How to start a podcast

Is there a career in podcasting?

When Spotify placed a private bid to purchase Gimlet Media for $230 million in 2019, the dream of making it big in podcasting was ignited.

With fewer than 20 shows and five years in operation, the bombshell Gimlet acquisition put us on notice that there is success to be had in podcasting, by those who know how to find it.

And finding it was not something Alex Blumberg and Matthew Lieber did by accident. The network’s founders raised $1.5 million to launch Gimlet’s first stable of shows, led by StartUp, and went on to raise another $6 million before the sale to the music streaming giant.

The ambition for most budding podcasters is to do four things: sit, talk, be heard, and earn an income.

Some, like Blumberg and Lieber, have figured it out, and make an honest, and sometimes enviable, wage from their work. The overriding majority haven’t, and need help getting there.

What follows is an enormous body of work to help you succeed as a podcaster. This all draws from work with our buddies over at the Podcraft Academy, which is an education resource and learning community to help podcasters win. This guide is a testament to that. We update it regularly with the best advice on how to start a podcast.

How do I actually make it in podcasting?

Warren Buffett is famous for his secrets. His investing activities have netted him billions and, despite the stock markets being open to us all, none of us could dream of rivalling him.

Why? Because most of us haven’t uncovered the secret sauces of hyper-successful investing. We read 'how to' guides to money-making, which are generally rehashed tidbits of common sense investing, and we implement well-worn strategies guaranteed to be mediocre.

The secrets to podcasting success are just that: secrets.

Despite our suspicions that most reading will brush passed this opening section, it’s those who take the time to read these secrets, and adopt them, who stand the best chance of succeeding.

Secret one: The odds are against you

There’s a dirty little secret known to everyone who’s written a guide to podcasting. And because we’ve written this one, we now have the secret. And this time we’ll share it with you. Here goes:

The above sentence is the most important you will read across any of the how to start a podcast guides available to you online, bar none.

Every month, thousands of people search the phrase, ‘How to start a podcast’ in Google. But they’re searching the wrong phrase. What they should search is, ‘How to not stop podcasting.’

Joe Rogan is often pegged as a controversial figure, but his success in podcasting can’t be denied. With millions of listeners, he charges brands a huge premium to advertise on his show ($75,000 an episode, apparently).

But Rogan’s podcasting prosperity was not guaranteed from the outset.

If you go back and listen to the first episode of The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, you’ll hear what could only be described as a minimum viable podcast episode, a freewheeling stream of consciousness, interrupted regularly by his producer’s attempts to perfect the production quality.

More than 10 years and a thousand episodes later, Rogan is now a behemoth on the podcasting landscape, with guests from all over the world lining up to share his air time.

But if he’d done what 50% of all new podcasters do, and give up before episode 10, he’d be forgotten. Don’t set out wanting to start a podcast. Set out never, ever wanting to stop.

Secret two: Don’t throw darts

A blind monkey throwing darts may almost have a better chance of succeeding in podcasting than most humans who embark on it. This may sound harsh, but it’s not intended to be.

It’s intended to shock you into understanding the need to plan for your show to succeed.

You may not have the resources of a large media organization, but you shouldn’t use that as an excuse not to think as strategically as they would about how your show is going to work.

Some of the questions you need to ask and answer are:

1. What exactly is your show idea? Can you say it succinctly and powerfully in 30 seconds? And, when you do, do people get it and love the sound of it?
2. Who exactly is your audience? What are they currently listening to? Will your show be on par or better than their current options? Have you validated the concept with them?
3. What exactly do you want to accomplish with your podcast? Are you starting it to make money? To build a personal/company brand? Or are you just passionate about a topic?
4. How will you acquire your first 100 listeners? Where do they hang out online and offline and how will you get your show in front of them? And how will they respond to it?
5. What will make your show unique? What will make it better? Why would those in your target audience choose to listen to you over the hundreds of thousands of other options?
6. Do you have the time and commitment to see the podcast through to 50, 100 episodes?

We can’t emphasize the importance of audience research and validation enough. One of the biggest problems creative people encounter is assuming once they build it, people will come.

Trust us, this almost never happens. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking this way.

Instead, come up with several concepts for shows and share them with a lot of people in your target audience. If they’re not that interested in the concept, they absolutely won’t listen to the show, no matter how much you force it.

Never ignore your audience, and, unless you’re podcasting as a hobby, don’t start a show that doesn’t test well in concept. When you’ve found a concept that works, you’ll know immediately.

Secret three: It pays to pre-podcast

We know a guy who records a podcast episode every day on his drive in to work. But you won’t have heard his show because he’s never published any of the episodes. Instead, he’s using his commute as a training ground to achieve podcast mastery long before he goes live to the public.

More than podcasting mastery, pre-podcasting gives you the opportunity to test your staying power. Remember, 32% of podcasters give up on their show before releasing just five episodes.

There’s a piece of social advice that’s relevant to people (like us) who agree weeks in advance to attend social gatherings only to pull out on the day of the event with a feeble excuse. The advice is to imagine that the event is taking place the evening you receive the invitation. If you wouldn’t want to attend the event that night, you probably won’t want to attend on the actual day.

The same goes for podcasting. If you’re unable to pre-podcast five episodes of your new show in a test environment, you’re unlikely to make it to five when the show actually goes live.

On the flipside, if you have no problems getting the five pre-podcast episodes in the can, you’ll have no problems beating the odds of podcasting failure.

To start pre-podcasting, you can use Alitu. It’s the simplest way to get started podcasting and you can test out all sorts of ideas using it's recording, editing and publishing tools. Start recording tidbits and full episodes, seeking feedback from friends in your target audience before going live with a polished episode.

Secret four: Podcast success is no longer technical

When podcasting was new, and you could count the number of hosts on two hands, the trick to being successful was to simply figure out how to do it. Those who understood RSS feeds and knew their way around a digital audio workstation had an enviable opportunity to win.

The game has changed significantly since then. These days, there’s no correlation between knowing how to start a podcast and being successful at it. Once you’ve figured out how to start a podcast, you’re no better off than the hundreds of thousands of others who’ve done the same.

In other words, don’t treat this guide, or any other like it, as a ticket to podcasting success, because it isn’t. Making a successful podcast is like raising a happy and healthy child: the job doesn’t end once the baby is born; the birth is, in fact, the beginning of a very, very long road.

How do I pick a winning show idea?

When you start a podcast you want it to last — beyond five, 10, 25, even 100 episodes — so you need to pick a concept that best guarantees podcasting longevity, in the face of low listener numbers and no interest from sponsors or Patreon donors.

Passion can be one source of that fuel. After all, when you’re truly passionate about a topic you can likely talk about it every day for hours on end, regardless of the plaudits or profits.

If you’re getting into podcasting as a hobby — with no need to monetize and no qualms about how many listeners tune in — and if you have a topic you’re particularly passionate about, which you think will generate enough content for you to publish an unlimited quota of episodes, do it.

But passion isn’t the only source of fuel for podcast longevity.

Another source of fuel is success. Tangible success hits your brain like a reward, and rewards are the best source of motivation, which fuels persistence.

If we were to go back and start a podcast five years ago it would be in the true crime genre, such was the world’s hunger for true crime podcasts at the time. Presuming we executed well and each episode was engaging, we’re confident we could’ve built an audience.

We’re not particularly passionate about true crime, but if we had done our research back then we could’ve sniffed the wind and realized how much interest there was in the genre at the time.

If we were to start that research today, we’d spend a month on it, visiting all the top podcasting charts (across Apple, Spotify, and the web). We’d take notes on each show featured there and classify the shows by genre, format, number of hosts, etc., to identify any recipes for success.

When we’d shortlisted a genre, we’d listen to a handful of popular shows and a handful of unpopular shows and note the differences. We’d keep notes on what we liked and what we didn’t and condense it all into a detailed strategy for our own podcasting success.

The problem with podcasting about your passion is it may not give you the best chances of success. If you want to truly succeed in podcasting, you need to approach it like a business, and businesses rarely succeed in the absence of detailed planning and objective execution.

Lastly on show ideation, you also need to settle on a show format. The common types are:

1. Single host, no guests: often seen in the true crime, education, and history genres, where the subject matter is the protagonist and the host just delivers the message;
2. Single host, guests: often seen in the self-help, business, and general interest genres, where the show is built entirely around interviews with notable or knowledgable guests;
3. Multiple hosts, no guests: often seen in the comedy, storytelling, and current affairs roundtable genres, where the chemistry of the hosts carries the show; and,
4. Multiple hosts, guests: probably the least common of the four, often seen in the sports genre, where a panel talks about the game and brings in experts for sporadic interviews.

Choosing a format is entirely up to you, but remember your job is to deliver the most compelling listener experience to your audience, so take your time settling on the best one for your show.

The last comment we’ll make on show ideation is not to be afraid if you want to launch a show in a crowded category. Crowded categories have listeners, and you’re likely to attract more of them with a good show that competes in a crowded category than one that wins a dead one.

How do I come up with fresh episode ideas?

Some species of sharks must keep moving to survive, taking in oxygen only when they’re in flight through the water. If they were to stop moving, they would asphyxiate and die. These species are obligate ram ventilators, and in the ocean of podcasting you need to be one.

Remember, 32% of podcasters give up before releasing just five episodes, so you need to find methods for ideating new episodes all the time. The moment you stop, you asphyxiate and die.

The method we recommend is to use the Ideas’ tab in the WhatPods’ community. You can either submit your own episode ideas to get feedback from the community, or just borrow ideas for episodes from those that are popular within the charts.

How do I find a co-host for my show?

Not all podcasts need, or are even suited to having, multiple hosts, but there are advantages to it. Co-hosts can generate chemistry that would otherwise be lacking if you hosted solo, and you can split the deluge of podcasting tasks, like editing, between you to save time.

If you’re in the market for a co-host, we recommend you joing a good podcasting community, like Podcraft for example, and see if you can find someone with similar interests.

What name should I give my show?

Believe it or not, your show’s name can be critical to its success because it’s the first line of attack to cut through to an audience. We’ll quickly outline three name formats you can stick to.

Naming it after yourself

Unless you have a strong personal brand, we don’t recommend you name your show after yourself. The Joe Rogans and Oprah Winfreys of the world can do it because it helps them get audience cut-through, but if you have no public reputation it’s unlikely to work for you.

Naming it to suit the search engines

If you’re show is on a topic, like fly fishing, you might name it something boring but searchable, like Fly Fishing for Beginners . So long as the topic isn’t super competitive (and therefore crowded with search results), it’ll help people find your show when they search the topic.

Naming it something catchy

The final naming mechanism to get audience cut-through is to name your show something catchy and, therefore, shareable. When you connect a catchy name to a compelling show concept, you’re arming your audience with all the ingredients they need to talk about your show.

For more on this, here's an article on Podcast names.

How should I name my episodes?

Your episode titles should be equal parts concise and descriptive.

If your show centres around interviews, title your episodes with your guests’ names; if your show centres around a topic, title them with the sub-topic addressed in the episode.

Remember, the titles of your episodes will be indexed by the podcatcher apps, so you want to give listeners the best chance of finding your show by making the episodes highly searchable.

Importantly, too, start the episode title with the episode’s sequence number (i.e., your first episode should be something like ‘Episode one: Barack Obama’, and so on).

How should I format my show?

While it may not be wise to condense your entire show into a predictable formula, you may want to set a consistent format for your show’s main elements before you start.

Show formats can streamline the recording process for you, the host, and give some structural predictability to your audience. Here’s a good format that’s used across a lot of podcasts:

1. Introduction
1. Episode teaser
2. Intro music & welcome
3. Pre-roll ad read
2. Body
1. The content of the episode (interview, etc.)
2. Mid-roll ad read
3. Conclusion
1. Call for reviews and/or listener contributions
2. Outro music
3. Post-roll ad read

How much will a podcasting setup cost me?

What you invest in your podcasting setup should be relative to your podcasting experience.

If you’ve not recorded a podcast before you should spend next to nothing until you can convince yourself that you’ll be able to make a good go of it. Then, as your experience grows, and as your momentum is maintained, you can upgrade.

How do podcasts actually work?

A good podcast episode lives within us all, but there’s a journey it must go on to get from your mind to the ears of your audience. We’ll outline the journey now, so you understand it clearly.

From mind to device

The first step in the journey is to get your podcast episode from your brain to your device, be it a phone or a computer. For this, you need a microphone, which we’ll deal with in detail, below.

When you have the episode recorded onto your computer or phone, you’ll likely need to make some edits and adjustments, like adding intros and outros and removing any parts you don’t want going live, which is where editing software like Audacity or Alitu comes in.

You’ll also need to package the episode audio file up with some meta data and your podcast artwork before it’s ready to be uploaded to the internet for distribution.

From device to internet

When you have your episode on your phone or computer, and you've edited and packaged it up nicely, the next step is to upload it onto the internet so people all over the world can access it.

This is where podcast hosting services, like PodBean and Blubrry, come in. Or you could use an all-in-one platform, like Alitu, which includes recording, editing AND hosting. Whatever you choose, they'll host your show on their servers for a monthly fee, making it playable for anyone online.

From internet to listeners

After your episode makes it to the internet via a hosting service, the last step is to push it to the popular podcatcher apps, like Apple Podcasts and Spotify, for listeners to find and listen to it.

This process (called 'distribution') is simple and can be done from inside whichever hosting provider you choose (we’ll go through this in detail, below). You simply tell the hosting provider to syndicate your show, via its RSS feed, to whichever podcatcher apps you want it to go to.

After you set up your show's distribution once, you simply upload new episodes to your hosting account. They’ll push automatically to the podcatcher apps, appearing in your show’s feed.

Where should I record my show?

Step one in the podcasting process is to record your first episode, which requires a suitable recording bunker, and the good news is you don’t need a state-of-the-art studio to get started.

Unless you’re intentionally recording a live show, the space should be quiet and furnished with noise-absorbing things like pillows, blankets, couches, and clothing. A closet works well but only if you’re recording alone or with guests on the phone. Otherwise, a small study or a bedroom with sound panels installed on the walls is fine if you’re recording with a co-host or guests.

If you have the budget to invest in acoustics, Joe Casabona recommends these Auralex acoustic sound panels and these AmazonBasics blackout curtains. However, you should be able to achieve a close result on a lower spend if you do your research and get creative.

Which microphone should I buy?

Once you’ve chosen a good spot to record, you’ll need a microphone.

Choosing a microphone can be a dangerous rabbit hole to start down. Unless you have time to become an audio geek, the sheer number of mic specs to get your head around can bury you.

From our surveys, there are more than 250 different models of microphone used by existing podcasters, each with a different price point and configuration of specs. So, how do you separate out the perfect mic for your needs from this enormous blob of choice?

Frankly, what microphone you choose doesn’t matter too much, particularly in your early days of podcasting. While the dream of every new podcaster is to record with state-of-the-art equipment, your show’s chances of success depend on much more than the mic you use.

Of course, you don’t want to sound terrible, either, so what follows is a breakdown of microphone setups by complexity and price point. As well as this, WhatPods also has its countdown of the 20 most popular microphones for podcasting, as voted by thousands of hosts:

Level one — Phone or computer microphones (Free)

The cheapest solution is your in-built phone or computer microphone. Alison Green, the host of the Ask a Manager podcast, has recorded all the episodes of her show with her phone’s mic. And, as you can hear, it doesn’t sound too bad, nor has it hampered her show’s popularity.

The beauty of the phone mic over the computer mic is its proximity to your mouth, which means it does a good job of isolating your voice. So, unless you plan to hold your laptop up to your face, we recommend you use your phone mic over your computer mic. That said, with the phone mic you have to be careful of the popping that can occur when you speak too sharply into it.

If you’re an iPhone user, and you want to upgrade from the phone’s internal mic, you can also consider buying a dedicated iOS microphone like the Shure MV88, which retails for about $150.

Level two — USB microphones ($50-$250)

If you’re not satisfied using your phone or computer microphone, the next step up would be a USB microphone. The popular USB mics range at a cost of between $50 and $250.

For context, you’ll see two main types of microphone on the market: XLR and USB.

USB mics are simple because they connect to your computer via a USB cable, whereas XLR mics need to pass through a device, like an interface, before connecting to a computer via USB.

If you’re in the market for your first microphone and you hadn’t known the difference between an XLR mic and a USB mic until now, you’re best bet is to go with a USB option. XLR microphones can be complicated to setup and use, whereas USB mics are super simple.

You might be drawn to an XLR mic that’s cheaper than a USB mic, but when you buy an XLR mic you’ll also need to buy a mixer or interface to connect into, so the overall cost can be higher.

The five most popular USB podcasting microphones on the market are:

1

Blue yeti

$129.99

2

Blue Snowball

$69.99

3

Audio Technical 2100

$79.95

4

Rode Podcaster

$229

5

Blue Snowball Ice

$49.99

Click here to see all the popular USB models.

Level three — XLR microphones ($100-$400)

As we said, above, XLR microphones are a little more complicated to setup than a USB microphone, and they’ll end up costing you more. But they do have their advantages.

For starters, because equipment manufacturers have been making XLR microphones for decades longer than USB microphones, there are tons available, with a huge variety of specs.

Also, because XLR is a superior connection type to USB, XLR microphones generally have a superior sound, though the difference is minimal to the untrained ear, particularly in podcasting.

And because XLR microphones connect to your computer via a recorder or an interface, which generally come with multiple XLR ports, they allow you to record with multiple microphones.

If you’ve been podcasting for a while and you’re looking to upgrade your equipment and/or you’re a competent AV guru, then buying an XLR microphone might be the right choice for you.

The five most popular XLR podcasting microphones on the market are:

1

Audio-Technica 2100

$79.95

2

Shure SM7B

$399

3

Heil PR40

$329

4

Shure SM58

$99

5

Audio-Technica 2020

$99

Click here to see all the popular XLR models.

If you do decide to buy an XLR mic, you’ll need a device that converts the analogue audio from the mic into digital audio, which can be uploaded to your computer. Your options for that are:

1. A portable XLR recorder, which captures the audio on a memory card, for it to then be uploaded to your computer (like these ones); or,
2. An audio interface or mixer, which act as a middleman device to connect your analogue XLR microphone to your computer via a USB cable.

If you’d like to learn more about microphones, go here: Types of Microphones.

Which hosting provider should I choose?

As we said above, you’ll need to host your podcast episodes online. You can do it yourself with regular web hosting, but you should avoid that and get dedicated podcast hosting.

There are plenty of podcast hosting services, each with different offerings and price points. We’ll share the main ones so you can make a quick decision and move on.

Understanding storage and bandwidth

Before you start researching hosting providers, you’ll want to estimate how much storage and bandwidth you’ll use, as most services will charge you based on one or both of these metrics.

Storage has to do with the size of your episode files. If each episode is 100MB and your hosting provider gives you 100MB of monthly storage, you’ll be able to publish one episode per month.

Bandwidth has to do with the number of people who download your episodes. If a million people download them, more of your hosting bandwidth will be used than if only ten people did.

How much bandwidth will I need?

Most hosting providers offer unlimited bandwidth these days, so you shouldn’t need to worry about it. In fact, we suggest you avoid any service that doesn’t offer unlimited bandwidth.

How much storage will I need?

This depends on two things:

1. How big are your episode files?
2. How many episodes do you plan to publish each month?

If you plan to publish a new episode every week and each episode is under 25MB, then you’ll only need 100MB in monthly hosting storage (four weeks x 25MB). But if each episode is quite long, and averages 50MB, you’ll obviously need 200MB in storage (four weeks x 50MB).

An episode we recently created ran for 14 minutes and was 10.6MB. If we had 100MB in monthly storage, we could comfortably publish nine episodes/month without exceeding the limit.

If you’re unsure how much storage you’ll need, we suggest you record one episode of your show before you sign up to a hosting service. See how large the file is, then just multiply that file size by the number of episodes you plan to publish every month and you’ll have your answer.

How do hosting services charge for storage?

You might get confused with how the hosting services charge for storage. We’ll outline the main ways, below. Make sure you’re clear on the method your chosen service uses before signing up.

Some services might give you a fixed amount of storage, say 10GB, for you to use at your own pace before needing to delete files or increase the storage. Your mobile phone works like this, where you either need to delete photos or upgrade the phone to get access to more storage. Unless the amount offered by the service is huge, we don’t recommend this option as you’ll eventually need to delete old episodes, which isn’t ideal, or pay to upgrade your storage quota.

Other services might give you a new allocation of storage every month. For example, Blubrry’s starter plan gives you 100MB of new storage each month. If you published four 25MB episodes in January, you’d have to wait for February for a new block of 100MB storage to release more.

Other services might give you rolling storage, which works like demerit points on your driver's licence, where you have to wait for a re-issue of lost points. That is, if you upload a 25MB episode today, you’d have to wait 30 days for the service to allocate you a fresh block of 25MB.

Then there are those rare services, which offer unlimited storage. We’d only recommend you go with one of these services if it’s either (a) inexpensive, relative to limited services or (b) you are publishing such a high volume of episodes every month that you need the unlimited storage.

Paid hosting solutions

Alitu is an all-in-one podcasting tool, which includes call recording, audio cleanup (noise reduction, levelling, etc), audio editing, transcriptions and podcast hosting. It follows a simple one-price of $38 for everything you need to run your show, and hosting is included in that price. That gives you up to 1000 downloads per month, which would suit the average podcaster just fine for the long term. And if you do hit the big numbers and grow beyond that, the add-on hosting prices are:

Level one $0/month for 1000 monthly downloads

Level two $10/month for up to 10,000 monthly downloads

Level three $30/month for up to 50,000 monthly downloads

Level four $60/month for up to 100,000 monthly downloads

Blubrry is one of the most popular paid hosting solutions. You get unlimited bandwidth on all the plans, but pay for storage. You get a fresh block of storage to use monthly, so with the 100MB plan you get a new 100MB block of storage at the start of every month.

The plans are:

Level one $12/month for 100MB in monthly storage (no video podcast uploads)

Level two $20/month for 250MB in monthly storage

Level three $40/month for 500MB in monthly storage

Level four $80/month for 1,00MB in monthly storage

Level five Unlimited storage, with the price negotiated with the Blubrry sales team.

Castos offers unlimited hosting and bandwidth on all plans. This makes them expensive, unless you expect to publish a lot of episodes every month to a large audience. The plans are:

Level one $19/month (no video podcast uploads)

Level two $34/month (no video podcast uploads)

Level three $49/month

Libsyn offers unlimited bandwidth on all its plans, then charges for storage. The plans are:

Level one $5/month for 50MB in monthly storage

Level two $15/month for 250MB in monthly storage

Level three $20/month for 400MB in monthly storage

Level four $40/month for 800MB in monthly storage

Level five $75/month for 1,500MB in monthly storage

Podbean offers unlimited bandwidth and storage on all its plans. The higher monthly price points come with additional features, which you should review on the pricing page. The plans are:

Level one $14/month (no video podcast uploads)

Level two $39/month (video podcast uploads allowed)

Level three $129/month (additional business podcasting services included)

SoundCloud (premium plan for $16/month)

SoundCloud also has a premium pro plan, with unlimited uploads and bandwidth for $16/month.

Which headphones should I use?

You’ll need a set of headphones for when you record, so you can hear yourself, your guests and co-hosts talking. Your phone’s headphones will do, but you’ll be much better placed if you invest in a good on-ear, noise-cancelling set. Here's a good guide to podcasting headphones

Do I need a pop filter?

A pop filter is a small mesh or fabric screen that sits between your mouth and the microphone to reduce the effects of plosives. By diffusing the air before it strikes the microphone capsule, a pop filter eliminates the distortion and ‘popping’ noise that plosives cause.

Common in professional studios, pop filters are also good for podcasters. And unlike most gear, they’re inexpensive to buy and simple to make at home.

When you buy your microphone, you should enquire about a compatible pop filter and compare the cost of buying one to making one from scratch (instructions to do that are here).

Do I need a boom?

A boom is an arm that holds your mic in place. They alleviate the strain of handling the mic and, by keeping it at a fixed distance from your mouth, can maintain the quality of your sound output.

While a boom is beneficial, it's not necessary, particularly when you're using a mic with a stand. We'd recommend avoiding the added cost until you’ve got some success under your belt.

Do I need a shock mount?

A shock mount is like a boom, but it's designed to keep your microphone steady on your desk, instead of in midair. Like the boom, a shock mount is a nice-to-have, but isn't necessary.

How do you record with guests and co-hosts?

Another area of concern for non-technical podcasters is how to record with other people, like guests and co-hosts, particularly when they’re not in the same room as you.

Alitu has a fantastic feature that makes recording with others super simple. It offers a call recording room that lets you record with up to 8 people, anywhere in the world, over the internet.

If you're not using Alitu to record your show, you can just use Zoom.us, which lets you record your conversations, or services like Ringr.

For more info on recording your podcast remotely, check out this guide by The Podcast Host. Here, too, is a guide from Audacity that explains how to record with two microphones at once.

How do I take listener contributions?

While not all shows are suitable for listener contributions, some are, and you may want to encourage your listeners to participate in some form or another.

Unlike radio, podcasting doesn't allow for real-time listener contributions, but you can nonetheless facilitate listener participation if you’re set up technically to do it.

There are tons of other solutions to achieve this result, including setting up a Google Voice number or using a service like SpeakPipe.

Master polish or master rawness

Reid Hoffman’s podcast is well crafted and polished. Joe Rogan’s podcast is raw and organic. Both are wildly different in terms of their production approach, yet both are wildly popular.

Unfortunately, too many podcasters set out to replicate one of the approaches, but don’t work hard enough to perfect the ingredients that make the approach work so well, and ultimately fail.

Some set out to craft wonderfully produced and editorially crafted episodes, but don’t have, and don’t develop, the production or editorial chops to execute the Hoffman way of podcasting.

Others set out to be as charismatic and authentic as Rogan, but crack under the nerves when the mics start recording and the episodes ultimately come across as contrived and rehearsed.

The best piece of editorial advice we can give is to pick one of these styles and work hard to master it. If you want well-crafted, polished episodes, take the time to make each episode bulletproof. If you want freewheeling, authentic conversations, hone your interviewing charisma.

We find that podcasters who start out trying to achieve both, generally achieve neither to the degree required for the style to work for them, so don’t try to nail both when you’re starting out.

There are some genres in podcasting where scripting episodes works. True crime, for example, is fine to be delivered off a pre-written script. As is history, education, and a few others. For these, careful scripting and pedantic post-production is welcomed, if not expected.

For other genres, though — including sports, comedy, interview, and roundtable — any signs of the episodes being contrived or overly produced can undermine its authenticity and appeal.

Pick a style and continuously work to master it.

Focus hard on manufacturing compelling audio

Judge Judy, Dr. Phil, and Jerry Springer have each aired for an average of 186 episodes across 22 seasons and several decades. Each has achieved an incredible editorial feat. What’s made them so popular is their ability to manufacture compelling television for their audiences.

Your job as a podcast host is to strive to strike the same level of editorial impact on your audience with your podcasts as the creators of those shows have struck with theirs.

Our point isn’t that you have to create cringe-worthy, personal human drama podcasts. More to the point, you have to uncover and leverage the elements that will make your show compelling.

When you’ve done that, the podcasting world is your oyster.

How do you interview?

A good interview has to be interesting, informative, or otherwise captivating. Few people naturally have elite interviewing chops, so if you’re launching an interview show, you’ll need to master the dark art. While they’re not definitive, we’ll briefly cover a few tips to get you going:

Put your interviewee at ease

Interviews suck if the interviewer and guest are tense and haven’t built a rapport with one another. So before you start recording, spend fifteen or twenty minutes breaking the ice. Talk about things that have nothing to do with the interview in order to build some baseline chemistry.

Be prepared, but not robotic

You want to know your guest and prepare for the interview, but you don’t want to be so rehearsed that you come off as robotic. Don’t write out a list of the fifty things you’ll ask the guest; instead, let the research you do on them guide the conversation naturally.

Don’t anticipate: listen

Connected to the last point, don’t spend the entire interview anticipating the guest’s answers and waiting to fire back with your next, rehearsed question. If the guest wants to take the conversation into an interesting space, let them take it there and adapt your questions.

Grow the conversation, don’t constrain it

On our point above about not preparing a list of concrete questions, you should instead prepare a handful of leading, open-ended questions that invite your guest to be expansive with their answers. If you constrain them with tight questions, you’ll get tight, predictable answers.

Don’t panic over silence

Inexperienced interviewers freak out about an interview going cold, so they tend to ramble or ask stupid questions when the guest stops abruptly or the conversation hits a lull.

Experienced interviewers handle silence by taking the opportunity to reflect on the interview before guiding it back onto solid ground. If you encounter silence in an interview, voice your reflections and purposefully guide the guest into a new stage of the interview.

Probe, respectfully

Sometimes guests give bad answers. The answer might be vague, misleading, or even inappropriate. Inexperienced interviewers are often afraid to probe their subject when a bad answer emerges, but your job is to get the best possible interview out of your conversation. If that means probing for a deeper or better answer, don’t be afraid to do it. Just be respectful.

Embrace your knowledge gap

You should be well prepared for an interview, but if the guest steers the conversation into an area where you lack knowledge or expertise, say so. Don’t pretend like you know what the guest is talking about in an effort to keep the conversation afloat. Your knowledge gap will inevitably be revealed. Instead, take it as an opportunity to educate yourself and your listeners.

Stay professional

Interviews can sometimes get emotional, and you actually want to draw emotion from your guest. But it’s not your job as the interviewer to succumb to the emotion, so stay professional.

Get interview closure

A good way to end an interview is to spend a few moments thanking your guest for taking the time to be a part of the conversation. It’s also a good time for them to close out the interview with any final remarks, which might include giving them the opportunity to promote their work.

How long should my episodes be?

Simple. For as long as they’re still interesting.

One of the best podcast hosts we’ve heard recorded just seven episodes of a true crime show, with each episode lasting fewer than 10 minutes. We devoured every precious second of the show, such was his hosting mastery on display. Then you have the Joe Rogans of the world, who can keep an audience engaged by simply talking to an interesting guest for hours on end.

Again, your episodes should be just as long as they’re still engaging, and not a second longer.

How often should I release episodes?

Again, simple. Release an episode every time you have one that doesn’t suck.

We highly recommend you don’t become formulaic for the sake of formula. There are hosts who reliably release an episode every week and each one is fantastic; then there are hosts (like Dan Carlin) who release an episode sporadically, when they have enough good content to make one.

Then there are hosts who reliably release an episode every week and each one sucks, because they are a slave to the formula and not to recording episodes that are genuinely compelling.

If you’re going to be a podcasting slave, make sure you’re a slave to the job of engaging your audience. It’s an extremely difficult job and is impossible when you don’t take any notice of it.

Should I release episodes in seasons?

Some podcasts break their episodes up into seasons, like a television show. We like the idea of doing it, too, if you have a show that aligns to the format. Not only does it keep things structured for your audience, it also keeps things fresh for you because at the end of every season you have the opportunity to take a break, regroup, and rebuild momentum for a new season.

If you didn’t structure your show in seasons, and you took a three month hiatus from recording every year, your audience might reasonably think you’ve dropped off the face of the planet. But if you prepare them for it by embedding the break into the show format, you’ll get away with it.

And taking an expected break from the show might just be a good thing. We know of a few sports podcasts that take a break in the off-season, and it has a huge effect on us as the listener. We start to miss it in those months when there’s radio silence, so when they come back on the air we return to the show with a huge wave of enthusiasm for fresh episodes.

Choosing & using recording/editing software

To record and edit your episodes, you’ll need a software editing tool. There are many options, but the premium ones can cost a fortune and you should be able to get away with a free one.

Of the free options available to you, the two best are:

1. Audacity (Windows & Mac)
2. GarageBand (Mac only)

Of the paid options available to you, the best one is Alitu, which we've mentioned a few times now. Alitu automates a lot of elements of editing, including adding your music, adding transitions and fades, and doing all the audio cleanup, such as noise reduction and levelling .

We won’t go into detail on how to edit in this guide because there are experts who will do a far better job of helping you than we will. Here are some fantastic tutorials for each tool:

1. Editing with Audacity (here)
2. Editing with GarageBand (here)
3. Editing with Alitu (here)

We will say that if you’re not smart about it, editing can take up an enormous amount of your time, time which should otherwise be spent improving your show and growing your audience.

So, when you’ve settled on your preferred editing tool, quickly learn how to use it and quickly streamline your editing workload by creating editable episode templates.

An episode template sets a mould of all your audio elements — your intro and outro, show body, music snippets, and ad reads, etc. — in the structure you want them. For each new episode, you then duplicate the template and drop in the newly recorded audio into its assigned place.

Of course, if you don’t have the time or inclination to master the editing skill set, you can always outsource the work to a professional. This article will help you find a good service for that.

Intros and Outros

It’s a good idea to record a stock intro and outro for your show, which you can add at the start and finish of each of your episodes.

Your intro should be used to set the tone and generate a hook for your show whereas your outro should be used as a call to action to get your listeners to do something important, like subscribe to the show or leave a rating or review.

You can record your intros and outros yourself, or, to get a custom, professional podcast intro, you can use a service like Music Radio Creative, which charges $465 for an intro and outro, three feature jingles, and help with your show’s branding.

What music should I use and how do I find it?

While having music in your episodes isn’t mandatory, a lot of hosts choose to at least include a track in their intro and outros.

The trick is knowing where to find music to use in your show. In this regard, what you’re looking for is ‘copyright free’, ‘royalty free’, ‘stock’, or ‘library’ music. If you choose to include music in your show you must avoid breaching copyright over the tune.

There are a few sites online that make copyright free and financially free music available to you to download, but because the tunes are free they’re not very unique, and the music isn’t always the highest quality. That said, if you’d like to check them out, here are a few of the better ones:

1. vimeo.com/musicstore
2. Incompetech.com

Your best bet is to pay for a copyright-free song to include in your show. If you can afford the $10-30 fee to licence the tune, you’ll stand a much better chance to find a high-quality song, quickly. To browse for premium, copyright-free music check out any of these sites:

1. Jamendo
2. Audioblocks
3. Music Radio Creative
4. MelodyLoops

Graphic design

To give your show the best chance to succeed, it needs to be presented well.

You can design the artwork yourself if you use an online graphic design tool like Canva. But if you don’t have design skills yourself, you can outsource the design to a skilled practitioner. You can find these on Upwork and Fiverr or you can use a service like 99designs.

You’ll need graphic design resources for the following aspects of your show and promotion:

1. Branding (logo, etc.);
2. Cover artwork; and,
3. Social media graphics

Designing your brand

Your show needs brand power if it’s to succeed straight out of the gate.

Building brand power starts with some key decision making about the visual elements of the brand. Visual branding is made up primarily of three things:

1. Color combination;
2. Font combination; and,
3. Imagery

Here is a fantastic Canva tutorial that will guide you through the process of building a brand kit.

Once your brand kit is set you can design a logo that complies with your style (which you can do in Canva or via 99designs or Upwork / Fiverr ).

You’ll want to apply your brand consistently across every marketing or promotional asset you release to the public, from your social media posts to your show artwork to your email signature.

Designing your podcast cover artwork

You’ll then need a visually appealing cover artwork. People choose podcasts like they choose books: with a snap judgment about the impact the cover makes on their brain.

With hundreds of thousands of shows in the Apple podcast library, the only chance you have of standing out is to create a distinctive podcast artwork.

Your artwork cover design should be less than 500kb in size, between 1400x1400 and 2048x2048 pixels in height/width, and either in a JPG or PNG format.

The artwork should include the name of your show. It can depict your logo or can be more abstract, and if you’re central to the show’s branding, you can make it a headshot of yourself.

How do people listen to podcasts?

In the early days of podcasting, listeners could only access a podcast directly via its RSS feed. Then Apple bundled up all the RSS feeds and made all the podcasts on the web available via one single mobile 'podcatcher' application, the Apple Podcasts app.

These days, there are dozens of podcatcher apps on the market (you can see our list of the 20 best podcatcher apps here). Apple Podcasts is still leading for the share of audience (with a little over 50% of listeners using the app to find their podcasts), but Spotify is quickly catching them.

To which podcatchers should you distribute?

To give your show a good chance of being found, you want to distribute it to as many of the leading podcatchers as you can. In order of importance, those podcatchers are as follows:

1. Apple Podcasts (App Store)
2. Spotify (App Store | Google Play Store)
3. Google Podcasts (Google Play Store)
4. Stitcher (App Store | Google Play Store)
5. Overcast (App Store)
6. Pocket Casts (App Store | Google Play Store)
7. SoundCloud (App Store | Google Play Store)

How do you distribute your show?

Most of the hosting services we mentioned above will allow you to submit your show to all of the major podcatcher apps from within your account. Here are the instructions for some of them:

1. Alitu
2. Blubrry

Other than submitting via the podcatcher apps, you can submit directly via the instructions in this guide: how to submit to directories.

What do you need to submit your show for distribution?

Before you submit your show for distribution you’ll need all of the following (all of which you should have if you’ve followed the steps in all the sections, above):

1. Show title
2. Publisher name (either your name or your organization’s name)
3. Show subtitle
4. Show description
5. Show artwork
6. RSS feed URL (which you’ll get when you upload your show to your hosting provider)