05: The Cost of Starting and Maintaining a Podcast for Your Coaching or Consulting Business
There are things you need to know before you start your podcast and, in this episode, In this episode, I outline the cost of starting and running your podcast. The price tag can vary quite a bit, from under $100 all the way into the thousands. Choosing your strategy and getting the right team around you is incredibly important.
What should you expect from an editor? Do you need a VA? And what actually needs to be outsourced? You know how important your money and time are, so let's make sure you spend them wisely.
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Transcript
Welcome to podcasting for coaches. I'm Britany Felix and I'm a podcast launch consultant who specializes in helping coaches and consultants utilize the power of podcasting as a way to build brand awareness and generate new leads for their business. I realize not every new coach or consultant can afford to hire someone to help launch their show. So I created this podcast as a way to guide you through the process of launching and utilizing your very own podcast to help you grow your business and reach a new audience of adoring followers and potential clients. If you're ready to get your voice and podcast out into the world, head over to podcasting for coaches.com. To learn more.
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In this episode of podcasting for coaches, we are going to break down the cost of starting a podcast and maintaining one for your coaching and consulting business. Now, I want to preface this by saying that we will be speaking in very general terms, because podcasting is still so relatively new, there is no set industry standard for these rates that I'm going to discuss. So you want to do your research. So if we take this process from the very beginning, and I am going to do bare bones, bootstrapping, starting a podcast, and then I'm going to also do people who have the resources to basically be as least involved in the process as possible. So bare bones launching a podcast, you need a decent microphone, which the one that I recommend actually is only about $70, you can use your earbuds that come with your smartphone, as long as you're not using the built in mic. For those of you do that I will be very upset with you. There are free editing programs. So you actually don't have to even pay to have the software to edit and mix your episodes together. So basically take all the audio and turn it into a complete episode. Don't have to pay for that. There are free recorders, you can use Skype with call recorders, or zoom. And those are free depending on what packages you choose if you need video or not. So you don't even have to pay for those, you will need a hosting service. So that's where your actual audio files are going to be stored. And they're going to create an RSS feed, which is going to push out your episodes to the different platforms. If that was gibberish to you. Don't worry, I will be explaining what all of those terms are. But you will need a hosting service and price can vary. Depending on what hosting service you go with the one I recommend. And the plan I recommend is $20 per month, you can have some I think in the range of like $10, some are like 30 or 50 a month. It just really depends on who you go with. But again, the one I recommend $20 a month. So let's just say that. So right now we are at 80 $90 to get your podcast up and going. And that's honestly it. That's technically all you need. You can create artwork on your own for free and Canva. If you don't want to have a website, or if you have one already, there's no extra cost there. So you can get a podcast going for less than $100. And you still have a decent mic, you can have decent sound quality, you can have the editing program that I use to mix together all of my clients episodes as a professional editor. Granted, I will add a little caveat here, I do use other programs that helped me process the audio. But as far as doing basic editing and mixing, the program I use is free. And there are free courses out there that will teach you how to launch a podcast, I will put a link to my favorite one in the show notes, which you can access by going to podcasting for coaches comm forward slash 05. And those are the actual numbers 05. Now one thing you'll need to understand, especially if you're a coach or consultant, if you do your own courses, you're probably already aware, the free courses are not really going to give you every single tiny little detail, they're going to give you enough to do the basics, which again, if you're doing this in a bootstrap basis for a brand new coaching or consulting business, that's good enough, just get started, just get your message out there and maintaining it, the hosting service will be a monthly fee. But once you've got your microphone, you're good there. Again, your call recording programs, your editing programs are free. So pretty much you just have to pay for ongoing website hosting which you should already have a website for your business. And then audio file hosting. And again, the program I recommend is 20 bucks a month. So that's all it is to maintain it. Now of course you do have your time that goes into it. If you're bootstrapping, you're not outsourcing most likely. So you are going to spend a lot of time and that does have you know a cost benefit thing that you need to think through there. If you're devoting 10 hours a week to your podcast is that 10 hours you could better spend somewhere else in your business, that's something you're going to have to decide for yourself. So for the people who are a little bit more established in their business, and they have the revenue to outsource some of these things, they're able to do that. And they want to be as least involved as possible, but they still want to utilize the power of a podcast to help generate even more leads for the business and reach an entirely new audience. For those people. You do have people like myself who are podcasts, launch consultants, it's literally my job to get your podcast onto iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Music, Spotify, Alexa devices, all of those places you can hire someone to do that for you. Now there are things you're going to have to do. They can do.
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The whole process for you, you know, you have some that may do the artwork, some that will create music for you, you can spend as much money as you want on this with full service companies, I myself, I prefer to still have the person involved in the process at least a little bit. Because I don't want to be more invested in your podcast than you are, I don't want to care more about it than you do. So for my clients, I make them still write the episode description, it's in their words, it's their mission is their business, it's their baby. So yes, it should be written by them, they still have to record their own episodes. But as far as the technical aspects and doing the editing, and the mixing, and the uploading, and all of that crap that you don't need to worry about, you can have someone else take care of that for you. So my launch consultation packages at the time of this recording started at $750. Again, this is January 2018, those prices could change. So don't hold me to that in the future. But you have some people who their launch consultation package is only a couple 100 bucks. And, you know, they may provide less services, but they may be great, you just don't know until you do your research and start, you know, looking for these specific things. Which again, in a future episode, I will go over the things you need to consider and the things you know, before hiring a consultant in an editor. So don't worry, I've got your back there. I also have a course that I'm actually going to be launching very soon, that is considerably cheaper than working with me directly, but will still guide you through the entire process of launching a podcast. Now I want to add to this, that's what this podcast is, I am literally going to give you everything in this podcast that I do in my online course that I charge for. The only difference is my online course is much more condensed, you could really go through that in a matter of days or weeks if you really wanted to, whereas this podcast is going to take probably a few months to get through that whole process. And of course, there are some bonuses that you will get in the online course, such as a call with me and things like that, that you won't get, you know, just listening to this podcast. If you want to learn more about that course, go to podcasting for coaches.com. So there are different ways that you can go through and do these things. And if you're at the point where you can outsource and you do have the resources to do that, and maybe you have an assistant that's working for you get the course for her him, have them, go through it, have them set up the podcast for you that way, you're only involved in things you absolutely need to be involved in. And then everything else is taken care of for you. Once your podcast is launched. Again, if you have the resources, outsource it, get rid of everything that you don't absolutely have to be a part of record the show and be done. Hire a VA to take care of managing your guests for you and getting those interviews scheduled. And get an editor who can take your raw audio files, you know what you have recorded and turn that into a full episode. and upload that to your hosting service and write the show notes and publish them on your website and have your VA schedule your social media posts and notify your guests it is live. You don't have to be involved in any of that stuff, if you have the resources to do it. And again, those rates can vary greatly. I know of some editors, say for example in the Philippines who charge like 20 bucks an episode. And then of course, there are editors who are going to charge you 1000s on a monthly basis. It all depends on who you want to work with and the level of skill you want that person to have, you can spend as little or as much on this as you want. So beyond hosting service and outsourcing to other people the different tasks that you don't want to be involved in. And the basic equipment which again, if you have the resources to devote to hire equipment, absolutely, you can get a better microphone, you can get a boom arm, you can get a pop filter, you can get studio quality headphones, you can get all of those things. And again, we're going to be talking about equipment in the very next episode. So you can there spend as much or as little as you want. But beyond even those things. The other thing that I want to mention that you might have to pay for is a scheduler. So I hope that you have one already for your coaching or consulting business. If you ever do any kind of calls with your clients or potential clients, you should have a scheduling software in place. My favorite is acuity scheduling, you can find a link to it in the show notes for this episode. And they even have a free account. So for you bootstrappers, you can get the most basic account and it will still work it will save you so much time and so much hassle. And we'll be talking about that again in next week's episode as to why you need this. But that is another cost that you may have to endure. If you want to have a more advanced account with your scheduling software. I personally myself I use the account that is $10 per month, and it works for my business. And it was working for my other podcast before I retired it and it's fantastic and I love it. So make sure that you come back next week, where I'm going to break down the actual equipment that I personally recommend for starting a podcast. But I hope that this was able to provide you with a little bit more clarity as to how much this thing can cost you. Overall. Again, as I mentioned the beginning these are very general basic terms, but it can cost you as much or as little as you want. You can seriously start a podcast for under $100 or you can spend 1000s upon 1000s on this thing. Thank you so much for joining me today and I will see you back here next week where we can dive more into the exact equipment that I recommend. Have a fantastic day
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and that right
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Another episode of podcasting for coaches. If you're wondering if now is the right time to start a podcast for your coaching or consulting business, head on over to podcasting for coaches comm where you can either take a free quiz or schedule a one on one consultation with yours truly, thank you so much for joining me today and I will see you back here for the next episode.