The Cost of Starting a Podcast

In this episode of Radio Influencers, host Andy Meadows discusses the importance of podcasting for radio professionals, emphasizing the need for on-air talent to adapt their skills to fit podcasting. He explores the exact costs associated with starting a podcast, the essential equipment needed, and the time commitment required for production. Meadows also addresses the potential for podcast advertising revenue growth and the importance of leveraging existing radio resources to enhance podcast visibility and monetization. You can also watch the full episode here.

Transcript

Welcome to another edition of Radio Influencers, a podcast series we’re doing for Radio Update… I’m your host Andy Meadows

If you watch or read my content you’re well aware that I’m a BIG believer in radio people doing audio/video podcasts

I’ve been saying for years every on-air personality should be doing this

I even wrote an eBook about how easy it is for on-air talent to adapt their radio broadcasting skills so they work well podcasting, it’s called From Broadcast to Podcast: Applying Radio Rules to Podcasting

Recently I also wrote about Why CEOs & GMs Should Podcast as well

Because it’s a great way to lead by example, if the person in charge is doing it how can on-air personalities continue to resist podcasting

& because it’s a great way to establish themselves as thought leaders within the community

Part of the reason I always encourage adding the element of video is, it massively improves the reach and effectiveness of a podcast

That’s because it makes it easy to pull and share video reels to use on social media

Gives you a long-form video to share on the station website and YouTube, currently the leading site for consuming podcasts of any kind

& there are ways to tie advertisers into all of that, even from day one before you have any downloads, something I’ll expand on with my final thought at the end

So, since this is a recurring topic of mine, I’ve had a lot of conversations with those in and outside our industry about why radio is so resistant to podcasting

From those conversations, my conclusion is that…

Part of it is the feeling that it’s beneath us because there’s no barrier for entry, literally anyone can start a podcast

There are currently somewhere between 3.5 to 6 million podcasts depending on the source and how you categorize them

There are only 44,000 radio stations worldwide, 15,445 of which are here in the United States

So, podcasting is a much less exclusive club than radio, which we all know is a smaller more tightknit community than most people on the outside realize

But, another big part of the reason radio people don’t commit to podcasting is the time and the cost

They’re already stretched thin, wearing multiple hats, doing the work whole staffs used to do like we discussed on last week’s ‘More With Less’ episode

And we’re all trying to watch every dollar, especially right now based on the economy and how our industry is trending overall

I fully understand why radio people would ask themselves, is it really worth my time and money to enter into a very crowded market and become podcast number 6 million and one

So, to help anyone wrestling with that question right now, I thought we’d talk about exactly what it costs both financially and time-wise to start a podcast

After watching or listening, if you have any questions, email me at Andy@RadioStationConsultant.com or Editor@RadioUpdate.com and I’ll answer them to the best of my ability

The cost of starting a podcast:

The cost..

One of the main reasons there are so many people podcasting is, it’s relatively cheap to do so

Even running lean in the smallest markets, a single station costs thousands of dollars a month to operate before you hire a single employee

You can start a podcast with a $50 usb mic, the webcam already built into your laptop and a $20 a month subscription to a podcast hosting site that gets your podcast on all the major platforms

Which you want to do by the way, podcasts should absolutely be on the station website of course but that shouldn’t be the only place they are

You have to fish where the fish are by putting your podcast on all the sites people already goto to get their podcasts, Apple, Spotify, Podchaser, Deezer, etc, and luckily it’s inexpensive to do so

I wrote an article you can find on Radio Update listing the 5 best podcast hosting sites for broadcasters, Simplecast, Buzzsprout, Transistor, Podkast+ and Podbean, they all are in that $10 to $20 per month range and most have free trials and come along with some monetization and promotional tools

I mentioned a $50 usb mic before, here’s one from Audio Technica in that range

However, if you’re going with a USB mic I would strongly suggest spending $199 for the Rode PodMic USB or $259 to $279 for the Shure MV7 (This one) or the MV7+, their new one

Because these sound closer to the professional broadcast mics we’re used to and our listeners are used to hearing us on

I would also suggest spending at least $100 on a good quality 4k webcam, the one I use is the Osbot Meet 4k and it’s $120 (even cheaper when it’s on sale)

Then another $50 to $100 on supplemental lighting that will vary based on your room

So, all in the one-time upfront hardcost for podcast equipment if you’re doing a solo podcast where any guests would be recorded remotely is anywhere from $50 to about $400

In addition to the podcast hosting site, I would recommend paying $30 per month to get a RiversideFM subscription

This is basically Zoom for broadcasters

It allows you to record high quality audio video remotely over the internet, which does require a little more bandwidth, you’ll need a minimum of 5 Mbps upload and 10 Mbps download

However, the beauty of it is, it saves a local copy so if you ever have a guest with a bandwidth issue, which YOU will, the final product won’t be effected

It also has a bunch of awesome AI tools that save you a bunch of time editing

So, the monthly recurring costs are a total of $50 per month, between the podcast hosting site and Riverside for recording

Additional costs:

Obviously if you want to do an in-person podcast you’ll need additional mics, if you don’t want to use multiple USB mics, or you already have broadcast XLR mics you want to use, you could jump to a Rodecaster ProII (Now $689) OR Zoom now has a competing PodTrack P8 that’s only $299, still sounds good and has a batter powered option

Plus, you’ll want to jump to multi-cam which can get pricey quick but there are a lot of options in the $1,000 to $2,000 range that I’ve talked about in the past but I can fully break down in a future episode

Paying guests, to be clear the majority of podcasts do NOT pay their guests, at most maybe they reimburse them for gas

However, some podcasts, especially as they’re getting established, do pay guests

Bobbi Althoff famously went from no subscribers to millions in a very short time by offering to pay famous rappers $300 to come on her podcast, The Really Good Podcast,  when she started it

Because she had a unique angle that people connected with, she only had to do that for a short while, but it worked because it added legitimacy and got her a Drake interview which of course then went viral and got her on the map

The reason people pay guests is simple, in the beginning you want people who have a larger following then you to come on your podcast, so their existing fan base sees it when they either share it or you tag them

Luckily in radio, we already have access to some celebrities through our stations, so that should give us a leg up

But, that doesn’t mean I’d rule out occasionally paying guests in the beginning if you want to ramp up quickly

Paying guests also helps alleviate one of the big pain points of podcasting, guest cancellations, which will ABSOLUTELY happen, that’s why most weekly podcasts work a few weeks in advance or are willing to do solo episodes (like I do, not just because of guest cancellations by the way, I think it’s a good way to hyper-focus on some important subjects too, like we are today)

But, people are much less likely to cancel if their getting paid, even if it’s a small amount, it’s human nature, they’ll feel guiltier

Regardless cancellations will happen because people get sick, emergencies come up, yada yada yada

The big secret for getting guests is to follow the lead of other podcasters and offer to go on other people’s podcasts as a guest, which by the way is great marketing anyway

Speaking of marketing, It’s also a good idea to set aside a marketing budget, obviously you’ll be promoting the podcast on your stations, but you’ll also want to boost some of the clips on social so you can target specific interests, locations and demographics

Just $25 to $50 on the right platform and the right clip can get you between 10,000 to 20,000 impressions, so it’s a great hack when you’re trying to ramp up quickly

And even once a podcast is established it still a good idea to occasionally boost some of the clips that are already getting a lot of traction organically to add fuel to the fire

Time commitment:

The time it takes to produce a podcast varies wildly depending on the type of podcast you’re doing, how elaborate you want the production to be and how experienced the person doing the editing

So, I’ll just speak to my personal experience

I always tell on-air talent on music stations to spend 30 minutes preparing for every hour they are on the air, so a four hour show needs 2 hours of show prep to be competitive on the air, in my professional opinion

Because podcasting is more like talk radio than music radio, it takes a minimum of an hour of preparation for every hour you’re recording if not a little more while you’re developing your podcasting process

If you have a guest you want to research them, write more questions than you think you’re going to need because some guests will give you long, elaborate answers, and others will give you short and to the point answers

If you don’t have a guest you want to spend that same amount of time putting your own thoughts together and either preparing bullet points or a full script to keep you on track, I wouldn’t wing solo episodes unless your Bill Burr it’s unlikely to work

Editing without the help of AI generally takes 2 hours for every hour you’ve recorded, especially if it’s multiple guests and multiple cameras

However, that process has been cut down substantially now, with the help of AI tools, like the ones built into Riverside and a whole host of other AI editing platforms like Opus Clip, Spikes Studio, Vidyo.AI and many more that are popping up daily, plus some of the AI tools being built directly into video editors, we use Adobe Premier and After Effects by the way, but a good free to start video editor is Hitfilm

AI also makes it easier for people who haven’t learned how to video edit well yet to produce professional looking podcasts without hiring a video editor

On average now I spend about 30 to 45 minutes total editing any podcast no matter how elaborate

So between prep, recording time and editing I’m usually spending 2 and a half hours total per podcast episode, but that used to be a LOT longer before I started using AI tools

Final Thought: Podcast Advertising

Even though I’ve just laid out how inexpensive starting a podcast can be and how it’s less of a time commitment now with the use of AI, the other major hurdle most people have on committing their time and money to podcasting is the return on that investment

Podcasting Ad revenue is projected to see continued growth this year, the Interactive Advertising Bureau estimates podcasting ad revenue will see a 7.4% increase again this year

Which could absolutely help fill the void left by the 9.3% decrease in US broadcast ad revenue Kagan forecasts for this year provided radio gets a larger share of that podcast revenue

But, that’s the big question, in this incredibly saturated market made of literally millions of podcasts, can radio breakthrough the noise and get a larger share of the 4.6 billion podcasting ad revenue is projected to bring in this year?

I believe it absolutely can, if we’re willing to commit on a much larger scale than we are now, getting everyone in our building that has an aptitude for podcasting or an interest in learning to podcast, add the element of video to all of our podcasts, and devote the time and money to professionally produce and promote them

I also believe that because radio has a built-in way to not only jumpstart podcast listenership, but also to jumpstart podcast revenue

If we take those same 45 second ‘best of’ video reels we’re pulling for social and run the audio for them on-air with a 15 second solicitation to sponsor, which of course turns into a sponsor mention once it’s sold, not only will that specific audio clip drive significantly more traffic to the podcast episodes than a generic one, it will also drive significantly more advertiser interest as well

We all know that selling popular on-air features has always been easier than just selling ads, and once those on-air features are sold, the advertisers tend to hold on to them, because it’s a great way of doing branded advertising without breaking the bank

What do you think, what experience has your station or group had with creating and monetizing podcasts, email me at Andy@RadioStationConsultant.com or Editor@RadioUpdate.com and let me know.

As always, if you have some thoughts you’d like to share on this or any other hot radio topic, submit an article about it by emailing submissions@radioupdate.com. If we use it on the site we’ll pay you for it.

Thanks for listening, watching and reading!

We’ll be back next week with a new episode of Radio Influencers