AP 0642: What Are the Must-Haves for Starting a Podcast?

AskPat 642 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey what's up everybody, Pay Flynn here and welcome to AskPat Episode 642. Thank you so much for joining me today, as always I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week.

We have a great question today from Matt, and if you're starting a podcast or starting really any business online this will be very helpful. And real quick today I'd like to tell you about today's sponsor, which is Design Crowd. DesignCrowd.com helps entrepreneurs and small businesses outsource, or what's called crowdsource custom graphic logo and web design from designers all around the world. Design Crowd has more than half a million designers from over a hundred countries ready to help you with any creative and design projects you might have. So, check out DesignCrowd.com to get started at designcrowd.com/askpat for a special VIP offer just for our listeners. Again that's designcrowd.com/askpat. Here we go, here's today's question from Matt.

Matt: Hi Pat, my name is Matt Ostero and I'm a 24 year-old graduate student from New York. So I'm starting my own podcast site and blog, and one of the things that's frustrating me is how some of the various aspects of this process are costing me more money than I expected. A lot of the process is free, such as your awesome podcast tutorial, but several things such as the microphones, web hosting subscription, website design, all cost some money. Now I want my podcast to sound and be very professional, so my question to you is, what are the absolute musts that I should pay for. Specifically, should I pay to have professional intro voice and music to go along with my podcast? Thanks so much for all you do Pat. Bye.

Pat Flynn: Hey what's up Matt? Thank you so much for the question I appreciate it, congrats on the upcoming biz that you are starting. Now when it comes to your podcast specifically it sounds like you are having your podcast be one of the main focuses here which is really cool, so we'll start with that. There are a lot of things you could by of course and, yes, a lot of those things can improve the quality of what you're doing, but in terms of must-haves, and I think that's a great way to phrase it, in terms of just getting something up that's gonna be worth listening to that's not gonna sound bad, that will allow you to deliver the content that you need to deliver for your audience in order for you to grow and get exposure and get customers down the road. The must-haves are as follows, I'm just gonna list 'em out for you.

So number one, you need, even though you're starting a podcast, you still need to have a website, and so you need to sign up with a hosting company, I recommend Bluehost to start out, and that will put you on a shared hosting service. They do offer other hosting services to like VPS, or virtual private servers and dedicated servers. But you don't need to start there, if you're just starting out get a shared hosting service. If you go through my link, which is smartpassiveincome.com/bluehost, you'll get a discounted price on your monthly hosting payment. You will have to pay annually though I don't believe they take monthly payments, but you get that discount and I believe it'll cost you around fifty bucks annually. Now of course you could sign up for more years and save money that way, but again that's fifty bucks for a website that will be reliable and allow you to host your podcast.

Now that being said your media files, the audio, the MP3 files that you create with your podcast, with those don't get hosted, or should not be hosted on your website host. You leave the website host for your website related things, you have to get a podcasting, or audio, or media host to host your audio files. That way, when people play your podcast, you're not slowing down your website because it's pulling those audio files from that media host. The one I would recommend to start out with, I mean there's a bunch, I would recommend Buzzsprout or Libsyn, Libsyn's great for five dollars a month starting out you can work with them. So five dollars, again so fifty plus five, you're at fifty five dollars for now for starting out a podcast.

Now like you mentioned earlier, you mentioned a microphone. And there are a number of different microphones that you can get, I would actually recommend checking out my podcasting tutorial, that's free. That's my own tutorial that's helped thousands of people start their podcast. In video number one of six there that walk you through the entire process of getting your podcast up, that actually walks you through the different microphones. Now just to fly to the end there, the one that I would recommend actually for those of you just starting out, those of you especially on a budget, I would recommend the AudioTechnica ATR 2100. So that's the AudioTechnica ATR 2100, and that'll run you, at least at this point in time, 79 dollars on Amazon. So we're at a total of what, so fifty and then five so that's fifty five plus about 80 bucks, so 135 dollars is really what you're gonna be paying right now. And that'll give you the website host, the podcasting host, and the microphone. And that's really all you need to get started with a podcast. In terms of recording software you could use Audacity, and that is completely free you can download that online, or you can use GarageBand if you have a Mac, that's included with a lot of people's Macs so you don't need to pay for that.

The only other thing I can imagine paying for would be a website design, which is obviously very important. Once you install WordPress, which is the blogging platform that allows you to create a lot of different looks on your website, and you could potentially customize it down the road, but I wouldn't worry about customizing it. You could lookup thousands of different themes that work for you and your niche and whatever it is that you're trying to do. On many different kinds of websites there are some amazing options over at studiopress.com. There's also Themeforest.net and Woothemes. And for maybe 50 to 80 bucks you could grab a nice theme that will immediately change the look of your website for you to then create content on and it will look very professional. So, let's see 135 plus let's just round that in terms of the theme to 200, so an additional 65 there. So you're looking at 200 bucks right now, which to start your own radio show essentially, I mean this more powerful than a radio show, you know it's a podcast, people could subscribe to it, it's evergreen. And it's just amazing, 200 bucks I mean, imagine starting a complete studio in your home or creating a radio channel, I mean how much that would cost. For 200 bucks, you're all set.

Now if you wanna stand out a little bit more you could put a little bit more money in, with a site like AudioJungle.com, I think it's audiojungle.com, or even istockphoto.com, they have some audio files that you can download too, royalty free, which is important, you can then import that into your podcast in a intro, just use GarageBand or Audacity to make them fade in and out nicely and you can just use your own voice to voice over it in the beginning. I mean you don't need to spend money on a voiceover right away, however that being said, you could also check out fiverr.com. I've had mixed success on that site, but with things like voiceovers you can find a lot of people who actually will read a couple lines for you and make them sound great. And you can take those files that they give you, plop 'em right on top of your intro music, then boom you've got a podcast going.

So again, go to podcastingtutorial.com it'll give you all the steps and everything in between I just mentioned, after you get all these things. But you know, so we're looking, $220 to get a podcast started, and that is with great audio quality, and professional sounding music and an intro. Not even necessary really some people don't even have professional music or a voiceover or anything like that, but you do need a website and then I guess I would also recommend that once you get started once you start building an audience and even hopefully before hand if you can afford it I would absolutely work with something like ConvertKit, which is an email service provider that way when you have people who listen to your show, they can come back to your website and sign up to your email list and then you can contact them every time an episode comes out or a new blog post, or when you have a promotion or something that you wanna recommend as an affiliate. Email list, man by far that was the biggest mistake I made when I started was not starting my email list sooner. So, my feeling for ConvertKit is, smartpassiveincome.com or askpat.com/convertkit, either one of those will work.

So, Matt I hope that answers your question, it can get very expensive very easily, but if you just go with the necessary items at first, you're gonna find that you're gonna have some great quality stuff and you can save that money or use it elsewhere. Grab a ticket to an event, meet people at Podcast Movement, which is happening literally as we speak right now when this audio file goes live so I just want to make sure I mention that there, but meeting people in person is by far one of the things that I feel where money could be best spent because you never know that next relationship that you build could be the one that actually gives you what you need to move forward or that person that gives you that advice that you need or that connection or that phone number, you never know. And if I could go back in time and change one thing it would be, I wish I could just talk to more people, get over being shy, and make as many relationships as possible.

So, Matt a lot of information there, but hopefully that helps you and hopefully I've been able to lay that down for you quite nicely and for everybody else out there listening, thank you. Matt, I want to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. All you have to do is just sit back and Jessica will email you in the next couple weeks or so, so we can collect your information and send that over to you.

Thanks again for your question, and thanks to everybody else out there who's asking questions. Seriously, this show wouldn't exist without you, I appreciate you so much.