MBA1447 How Much Money Do You Need To Start a Podcast? + Free Ride Friday

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Welcome to the $100 MBA Show Business Insights for entrepreneurs that need to get things done every day with their daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. And in today's episode you will how much money do you need to start a podcast? Many people that I meet at conferences in person, they know me from this show, this podcast and they ask me so many questions like when did you get started? How long did it take to become a popular podcast or a successful one? And at the top of the list is how much does it cost to start and run a podcast? So in today's episode, I'm going to break down all the costs involved to get started, as well as to keep it running. Of course, like in anything, there's a range of how much you can spend. But in today's episode, we're gonna talk about the basics. How much it costs to produce a quality podcast so you can get on your feet, get started, and of course, later on you can upgrade as you go along. We did this with our podcast, but it's important for you to have a level of quality when you get started that's comparable to the professional shows. But how much is this all gonna cost you? Hundreds of dollars? Thousands of dollars? We get into all of that in today's episode, so let's get into it. Let's get down to business. When it comes to producing a podcast, there are one time costs, things you need to purchase one time to get started, and then there's ongoing costs, and we'll talk about those as well. But let's get started with the one time costs. Let's begin with the hardware, and that's a mic. The first thing that a lot of people think about when they start a podcast is a quality mic. And there are a lot of different mics at different price ranges out there. I'm going to recommend the mic I think is a good starter mic. It's actually a good mic to have in general, and it's called the Audio Technica ATR2100. This is an XLR and USB mic. That means you can plug it into an XLR port as well as into your computer with a USB port. The quality of this mic is incredible. I actually recommend it for webinars as well as podcasting. If you're looking to podcast, I know a lot of pro podcasts that use this mic. It's only around $70 on Amazon, so it's a great starter mic, and for a lot of people, they use it throughout their podcasting career. The difference between this mic and let's say, a $300 mic like the Heil, or a $500 mic like a Shure mic is quite insignificant. It's actually really hard to tell the difference if you're not an audiophile, if you're not somebody who does this for a living, if you're the average listener, it all sounds the same. Actually. Sound quality is really dictated by the environment you're in more than the actual mic. Meaning that if I'm using my iPhone to record a audio podcast, And I'm in a professional like deafening sound booth. Deafening by the quietness of it. If you've ever been in one of those, it's incredible how quiet they are where you're like really shutting the door and it's like clunk, right? If I recorded a podcast using my iPhone in a room like that, it would sound incredibly professional. It's because the environment is incredible. So you can do a lot with a great environment. And that's the next purchase. So let's get our mic. You can go to the ATR 2100 for 70 bucks. The next is a soundproof booth. And you're not gonna build a whole like room, but there's these great portable padded booths. You can put your mic inside and record inside that booth with just your face in that booth or your mouth inside that booth with the mic inside. The one that I have that I recommend, it's called the Portabooth plus, it's $200 on Amazon. And this is a little bit of a fancy one because it's portable. You can actually flatten it up or zip it up and put it in your suitcase. So if I ever travel, I need to record, I can take this with me. And I got this one because there are some instances when I do need to do that. Because it's a daily show. If you have a weekly show, you can batch really in advance. So you may not need this fancy one that is portable. There's other ones if you go to see the Portabooth plus that are not portable, that are just as nice, that look exactly the same and they're around $50. This creates a great environment for your podcast. It creates great sound because it really allows all the sound to into the mic and not bouncing off the walls in the room. I recommend actually putting this sound booth in a closet, like in the shelving of a walk in closet or just a regular closet and standing right in front of it and recording this is going to create a studio quality sound. So if you go with the non portable one, it's about 50 bucks. If you go with the portable one, it's about 200. If you don't need to travel. If your podcast is not daily, I probably wouldn't recommend the portable one. You don't really need to travel with it that much. You could batch ahead of time. So so good or under 200 bucks. What about software? Well, you can record and edit your software pretty much for free with a Mac or a PC. If you're on the Mac, you can use QuickTime that allows you to just record your audio right there. If you want to edit your podcast on a Mac, there's a software called GarageBand that allows you to edit podcasts. And there's plenty of tutorials that you can buy or watch on YouTube to learn how to edit your podcasts. If you're on a PC, I recommend a software called Audacity. Audacity will allow you to record and edit the podcast, and it's free. So there you go. You can record and edit the podcast nice and easy. Now, there's another piece of software you'll need. It's called an ID3 Editor and there's one on the market called ID3 Editor, and it's about $30 for a license. And what this does, it allows you to put the information on the sound file so it actually appears properly on sound on, I should say podcast players. So, like the title of your podcast, the description, the author, that kind of stuff, the COVID image, you know, the art for the actual show, ID threeing your podcast is very important because you need to do that before you upload it to your host because that's what everybody's going to see on distribution channels like itunes or podcast players like Spotify and Stitcher Radio and Overcast, all those different kinds of apps. So you're still under 200 bucks with hardware and software. What else do we need for one off cost? Well, we need to design our actual show R. Some people call it a cover art or show R for our podcast. So I actually recommend hiring a designer to do this. Many people use something like 99designs, where they get various examples of their podcast R or samples, and then they go on Facebook or something and ask their friends and family which one do they prefer, A, B, C or D. And this can cost anywhere between $100 to $300, maybe even $500 for a really sought after designer. If you have a designer that you've worked with before for your website or something like that, ask them to take a crack at it. Otherwise you can go to 99designs, you can go to Freelancer or Upwork and find a designer to design your podcast show art. Remember, you want to make sure the name of your podcast is very clear on your show art. It's catchy, it's easy to see and have them mock up your show art in a screenshot of itunes or something like that so that you could see what it looks like against other podcast show art. So you could say, oh yes, that does stand out, that does look Good. So we're looking at right now, let's say on average, you're going to pay $200 for a great piece of show art. You can of course, design it yourself if you want. If you do have an eye for design, Canva is a good tool to use. You can get a free account to start with Canva. So you can either pay Nothing or around 100 to $500 for a design show art, let's say ballpark 250. So we're around hovering around $400 or so to start a podcast. The one off costs, let's talk about the ongoing cost. Well, the first thing you're gonna need is hosting somewhere to host your actual audio files. So just so you know, when you're hosting a podcast or you're creating a podcast, you have a host that stores these files. And every time somebody uses any kind of podcast player, Apple, Podcast, Stitcher, whatever they use Spotify, it's streaming from that host. It's not streaming from Spotify. Spotify doesn't actually save or hold these audio files. You do in your hosting account and you just basically link to it via your podcast feed. So you're going to need a host. Now, when it comes to hosting your podcast, there's a few options. Some people go with an all in one solution and some people go with a just strictly hosting solution like something like Lipson or SoundCloud where they'll just host their audio files and you can then build a website around that on Your own with WordPress or Squarespace and create all the marketing materials around it. Or you can go for an all in one solution like Transistor. One of our past guest teachers, friend of the show, Justin Jackson, is actually the co founder of Transistor fm and they have a pretty cool system where they give you everything from your podcast website to the hosting of your podcast. You could just upload your files right there. It's pretty straightforward. You can even use their players to embed those players somewhere else or on social media to actually, you know, share your episodes. So if you want something absolutely simple, Transistor FM is probably the way to go. It's what I would recommend if you're a techie and you want to kind of have your hosting by itself and you want to build your own site and all that kind of stuff, then go with a hosting provider like Libsyn or use something like SoundCloud Unlimited and then build your site by yourself via WordPress or with Squarespace or Weebly or any other options out There, those website builders. Now, this is an ongoing cost. So whether it's hosting or you're going with the all in one solution, like Transistor, you're going to have to spend around $100 a month, I would say, depending on how many downloads you're getting. Now, the good thing about transistors, they have an entry level package, about 20 bucks, and that gives you up to 10,000 monthly downloads. So if you were just getting started, that might be just enough. They have a higher tier. The highest tier is about $100 a month. Now, remember, that comes with everything, the website. So you're pretty much good to go with transistor, and that comes with 150,000 downloads a month, which is a significant show. But if you go the other route, you're gonna save a little bit more money because hosting is not gonna cost you that much. SoundCloud is about $15 a month. Libsyn has got a plan, I believe, that begins at $20 a month. And then you're gonna have to take care of your website yourself. Hosting your website via a hosting provider like WP Engine or Hostgator, using, you know, a WordPress site, building it out, buying a theme, all that kind of stuff, or you go the squarespace route and pay them a monthly rate as well. So all in all, you're looking at spending, I would say, to be safe, $100 a month on hosting and website. If you're going with transistor, you can start about $20 a month, but I would say overall, after you start growing, it's going to be around that much anyway, regardless of which option you go with now, that's actually pretty, pretty decent. $100 to run your own media channel. A podcast, that's pretty insane if you think about how hard it was to get on the airwaves, quote, unquote, 20 years ago. There are some fixed costs, like I mentioned, some ongoing costs, but that's pretty much all of it right there. There are other things you want to do promoting your podcast, you know, using social media. You may want to use tools like meetedgar or Buffer, but what I share today are the basics. Hey, Fidelity. What's it cost to invest with the Fidelity app? Start with as little as $1 with no account fees or trade commissions on US stocks and ETFs. That's music to my ears. I can only talk investing involved risk, including risk of loss. Zero Account fees apply to retail brokerage accounts only. Sell order assessment fee not included. A limited number of ETFs are subject to a transaction based service fee of $100. See full list of Fidelity.com commissions Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC Member NYSE SIPC Gas, Snacks, Tolls this trip is draining my wallet. Yeah, but we'll be with family. You're in a good mood. What's your deal? What's my deal? I saved at Metro with no activation fees and I got one line of 5G for just $25 per month. Kept the phone I love and a 5 year price guarantee on my top text and data detour to Metro. Get that more for your money feeling only at Metro by T Mobile. Just bring your number $30 first month and $25 after with autopay not available. If with Metro or T Mobile in the past 180 days podcasting is a long term strategy. It takes a bit of time for you to start seeing some results and some momentum and really seeing the show grow and have an impact. You know, we've been running the $100 MBA show for over five years and a half and I can tell you traction takes time. It takes months. I would say it takes about six to 12 months to start getting some traction with your podcast. So understand this is going to take some time. I say six to 12 months because when I got started it was about six months. That's back in 2014. But I say now it's probably saying it's going to take longer to get some traction because it's a busy marketplace. Now everybody knows what a podcast is. When I started podcasting back in 2014, statistically only one in four Americans knew what a podcast was. I'm pretty sure if they ran that statistic now, it'd be a whole lot more. I'm not saying this to discourage you, but I'm telling you to set up your expectations that you need to understand that this is the cost. It's going to cost me for the next year or so because I'm in it for the long haul. You know, I got to invest in your podcast and allow it time to grow. Even if it's daily or weekly or bi weekly, it doesn't matter. You really do need to invest in allowing it time to grow and you got to allow yourself time to get better at podcasting, right? Being a better host. But what's great about podcasting, it's evergreen. Those episodes don't go anywhere. Those they're there for people to consume forever and therefore it becomes like a snowball effect. It builds upon each other and it serves you and your business and your brand for years to come. Thank you so much for listening to the Hundred Dollar MBA Show. Today's episode's not over though, because it's Free Ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's Free Ride. And the winner is. Hamstring two. Hamstring two says actionable Advice. Five stars. Tons of things to do for your business today. Love it. New big fan. Thanks hamstring2 for that great review. Your mission is to email me over@omar00mba.net so I can hook you up with the lifetime membership to EZcourse, our 30 day course on how to build your own online course. It retails for $500 over at EasyCourse co. Or you can win it for free. Just leave us an iTunes rating and review and you enter our weekly random draw. Listen in on Friday to see if you won. That simple. Thank you so much for listening. Before I go, I want to leave you with this, my podcast. This podcast $100 NBA show has opened so many doors for me. It's allowed me to speak on stages. It allowed me to meet new people, to connect with great entrepreneurs that I only dreamt about meeting. It grew my personal brand. My business allowed me to attract the right customers that I want to work with. It's by far the best business investment I've made in terms of time and especially money in the last five years. So I really recommend if you're into this medium and you want to give it a try, go for it. I'm sure glad I did. Thank you so much for listening. I'll check you in Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. When the flu is keeping you up at night, don't try to tough it out. Knock out your flu symptoms with NYQUIL Intense Flu. You got this. It provides powerful relief of your flu symptoms so you can sleep well through the night. NYQUIL Intense Flu the Nighttime Sniffling, Aching, aching fever Best Sleep with a flu medicine. Use as directed. Keep out of reach of children.