Nothing's Off The Table
A podcast about hitting bottom and getting out, behind a site that led with subscriber counts instead. Rebuilt around the interviews, with the episodes finally findable and one honest route to help.
- Client
- Louis Ruggiero
- Sector
- Podcast and recovery coaching
- Scope
- Full rebuild, CMS, episode library
- Stack
- Next.js and Sanity
The old site
Opened on a subscriber count, a streaming figure and an episode tally, then three video thumbnails. The show is people telling you the worst thing that ever happened to them, and the page led with metrics.
The numbers came before the person
Five thousand subscribers, three million streams, a hundred and thirty-six episodes, all above the fold. Nobody subscribes to a podcast because it has subscribers, and an audience figure is the one thing a first-time listener has no use for.
The episodes were a shelf, not a library
Three thumbnails and a link to a channel. Ninety-one interviews existed and the site treated them as a feed to link out to rather than the reason anybody was on the page.
Nothing said who he was
The host's story is the whole credential on a show like this, and it sat in a panel below the fold, in the third person, next to a coaching offer.
Help was below the sales
The people most likely to land on this site are looking for a way out at two in the morning. The route to a meeting was under the newsletter, the sponsorship pitch and the coaching upsell.
Six moves.
Led with the sentence
“I sit down with people who have been to the bottom of addiction and found the way out.” First thing on the page, at the size of the promise it is making.
Put him in the first person
Twelve years of compulsive gambling, more than ten million gone, and it nearly cost him his life. In his own words, beside the headline, because that is the qualification.
Made every episode a page
The whole library in a CMS he updates himself, each episode with its own page, its own guest and its own title, so a search for one story lands on that story rather than on a channel.
Sorted the reasons people come
Family, rehab, mental health, gambling, sober living, debt, relapse. Somebody arrives with one of those, not with a browse, so the library is cut by the thing they are living through.
Moved help above the offer
A standing block with the meeting he runs on Mondays and a link to Gamblers Anonymous, ahead of coaching and sponsorship. It is the right order morally and it is the right order commercially.
Kept the numbers, for sponsors
The figures did not go away, they went where they are useful: beside the sponsorship pitch, next to the line about turning down gambling money.
Live on nothingsoff.com
Opens on the sentence that says what the show is, in his own voice, with the guests along the bottom and the newest episode one click away. The numbers moved to where a sponsor looks for them.
91
Full episodes, listed on the live site
23.6K
Subscribers, as published on the site
4.6
Apple rating, as published on the site
“I had a website I didn't like and never promoted. Now it is the first thing I send people.
All 91 episodes are finally somewhere people can actually search, which the old one never did. And the meetings and the recovery resources are up front where they should be instead of buried under a coaching pitch. He got that without me having to ask.
He handles it after launch too, so I stay on the podcast. Appreciate you brother.”
Louis Ruggiero Jr.Host, Nothing's Off The TableYour work is better than your website says it is.
That gap is the whole job. Tell us how your business actually runs and we will show you where it is leaking.