20 people jump on is not a true mastermind. A true mastermind is you show up, everyone gets a chance to get support from everyone else, and there's just this kind of communal support happening. So I would suggest finding a group of four other Insight Timer teachers if you want to focus this specifically on Insight Timer or maybe that you're talking about other parts of your business too. And meet weekly for an hour, 90 minutes, two hours, each person, share what you need support on and just go around and boom, you can self organize that on your own. So consider joining a mastermind group or creating it. Okay, I hope my rambling is coherent and you're enjoying getting something out of this. Last thing I want to say, the biggest secret for insight timer in 2025 is that there are no secrets. That Insight Timer literally gives away every information, every possible trick or tactic. They're telling you what to do. And Tom and the Facebook group is telling you what to do. I am coming on here every so often and talking about this. I have a podcast where I'm talking about all of this for up and coming teachers and healers. I'm doing it all for free. I'm just telling you what to do. I would happily answer whatever you ask me about this. I will give it away for free. That there's not any secrets to it. So if you keep looking for the secret, you're just getting in the way of actually just putting in the work. Yes. There might be little strategies or tactics here and there that you'll learn and be like, huh, yeah, I can do this differently. But at the end of the day, this is about your truth. This is about you being in alignment with the creation that wants to flow out of you. And when you are in alignment with the creation that wants to flow out of you, I like to say God runs the algorithm that things will show up, clients will show up, the success will find you. That every person that I know is really successful on Inside Timer, they didn't have a strategy, they didn't have a plan, they didn't have the secrets. They just really had a soulful gift and mission. That Insight Timer was a platform for them to express on. So if anyone's trying to say that they have the secrets, I would just pause that. It's all that Insight Timer is giving you all the information. I'll give you as much information as I can. And to just come back to trusting that if you're in alignment, leaning into your fears, letting yourself try new things, try new content that maybe you feel is a bit edgy and staying from that space, I think you're gonna do really well. And again, if you're thinking, if you're doing that now with the intention of 2030 being your year, you're gonna go so far. So far. Because most people are trying to make things happen too fast. They're impatient. Focus on your gifts, your soul's mission. Be in it for the long game. And you know, out of anyone, I am rooting so hard for you. It's such a gift to be able to offer something that can be helpful. I hope this was enjoyable for you. If you're still listening to this after all these rambles and you want some support creating meditations in a way that connects to that spirit, I have a course that's helping you create your meditation scripts and helping you tap into your creativity. It's not a course about, like, do it my way, even though I share my way. It's really giving you the paint brushes and the paint and saying, hey, maybe you try this. How do you get inspired with your own inspiration to create something that is evocative, that is powerful, that makes people say, whoa, this is. I feel a connection with you. If you're looking for some insight on that, I have a free course called Meditation Script Mastery. It's in the link in the description. Go check it out. See you in the course or I'll see you on the next podcast. Thanks so much for watching. Listening wherever you are experiencing this and my voice right now. I'll see you soon.