Start a Podcast Production Business
Companion to "The Money, Honestly" and "When Money Arrives."
| Item | Cost (verified) | Your cost |
|---|---|---|
| Dynamic USB microphone (category's default beginner pick) | ~$70 | $ |
| Boom arm, headphones you own, windscreen | $ | |
| Complete first studio | under $200 | $ |
| Recording software | $0 (Audacity / GarageBand) | $0 |
| Item | Cost | Your cost |
|---|---|---|
| Podcast hosting (stores files, publishes feed, includes distribution) | starts around $15/mo on the major hosts | $ |
| Honest full stack | about $15 to $20/mo, zero in required software | $ |
Year-one budget lines from the course: self-edited, about $400 total (gear plus twelve months of hosting). Outsourced editing on a weekly show, roughly $2,600 to $5,200 of editing added.
| Row | Your numbers |
|---|---|
| Your editing hours per episode | hrs |
| What one hour of your time is worth in the business (booking guests, clients) | $ /hr |
| Your time cost per episode (hours x rate) | $ |
| Editor's invoice per episode at your handoff level | $ |
| Decision: outsource the moment your editing hours are worth more than the editor's invoice somewhere else in the business, or the moment editing threatens the cadence |
Middle path: edit your first ten episodes yourself to learn what you want cut, then hand a written edit policy to an editor. Editors charge for decisions; a show that sends a policy pays for execution, not taste.
| Your downloads / episode | Pre-roll @ $20 | Mid-roll @ $25 | Post-roll @ $5 | 3 mid-rolls per episode |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2,000 | $40 | $50 | $10 | $132 (at $22) |
Practical starting line for sponsorship at standard rates: about 15,000 downloads per episode measured in the weeks after release (operator guidance; publishers report few shows reach it). Below that line, sell direct or not at all: one-page rate card, verified download stats, price per episode and per placement, in writing, never pure percentage-of-sales as a first deal.
| Month | Lane 1: affiliate (disclose out loud; only what you use) | Lane 2: services pipeline (guests to clients over one to three quarters) | Lane 3: sponsorship | Lane 4: membership |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1-3 | not yet | not yet | ||
| 4-6 | ||||
| 7-12 |
Honest shape: there is no podcast income in the first months for almost everyone. A single guest who becomes a client, or refers one, can out-earn a year of mid-roll ads on a small show. Run the stack, not a lane: the stack grows from the bottom upward (affiliate, then services, then one direct sponsor priced on niche audience quality, then membership), and the order rarely reverses.
| Stable publish rhythm never broken | ☐ |
| Downloads per episode trending up across the quarter | ☐ |
| At least one lane-two conversation that exists because of the show | ☐ |