And this is because, not only is podcasting super fragmented compared to other media, but there’s also a real lack of standardization when it comes to what actually counts as a download.

For some platforms, a ‘listen’ is when someone actively downloads an episode, or streams it for more than 30 seconds; for others, hitting that ‘subscribe’ button results in an auto-download of every new episode regardless of whether you’ve listened to it yet or not.

But despite the undeniable grey areas involved, podcasters, brands, and agencies still need to rely on third-party listener data to help decide which shows are potentially suitable collaborators.

So it’s good to know that there are people out there developing tools to try and make the industry a bit more transparent. These tools can help us better understand the podcasting ecosystem and what listener behaviour looks like across it. And the leading tool in this area right now is undoubtedly Rephonic.

But we wanted to know how close public estimate tools like Rephonic are to the real thing.

And so, with the help of a few podcasting pals, we ran a test to find out!

What is Rephonic?

Rephonic is a podcast analytics platform and research tool that helps podcasters, brands, advertisers, and networks analyse and better understand the podcast ecosystem.

The tool provides insights into podcasts and their audiences, like listener numbers and locations, so users can decide which shows to collaborate with.

Rephonic reports that it logs data for more than 3 million podcasts, and it’s probably the best tool on the market for finding cross-promotion opportunities and keeping track of what your audience also listens to. The 3D audience graph tool is easily the platform’s neatest feature, which uses data pulled from ‘listeners also subscribed to’ to create a visual map of connected shows that you can click to dive into the detail. Here’s what it looks like:

Podcasters might use Rephonic when looking to…

• Choose new podcasts to do guest swaps and cross-promotion. You can use the search function to find shows within your podcast niche, and it will provide listener data and contact details for you to easily reach out to. 
• Understand your own podcast’s position within the ecosystem. Rephonic allows you to view your performance in comparison to other shows in your niche and also see which similar shows your audience are also listening to

We were curious to know just how accurate the listener data Rephonic logs really is, so we ran a test. Here’s what we did, and what we found out.

The Podcast Download Test: What We Did

To run the test, we took a sample of 16 podcasts. The shows varied widely in size and were taken from various podcast categories and genres. We based our Size Tier on Buzzsprout’s platform stats, which are, in turn, based on the number of downloads new episodes get in their first week of release.

In order to include a podcast in the test, we needed to contact the host directly so that we could access their actual download number data and compare it with Rephonic’s.

Of the podcasters we contacted, 16 shows agreed to participate. We excluded two outliers that returned wildly inaccurate results (one had an inaccuracy rate of -1395.3%!), so the sample size became 14 shows in total. 

Sharing real download numbers is still uncomfortable for many creators, and so we agreed that this data would keep them anonymous.

Podcast (Anonymised)	Size Tier	Accuracy	Accuracy Rating
Podcast A	Top 1%	85.6%	High
Podcast B	Top 1%	-945%	Extremely Off
Podcast C	Top 1%	36%	Moderate
Podcast D	Top 5%	82%	High
Podcast E	Top 5%	11.1%	Low
Podcast F	Top 10%	97%	High
Podcast G	Top 10%	22.5%	Low
Podcast H	Top 10%	5.7%	Low
Podcast I	Top 25%	72.5%	High
Podcast J	Top 25%	48.9%	Moderate
Podcast K	Top 25%	98.9%	High
Podcast L	Top 25%	52.8%	Moderate
Podcast M	Top 25%	26.25%	Low
Podcast N	Top 50%	16.1%	Low
Podcast O	Top 50%	-1395.3%	Extremely Off
Podcast P	Top 50%	66.7%	High

The Results: What We Found

Here’s a quick overview of the results we gathered from our test in comparing Rephonic’s download numbers with actual numbers gathered directly from podcasters:

• Average accuracy: 51.6%
• Median accuracy: 50.85%
• Highest accuracy: 98.9%
• Lowest (non-outlier): 5.7%
• Over 70% accuracy: 5 of 14 podcasts (~36%)

So, in a nutshell, we found out that Rephonic’s download estimates provide a very rough approximation.

• We found that the results were directionally useful, in that they give you a rough idea of how many downloads a show gets, especially for podcasts in the 500–2000 range, but you’d still want to ask the hosts directly to confirm their numbers. 
• However, we’d say the results we gathered were not accurate enough for ad pricing, pitch decks, or precise planning. 4 of the 14 podcasts we tested had an accuracy of 70% or more.
• We also found that the results were unreliable for podcasts with very low or very high downloads, where estimates were wildly off. This includes the two outlier shows that we decided to exclude from the final results, as they were too inaccurate. 

Why These Results Make Sense

A ‘very rough approximation’ might sound like Rephonic’s download estimates aren’t so useful, but this is far from the case. And, given the opaque nature of podcast downloads, 50-ish % accuracy isn’t so surprising.

As mentioned earlier in this article, there’s a real lack of public visibility when it comes to download numbers, and also a lack of standardisation across different platforms in terms of what qualifies as a listen. For example, Apple Podcasts only recently updated its approach to automatic downloads—previously, episodes were counted as downloads simply because a user was subscribed, regardless of whether they listened. With recent changes, auto-downloads are now paused for inactive listeners, leading to more accurate download metrics

Rephonic also states that it uses OP3 (the Open Podcast Prefix Project to verify the number of listeners per episode. While OP3 is an excellent open-source data platform, hosts need to proactively choose to participate, so it’s likely only a small fraction of Rephonic’s 3 million shows actually do this. 

I contacted the founder of Rephonic for comment, and what he said reflects much of what we saw in the test:

“Rephonic’s download estimates are primarily designed to help PR professionals, brands, and marketers quickly gauge the approximate size of a podcast’s audience. The main value is giving users a reliable way to prioritise which podcasts they approach for guest appearances, sponsorships, or general research – without needing exact listener figures upfront.

We always encourage users of the platform to reach out to the host directly to get the real numbers.

While we believe the estimates are useful and the best in the industry (and it’s a really hard problem to estimate these figures because podcasting is so fragmented!) they do tend to be worse for (a) non-English language shows and (b) shows where the audience is quite small, say 1000 listeners per episode or less, because there is usually less data that we can collect for those.

We also provide lots of other real metrics (not estimates) like Spotify followers, ratings, reviews and chart rankings. Those help you get a better overall understanding of the size of the podcast’s audience.”

— James Potter, Founder of Rephonic

Rephonic: A Place for Estimates, A Need for Real Data

Despite our test results suggesting that Rephonic’s download estimates are only 52% accurate overall, the tool’s usefulness, particularly at scale, can not be disputed.

Our recommendation would be to treat Rephonic estimates as a starting point but not a final figure, and validate numbers with actual data whenever possible.

Nothing beats real numbers when making key decisions like which shows to collaborate with, but Rephonic provides an excellent kick-off point to help you narrow your searches and focus on the shows most suited to your goals.

To be brutally honest, you do have time to podcast. You simply don’t have time for the frustration that can happen when obstacles get in the way of doing what you want to do. However, there are ways to eliminate obstacles that cause frustration.

How Much Time Do You Need? 

Let’s estimate the size of our problem. When we say, “time to podcast,” how much are we talking about?

Colin has written an excellent article about how much time it actually takes to run a podcast. It’s a multi-faceted issue, depending on what kind of podcast you produce and how frequently you want to release episodes.

Some podcasters estimate the time they’ll need by multiplying their episode length by four. This means a 15-minute episode would take roughly one hour to complete, a half-hour episode would take roughly two hours, and so on. Others say that for multi-layered sound design, you should estimate an hour of editing for each minute of audio per episode.  

The most important part to remember is that recording is not what takes the most time to work on your podcast. Other tasks can take longer. All together, you have to think about:

• Planning & Scheduling
• Setting up
• Recording
• Editing & Mixing
• Writing Shownotes
• Uploading & Publishing
• Promotion

The good news is that once you know how long it takes you to make an episode, you can plan accordingly. And, once you’re better acquainted with the tasks, you can complete them faster. 

Free Up Some Filled Time

A productivity meme that gets thrown around a bit is, “You have the same number of hours in the day as Lin-Manuel Miranda or Beyoncé.” Yes, it’s true that a day has 24 hours, no matter who you are. But Beyoncé and Lin-Manuel Miranda also have different support people and systems at their disposal. You might not have a staff, but you can make time-saving support systems. 

Queen Bey may have an army of personal assistants, but Trello can manage anything. Lin-Manuel Miranda may have someone to wait in line at the post office or the bank for him, but you can use that time to listen to raw audio before editing. A robot vacuum can’t clean your floors as well as you can, but it can clean a little bit every day, giving you more time to podcast more frequently. 

Thinking like people who record for a living can help you find ways to use technology, strategies, and support to make time for podcasting.

I’ll go into detail later about tools you can use to make your podcasting time more efficient. For now, think about your daily tasks and brainstorm some ways to subcontract tasks out and make time in the rest of your life.

Sacrifice The Habits You Want to Change Anyway

Let’s get the hard part out of the way. Everybody has at least one habit they don’t need. For anyone who makes digital content, these distractions tend to pop up in the digital realm. But, there are other ways to block the time bandits and open the door for podcast productivity. 

Screens Want Your Brain. 

Okay, that’s a vast oversimplification. But Nir Eyal, author of the book Hooked: How To Build Habit-Forming Products, shares how tech companies create systems to grab and hold your attention as long as possible. He admits, “I could easily escape discomfort, temporarily,” via his phone use.  But he’s also found that roughly 85% of smartphone users never adjust their smartphone’s app settings to keep their phone from interrupting or distracting them.

If you want to spend less time looking at your phone, here’s how to do it: 

• Adjust iOS Screen Time Settings and notification settings. 
• Set up Digital Wellbeing on an Android phone. 

Another simple hack is to go into your phone’s accessibility settings and adjust the color filters. These are meant to improve accessibility for colorblind users. If you turn on the wrong filter, though, your phone’s screen will become really boring. You can always change it back later.

Smartphones aren’t necessarily the enemy. There are tons of podcasts in there, right? Instead of scrolling through social media, try these on for size: 

• Use a note-taking app to stash ideas for future episodes. 
• Bookmarking apps like Instapaper to save and read your research, or Feedly can help you keep up with news about your podcast topic.
• Read through your favorite media host’s knowledge base to learn how all of its features work. You may find features in there that save you hours.
• Subscribe to some podcasting newsletters to learn what’s happening in the podcast sphere.

If you use phone activity as a reward, do it intentionally. Use timers, use headphones, and enjoy that reward unapologetically, within limits. When I play an open sandbox game, and I give myself only 15 minutes, I play hard. I’m fast-traveling and scooping up resources like Scooby Doo in a haunted house in the last act of the episode. 

Think about it this way: is scrolling through feeds on your phone (or any other habit, really) helping you get your show planned, scripted, edited, uploaded, and so on?

If not, then cut down.

Waking Up and Sleeping Well

Productivity gurus claim that waking up early is the best way to gain time. But this isn’t true for everyone. 

On the one hand, many people derive peace and satisfaction from waking up while the house is quiet, and getting a bit of recording done before the neighbors can start mowing the lawn. On the other hand, sleep deprivation can lead to poor decisions and sloppy podcasting. 

From my own experience, early mornings are good for short work sessions, like writing episode ideas or season plans in a notebook. This way, you get a small win to fuel your motivation for later in the day.  Plus, you’ve got something in place to look forward to when you work on your podcast later. 

This works best when you turn the light off and close your eyes earlier. Don’t deprive yourself of sleep. You’ll miss details that pile up and make audio that you’re not proud of. It’s one thing to find time to podcast and another to poke holes in your mental and physical health. 

Being Proactive vs Reactive 

A lot of time is wasted when you go through life reacting to things instead of sticking with your original plan.

Tim Ferriss’s classic book The Four-Hour Work Week covers this in detail. Like Nir Eyal, Ferris recommends minimizing electronic notifications. Ferris schedules a block of time to respond to messages, like Cal Newport’s time-blocking strategy, which you can find in his books  Deep Work, and Digital Minimalism.  What Ferris and Newport recommend is: 

• plan out your day, 
• set time to work thoughtfully on the tasks you need to complete,
• don’t let anyone or anything get in your way. 

This is great advice, and I’m sure Messrs Ferris and Newport’s experiences prove that it works for them. It’s terrific advice, especially for men, who benefit from gender gaps in responsibility for household chores, the wage gap, and multigenerational caregiving. When you have less autonomy over your time and effort, engaging in productive thinking is harder. 

However, all podcasters can and should learn from their methods, which are:

• Use time blocking to plan your days and your week. 
• Schedule time to work on your podcast and nothing else. Don’t multitask. Relax and give your full attention to the task at hand. 
• During a work session, turn off, mute, or block anything else that gets between you and the task you’re doing.
• If you have the luxury of a separate room, use it. If you don’t, headphones are your friend. 

If you were at work and someone called your home phone, the phone would ring, and they would leave a message. You’d call them back later. The same goes for when you’re working on your podcast. 

Make Your Podcasting Work Sessions More Efficient

We’ve discussed ways to carve out time and build boundaries around it. Now, let’s look at ways to make your time in the workspace more effective. 

Batching 

When you make a dozen cookies, if you bake each one at a time, you’d drive yourself crazy. That’s why you mix up a batch of cookies and bake them all at once.

Batch processing is when you set out a block of time to perform the same step on multiple podcast episodes at once. Allegra Sinclair, creator of Your Confident Self, praises the method’s momentum:

“I produce in batches all the way down to creating my show notes, episode description, and the blog post that accompanies the podcast episode. Once I’m in the rhythm to do a particular task related to my podcast, I do as many as possible in the allotted time.”

Batch processing is how Rob Oliver broke the world record for the longest interview marathon in the spring of 2023.

Teaming Up Can Help You Find Time

The expression “Many hands make light work” is true more often than not. Find a podcaster friend to work with. Whether you schedule work sessions together, swap tasks, or any of the many other ways that podcasters collaborate, you’ll feel more energized and engaged if you’re not alone. 

True, not everyone is a great co-worker. But you’ll find that tasks like editing, promotion, or planning feel less like chores when someone else is working alongside you. And, when you feel better about work, you can get more done. 

Body doubling, or working alongside another person who’s also working, is a great way to boost your productivity and mood. A coffee shop or library can be a good place for knowledge workers to congregate. If that’s not possible for you, try a virtual co-working session. 

Productivity Tools Aid Efficacy

Earlier, I suggested deploying technology to handle your tasks outside of podcasting. Here’s a list of ways you can use technology to get more out of your podcasting time. 

• Trello is a great project management tool. We love it so much here at The Podcast Host that we even have a course about using it in our Academy. 
• Another powerful project management tool to help you organize your work is ClickUp. Check out Tae’s in-depth review of ClickUp and why she loves using it for her podcast.
• EditPoint is a phone app to listen to your audio and mark it for later editing. Walking the dog or waiting in line just turned into time to podcast. 
• AI tools like Buzzsprout’s Cohost AI, Capsho, and many others can write your podcast’s show notes and promotional materials while you tackle a different task. 
• Meet Edgar can post all of your social media updates for you.
• Scheduling recording sessions doesn’t have to mean playing phone tag. Doodle uses calendar-based polls to set up meeting times and adjusts itself for time zones, so there’s no confusion about when exactly to meet. Book Like a Boss is another scheduling tool, with customizable features that help you set up meetings with shared information. If you’re not playing email catch-up with people, or waiting for them to respond, you suddenly find time you didn’t know you had.
• Finally, Alitu can take some of the editing work off your to-do list. It does all the complicated and steep learning curve processes like Compression, EQ, and Noise Reduction for you, automatically. It’ll also remove long pauses and filler words in the click of a button, and you can delete text in its automatically generated transcripts, which will then chop out the corresponding audio, too. If you like the sound of Alitu, then there’s a free trial available to kick the tires on it.

Treat Yourself Like The Star You Are

I keep a dry-erase board on the door to my office, with a line drawn down the middle. On one side, I write what I’m doing (working, obviously) and what time I’ll be available. On the other side, it says, “leave a message,” with a blank space and a magnet. Anyone who needs to tell or show me something can put it on the board. Telling people what I’m doing respects their time. When they leave a message or follow up later, they respect mine. 

Then, when I’m in that room, I do what the board says I’m doing. Setting intentions and following them is powerful stuff. 

Schedule your work sessions on a calendar, and set boundaries around your workspace. If someone infringes on your time to podcast, say, “I have to work.” 

You Are Worth the Time It Takes to Make a Podcast

We all have busy lives with distractions, responsibilities, and interests. If you say, “I don’t have time to make a podcast,” make some. Use technology to eliminate what you can, and swap tasks with friends (like dog-walking or cooking) for what you can’t. Put barriers between yourself and habits that don’t help you. Use the time you have more effectively by using good procedures and tools. When you get stuff done, you feel good about yourself, which makes you more motivated.

Carve out that time with a chisel and hammer. Your audience might not be right in front of you, but they need you and your podcast.

Question: How much time does it take you to make a podcast episode, right through from planning to publishing? And what tools and tactics have you put in place to minimise its footprint on your schedule? Be sure to let us know in the IndiePod Community.

Once, the Internet was an information superhighway. Now, it’s an urban center out of Blade Runner. Everywhere you turn, someone wants to sell you something, the pavement is slippery, and you’ll never know who’s a bot.

Fortunately, this means people appreciate sustained individual attention more than ever.

To sustain your podcast audience relationship, a sound email marketing system can help you cut through the clutter and engage with your audience. Specifically, Beehiiv helps you use email to engage your podcast audience meaningfully and monetize your content at an affordable price.

A quick heads up before diving in. Our link to Beehiiv is an affiliate, which means we’d earn a commission should you choose to sign up through it. Rest assured, this doesn’t cost you an extra cent, and doesn’t cloud our judgment when writing fair and honest reviews!

What is Beehiiv? 

Is it a website? Is it an email platform? It’s both. Though Substack grabs a lot of attention, Beehiiv provides greater value for money. 

Podcasters need to engage their audience in a meaningful, trackable way, without exhausting their resources. Though email newsletters may seem old, they avoid what promoters call “interruption marketing.”

Social media feeds want you to keep paying attention to their platform, though they interrupt your scroll with ads. Email newsletters use a promotional approach that’s more respectful to your audience. They’ve chosen to get emails from you. You can track which messages they open or links they click on. This consensual flow of information is worth building on, and that’s what Beehiiv is doing.

Beehiiv’s founders came from the Morning Brew newsletter and launched Beehiiv soon after the pandemic skyrocketed demand for trustworthy news sources. Tyler Denk’s growth plans circumvented algorithms by incentivizing sharing and improving SEO. He and his co-founders brought everything they learned at Morning Brew to Beehiiv. Now, those growth philosophies can work for you. 

Beehiiv Review: Features

Beehiiv helps you create an email that includes almost any element you can put in a blog post. Then, you send it to your audience. In return, you get data you can use to learn what the audience wants more of or doesn’t. 

Plus, your newsletter recipients can communicate with you via replies or comments. Each email is a blog post; the URL is your newsletter issue’s title. These fit into a simple website. And, you’re not married to one newsletter. Even the free tier allows you to make up to three separate publications. 

Your subscribers can read your content in their email or on your website, or you can link to outside content. It’s as easy as social media. I’ve been using Beehiiv to edit and publish The Fiction Podcast Weekly for a few months now, and I’ve enjoyed learning more about newsletters and experiencing Beehiiv’s growth. Here’s a screenshot of the newsletter’s web page on Beehiiv.

Let’s look at how you can use Beehiiv to cross-promote with other creators, share audio, track your audience’s response, and monetize your messages.  

Recommendations and Cross-Promotion

Do you know other podcasters who use Beehiiv? You can recommend each other’s newsletters. Know any experts in your podcast’s niche who publish via Beehiiv? Why not work with them, too? When someone signs up for your newsletter, Beehiiv can show them your choices of newsletters that they may enjoy. Beehiiv guides you through setting up a Signup Flow, so new followers can check off whether they’d like to subscribe to the newsletters you recommend, too.

Embed Audio in your Newsletter

Not all email marketing platforms can make your newsletter readable and audible. With Beehiiv, you can embed audio files in your newsletter issues, or turn each issue into a podcast episode with a few clicks. These options are only available for certain paid plans (Max and Enterprise) but may fit your needs.  

You can embed audio files in the body of your newsletter just like images. First, add an audio block from the embeds menu.

Then, upload the audio file or drag and drop it into the audio block. You can customize the look using Beehiiv’s block menu. You can also choose to make this block visible only to paid subscribers. 

To listen, recipients click the link in their email, which takes them to the website version of your email message. 

Beehiiv can also turn your newsletter into a podcast. Once you’ve set up an audio RSS feed for your publication, you can choose whether to enable audio when you publish each episode. Pick out a voice to read the newsletter. Then, choose whether or not you want the episode’s dialogue to read: 

• A direct transcript of your text
• An AI-generated summary of your text
• A custom prompt, such as “read a summary of this newsletter issue in the style of Marvin the Paranoid Android.”

An important consideration: Beehiv’s knowledge base advises, “Unfortunately, audio previews aren’t available in draft links or post previews. If you want full control over what is read aloud, we recommend choosing the Transcript audio content type.” 

The RSS feed will publish the episodes to whichever podcast directories you choose. 

Tracking your Audience Data

Tracking audience behavior is simpler with email than with a podcast. Instead of counting downloads to IP addresses, you can track how many open your message and what they click on.

Beehiiv’s analytics help you see how many recipients opened the email and what they clicked on. And, with Beehiiv, you can segment your audience to send different email messages to different segments. 

This might not seem like such a big deal, but most email marketing software only offers Beehiiv’s features at higher prices, or if you’re bringing in thousands of email addresses. 

Monetize Your Content with Beehiiv

Monetization is simple, too. Pick out Beehiiv’s Ad Marketplace ads and include them in your posts. Or, use Boosts to recommend other Beehiiv newsletters to your followers. When recipients click through and subscribe, you get paid. 

You can also sell premium subscriptions and/or set up a gate in your newsletter to remind recipients to subscribe for premium content. To participate in the Ad Marketplace or Boosts, you’ll need to purchase a paid tier. Which brings us to…

Beehiiv’s Pricing

Beehiiv offers a free tier with loads of features and flexibility for folks just starting out. You’ll get the community and learning needed to grow your following. However, Beehiiv’s monetization programs are available in paid tiers. These prices are effective when you pay annually. Unlike other email newsletter platforms, Beehiiv doesn’t charge a percentage, but a flat rate. 

• Launch. Beehiiv’s free tier allows you to maintain up to 2,500 subscribers, unlimited sends, campaign analytics, and access to its recommendation network. Optimized deliverability, audience segmentation, and custom domains are included in the free tier. You can also publish three different newsletters. 
• Scale. For $49/month, you get everything from the Launch tier, and you can send your newsletter to up to 1000 paid subscribers. This tier includes the Ad Network and Boost Network, plus Beehiiv’s Referral Program, where you can reward your current subscribers for sharing an affiliate link to your newsletter. The Scale tier includes Beehiiv’s AI, survey forms and polls, access to Beehiiv’s user community on Slack, and a team of up to three users for your account. 
• Max. For $109 a month, you get everything from the Launch tier and unlimited seats for your team, as well as the ability to create up to ten publications. The Max tier includes Audio Newsletter features, Beehiiv’s NewsletterXP Course, and the ability to use direct sponsorships to advertise storefronts. 
• Enterprise. You get everything from the previous tiers, custom subscriber limits, subscribers and publications, a designated account manager, dedicated IP addresses, invitation-only webinars, and an expedited customer support queue. Beehiiv’s sales department negotiates the price for this tier. 

In addition, when you sign up at the Scale or Max levels, you get a 30-day free trial. However, the free trials don’t include monetization features or extra logins. In the first month, you can build your Beehiiv skills without the paid features that affect other users (such as Ads and Boosts). 

Is Beehiiv Good for Podcasters? 

Did you skip to the end without reading the rest? Beehiiv is less expensive than other email marketing platforms for the features you get. For podcasters growing their email list from the ground up, the ability to make a newsletter that’s as feature-rich as Beehiiv’s, for free, is unusual.  

Once you’ve gotten the hang of the basic features and built a relationship with your audience, you can expand to include your audio in the newsletter, monetize, and grow. 

Tracking listens, however, is another story. I scoured the knowledge base: though you can tell how many recipients clicked on the link to your audio, I couldn’t find whether or not you can tell how long people listened. You’d have to check your dashboard within each directory to track listens. 

Beehiiv is good for podcasters because it offers more features and flexibility at affordable prices than other email marketing software. However,  your podcast, your audience, and your needs are a unique mix. Maybe your audience enjoys a brief reminder to listen to the latest episode, but doesn’t need the audio served directly to them with a silver spoon. Maybe your newsletter provides bonus content for your podcast listeners, rather than replacing the feed. Think about what your audience needs and whether or not Beehiiv makes audience engagement easier for you. 

Beehiiv: You Structure the Hive, They’ll Share the Pollen

In 1973, Karl Von Frisch won the Nobel Prize for deciphering how bees dance to communicate. By moving in patterns of ellipses and carefully counted wiggles, a honeybee can tell thousands of her sisters which direction to fly, how far, and what the reward will be. 

Wiggling your spiracle at a crowd can be tiring, but maintaining a relationship with your audience doesn’t have to be. Beehiiv can make sharing your latest episodes and supplementary information with your fans much easier. You don’t have to do any complicated dance moves unless you want to. 

Beehiiv isn’t the only way to reach your fans, by the by. Our guide to keeping in touch with your followers can show you how to simplify audience engagement. On top of that, our Indiepod community is a great place to discuss audience engagement, promotion, the finer points of recording, and so much more.

Search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo! were once synonymous with being online: Switch on your computer, open up a browser and type something in that will take you to the website you’re looking for. 

But a few technological developments have changed this behaviour in the recent years. For example, the proliferation of smartphones means we use apps and social media to find answers just as much as we use search engines. And the latest big shift? AI, of course! 

So, what impact is this change having on websites and how podcasters use them to host and promote their shows? And what should you do with your podcast website to ensure it keeps working for you and your show?

Subscribe or follow Podcraft on your listening app of choice!

What’s Threatening Websites Right Now?

In a nutshell, the threat to websites right now could be described as “a decline in organic search traffic.” Even some of the biggest and most successful websites are seeing a big drop in visitors who find their websites via search engines. So if you’ve noticed your traffic numbers slowing recently, you’re not alone. 

This is happening for a few reasons. For one thing, people rely a lot more on social media to look up brands and find answers than they used to. The rise in smartphone use also means we don’t always need a browser to do what we want to do online—we can just open an app instead.

But the biggest change impacting search engine traffic is that people are turning to generative AI tools for quick answers instead of search engines. In fact, this is so common nowadays that you may have noticed search engines like Google have started providing their own AI-generated answers at the top of search pages in full, so you don’t even need to visit the websites listed below to find the answers.

Here’s what Google searches look like nowadays, prioritising AI content even over sponsored ads that make Google money:

But AI isn’t solely responsible for this trend. Google has been answering some search questions for years now, leading to the rise of “zero-click” searches.

So, if fewer people are landing on websites, what does that mean for their future?

Do Podcasters Think Websites Are Still Important? 

In a recent survey, we asked independent podcasters whether they think a dedicated podcast website is still important. Here’s what they said:

Almost 80% in total said they believe podcast websites are still important, with 43% strongly agreeing.

Let’s take a look at why a dedicated podcast website should still be an integral part of your workflow, despite these changes in how people use the internet. 

Why Podcast Websites Still Matter

AI relies on your website to provide accurate data 

Somewhat ironically, you need to keep your website alive so that listeners can use AI to find you instead of your website.

Confused? Well, generative AI tools rely on good websites to actually work.

These tools scour the Internet for the most relevant information, presenting answers in a clear and concise way for searchers. 

So if you don’t have a well-structured website that includes the right niche keywords, it’s possible that you won’t be included in podcast-related search queries. And even if you are included somehow, even without a website, the information the AI provides might be incorrect. So, in this sense, keeping an up-to-date website is even more important than ever.

You have total control over your website

Unlike social media or listening apps, your website is the one platform you have complete control over.

Just imagine that you put all your effort into building your podcast on one single platform, like Spotify or YouTube, only for it to disappear virtually overnight, or for the platform to begin removing your content without your consent.

Having a website for your podcast means you can link out to all the different listening platforms your RSS feed takes your show. That way, people can choose which listening platform they prefer, and it’s not the end of the world if one day one of those options disappears.

And while AI search may be an exciting new way to gain visibility for your podcast, what if tomorrow, ChatGPT began charging podcasters to appear in its recommendations? These big tech companies can do whatever they want; unfortunately, the internet is a pay-to-play world.

Websites create trust and authority

Having a website for your podcast will always do great things for creating a trust network with your listeners. That’s not something that will change.

As one podcaster who took our survey said, a website “legitimizes your show and takes it to a new level.” Another survey respondent spoke about how, as a new podcaster, having a website was essential to kicking things off:

“I haven’t launched yet so I can’t speak to how vital it is after, but it has been so helpful for providing a credible foundation as I reach out to potential guests without any episodes that are live.”

Websites create a home for your podcast brand 

Podcasting can be super fragmented. And while this is part of the beauty of open podcasting, it’s good to have a central home for your conent, too.

One survey respondent highlighted that as choices grow, it’s good to provide a go-to, easily accessible option for listeners:

“The more we advance in-device-dependent technology, there are still individuals needing a landing page and an “easy” spot to go to versus having to perform a search for the podcast you want on other platforms.”

So, in terms of accessibility, having a home for your podcast brand makes it easier for people who are less tech-savvy or are completely new to podcasting to find your show. While it’s not a good idea to host episodes directly on your website, it’s a place where you can link out to all the places you do host your show.

Another anonymous survey respondent said:

“For me, [a website] is akin to having a home address. In the digital age, as much as one can in a digital format, it connotes permanence.”

The website itself can even become an essential part of your brand. Fred Hoffman from the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast told us that his website has become an essential part of how he talks about his show: “You can find it at GardenBasics.net”

Websites convert sales

Many podcasters offer products or services that accompany their free content. And whether you’re selling an ebook or a year of one-on-one mentorship, the best place to send potential clients and customers is a landing page on your website.

Even if you use third-party tools to handle the transaction or deliver the goods, it’s best not to send them there directly when mentioning it in your CTAs. What if you had 100 episodes pointing the listener to a platform that either shuts down, or one you moved away from? Having your own optimised landing page, fully under your control, negates all of that.

Websites allow you to add extra media

As audio lovers, we wouldn’t dream of implying that audio content isn’t enough for listeners. But another nice thing about hosting your audio on your podcast website is that you can add additional media to enhance listeners’ experiences of your show.

This is something that a lot of survey respondents said they’re doing with their websites:

“I like using my website to add additional photos and resources to share with listeners.” – Yvonne at the PTA Podcast.

“Having [a website] with a visual archive is, in my opinion, a handy tool for the users” – Jeff Bloomfield at The Driving Change Podcast.

“A website is a good place to put further information, links, gallery etc. to support and expand on your podcast content ” – Anonymous respondent.

“[Websites are] a great place to hold all podcasts at a central point and have a link to, perhaps, merchandise, etc.” Martin Dickerson from the Peace Unplugged Podcast.

A Website is What You Make It

Of course, it’s not just about having a website but also about what you do with it to ensure it stays useful for your listeners. If you don’t already have one, then our ultimate podcast website guide can help you get set up, no matter your budget or technical knowledge!

And, if you’ve got any thoughts, lessons, or advice on running your own podcast site, be sure to share them with us in the IndiePod Community.

In this article, I am excited to introduce to you a new reverb tool from iZotope/NI, Equinox.  This tool has the potential to elevate your podcasts to the next level, whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned pro.

What is Equinox?

Back in the not-too-distant past, soundies worldwide drooled over the sound of the reverbs from Exponential Audio. Equinox is reviving the sound of these reverbs by utilizing the Exponential Audio algorithms and combining them with the adaptive unmasking technology we’ve seen from Aurora. 

Equinox boasts 1,250 presets geared toward giving you a lush, immersive sound for dialogue, soundscapes, or experimental music. 

The best part? Equinox is a multichannel reverb, which means it supports immersive formats like surround/atmos/binaural for mixing.

For individuals with a license for the Exponential Audio reverbs Stratus and Symphony, Equinox allows you to replace these plugins in a Pro Tools session with Equinox while carrying over plugin settings. At this time, only Pro Tools is supported for this feature.  Automation and auxiliary output information is currently not supported at the time of this review.

Zotope provided me with a review build of Equinox.  Some elements may differ slightly from the official release.

Crafting Reverb in Seconds

The team at iZotope has taken care to assist users who are new to more complex tools like Equinox without hindering control for more experienced users. Equinox features a “Filter” section where users can select what “flavour” of reverb they would like to have. 

For podcasters, you’ll mostly focus on the Space and Size filters, but you may want to play with the Effect filter if you are doing sound design for audio dramas. 

So, what do these filters do exactly? They suggest factory presets based on your needs. For example, under “Space,” I clicked “Tight,” and for “Size,” I selected “Small,” which brings up the Smooth Vocal Booth preset.

As you can see, the settings are changed, but you can make manual tweaks, add more effects for more complex textures, or enable unmasking. If you’re ever unsure what a setting does, hovering over it will give a brief explanation.

Equinox and Unmasking

Equinox has an unmasking function, but what exactly does that mean?

Frequencies need a lot of coaxing to “play nice” with each other.  When you have the dry signal of say a voice recording and add reverb, you are adding frequency content to the overall signal.  This can lead to frequency build-up, also better known as “mud”. This can have an ill effect on the intelligibility of both the dry audio and the reverb.

Did you know you’re supposed to EQ your reverb? This is how audio professionals deal with frequency buildup issues. However, now, with unmasking tools, you no longer need to listen for this manually, saving you a tremendous amount of time and leading to cleaner-sounding mixes. Equinox uses a simple UI to set up unmasking between the dry and reverb applied to the audio. 

What Does This Mean for Me?

Your dry audio will remain intelligible with little to no loss in transient details, while your reverb will be more defined. That means you can have a large reverb with a long tail without the source audio sounding washy or muffled, or with tight/short reverbs to make a voice-over recording sound “larger”.

Now, is it 100% effective? Not always, but the unmasking technology has vastly improved since I first came across it in Neutron 4 Advanced from iZotope. With letting Equinox unmask the reverb applied to a source sound in real-time, there is definitely a noticeable difference!  Equinox allows a user to make manual adjustments if needed.  Having this tool built-in also helps with plugin insert clutter. This can help simplify plugin chains inside a DAW.

Equinox: UI

The UI has a lot going on, but iZotope did a good job of balancing sections that separate features so as not to overwhelm the user and keeping it concise enough that there’s no need to constantly flip between windows to make adjustments. It uses a “dark mode” colour pallet, which is great for people with screen brightness sensitivity.

Equinox: Performance

It’s always recommended that if you haven’t built your own PC for audio productions, at the very least, use a laptop that is advertised as a gaming laptop to meet the minimum hardware specs of the audio processing applications you’ll be using. 

In my testing, Equinox wasn’t a glutton on CPU/RAM and ran quite smoothly. The version of the plugin I tested was in its review build, and I didn’t run into any time crippling glitches or performance issues. I was running it in a 100-track session with multiple occurrences on auxiliary sends (FX sends) with no issues. 

This is a breath of fresh air for a Windows user, as QC for tools on the Windows side has started to take a downward hit again as developers favour Mac stability.

Sound Samples

Here’s a quick spoken-word before-and-after. I used a darker-sounding mic, and Equinox opened it up, making it brighter and livelier, but the effect is subtle in this use case. The tool will undoubtedly shine more with multi-sound source sessions like audio drama.

Equinox Cost & Conclusion

Equinox is set to be priced at $249 USD. A special discount price of $149.20 USD will be available until April 30^th, 2025. 

This plugin is a great addition to a toolset for time-saving capabilities with professional results. Its filter feature can help a less experienced user zero in on where to start with a preset, yet it has enough manual functionality for tweaking for a more seasoned user.

Reintroducing the sound of Exponential Audio for reverbs is very exciting, as those sounded amazing! They were an industry favourite for many years. With Equinox, a user will be able to easily create ear candy for their listeners! 

I’ll keep this article up to date as new reports come out. Therefore, below, you should find the latest numbers, according to the podcast industry.

Listen, follow, or subscribe on your podcast app of choice!

So, let’s get into it. Here are the questions we’ll cover. Take your pick!

Podcast Industry Statistics

How Many Podcasts Are There, Right Now?

In total, how many podcasts are there in the world right now?

There are 4,509,765 total podcasts registered, around the world.

podcastindex.org – April 2025

But what counts as a “registered podcast?”. We reached out to The Podcast Index to enquire.

Unsurprisingly, there are many “Hey, is this thing on!?” 20-second 1-episode “podcasts” on the free hosting platforms. The Podcast Index criteria require shows to have at least three episodes (one is often a trailer) and at least one of those episodes to be three minutes long.

So now that we know the total number of podcasts, let’s look at one of the most in-demand podcast statistics: how many are registered on one of the biggest listening platforms, Apple?

Apple Podcasts hosts 2,800,138 podcasts as of April 2025

Podcast Industry Insights courtesy of Daniel J. Lewis

This is up from 2,332,900 (+20%) in September 2021. To show growth over the past few years, here’s what Apple announced at WWDC in 2018:

In 2018 there were 550,000 active podcasts on iTunes

Apple, WWDC 2018

How Many Podcast Episodes Are There?

There are currently over 106,796,827 episodes published in Apple Podcasts, as of April 2025

Podcast Industry Insights courtesy of Daniel J. Lewis

This is up from 52,990,000 in June 2021. Again, to compare, these stats came from Apple at WWDC in 2018:

In 2018 there were 18.5 millions episodes published, total

Apple, WWDC 2018

How Many Active Podcasts Are There?

The stats show that just over 15% of the podcasts on Apple Podcasts are currently active. That means they’ve released a new episode in the past 90 days.

There are currently 436,240 active podcasts on Apple Podcasts, as of January 2025

Podcast Industry Insights courtesy of Daniel J. Lewis

The percentage of active podcasts has dropped slightly to 15% since June 2024

There was a big drop after the COVID boom year (2020 to 2021), but since the start of 2022, we’ve been relatively steady between 21% and 15%, and a bit of a rebound in mid-2023.

Here are the recent stats, on a percentage basis.

There was certainly a huge increase in new podcasts during the early stages of the pandemic. 2020 was a bumper year for growth as potential podcasters found more time and space to create, and therefore, turned into active podcasters.

Combine that with companies turning more to digital to either market themselves, or to communicate with staff, and you have a podcasting growth spiral the likes of which we’ve never seen.

But, now – with everyone back to “normal” work and life – many of those podcasters have lost enthusiasm, and internal podcasting projects have been abandoned. So, the 2020 boom raised our numbers, and now many of those shows have turned inactive. This isn’t a bleak sign of the state of the industry; it’s just that things were so different in 2020 (and most of 2021) that it’s hard to make any reasonable comparison.

And, though the percentage of people making podcasts (and sticking at it) has been pretty stable the past couple of years, the percentage of people knowing about them and, most important of all, consuming them, has risen.

How Many People Know What a Podcast Is?

There continues to be growth in the simple act of knowing what a podcast is, year on year:

85% of people in the US are familiar with the concept of podcasting

Up 10% from 2020

Infinite Dial 2025

What Does This Mean?

“Familiarity” doesn’t necessarily mean that the respondent has listened to a podcast, or even really knows how podcasts work, but that they have been exposed to the term.

As podcasts grow in their references in more traditional media and enter general conversations, so too will we see growth in familiarity; it’s a good benchmark for analysing entry into the mainstream consciousness and out of the podcaster bubble. Indeed, this year, familiarity continues to rise at a rapid pace, with well more than 4 in 5 Americans now aware of the term “podcast”.

How Many People Listen to Podcasts?

Familiarity is one thing, but how many people have actually gone ahead and listened to a podcast?

Well, in mid-2023, data from Edison Research revealed that, for the first time ever, on-demand audio (like podcasts and streaming music) has leapfrogged linear audio (like radio) when it comes to ear-time in America.

On top of this, here are the latest Infinite Dial stats, released early 2025.

70% of people in the US have listened to a podcast, at least once

Up from 55% in 2020

Infinite Dial 2025

What Does This Mean?

Infinite Dial analyses listenership in steps:

• Have ever listened to a podcast
• Monthly Podcast Listeners
• Weekly Podcast Listeners

The gap between listenership and familiarity has often seemed insurmountable. How do we get the people familiar with the term to become interested in trying a podcast, or invested enough to learn how to listen? What kind of tools can we use to get them there?

Listenership continues to grow, with a 15% climb over the past five years!

On top of this data, the Share of Ear study by Edison Research indicates that podcasts now occupy 9% of Americans’ total audio consumption time, with an all-time high 31% of all spoken word audio listening going to podcasts.

Podcast Consumption Stats 2025

In 2025, the Infinite Dial reported on a new metric for the very first time – podcast consumption.

73% of people in the US have listened to or watched a podcast, at least once

Infinite Dial 2025

This takes into account the rise in popularity of video podcasts, and acknowledges the fact that not all podcast fans are “listeners” – some listen and watch, and a select few only watch.

How Many People Consume Podcasts on a Monthly Basis?

Both monthly and weekly listenership fell slightly in 2022 (a correction from the pandemic era), but came back stronger in 2023 and have continued to grow into 2025, especially now that watching has been added to the equation.

How Many People Listen to Podcasts on a Daily Basis?

In November 2022, Edison Weekly Insights revealed that daily podcast listening among Americans continues to grow.

In 2014, the first year of the Share of Ear survey, podcasts reached 5% of those in the U.S. age 13+. As of our most recent data, Q3 2022, podcasts now reach 18% of those age 13+ in the U.S. — a 20% increase in the past year (Q3 2021), and over three times the reach of 2014. 

When Do People Listen to Podcasts?

A YouGov survey ‘What situations do Americans listen to podcasts?’ asked listeners when they’re most likely to listen to shows.

The most popular podcast-listening situations respondents gave were the following:

• 49% said they listen to podcasts while doing chores (the gender split was 43% male vs 55% female)
• 42% said they listen to podcasts on their work commute
• 29% said they listen to podcasts while working out.

Car & Commute-Based Podcast Listening

According to Edison Research, individuals with Apple CarPlay or Android Auto in their vehicles tend to engage with podcasts for nearly twice the duration compared to those without these features.

Data on Podcast Trust, Engagement, & Authority

Podcasts are gaining trust and engagement as a source of news and information. A study by The Pew Research Center shows that two-thirds of listeners hear news discussions on podcasts, expecting accuracy.

Research by the University of California suggests that headphone listening is twice as effective for message reception, with 93% of podcast consumption happening on headphones.

According to data presented in Audacy’s Spring 2023 State of Audio guide, advertisers benefit from podcast host reads, which outperform social media.

In November 2024, new data from Veritonic’s 2024 Podcast Study showed a significant portion of listeners took action after hearing a podcast ad. Visiting a brand’s website (57%) and making a purchase (28%) were two common outcomes.

And a Spanish listener survey by Acast reveals that 97% of listeners have a positive perception of brands advertised on podcasts.

Overall, this data helps build a picture that podcasts have become a trusted medium for content and advertising.

Demographic Stats: The Women’s Podcast Report

The Women’s Podcast Report surveyed 1,500 Americans who self-identify as women, aged 18+ in August of 2022 and listen to podcasts monthly.

Over 1 in 3 U.S. Women 18+ (35%) have listened to a podcast in the past month. This is up 67% over the past 5 years, and now represents an estimated 47 million women.

And

Women listen to a variety of podcast content – on average, they listen to 5.7 different genres or topics. Some groups are even more voracious, with women aged 25-34 listening to 6.9 topics, Hispanic women listening to 6.8 topics, and moms listening to 6.5 topics.

Read the Women’s Podcast Report

Popularity of Spoken Word Audio

Podcasting doesn’t have a monopoly on audio content. The medium must still compete with audiobooks, radio and streaming music platforms.

• Spoken word’s share of audio listening has risen 45% over the last eight years
• There’s been a 25% increase in spoken word audio listeners in the US from 2014 to 2022 (105 million to 131 million)
• Gen Z (aged 13-24) spends 22% of their listening time on spoken word, compared to just 9% of the same age group back in 2014. That’s a whopping 214% growth.

Source: The Spoken Word Audio Report

How Popular Are Audiobooks?

• Audiobook listening in the US fell slightly for the first time since 2022
• However, the percentage of audiobook listening is still higher than 2023 and all years prior
• Daily reach of audiobook consumption has grown 94% since 2017
• 44% of UK adults said they listened to audiobooks in their spare time in 2021 (27% said they listened at least once per week)
• The number of audiobook titles published in the US increased 66% between 2018 and 2022.
• The global audiobook market was worth $4.2 million in 2021 and is set to grow annually at a rate of 26% between 2022-2030
• 41% of audiobook listeners say they subscribe to at least one audiobook service.

U.S. Radio Stats

Statista reported that radio had a weekly reach of around 82.5% among adults in the US, as of April 2022. There are over 15,445 radio stations competing for a share of this market.

What About Streaming Music?

• Music streaming revenues have multiplied more than 28 times since 2012
• The number of music streaming service subscribers worldwide grew 72% between 2019 and 2021 (305 million to 524 million).

Source: Statista

UK Podcast Audience Statistics

How Many People Listen to Podcasts in the UK?

2024 was a record-breaking year for podcast listening in the UK, according to Edison’s latest UK Podcast Consumer Report.

They found that:

• 69% of the UK population has listened to a podcast
• 42% of the UK 18+ population has listened in the last month
• 30% of the UK 18+ population has listened in the last week

2024 Ofcom data shows a lower number (50%) in the “has listened” bracket and 25% in the “regular listener” category.

Meanwhile, RAJAR’s most recent audio measurement report suggested that 34% of Brits listen to podcasts at least once a month and that 77% of podcast listeners in the UK enjoy between one and three episodes per week.

What Age Group Consumes Podcasts Most?

Men aged 25-34 make up the core audience of podcasting, according to data from Edison Research. They spend 16% of all of their audio time with podcasts.

Here are more age and demographic stats from Edison Research’s Infinite Dial Report 2025:

What do these Podcast Statistics Mean?

66% of 12 to 34 years olds consume podcasts on a monthly basis, while 38% of 55+ watch or listen at the same frequency.

Infinite Dial 2025

It looks like podcasting is a young person’s game! Proportionally, people in the 12 to 34-year-old age group enjoy podcasts more frequently than their older counterparts. Well more than half of all 12 to 34-year-olds consumed a show within the last month, which has even exceeded the 2021 pandemic boom.

The segmentation still shows a steep drop-off in the overall number of regular listeners once it hits the 55+ range (38% in 2025), but that number has also exceeded its 2021 high, so there are encouraging signs.

The 35-54 range has shown consistent growth for the past four years, too, climbing 16% since 2022.

Podcast Listening in Ages 55+

A study released in April 2023 by Edison Research and NPR found that podcasting has a largely untapped audience in the age 55+ demographic.

The new data reveals that while podcast listening has grown dramatically over the last five years overall, listening among “Baby Boomers” has not grown and is at a far lower level than younger demographics. According to the report from Edison Research and NPR, Boomers have the tools and the interest to listen, but increased education and targeting are required.

Hit Play, Boomer!

Men aged 55-64 spend only 4% of their total audio time with podcasts according to another report by Edison Research.

Kids Podcast Listening

A 2022 survey from Kids Listen reported that nearly half of all kids who listen to podcasts do so daily. Kids podcasts also show a high level of trust amongst parents compared to other mediums like TV and social media influencers.

Meanwhile, data in the Kids Podcast Listener Report from Edison Research suggests that 29% 6-12 year olds in the US are monthly podcast listeners, and that 87% of them have shared a takeaway or lesson with others.

Gen Z Podcast Listening

SXM Media’s Gen Z Podcast Listener Report examined the podcast listening habits of individuals aged 13 to 24 in the United States. The report, based on research conducted by Edison, reveals that 47% of Gen Z listeners have engaged with podcasts within the past month. Notably, this group demonstrates greater diversity compared to the overall monthly podcast listener base in the US. When it comes to discovering new shows, Gen Z podcast listeners primarily rely on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram.

According to a recent report from Spotify in the UK, Gen Z represents the music and podcast streaming platform’s most rapidly expanding demographic. In the first half of 2023, this generation has witnessed a remarkable 58% increase in year-on-year podcast plays. Additionally, 39% of these Gen Z listeners opt to listen at an accelerated playback speed.

Weekly Podcast Listener Stats

Just under 100 million Americans age 12 and older now listen to podcasts every week.

Infinite Dial 2024

With an estimated 34% of the US population listening to podcasts on a weekly basis, here’s a further breakdown of weekly podcast consumption.

Average number of podcast episodes listened to in a week:

• 8.3 – total weekly podcast listeners
• 9.5 – female weekly podcast listeners
• 7.2 – male weekly podcast listeners

Podcast fans consume over 8 episodes per week, on average, whilst female podcast fans consume between 9 and 10 episodes per week.

Infinite Dial 2024

What Day of the Week Do Podcasts Publish Episodes?

Wednesdays and Thursdays seem to be the most popular day for publishing podcasts, according to this 2022 report by Podchaser. The weekend sees a big dip in new uploads, with Saturday being the least popular day.

How Many Listeners Do Podcasts Get on Average?

This is the number everyone cares about: how do you compare to other podcasters? Here are stats from Buzzsprout, one of the biggest podcast hosting providers in the world, on how many listeners podcasts tend to get.

Here is your position, based on downloads per episode within the first seven days, as of April 2025:

• Top 1% of Podcasts > 4,615
• Top 5% of Podcasts > 1,106
• Top 10% of Podcasts > 472
• Top 25% of Podcasts > 115
• Top 50% of Podcasts > 30

So, if you get 30 listens per episode or more, you’re about the same as the middle-of-the-road average Buzzsprout podcast user, right at the 50% mark!

These stats give you a gauge of how your show stacks up against ultra-popular podcasts. But remember, podcast downloads are never the full story.

Here are the previous stats:

What are the Top Podcast Listening Apps? (What do People Use to Listen to Podcasts?)

Everyone has to listen somehow! But what listening app do people use to listen, whether mobile or computer-based? Apple Podcasts recently regained their lead on Spotify:

Apple Podcasts is the most popular podcast listening app (37.5%) (Via Buzzsprout).
Spotify is in 2nd place (33.2%)

Updated April 2025.

Here are the top 10, according to Buzzsprout’s podcast statistics:

Google Podcasts was killed off (rather slowly and painfully) by Google in 2024 and has finally stopped collecting listener data. This is a shame, as around 2% was still a respectable percentage of share, and it would’ve been an easy on-ramp for brand-new podcast listeners.

How Many People Listen to Spotify?

Spotify is a behemoth in the realm of online audio. Podcast listening has grown steadily on the platform these past few years, but streaming music is still what it’s best known for. 35% of people in the US (12+) have listened to Spotify in the last month.

• Up from 20% in 2018
• Up from 25% in 2020
• Up from 29% in 2021
• Stable at 35% from 2022 onwards

35% of people in the US (12+) have listened to Spotify in the last month

Unchanged since 2022

Infinite Dial 2025

What Devices Are People Using to Listen to Podcasts?

Long gone are the days of downloading podcasts on your computer and sticking them on your iPod. In this “internet of things” era, you could probably download an episode on your teapot.

The top 10 podcast listening devices as of April 2025, according to Buzzsprout.

1. Apple iPhone – 64.9% (down from 68.6% in Jan 23)
2. Android Phone – 22.8% (up from 18.1% in Jan 23)
3. Windows Computer – 5.5%
4. Unknown Device – 2.7%
5. Apple Computer – 1.6%
6. Apple iPad – 0.9%
7. Amazon Smart Speaker – 0.5%
8. Unknown Smart TV – 0.5%
9. Unknown Computer – 0.4%
10. Android Tablet – 0.1%

So, no teapots, then.

Yet.

What Is the Most Popular Podcast Genre in the U.S?

Edison Research announced the Top Podcast Genres in the U.S. for Q2 2022. The list ranks the most popular podcast genres based on audience size from Edison Podcast Metrics.

1. Comedy
2. News
3. Society and Culture
4. True Crime
5. Sports
6. Business (up from #7 in Q1 2022)
7. Arts (up from #8 in Q1 2022)
8. TV and Film (down from #6 in Q1 2022)
9. Education (up from #10 in Q1 2022)
10. Religion and Spirituality (down from #9 in Q1 2022)

In April 2023, Edison also published data suggesting that True Crime is the genre “most likely to place a show in the top 200”. Sounds Profitable’s Tom Webster expressed some legitimate concerns about how this data might be interpreted.

Podcast Ads & Advertising Stats

Podcasting is a big money industry these days, and it’s not all food hampers, mattresses, and socks.

Here are some statistics and data from the IAB’s U.S. Podcast Advertising Revenue Study.

• For the first time ever, the podcast advertising market surpassed one billion dollars in 2021
• Revenues increased 72% YoY to $1.4B and are forecasted to exceed $2B in 2022 and almost triple by 2024 to over $4B.
• Revenues continue to grow faster than the total internet advertising revenue market – up 72% YoY vs. 35%. (IAB 2021 Internet Advertising Revenue Report)
• Podcast advertising categories are diversifying: the “Other” category—which contains an increasing number of ad categories with lower spend—more than tripled share in just two years.
• As advertisers demand surged, pre-roll advertising increased its share of revenue to 32% from 22% in 2020.

• Investments in ad tech made podcast advertising more digitally-enabled, expanding its capabilities and value for advertisers
• Dynamic ad insertion expanded to 84% of ad revenue, almost doubling in 2 years. Both host-read and announcer-read ads are largely being served via DAI (84% and 85%, respectively), creating greater scale, flexibility, and targetability for advertisers.
• Announcer-read ads continued to grow its share of ad revenue to 40% from 35% in 2020 as it enables efficient ad creation and deployment.

And these stats are from the IAB and PwC Digital Adspend report:

• Podcasting ad spend in the UK is up 23%, year on year.
• £58m in 2021
• £68m in 2022
• £83m in 2023

Which Podcast Formats Will Be the Most Popular for New Creators in 2025?

There are various podcast formats you can use for your show. Running podcast interviews was almost considered the default choice for many years. These podcast statistics suggest that the future may look a little different, however.

Data from our free Podcast Planner Tool suggests that 43% of new podcasters plan to release solo episodes. Is this a sign of post-pandemic remote call fatigue? Or are podcasters starting to realise that going solo is an optimal way to become the authority on their shows? Only time will tell.

What Audio Equipment Do Podcasters Most Commonly Use?

Finding the right podcast equipment is always exciting but can be daunting. So, what’s the most popular gear out there? In July 2024, we published our latest findings on podcast equipment statistics: The Podcast Host Gear Survey 2024. Here are some of the top-line numbers based on responses to this survey.

The Blue Yeti is the most popular mic (16.6%) with the Samson Q2U in 2nd place (8.1%)

The Podcast Host Gear Survey 2024

USB mics are the most popular (36.1%), followed by XLR (32.5%), and Combo (19.7%)

The Podcast Host Gear Survey 2024

42% of people use a dynamic mic, 28% use a condenser mic, whilst 30% were unsure

The Podcast Host Gear Survey 2024

More than 70% of podcasters record with headphones on

The Podcast Host Gear Survey 2024

Do Podcasters Record Video Too?

In most cases, no! These stats are from the IndiePod Census 2023, where we asked about video podcasting:

Only 11% of respondents record video & publish the full episode

IndiePod Census 2023

32% of respondents don’t record video & have no plans to

IndiePod Census 2023

What Software Do Podcasters Use?

There’s definitely a big range of podcast software in use by podcasters, but one option commands the bulk of podcast editing and recording usage:

Audacity is the most popular podcast recording software (17%) AND the most popular podcast editing software (24%)

The Podcast Host Gear Survey 2024

How Long are Podcasts, on Average?

If you’re trying to decide on how long your podcast should be, then it might help to get an answer to the question: how long is the average podcast?

The most common podcast length is between 20 and 40 minutes (30%)

Across all Buzzsprout Podcasts

Here are the stats from Buzzsprout, as of January 2025, drawing from 120,338 active podcasts:

• Less than 10 minutes > 20%
• 10 – 20 minutes > 16%
• 20 – 40 minutes > 30%
• 40 – 60 minutes > 19%
• Over 60 minutes > 15%

For comparison, here are the same stats going back to 2021. You can see that these numbers remain fairly consistent throughout, though the number of sub-10-minute episodes is slowly climbing.

Episode Length & Time Data From Over 1500 Aspiring Podcasters

Data from our free Podcast Planner Tool suggests that 53% of new podcasters plan to publish episodes that are between 20 and 40 minutes long.

How Often Does the Average Podcast Publish an Episode?

Similarly, if you’re asking, how often should I release my podcast, here’s what Buzzsprout’s Podcast statistics show about the average.

The most common podcast publishing frequency is every 8 to 14 days (39%)

Across all Buzzsprout podcasts

Percentage of podcasts and the frequency by which they release episodes:

• 0 – 2 days > 7%
• 3 – 7 days > 34%
• 8 – 14 days > 39%
• 15 – 29 days > 18%
• Over 30 days > 1%

Updated January 2025.

Release Frequency Data From Over 1,500 Aspiring Podcasters

Data from our free Podcast Planner Tool suggests that 55% of new podcasters plan to publish on a weekly basis.

How Do People Find New Podcasts to Listen To?

Let’s find out how listeners are actually finding new shows. These are the results of a discoverability survey we ran in 2024. According to our respondents, here is how they find new shows:

• 50% said they would open up their preferred podcasting app (Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, etc)
• 13% said they would listen out for recommendations on the podcasts they already enjoy
• 12% said they would directly ask someone they know who likes the same stuff
• 11% said they would use a search engine like Google or Bing
• And 10% said they would ask on social media or in an online community

This was one result from The Podcast Host Discoverability Survey. The report is essential reading for anyone who wants to grow an audience. It highlights the most effective areas to concentrate on when it comes to promotion and marketing.

We’re always looking to run interesting new surveys too, so if there are any specific podcast data you’d like to see here in future be sure to give us a shout!

Where in the World is Podcasting Growing Fastest? Podcast Population Stats

Voxnext released a set of podcast stats in 2019, which showed the countries in which podcasting is growing fastest. It makes for an interesting read:

Chile (83.9% growth)
Argentina (55.28%)
Peru (49.1%)
Mexico (47.84%)
China (43.62%)

Voxnest, March 2019

Reuters Digital News Report 2018 also reported that, in South Korea, 58% of people said that they listened to a podcast at least once a month.

Room For Growth

There are still massive growth opportunities for podcasting in certain countries.

India

In May 2024, Podnews shared data from The Podcast Pulse, the first-of-its-kind comprehensive report on podcast consumption in India.

Key findings from the report include:

• 82% of respondents were initially unaware of podcasts, highlighting a significant opportunity for awareness-building efforts.
• 78% of consumers discovered podcasts less than a year ago, indicating a recent surge in interest.

Japan

Japan is a country with lots of room for podcast growth. Though listening increased in 2022, overall uptake remains low at 15.7%.

With that said, one in three Japanese individuals aged 15-19 listens to podcasts monthly, making podcast listening as popular as TikTok consumption in the country. This 2024 data was published by Otonal in collaboration with The Asahi Shimbun Company.

Writing for Podnews in 2023, Guang Jin YEO takes an insightful deep dive into slow podcast growth in Japan, and what can be done about it.

Which Country Has the Highest Percentage of Podcast Listeners?

According to the Edison Research Infinite Dial 2023 Australian Audio Report, it’s Australia. The study highlights that 43% of Australians tune in to podcasts monthly, surpassing the US’s 42% figure. Additionally, a significant one-third of Australians engage with podcasts every week, outpacing the US’s 31% statistic.

And 2024 YouGov study examined the percentage of populations who listened to podcasts for more than one hour per week.

• Saudi Arabia 59%
• Mexico 48%
• Romania 47%
• Vietnam 47%
• Morocco 45%

Why Do People Start Podcasts?

People start new podcasts every single day. But why? Data in our recent Podcaster Cares Survey shows that the majority our respondents (38.4%) launch shows “as a hobby”.

Is the term “hobby” slightly patronising, though? Many “hobbyist” podcasters prefer to describe their endeavours as a “creative outlet”.

Other common reasons for starting are to build a personal brand (21%) and to grow a business (19.7%).

What Do Podcasters Struggle With Most?

Our Podcaster Problems Survey showed that the vast majority (47.7%) of our respondents get stuck on podcast promotion.

Ideas, scripting, and episode planning caused problems for 17.9%, whilst editing was the issue for 13.4% of respondents.

How Do Podcasters Measure Success?

The term “success” means different things to different people. Our Podcaster Cares survey revealed that the most common way responding podcasters measure it is through spikes in their download numbers.

Feedback from listeners, either via email or podcast reviews, was also shown to be something podcasters put a lot of onus on. The amount of ‘likes’ an episode gets on social was the thing that had the least impact.

Are Podcasters Concerned With Censorship & Content Moderation?

There are an increasing number of conversations about censorship and content moderation in podcasting. We asked about this in our Podcaster Cares Survey.

49.2% said that they were “concerned about harmful, dangerous, and misleading content in podcasting”, but felt that censorship was a “slippery slope”.

19.3% felt it was the responsibility of hosting platforms to “weed out harmful, dangerous, and misleading content”, whilst 17.4% believe this should be the job of the listening apps themselves.

14.2% don’t want to see any content moderation whatsoever, stating that “it’s nobody’s right to try and police podcasting for everyone else.”

What Organisations Are Collating Podcast Statistics?

The Infinite Dial report, a survey conducted by Edison Research and Triton Digital, is probably the most popular databank and survey on the state of Podcast industry statistics in the United States, especially audio. The Rajar Midas survey is the equivalent in the UK.

Infinite Dial has conducted phone-based surveys since 1998, including podcasts since 2006–that means since nearly the inception of podcasting, making this incredibly valuable data. The respondent pool of 1500 is composed of people aged twelve and over, weighted against the US census data for population, and split proportionally between landlines and cell phones.

Podcast Industry Statistics: References

I’ve drawn from a range of great sources of Podcast Industry stats in this article, including:

• Edison Research Infinite Dial 2025
• Rajar Midas Audio Survey Summer 2022
• The Podcast Host Gear Survey 2024
• The Podcast Host Discoverability Survey 2020
• The Podcaster Problems Survey 2021
• The Podcast Host ‘Podcaster Cares’ Survey 2022
• Reuters Digital News Report 2018
• Podcast Industry Insights courtesy of Daniel J. Lewis
• Buzzsprout Podcasting Stats
• Ofcom Podcast Survey April 2023
• Statista – U.S. Radio Industry – Statistics & Facts
• iab U.S. Podcast Advertising Revenue Study.
• The Spoken Word Audio Report

In the past year or so, I’ve noticed that many new audio drama and fiction podcasts have descriptions that follow a non-fiction format. But, fiction or audio drama podcasts have different audience expectations, so the needs are different.

Over the next few paragraphs, I’ll show you how to use your fiction-writing skills to craft a concise, plot-focused, and clear audio drama or fiction podcast description that’s easy to share and commit to.

Why Do Audio Drama and Fiction Podcast Descriptions Matter?

When I say “podcast description,” I don’t mean the episode descriptions or show notes. I’m talking about what the audience gets in exchange for paying attention to any or all of the episodes in this feed.

In our Discovery survey, we found that the podcast description is the top reason respondents choose a podcast. 

We’ve written a comprehensive guide to writing nonfiction podcast descriptions. But fiction podcast descriptions have different expectations.

Nonfiction podcast descriptions speak to who the audience is in real life, while fiction podcasts speak to the audience’s imagination.

A nonfiction podcast description can promise what the audience will get in exchange for their attention, but fiction’s impact has too many variables to make those promises. The sole element podcasters can control, and the promise you can keep is what we’ll hear, not why we should listen. 

How to Write a Fiction Podcast Description

50% of respondents to our Discovery survey told us that they start searching for new podcasts by opening up a podcast directory or app. Chances are good that your audience will find your description there or in a newsletter for podcast listeners or communities where people interested in audio drama or fiction podcasts congregate.

Your prospective audience knows what they’re looking for and where they want to find it.

Avoid Redundancies

Your podcast description doesn’t need to explain that your show is:

• A fiction or audio drama podcast
• A “movie for your ears,” “cinema of the mind,” or “radio play”
• Created by a brilliant writer or hard-working production team

Let it go.

People who search for audio drama and fiction know what a podcast is. What potential audiences don’t know is your story. That needs to be front and center in your podcast description. 

Now that we’ve eliminated redundancies, let’s address what your podcast description needs and why. Your fiction or audio drama podcast needs to be: 

• Shareable
• Easy to display in posts
• Actively focused on the plot

All three of these elements overlap with and complement each other. Let’s look at how to make these elements work best. 

Brevity Makes the Magic Happen

Whether your podcast hosting service gives you 100 or 10,000 characters for your podcast description, the first characters matter most. Any time someone posts a link to your podcast on social media, the platform pulls a limited number of characters from the destination URL to describe that link. 

How many? 

Any number I research for you today could change tomorrow. Social media platforms can change their character display limits on a whim. And, platforms collapse posts to make scrolling easier. To show the audience what your podcast is about, you want to get the logline in the post’s first hundred or hundred and twenty-five characters. Here’s an example of how a podcast link appears on Bluesky: 

I disappointed myself. Where’s the logline? It’s fragmented and hidden under the world-building. I’ve rewritten this description multiple times, but different directories display different versions of the description from my hosting service.

When a post clearly shows what to expect in the podcast, people are more likely to pay attention, and your fans can share the post easily. Keep your audio drama or fiction podcast description concise and to the point. The point, of course, is your logline, which we’ll get to next.

Stick to The Logline or Plot

When your fiction podcast description focuses on the logline, the audience knows what to expect. Your story might give audiences a world more vast and detailed than all of Lord of The Rings. First, you have to give the audience a point of entry. The logline gives casual browsers a handle to grab. Keep your podcast description concentrated on the throughline or narrative spine. 

What Makes a Great Logline?

Screenwriters use the term logline; others call it a throughline, an elevator pitch, or a narrative sentence. You may have also heard the term “tagline,” which is different.  Backstage Magazine has a detailed explanation of what a logline is and how to write a good one. In the meantime, let’s get back to your podcast description. Your logline needs to include the story’s: 

• Primary character(s)
• Inciting incident
• Protagonist’s goal
• Conflict and stakes

Here’s an example using the description and tagline from Six Minutes.

“Eleven-year-old Holiday is pulled from the icy waters of Alaska with no memory of who she is or where she comes from. And when she begins to develop incredible abilities, she’ll soon learn she’s not alone in the world.” 

The podcast art includes the tagline: “Before she was a girl… she was a weapon.” 

The tagline implies the elements of the logline, but it’s shorter and more mysterious. Let’s return to the description and break down what makes it effective. 

The logline tells you about the following: 

• The primary character (Holiday, an eleven-year-old girl with memory loss)
• The inciting incident (pulled from the icy waters of Alaska)
• The primary character’s goal (learn she’s not alone in the world or learn her identity)
• The conflict and stakes (no memory, begins to develop incredible abilities)

The tagline informs our understanding of the main character, conflict, and stakes. But, it lacks specificity that gives the potential audience something to grasp.  The podcast description tells us whose story this is, what they want, what’s in their way, and how they will get it. 

Now that you know what elements to include, let’s clarify and polish your logline.

Clarity Matters

Many audio drama and fiction podcast writers labor over their scripts for years. Some of these stories have vast tomes of world-building knowledge, with religions, currencies, alphabets, laws, hierarchies, dynastic feuds, and revolutionary shoe fashions. Cool. And some people want to include all of this background information in the podcast description.

Your description has to pique their interest. Then, your episodes can help them invest emotionally. Once they’re cosplaying as your characters, you can sell the spinoff graphic encyclopedia and vinyl record set explaining all aspects of your audio drama universe. But first, the description has to give casual browsers a handle to grab. 

There’s more lore in Lord of the Rings than in the Prose and Poetic Edda combined. But the Tolkienverse has influenced so many and endured for so long because, ultimately, it’s about an underdog who trades comfort for adventure.  That’s seven words.

Take, for example, The Dex Legacy. This epic saga includes political intrigue, war profiteering, interplanetary colonization, and intergenerational trauma. How does one fit all of that into a pithy, contagious description?

“Join Varian, Isra, and Ren as they battle to maintain every ounce of their humanity against a despotic regime determined to turn them into monsters.” 

That’s only 147 characters. I’m not saying this is easy. If you practice writing haiku, you may find it simpler. 

In as few words as possible, tell us about the person who wants something and what they risk to achieve it. Don’t tell us their tactics or how the process changes them. Let us experience those actions and changes as an audience. When you keep your podcast description simple, we can find something familiar in the logline and latch on. 

Active Voice Persuades

Surprise! All that time in seventh grade with Warriner’s English Grammar and Composition does matter. In the podcast descriptions I’ve shown you, nearly every verb uses active voice.

When you choose to use active or passive voice, neither is better or worse. But, active voice uses fewer words and implies forward motion. The sole exception is in the description for Six Minutes, where “Holiday is pulled from.” In this case, the passive verb tense avoids spoiling Holiday’s mystery or complicating the description.

Active voice piques your audience’s curiosity with a brief and dynamic description.

Don’t Be That Podcaster

Every time I edit the Fiction Podcast Weekly, I look for audio drama and fiction podcasts that have recently launched, published a new season, or reached a significant milestone.

Without fail, the podcast descriptions make me wonder who is telling these fiction podcasters to shove as many words into that podcast description as possible. At the same time, I’m scanning through all this text, exhaustedly praying for a logline, until I turn into Detective Mills at the climax of the movie Se7en, screaming, “WHAT’S IN THE BOX?” while John Doe drones on and on like a sad robot.

All audiences need to know is who wants what, how hard it will be to get, and what’s lit a fire under them this time.

Keep it brief, direct, and active.

Tell us what’s in the box so we can press play and share your show. 

Sign up for the Fiction Podcast Weekly newsletter. Whether you’re a creator, avid listener, or just audio drama-curious, don’t miss out on getting this essential bulletin delivered to your inbox every Friday!

It’s true that the best way to grow an audience is to create great content. But it’s rarely as simple as that. If you never do any podcast promotion, then it’s unlikely your show will fulfil its true potential.

Building a bit of marketing into your workflow from day one is advisable. There are loads of different ways to promote a podcast – some may appeal to you, others might not.

The aim here is that you can pick and choose the ones that feel like the best fit. With podcast promotion, there’s no silver bullet and no shortage of trial and error. But, armed with these tips, you’ll be ready to go out there and double, treble, or even quadruple your downloads – if you’re willing to put the work in.

Our ultimate guide to podcast promotion is a list of the various routes, strategies, and options gathered together in one place. You can pick a few and try them over time to see what works for you and what doesn’t.

And, because we love a framework, we’ve packaged our podcast promotion guide into one. It’s called SCALE

The SCALE Podcast Promotion & Audience Growth Framework

Each podcast promotion tactic in this guide falls into the following categories:

• S – Syndication
• C – Communities & Collaboration
• A – Advertising (Paid Promotion)
• L – Live & In-Person
• E – Email & Engagement

Are you ready to SCALE your podcast growth? Then let’s get into it…

Syndication

Be everywhere your audience listens and searches.

Submit Your Show Everywhere You Can

The beauty of running a podcast is that people can consume it on platforms you’ve never even heard of.

Once you submit your show to Apple Podcasts, it will appear in the vast majority of directories and apps out there. Then, Submit to Spotify, and you’re catering to the large chunk of users over there. The final place to consider is YouTube. You can put a podcast on YouTube even if you don’t record video, too, so this is definitely worth doing!

Optimise Your Website for Podcast Growth

A great podcast can still suffer from having a poor website associated with it.

Many podcasters limit their show’s growth by overlooking some low-hanging website-based fruit. You want to enable your audience and traffic to help you grow.

If you don’t have a home for your show yet, check out our ultimate podcast website guide, which covers the whys, hows, and wheres.

But here are some important things to consider right off the bat;

• Do you have an About page where you sell the benefits of why people should listen? What’s in it for them?
• Do you have a Subscribe page where you link to podcast directories like Apple, YouTube, & Spotify? You could even explain here why and how to subscribe to the show.
• Do you have a Contact page listing how folks can get in touch? Stick your email address and social media links here.
• Do you have a media kit page?
• Do you have social sharing buttons on your posts? You want to make it easy for your listeners to promote your episodes.
• Is your domain name descriptive or memorable and easy to spell?
• And does your site display properly on mobile and tablet?

Be sure to create a short promo trailer for your podcast and embed it on your homepage, too. That way, potential listeners on your site can get a taster of the show immediately!

SEO & Google Search for Podcast Promotion

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation.

No matter how or where you set up your website, you now have a base to create searchable content that can rank and be found on Google, Bing, and the ever-evolving AI search and LLMs, where an increasing number of folks are finding their info.

If you’re using WordPress, the Yoast SEO plugin is a great tool for optimising your shownotes. It’s worth checking out this full guide on how to make your podcast SEO-friendly, too.

Of course, a huge part of this is your episodes’ actual names and titles, so how do we make the most of those?

Create Clear & Compelling Episode Titles

The way you title your episodes has a significant impact on your overall download numbers.

The worst thing you can do is to use a naming system like “Episode 6” or “The Whatever Podcast – Episode 6”. You don’t need your show title in there at all. And simply labelling content with numbers does nothing to tempt anyone to listen. It gives no hint of what’s on offer, so there’s no incentive to hit play.

Be as descriptive about the ‘hook’ of each episode as you can. It all depends on the content, but there are certain formats you can use to make clicking the play button irresistible. We go in-depth in our WHISPER TITLES Framework, and the following video will show you how to utilise them in your own topic or niche.

Of course, that doesn’t mean you should try to shoehorn these episodes if they’re not a good fit for your show. Just be as descriptive as possible. Let your target audience know at a glance this is the show they’ve been looking for.

For examples of ultra-descriptive episode titles, check out our show Pocket-Sized Podcasting.

Build Great Blog Podcasts Around Your Episodes

The blog post you write around each episode is also called your podcast show notes. The more detailed and helpful these are, the more they can work as stand-alone content to get your show in front of new people.

Add links to any tools or resources mentioned in your episodes, and Google will appreciate that, too. Some folks recommend copying full episode transcriptions into your show notes, but this content is often badly written – we talk very differently to how we speak, after all. Instead, it’s better to make your transcripts available elsewhere and clearly link to them in your shownotes.

Here’s our full guide to writing great podcast show notes for a deeper dive on that topic.

Communities & Collaboration

Grow through people, shared audiences, and strong fan culture.

Run Regular Audience Surveys

This isn’t a strategy for brand-new podcasters who don’t yet have an audience. But if you’ve been running a show for six months or more, you can get some invaluable growth insights from an audience survey.

Your existing fans can tell you a lot about your show. For example, how or where did they discover it? If many listeners find you in the same place or way, you can do more of it.

Likewise, if you’ve just spent $100 on an ad campaign and literally not one person discovered you that way, you can save yourself the money in future.

You can ask your listeners what things they like about the show. What topics do they like you to cover? What would they like to hear in future episodes? Give them a place to tell you all their likes and dislikes, and then tailor your content around that data going forward. It’s a lot better than trying to guess what your listeners want!

Sell Podcast Merch

Many podcasters see merch predominantly as a monetisation strategy rather than a podcast promotion tactic. And, whilst it’s true that it can be both, it’s usually more effective as the latter.

The vast majority of podcasters use third-party print-on-demand stores to create and sell their merch. This means that prices can be high and profit margins low.

If you run a merch store in this way, it’s worth selling stuff as cheaply as possible to maximise the amount of it out there in the wild. After all, every t-shirt, sticker, or mug with your logo is like a little billboard for your show.

Here’s our full guide to running a podcast merch store, as well as our podcast monetization roundup for more effective ways to earn some pennies from your show.

Collaborate & Cross-Promote

If other podcasters cover similar topics, you don’t need to see these shows as your competition.

It’s not like old-style TV, where folks had to watch one or the other. Podcast listeners subscribe to lots of different shows, and they’ll usually be based on similar subjects.

So, what active podcasts are putting out content for the same target audience as you? Why not draw up a list and reach out to the people behind them?

Here’s our full guide on podcast collaboration and cross-promotion, with 14 actionable tips.

Working together can help share your collective audiences, which will benefit everyone. Here are some top-level suggestions:

Swap Trailers

You might initially consider doing a ‘promo swap’, where you each play the other show’s promo trailer on an episode or two.

Create Content Together

You could look at collaborating on some podcast content. A common way of doing this is to co-host an episode together, which is then published to both of your feeds.

Build a Montage Episode

If you’re in touch with a handful of podcasters in your niche, you could also create a montage episode. This is where you reach out to them with a question and have them answer it in an audio form. Then, you piece these together into a single episode.

For example, a writing podcast might ask, “What’s your best tip for overcoming writer’s block?”. Or a health podcast might ask, “What does your morning routine look like?”.

Montage episodes are well shared amongst everyone involved. In turn, everyone’s audience gets a boost as a result!

Create Content for (Or About) Others

This follows from the collaboration angle and is also based on creating shareable content.

Guest Posting

A popular way to promote your podcast is to post a guest blog on a site with a similar target audience. With a guest post, you’re creating insightful and helpful content for their readers and, in turn, can link back to your own content.

Reviews

You can also create content that’ll be well-shared by reviewing a product or service you like. For example, if you do a cooking podcast and use a specific type of whisk, you could review it on an episode, then get in touch with the company that makes it and let them know. The chances are, they’ll share it with their own audience, many of whom will be interested in your show.

Guesting on Another Podcast

Another way of creating content for others is to be a podcast guest on their interview show. However, it’s not as easy as approaching someone and saying, “Hey, bring me on, please!”.

If you’d like to be interviewed on a specific podcast, give them a thorough proposal on what you can offer their listeners. What unique insights can you bring to the table? Personalise this to the show’s format and previous episodes. Only reach out to podcasts you’ve actually listened to.

You might even want to make your proposal in video rather than in written form. This will be much more likely to resonate with the podcaster. It’ll also set you apart from the many other requests they might get in.

Here are some useful tips on how to get booked as a guest on a podcast.

Advertising (Paid Promotion)

Use strategic spend to boost visibility and reach new listeners.

Pay to Advertise Your Show

If you’re a traditionalist, you might see podcast promotion as simply paying to get it in front of some new eyeballs (or ears!).

And advertising your podcast can be a great way to kickstart your growth if you have some budget behind you.

You can pay for podcast ads to promote your show in many places. It’ll always depend on your topic and audience, but these range from Google and social media ads to newsletters and print magazines.

One of the most effective ways we’ve found so far is on the podcast listening app Overcast. Here’s the lowdown (and our data) on Overcast advertising.

Other podcast apps offering ads include Pocket Casts, Podcast Addict, and Podbay. You can find full details in our podcast advertising guide.

However, a creative “Guerrilla Marketing” campaign might be the best option for those with little or no budget!

Gain Visibility Through Financial Support

Just like the traditional advertising route of podcast promotion, you might be able to dedicate a small budget towards gaining extra visibility.

You could literally sponsor another podcast in your niche or wider topic. If done well, this could be a very effective way of gaining new listeners.

Some shows run Patreon accounts (other crowdfunding platforms are available), and rewards often include being mentioned on their episodes or websites. If you find a popular show with such a reward tier in your niche, you could chuck some money their way.

This route doesn’t only apply to other podcasts, either. Perhaps there’s a charity in your niche you could support? An example of this could be a tabletop wargaming podcast supporting a veterans’ charity. Or a writers’ show supporting an organisation that helps fund books for kids in socially deprived neighbourhoods.

Obviously, with charities, it’ll be more of a reciprocity thing than a direct transaction of money for promotion. You’ll need to be respectful here and keep in mind that this is an ongoing relationship rather than a service.

Live & In-Person

Create real-world connections that deepen loyalty and word of mouth.

Real World Podcast Promotion

Believe it or not, promoting your podcast away from the screen is possible!

For starters, are there in-person events in your area based on your topic? If you join a local club or society, you’ll naturally meet folks interested in what you do.

Are there any conferences or conventions happening in the next year? Why not inquire about running a booth or organising a session, panel, or workshop?

Finally, you can use the montage episode idea to promote your show in person with Vox pops. Vox pops are basically just clips of numerous folk answering the same question. You can record vox pops anywhere, from a dedicated event to out in the street.

If you go down this route, give each person you speak to a business card promoting your podcast. Let them know that this is where they’ll hear the finished piece. Most of them will be keen to check it out!

Email & Engagement

Build lasting direct relationships and drive listener action.

Embrace Email Marketing

When we ran our podcaster cares survey, 40% of respondents agreed that “any serious podcaster must run an email list”.

If you’re a “serious podcaster” and don’t, though, there’s no need to go on the defensive about this. If you’ve no time or enthusiasm for email marketing, then it’s better not to do it.

However, if you can muster the time and motivation, email is a great way to keep in touch with your listeners.

“But I already do that with my podcast episodes” is a valid answer. The thing about audio, though, is that CTAs are tricky. Often, our listeners are busy doing other things whilst we chat to them in their earbuds. Very few are looking at their screen or in a position to immediately click any link.

So, an email list can act as the perfect complement to your show. You can use it to mail out your show notes or any other offers, competitions, or sales you’re currently running.

If you’re interested in setting up or improving your email marketing strategy, our full guide has you covered!

Optimise Your Calls to Action (CTAs)

Finding new listeners is a huge part of this podcast promotion guide. But one place you certainly will find your target audience is at the end of each of your episodes. Those loyal folks who listen right to the end are your biggest fans, and they’ll be willing to help you out if you ask in the right way. That means honing in on your Calls to Action.

Two of the most common podcast promotion mistakes are;

1. to overlook those who are already listening
2. to waste your Calls to Action

Even if you’ve ‘only’ 20 regular listeners, those 20 people can help you reach a much bigger audience.

You can give your Call to Action (CTA) at the end of each episode. You’ve served the listener with great content, and they’ve really enjoyed and benefited from it. Now, you can ask them for a small favour.

Many podcasters ask for reviews because they think that’ll help the podcast grow. Sure, they can be great social proof, and we’ll talk more about that shortly. But don’t focus exclusively on reviews in your CTAs.

Instead of constantly urging your audience to review your podcast, try some other CTAs that could make more of an impact. A great place to start is by asking your audience to recommend the show to one friend they think would enjoy it.

You could even make an engagement-forward game out of it: ask your fans to recommend your podcast to a friend directly on social media and tag your show in the post. Then, thank that listener in your next episode!

Podcast Promotion on Social Media

Social media may seem like the most obvious place to promote your podcast. But if all you do is post, “Hey everyone, check out my podcast!” then you’ll be another meaningless voice amongst a very loud noise.

If you want to use social media for your podcast (and, by the way, you don’t have to!), then pick a few where you think your audience is most likely to hang out. In What’s the Best Social Media Platform for Podcasters, Kristina gives the lowdown on each app, from Twitter/X and TikTok to Pinterest and Reddit.

Facebook isn’t the goliath it once was, but its ‘groups’ feature can still be an excellent place to find or create communities around your topic or niche. If you can contribute to these in a way that’s positive and helpful to others, your podcast can find new listeners as a result.

You can also use micro-content to run effective Facebook ads. Or, you might opt for a platform like Instagram to pay for some potential traffic. But I’d recommend starting with a very small budget and only investing more if you see promising results.

Promoting a podcast on WhatsApp is also a thing, and joining or running a Discord community offers all the benefits of social media without algorithm-led issues and distractions.

In terms of the content you create for social media, most of these platforms now lean heavily into video, so let’s take a look at that…

Create Shareable Videos

Audio is notoriously hard to “go viral” because it’s long-form and non-visual. A good way to make your audio more shareable on platforms that cultivate short attention spans is to turn it into short video clips. Traditionally, the most popular way of doing this was with Audiograms, but creating video (especially ‘Shorts’) has become simpler and more accessible in recent years,

Perhaps the most innovative and fun approach here, though, is to have a clip from your show turned into a cartoon. We tried that with our show Hostile Worlds a while back, and got a really nice response.

Text-Message Marketing

Text-message marketing is similar to email marketing, though arguably a lot more personalised. You’ve probably had a marketing text from your local gym, hairdresser, or takeaway shop before, and you can use that same technology to grow and engage your podcast audience with regular updates and unique offers. Check out our full guide to text-message marketing to learn more.

Use Podcast Reviews As Marketing Material

As mentioned earlier, podcast reviews can be great social proof for your shows. Here are some tips and tactics for getting more podcast reviews. Once you actually have a few, you can start sharing them, too.

This is much better than telling people how great your show is – now, you have others to do it for you.

There are still some tactful and elegant ways to share your reviews on any platforms you’re active on. Even bad podcast reviews can be used humorously as part of your podcast promotion toolkit.

You can use podcast reviews on your website or on your podcast merch. You can even grow your podcast by writing podcast reviews for other shows!

Ready to SCALE Your Podcast Growth?

Hopefully, that’s given you plenty of ideas and tips for drawing up your own promotional strategy. Combine these approaches with creating great, unique content, and you’ll be well on your way to running a successful podcast.

Remember, if you haven’t done so already, check out our article on what’s a good number of downloads for a podcast. Setting realistic goals and expectations is important to avoid disillusionment with your show.

And, if you’d like some real-world examples and case studies of indie podcasters promoting and growing their shows, check out the following Podcraft episode…

Top Promo & Growth Lessons From Successful Indie Podcasters

Read article called: Top Promo & Growth Lessons From Successful Indie Podcasters

Finally, be sure to join us in the IndiePod Community, where you can discuss your latest growth plans and strategies with an enthusiastic group of like-minded podcasters. We’d love to see you in there!

By the end, you’ll know exactly how to make a podcast and help it succeed in the quickest, most pain-free way possible.

Here’s the stages we’ll cover. How to start a podcast in 10 simple steps:

1. Develop a Growth-Ready Podcast Plan
2. Define your Show Structure & Format
3. Establish your Podcast’s Brand
4. Set up your Podcasting Equipment
5. Pick your Recording & Editing Tools
6. Present & Record your 1st Episode
7. Edit Your Podcast Episode (Learn how!)
8. Set up your Podcast Hosting
9. Submit to Key Podcast Directories
10. Create a Starter Launch Plan

Click a step to jump straight there. Otherwise… there are no shortcuts to success in life. Except here! Three extra tools to help:

• Want help planning it out? Try our AI-powered assistant
• Want a free email course to guide you through?
• Wondering why you should start a podcast for your business?

1. Your PATH: a Podcast Framework for Success

Right, let’s create this show! First is the idea behind it, and the strategy. What does it look (sound…?) like?

I’ve developed a framework for this: PATH.

This framework leads to a podcast plan that stands a great chance of producing compelling content and consistent growth:

Purpose: why am I doing it?
Audience: who am I talking to?
Topic: what am I talking about?
Hallmark: why should they listen?

So, let’s dig into how to set up a podcast and create a fully-fledged podcast strategy for your show.

Want some extra help with this? Here’s a tool which asks the right questions, and uses AI to help you formulate that plan: The Interactive Podcast Launch Planner.

Purpose: Why Are You Making a Podcast?

So, firstly, why do you want to make a podcast? This gives purpose to everything else, and keeps you motivated long term. Here are some of the most common.

• Marketing: Personal or Business Branding
  Grow authority and trust. Be more personal than blogging, more evergreen than social media. Offer great, valuable content to customers. Nurture brand superfans.
• Creative Outlet: Make something Cool!
  Make a show around your passion, from true crime, to vegan baking, to audio fiction. Create something you’re proud of!
• Build Community: Connect with Like-Minded People
  Podcasting is a great way to bring people together around a common passion. Build that audience and attract them into a space where you can turn it into a 2-way conversation.
• Education: Teach my expertise
  Teach what you know, or educate by example and help your audience to elevate their own skills.
• Entertainment: Help people have fun!
  Comedy shows, quizzes: some great podcasts have no other aim than to entertain their audience, and grow great fans as a result.

So, what’s the bottom line with all this? Unless you answer the question of “why?” then you won’t be best positioned to design podcast content that’ll match your ambitions and objectives. You are building the foundations of your metaphorical house, so it’s worth a little extra thought (and work) to get it right!

Your Tasks

Grab a pen and paper, and write this down:

Pick a purpose: why are you running this show?

(Optional) deeper dive into your podcast purpose and “WHY”

Alrighty, our WHY is in place! Let’s get into HOW we’ll do it.

Watch a Full Guide to the PATH Framework:

Audience: Who is your Podcast For?

Unless you know exactly who you’re making your show for, you’ve got no chance of growing an audience.

A lot of smart people talk about creating an “ideal listener” for your show, sometimes called a podcast listener persona or avatar. It’s a great idea. Who exactly is it that’ll love your content?

That persona is something to keep in mind every time you plan an episode: “Would John, our listener persona, like this? Is this focused on what he likes, what he’s interested in?”

This all helps to keep your show focused and on track, both of which make for more engaging episode content.

And for growth, that listener persona drives every decision. The name, the description, the messages you put out on social media, the trailers you create. They’re all designed to tickle the fancy of that specific listener.

Your Tasks

Describe your ideal listener in a sentence
(Optional) Create an in-depth listener avatar

Topic: What am I Talking About?

So, what’s the show about? This is usually the easy part. So, let’s get it noted down before we dig into parts that really make it zing! A lot of this comes down to who YOU are, and to your experiences.

Your Tasks

Who are you, on this show?
What do you want to talk about?

Get specific on the who. This won’t cover everything about who you are. We contain multitudes, after all! But, when it comes to this show, who are you?

Hallmark: Why Should They Listen to YOUR Show?

We now know who you want to reach, and what you’ll talk about. So, how do you stand out?

You need to find your hallmark. It’s what compels your ideal audience to listen to YOUR show, above all others. But how?

Find a UNIQUE angle – that’s your hallmark.

Here are some of the most common hallmarks:

• Tight Niche: Solve a specific problem for a specific person
• Personal Angle: Your unique take on an existing topic
• Podcast Format: Create a unique format for your niche
• Production Quality: Extra time & effort on audio polish
• Outcome: Create a unique outcome that’s appealing

This step is all about figuring out why your show is adding something new to the topic.

Then, any time you tell someone about it, it becomes really easy to tell anyone why they need to listen to your show.

And, not only have you given them a reason to listen, but you’ve also given them a reason to come back for more, and tell their friends about it!

Your Tasks

Write down your unique approach

Need more help on this, as well as a bunch more examples? Here’s an article: How to Make a Podcast More Unique

Some Podcast Plan Examples

Let’s lay out some examples a nicely defined PATH, so we can see how it works.

The health show:

• Purpose: Podcasting for my Business
• Audience: Interested in weight loss, getting fit and eating better
• Topic: Health and Fitness
• Hallmark: I’m a personal trainer. I used to be very overweight, but I found CrossFit and lost 50 pounds. I’ll use my experience to help you repeat my feat by sharing a short HIIT workout that I know overweight people can actually complete.

The pop culture podcast:

• Purpose: Podcasting about my Hobby
• Audience: The same as me! Watches the Walking Dead and the Last of Us. Plays Resident Evil. Loves Contagion and 28 days later.
• Topic: Post-apocalyptic books, movies, games, TV shows
• Hallmark: I’m a huge fan of post-apocalyptic fiction. I’ll niche down on audience AND topic. I’ll choose Zombie films only, so this is the Zombie film show. And I’m 51, so I’ll target older fans of the genre, delving back into classic Zombie films and fiction as much as covering the new material.

The entertainment podcast:

• Why: To entertain & have fun
• Audience: Enjoys improvisation comedy, great storytelling & wacky humour
• Topic: Creating a new fiction story every week
• Hallmark: We are four friends who are into improvisation. We’re going to record our main story, but with a few alternative endings, every week. We’ll take suggestions from our listeners and record three of them, including them in the main episode. We’ll include chapters so listeners can skip to their favourite, or, listen to all three.

FAQ: Do I Need an Audience to Start a Podcast?

Absolutely not!

Everyone starts with zero at some point. So, if this is your first content rodeo, podcasting is a great place to start. It’s actually a great place to experiment, to try new things, to test out topics and find your voice.

Once you’ve found that groove, you can expand into other mediums, too.

If you DO already have an audience, even a small one, what then? This could be anything from a business or brand to a musician, former athlete, or author.

Whatever the medium (social media, YouTube, blog), it’s a great kernel for your show’s fanbase.

During the planning stages, you may opt to survey your audience. Here, you can ask them things like “What’s your biggest pain point?” and “What are you struggling with right now?”. This could help you shape your content, going forward.

You might even choose to find out a bit more about them. This could be anything from demographics and location, to what other podcasts (if any) they enjoy listening to.

FAQ: How Many People Consume Podcasts in 2025?

There’s no point doing all the hard work to create content in a medium nobody pays attention to. Fortunately, podcasting is not that medium.

To give you some perspective, 85% of people in the US are familiar with the concept of podcasting, with 55% consuming one each month, and 40% catching up with their favourite shows weekly. These are all stats from the Infinite Dial Report 2025.

So rest assured, your audience is out there. We just need to lay the groundwork to go out there and hook them with your brilliant content.

2. Define Your Show Structure & Format

Now that we know what kind of show we’re creating, it’s time to figure out how it looks! (or sounds…?). So, when looking at how to start a podcast, what are the most common questions about how it’s delivered?

What Podcast Format Should I Choose?

The format you choose is really personal and depends on who’s involved. It’s totally up to you!

So, what are the common types of podcast show formats?

The Solo Podcast

Also known as the monologue. You record (sing along!) “all-by-my-seeeeelfff!”

Pros

• Don’t rely on anyone else
• No scheduling conflicts
• Building a reputation individually as the authority
• You call the shots on sponsorship and monetization
• No need to split the profits with anyone.

Cons

• Intimidating to record alone for the beginner podcaster
• Takes practice to avoid a monotone sound
• Can be less engaging than a conversation

The Co-Hosted Podcast

Presenting alongside a friend or colleague.

Pros

• Avoids the ‘mic fright’ of recording alone
• Good co-hosts create great chemistry and engaging content
• Builds long-term loyalty with two or more hosts
• Can set up a regular recording time to reduce scheduling admin

Cons

• Needs careful agreement over ownership and responsibility
• Need to split earnings
• Have to manage two people’s schedules

The Interview Podcast

‘Borrowing’ the expertise or entertainment value of others.

Pros

• Talk to your heroes, or other really interesting people
• Bring in different points of view & varied expertise
• Grow your network
• Some growth benefits if they share the episode

Cons

• Interviewing is a real skill: it’s hard to do a great interview
• Need to constantly find and approach potential guests
• Booking logistics, and scheduling interviews
• Builds less loyalty since it’s a new person every week
• And less spotlight on building your brand

Other Formats

Finally, there are a bunch of other formats that aren’t so commonly used but might well suit you.

For example, you’ve got:

• Roundtable – One regular host and several guests discussing one specific topic (e.g. The Game Design Roundtable).
• Documentary – A narrator walks you through a range of interviews, conversations and on-location clips to paint a picture (e.g. Startup)
• Docu-Drama – A mix between drama and documentary. Offering learning and info, but in an entertaining way (e.g. Hostile Worlds).

How Long Should a Podcast Episode Be?

This always depends on your content, but here are some stats on average podcast episode length:

Don’t worry too much about these figures, though. Ultimately, your episode lengths should be decided by two things.

1. Your content
2. Your audience

If you have 50 minutes of valuable, relevant content, why chop it down to 20? Or likewise, if you’ve said everything you have to say in 10 minutes, why pad it out to 30? If you do go super-long on an interview, just cut it down into two episodes!

Finally, length can actually be a ‘unique’ factor, as I mentioned earlier. Short and snappy 4-minute episodes could suit a certain type of listener, or huge 3-hour in-depth interviews might suit another. Think about whether length might be a deliberate, unique choice for you.

How Often Should I Release New Episodes?

So, how often should you podcast? Here’s the answer:

So, if you can only manage once a month, that’s fine. If you can manage every two weeks, even better. If you can manage weekly, that’s great.

You can still have a big impact with a fortnightly or monthly show, but people often plan their lives around what day of the week their favourite shows drop.

That said, sticking to a deadline just for the sake of it is pointless. You’ll have a bigger impact if you put out one excellent episode a month instead of a very average episode every week.

Should I Make a Daily Podcast?

These are hard! They tend to be short-sharp, “one quick tip” style, running Monday through Friday.

Becoming part of your listener’s daily routine can be powerful, but it’s a huge amount of work to create.

With my daily show, Pocket-Sized Podcasting, I batch all of the work. Scripting, recording, editing, production, and publishing an entire week takes about 3 hours. That’s one way to make it sustainable!

Should I Podcast In Seasons?

A “season” is a series of episodes all around one topic or theme.

Our fitness podcaster, for example, might do an entire season on upper body strength, whilst our zombie podcaster could do one on post-apocalyptic video games.

There are a bunch of benefits:

• Addictive to listeners because episodes are related
• Your back catalogue is more organised
• Repurposing is really easy: turn one season into a course
• Work towards a goal (end of season), then take a break!
• Good excuse to text new formats & approaches each season

But do you lose listeners during the break? In my experience, no!

Just communicate well. Tell them when you’ll return.

And in any case, they’re subscribed, so next time you release an episode, it’ll just pop up in their app!

How to Create Great Episode Titles

This is the final thing around formatting, and a really important one to be found in search. Choosing good descriptive episode titles is vital!

Here are two mistakes I see all the time!

Episode numbers or unknown names just get in the way of the ‘hook’. Because the goal of your title is one thing, and one thing only: give them a reason to listen that they just can’t ignore!

• What’s the real meat of the episode?
• If there’s one key takeaway or solution here, what is it?

This is a big clue as to what your episode title should be.

Our WHISPER TITLES Framework won’t only help you come up with killer titles, it’ll give you infinite new content ideas too:

• W – “What” or “Why” Titles (e.g. “Why You’re Always Tired”)
• H – “How to” Titles (e.g. “How to Launch a Business with No Money”)
• I – “Insider” Titles (e.g. “Inside Apple’s Secret Process”)
• S – “Secrets” Titles (e.g. “The Secret to Lasting Happiness”)
• P – “Problem-Solution” Titles (e.g. “Feeling Stuck? Do This”)
• E – “Emotion-Driven” Titles (e.g. “The Truth About Burnout”)
• R – “Results-Oriented” Titles (e.g. “Get Fit in 30 Days”)
• T – Trending & Timely Titles (e.g. “AI Just Changed Everything”)
• I – Intrigue & Mystery Titles (e.g. “This One App Changes Everything”)
• T – “Top List” Titles (e.g. “7 Habits of Successful People”)
• L – “Life-Changing” Titles (e.g. “The Power of Saying No”)
• E – Expert or Contrarian Takes (e.g. “Everything You Know is Wrong About…”)

Video or Audio? Or Both?!

It’s funny; in the early days, it was solely about audio podcasts, but these days, it all kind of blends together.

It’s possible to record a video podcast in great quality, using a lot of the call recording platforms you’ll read about in Step 5. But it does introduce a whole lot of extra factors that can make things more difficult.

Here’s my take:

1. Don’t believe the hype; you don’t NEED to do a video podcast. Audio podcasts are still vastly more popular, and extremely powerful.
2. Video (good video, at least) is far harder to create and edit. It can also make people more self-conscious, reducing the quality of the content.

So, normally, I’d recommend starting with audio only and adding video podcasting at a later date if your audience shows a desire for it!

This post contains affiliate links to products and services that we recommend, at no extra cost to you.

3. Establish Your Podcast’s Brand

In the world of podcasting, our brand is in all three realms:

Let’s get that sorted before we get into making the thing!

How Do I Choose a Good Podcast Name?

No “how to start a podcast” guide is complete without answering this most common of questions: What the flip do I call the thing?

 Generate a Podcast Name With the Alitu Showplanner

There are three main camps for choosing a podcast title and naming your show.

Option 1: The Clever Name

You might think of a really clever name for your show. But remember that people need to be able to find it when they’re searching for information about your topic. If you have a clever/catchy name for your show, try incorporating a description into the title. There’s no point putting out great content if nobody can find it.

For example, one of my old shows was called Path of Most Resistance. It probably falls into the ‘clever name’ category, even though I’m not that clever… So, to give a bit of description, I also used the tagline: The Uncommon Leader’s Guide.

Here are a few shows that do this well. They’re creative, but are still reasonably clear. Note, though, you’re probably still not 100% sure what they’re about. That’s the downside of this approach!

Beyond the Bump
Behind the Bastards
Should you Really Eat That?

Option 2: The Descriptive Name

The searchable (but some might say boring) choice is to simply call your podcast what your target audience is searching for. If our personal trainer called her show The Fitness Podcast, then there’s absolutely no doubt as to what it’s about. Look at these great examples:

The Australian Finance Podcast (Topic & audience)
The Ask a Cycling Coach Podcast (Topic & format)

It works really well for search and for recognition, but some people feel it can be a little… well… boring!

But, consider this: is attracting a zillion new listeners boring?! It is NOT. Simplicity and clarity are the best ways to do that!

It’s totally fine to add a few words to the topic name to build some character, but make sure the main keyword is fully mentioned in the final podcast name. Look at these examples; all really clear but still a little bit of personality and wordplay:

Diary of a CEO
The Rest is Politics
How Other Dads Dad

Option 3: Using Your Own Name

This is pretty much a no-no unless you’ve already got an audience. If someone started The Mike Smith Show and it was about rock climbing, people would just think, “Who is Mike Smith?” and move on to the next podcast. Again, you can incorporate this into your show’s name along with something descriptive (‘Rock Climbing, with Mike Smith’). But avoid naming the show after you without any other details.

The Mel Robbins Podcast
The Tim Ferriss Show
The Lise & Sarah Show
Ask Lisa: The Psychology of Parenting

Finding Music for Your Podcast

There’s no rule to say your show must have music, but many podcasters include a theme to add a bit of polish.

You might have seen TV shows with a minute or more of intro music, but don’t copy this in your podcast. I’d say keep it shorter than 10 seconds, and fade into your voice from there.

If you go beyond 10 to 15s you’re going to train your audience to hit the skip button.

Here are two great options for finding podcast-safe music:

• Subscription music sites: like Shutterstock or AudioHero
  Pay Monthly to use all of their music or FX
• Podcast Production Tools: like Alitu
  Music library included inside the recording & editing tool

If you want to see some more options (including some possible no-cost options if you’re wondering how to start a podcast for free) here’s all the music you can legally use on your podcast.

How to Create Your Podcast Cover Art

Sadly, first impressions are still everything! Attractive cover art is vital to stand out against thousands of others in apps like Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Here’s some podcast artwork recommendations:

• 1400px x 1400px minimum size
• jpeg or png in format
• Keep text short & large, so it shows up on small thumbnails
• Keep the artwork simple and bold, to stand out

You can create decent cover art for free on Canva. They even have podcast logo templates on there. Or, you might want to hire a freelancer on a platform like Fiverr if you’d like someone to do it for you.

Cover art (sometimes called a podcast logo) is a bit like choosing a podcast name in many ways. You’re trying to find that balance between descriptiveness, cleverness, and quirkiness, all in one static image. And it all still needs to work well when viewed as a thumbnail on a phone screen.

4. Set Up Your Podcasting Equipment

Once you’ve done the groundwork and planned out your show, it’s time to get to work recording your first episode.

How to Choose Your Audio Equipment

This is where it’s really, really easy to overcomplicate things. Instead, let’s keep it simple. Because the bare minimum you need to podcast is a recording device and the internet!

Smartphone recordings can actually be just fine to start out (hold it to your face like you’re doing a call, and hit record!). But, using an external USB microphone is a wise, low-cost upgrade that won’t complicate things.

Top USB Microphones

• Samson Q2U / ATR2100: two near-identical podcast microphones, both sub-$100 and great quality.
• Rode Podcaster: great podcast mic, significant upgrade, around $150

Microphone Stands

The Samson comes with a small mic stand, but a nice upgrade is a boom arm mic stand, to give you a bit more flexibility.

• Rode PSA-1 Mic Stand: rock solid and decent value at $80.
• Neewer Boom Arm: Budget choice. Bit rickety, but does the job!

Portable Setup for In-Person Interviews

If you want to stick with smartphone recording, the kit has come on leaps and bounds these past few years.

The best option out there right now is the Rode Wireless Micro. This gives you two little mics that attach to your clothing, letting you record guests or co-hosts straight into your phone.

• Rode Wireless Micro Review
• BOYA Mini – a great alternative to the Wireless Micro

If you get serious about in-person recordings, consider the:

• Zoom PodTrak P4.

The P4 is a dedicated podcast recorder that lets you record four participants locally, as well as remote guests, both on the phone and online. It’s a fantastic all-rounder piece of podcast equipment.

Other Gear

• Good Headphones: Highly recommended for recording
• The Logitech C920 Webcam
• Podcast Mixers and Interfaces

For a full guide to all the gear options we recommend, go here:

Complete Guide to Podcast Equipment

5. Pick your Recording & Editing Tools

Nice work, you’ve plugged in your USB microphone or your audio interface! But how do you capture a podcast recording? How do you edit the audio file? Including audio recording, removing mistakes and background noise reduction, it’s time to pick your podcast software.

The good news is that there are plenty of great packages that do both recording AND editing. Let’s take a look.

Online Call Recording Software

Whether you have a co-host in another country or regular interviewees from all around the world, it isn’t difficult to create a podcast recording with them.

1. Alitu

Alitu includes both solo and call recording inside one recording studio. Reliable, includes audio cleanup (noise reduction, levelling, etc) and tied directly to Alitu’s editing tools, it’s a complete package.

2. Zoom

I mean, everyone knows Zoom now, right? So, super easy to share and use. Also free for up to 45 minutes. The quality is… fine… but isn’t A+.

3. Riverside

Riverside offers a range of features related to video recording and repurposing, including simple text-based editing, video clipping and its own streaming platform.

4. Squadcast

Another double-ender recorder, Squadcast captures great-quality audio and video.

For full details, read: Best Call Recording Platforms

Audio Editing Tools (+ Solo Recording!)

These are our picks for podcast editing software, but bear in mind they all offer solo recording, too, for those all-important podcast intros, adverts or solo episodes.

1. Audacity

Audacity is a good quality, free-of-charge audio editing package. It’s a bit old and clunky, but it’s free, and does a good job! It’s a fully featured digital audio workstation, so there’s a bit of a learning curve, but most of the features you need as a podcaster are quick to learn.

It includes everything you’d expect in a digital audio workstation (DAW), including multitrack editing and a range of manual audio cleanup tools, so you can get your audio quality up to par.

2. Alitu

Alitu: The Podcast Maker is designed to be the easiest audio editing experience on the market, tailored specifically for podcasters. It has everything else you need to run your show, too, like podcast hosting.

This web app records your audio (solo or remote call) and automates the audio cleanup, volume levelling, and EQ for optimum audio quality. Its editing tools are simple, and you can even chop out audio by deleting text in Alitu’s auto-generated transcripts!

The episode builder is a simple drag-and-drop interface for adding music, sponsor segments, etc. Then, you can directly publish via Alitu’s own hosting so your show is pushed out to places like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all other listening apps.

If you’ve never worked with audio before and find the very thought intimidating, then Alitu was made for you. If you want to see how it works, check out my guide on making a podcast with Alitu.

3. Adobe Audition

Adobe Audition is a great Pro-level production tool, ideally suited to full audio engineers. Great workflow and feature-rich, but a steep learning curve. It’s available through a paid subscription.

Here, you can compare Adobe Audition vs. Audacity.

4. Garageband

For what it’s worth, if you’re a Mac user, you will probably have Garageband installed by default on your machine. This is popular audio software with podcasters too, although recent versions have really cut down the features it offers. These days, I’d recommend that even Mac users get hold of Audacity as a free alternative.

What about the Computer?

The humble laptop fits nicely between the bulky desktop (don’t you ever try to move me, ever!) and the dainty mobile phone (take me everywhere you go, and please, doomscroll me to your heart’s content). So, if you’re looking for a new one:

What’s the best laptop for podcasting?

Or, even easier, you can Start a Podcast with a mobile phone.

6. Present & Record Your 1st Episode

Time to get this thing down on tape. Or… the 21st-century equivalent, anyway! Let’s cover presentation skills and recording that audio.

How to Script your Podcast

Finally, we’re ready to hit ‘Record’! But what will you say? That’s where podcast scripting comes in. Here’s two tips:

Word-for-word scripts give you confidence & cover the details, but they’re time-consuming to write & hard to read naturally.
Create a bullet-point outline to guide you, but one that keeps you flexible and conversational when recording.

The intimate nature of podcasting is far more suited to a conversation rather than a sermon. Feel free to use more detailed scripts in the early days, but try to work towards more flexible, natural outlines over time.

Read more on scripting, with examples

How to Talk Into a Mic

This is hard when you start out, no question. Especially if you’re doing a solo show! Here’s some advice:

• Put a photo or teddy (?!) on a chair behind the mic, to have a ‘person’ to talk to.
• Imagine your audience avatar in your head: speak to them.
• Take confidence in the fact that you have a message to share, and there are people who want to hear it!

Once you’ve got the confidence to begin, it’s time for technique! Our mic technique for podcasters guide covers everything you need.

7. Editing Your Podcast

Gear: check!

Software: check!

Irrational hatred of your own recorded voice: check!

But you’ve recorded it anyway. Strong move. Now, how do we polish it up nice, so it can be catapulted out into the world?

This is where you take your podcast recording, edit out mistakes, stitch together audio clips, add music or FX, and make sure it all sounds great with EQ, levelling, compression, and more. Let’s look at how it all works.

How Much Editing Do I Need to Do?

From awkward pauses to uhms and ahs, there are no shortage of things you could edit out in the post-production phase.

If you want a starter guide on what type of editing to do, check out my article on the MEE Podcast Production process. This keeps editing simple, sustainable, and consistent.

Here’s the rundown, though. For your first ten episodes, keep it really, really simple.

Here’s a minimum podcast editing plan:

• Trim the start & end
• Volume Levelling (video guide here)
• Publish!

Here’s a more polished podcast editing workflow:

• Trim the start & End
• Remove mistakes (with a click edit)
• Volume Levelling (video guide here)
• Noise reduction
• Add music
• Publish!

It’s possible to do a lot more, but honestly, the improvement to time ratio just doesn’t provide enough value in many cases.

You could learn EQ and Compression for example to really polish up your voice. But, this is well worth outsourcing, either to software, or to a freelancer (below).

Outsourcing: The Hands-Free Option

For some, if you have the budget, it’s better to hire in help for this!

You’ll find podcast editors for all budgets and requirements over at our Podcast Production Directory.

What File Type Should I Use for Podcasting?

The most common format for uploading a podcast episode is an MP3 file. That’s why so many people ask us how to convert from wav to mp3…!

Not all MP3 files are created equal, though. If you’re exporting yourself, here’s what to go for:

• Bitrate? Choose 96kbps for spoken-word audio
• Constant (CBR) Vs Variable (VBR) bitrate? Choose CBR
• Mono or stereo? Go mono, unless you’ve got loads of music and sound effects
• Sample rate? Opt for 44100Hz

If this seems like the sort of stuff that melts your brain, remember that podcast-maker tool Alitu does this all for you automatically!

8. Set up Your Podcast Hosting

When it comes to getting your podcast out there for everyone to hear, you’ll need a podcast hosting platform, sometimes called a media host.

A podcast host is where you store your audio files, set up your episodes, and publish them to the world. No need to upload anything to the directories, like Apple Podcasts or Spotify. They read the episodes right from your podcast host through your RSS feed (more on submitting to directories in the next step!)

I use a few different podcast hosting providers, and you can read what I think of them in that dedicated roundup. But here’s the TLDR;

• Alitu: Hosting tied in with call recording, audio editing & audio cleanup, plus podcast analytics, transcriptions, podcast distribution and more.
• RSS.com: Superb value-for-money service, fully localized in three languages (English, Spanish, and Italian), which includes customer support. Use promo code THEPODCASTHOST to get free months.
• Captivate: Growth-focused podcast hosting, with tools like media kit generation, dynamic ad insertion, multiple podcasts, podcast distribution and excellent podcast analytics
• Castos: a host focused on private podcasting & linked with a strong production service

Your Podcast Website: Publish Your Shownotes & Player

What about a website for your pod? You’ll want one place for people to read more about your show, access the show notes, signup for your newsletter, and a lot more. There are a few options for this:

1. A Podcast Host Website: Most podcast hosts offer a free website to work as a home base. They’re free and easy, and perfect for hobby shows. But, they can be restrictive.
2. Your existing brand website: Add a ‘podcast section’ and start publishing a page for every episode there (Read: how to install podcasting tools on your website)
3. Podpage: This is a dedicated tool to set up a podcast site in minutes, and includes blogging, growth tools, newsletters and more. Great option for a flexible, powerful site.
4. WordPress: Set up a new WordPress site, dedicated to your podcast. Super flexible, as powerful as it gets, but a little more work to build and maintain (read: podcast websites guide)

For 2 to 4, you’ll add your audio content to your shownotes pages by embedding your podcast player in your blog posts, straight from your host. This is really easy, generally just a cut and paste!

9. Submitting to Podcast Directories

Once you’ve created your show inside your podcast host of choice, you can then submit it to a podcast directory. These are the podcast platforms that handle your podcast distribution, and where listeners can discover, subscribe to, and download your show.

Any good host will have a decent set of auto-submit or guided-submission tools. So, they make it easy to get your show into Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and other popular spots (although forget about Google Podcasts now!).

You need to have at least one published episode in order to submit your show to some key directories. It’s a good idea to create a short teaser, podcast trailer, or episode zero early on in your podcasting journey. This way, you can ensure you’re being listed on all popular platforms in time for you dropping your first “proper” episode.

Once your podcast is out there, the way podcast listings work varies from platform to platform. For example, Apple Podcast search will favour shows with high numbers of all-time followers, while Google Podcasts used to be mainly focused on search keywords. That means that established shows can have the upper hand when it comes to discovery, so take on board my podcast naming advice from earlier in this guide.

Next Step How to Submit to Podcast Directories

10. Set Your Launch & Growth Plan

Once you’ve set up your podcast launch, that’s when you’ll move on to thinking about podcast promotion, building your listener base, and maybe even earning a crust from your show.

Get Your First 100 Listeners (and Beyond)

When it comes to podcast promotion, growth and visibility, I work with the SCALE Framework:

• S – Syndication
• C – Communities & Collaboration
• A – Advertising (Paid Promotion)
• L – Live & In-Person
• E – Email & Engagement

I break the SCALE Framework down for you in our Ultimate Podcast Marketing & Promotion Guide. And here are a few more options for you to bookmark and check out.

• The Podcast Host Planner (Physical Notebook)
• Podcast Growth Mastery (Video Course)
• Podcast Growth: How to Grow Your Podcast Audience (Book)

Try at least a few of these in the first few months, and you’ve every chance of reaching far more of your target audience.

A Caution on Podcast Download Numbers

Podcast hosting services give you download stats which help you gauge how your show is doing. You can also get some platform-specific data from the likes of Spotify, Apple Podcasts Connect, and YouTube.

Download stats can become an obsession, especially when comparing yourself to any popular podcast. But there are so many variables when it comes to what are “good” download numbers. You might be surprised to learn that many successful podcasters thrive with “only” a few hundred downloads per episode.

So don’t compare yourself with others. Just try to improve every week.

Podcast Monetization (Earning a shilling!)

If you put the work in, stick at it, and consistently deliver great content for your audience, then you’ll eventually be in a position to think about monetizing your podcast. Here are a couple of resources to get you up and running:

• Our Ultimate Guide on How to Monetize a Podcast
• Affiliate Marketing for New Podcasters

Want to Watch a Full Guide on Making a Pod?

Need More Personal Help in Starting?

The Podcraft Academy is our coaching, support & community space, designed to help you take action and grow this show of yours! Including:

• Live regular Q&As with our team
• Launch & Growth Frameworks to follow
• Time-saving checklists & templates
• In-depth courses on editing, presentation skills, workflow & more
• Community motivation, conversations & support

We’d love to see you there!

Sign up for the Academy here

About the Author

If you’re asking – “Who’s this guy? How does he know what he’s talking about?” – then that’s totally fair

I’m Colin Gray, and I started out in podcasting around 2008. I remember the day I walked into my boss’ office at a Uni in Edinburgh, Scotland, and she said: “What’s this Podcasting thing? Could we use that to teach our students?”

I had no idea! My job at the time was to teach lecturers how to teach better with technology, though, and I’m a bit (a lot…?) of a geek, so I jumped into the world of mics, audio cleanup & speaking… and I never looked back!

In the years following, I left the Uni to go full-time on this. I inhaled everything podcasting, learning anything I could, and turned that knowledge into this website you’re reading right now. In 2015, I started working with Matthew McLean, a veteran audio drama producer, after a chance meeting in Birmingham. Together, we built this site to 2 million+ views a year. We started Podcraft, and grew it to a top 1% podcast. We reach tens of thousands of podcasters through our newsletter every week. I’ve spoken on stages around the world, and we’ve helped start thousands of podcasts over the years.

All this to say: I really love this medium. It changed my life, and I’ve seen it change hundreds of others. We’ve been in this a long time, but we’re still learning. Every day. All of that learning goes into the writing we publish here on The Podcast Host, aimed at helping you do the same.

So, if you’re up for it, read on and let’s get that fantastic voice of yours out into the world

How to Start a Podcast: Raring to Go?

Phew. That’s it. We’re done!

Don’t forget to bookmark my post here, so you can pop back every time you move on a step.

Good luck with the show, and I can’t wait to see your voice out in the world

Video is killing podcasts! Video is saving podcasting! If you’re not doing video, what’s the point? It’s a lot.

Regardless of which side of the fence you sit on, there’s one thing I’m sure we can all agree on: Every show is different, and adding video unnecessarily could kill your podcast.

So rather than continuously examining contradictory data or choosing which hill to die on, I spoke to some podcasters about their real-life experiences adding video to their workflow and the results (and challenges) it can bring. 

5 Video Podcaster Case Studies

1. Darren Lake/ DLake

Host of the 1% Better Runner podcast

“Video is three times harder, but worth the effort”

Darren Lake, otherwise known as DLake, never actually set out to be a podcaster. He just wanted to create a platform where he could explore “weird content” about running. 

In the first three years, he produced about 40 audio-only episodes. But despite trying “every trick in the book” to grow his audio podcast, it struggled to gain traction: “I couldn’t crack the [running] niche, for whatever reason. Maybe I was too late.”

Adding a video component became a no-brainer. For one thing, running is a subject that has a lot more impact when visuals are included. His listeners repeatedly told him, “You should be on YouTube,” and “You have the perfect style for YouTube.” It also helped that Darren already had a lot of experience in front of the camera from his days as a music artist. It felt like “a very natural transition” for him.

He began experimenting with video in 2021 but didn’t immediately publish any content. Instead, he accumulated a backlog of 25 videos, which he then released all at once in 2023. The impact of this strategy was fast and transformative. 

The “YouTube algorithm is beautiful.”

Within 18 months of adding video, he gained 3.5 times the audience he had built in 6 years with audio-only content. He told me his content regularly performs 10-100 times better on video platforms than audio-only, with one particular video alone earning him 1,000 YouTube subscribers.

Since posting regular short videos twice weekly, he gains approximately 100 new streams per month on Spotify too. “When people know you have a YouTube, they’ll go to your podcast, they’ll go to Spotify, they’ll go to your Instagram“—but rarely, he says, the other way around.

Lake discovered that YouTube offers tremendous leverage: “I put in a little bit extra work for video, and I get 10, 20X, a hundred [views in return].” 

It’s worth noting that Darren’s video content is quite different from his audio-only; he adapts it heavily for YouTube so he can optimize for visual audiences. So instead of simply filming his long-form podcast sessions, he totally repurposes his content for a YouTube audience. 

Here’s how he does it:

• He shortens episodes to 10-15 minutes
• Adopts an “explainer style” format, talking directly to camera
• Implements scripting to make content more focused
• Optimizes topics based on YouTube search trends – “pillar content that people are searching for”

While he acknowledges that “video is three times harder” than audio, for him, the return on investment justifies the effort.

Lake’s financial investment in YouTube has been relatively modest—approximately $500 in total.

2. John Kundtz

Host of The Disruptor podcast

“To produce a successful video podcast, you need to either outsource post-production or take the time to learn how to edit videos effectively.”

When John Kudtz launched The Disruptor podcast, he recorded both video and audio from day one. “I recorded the shows in video and audio. Then, during post-production, I would publish either the audio-only or video podcast,” he told me. 

He did this because he’d been hearing a lot about the benefits of YouTube for growth and monetization: “I heard that YouTube was an easier platform to monetize and that the reach could potentially be greater because of the search nature and the algorithms of YouTube.”

Video investment challenges

But publishing a video component to his podcast wasn’t as straightforward as he’d hoped. John quickly discovered the hidden complexities of video podcasting, including:

• Time investment: “I examined how much time I was spending on pre-production compared to post-production. [Video editing] led to a significant cost in terms of my time.”
• Technical hurdles: “I’m not a video engineer and found video editing quite time-consuming and not enjoyable.”
• Cost: Eventually, John hired someone to handle the post-production video editing and creating thumbnails, costing him around $300 to $400 per show for a one-hour episode.

After publishing eight video podcasts, John reevaluated his workflow and pulled back to publishing audio-only, re-platforming his show to Buzzsprout. “My video podcasts weren’t gaining much traction,” he says, “so I couldn’t justify continuing the investment of time and money into post-production and editing.”

Since going audio-only, his production output has increased substantially. He’s currently sitting at 33 episodes. 

He says he owes a lot of his audio podcast production to modern tools – especially AI. “With tools like Descript, I can edit an audio podcast extremely quickly, upload it to Buzzsprout, use the AI tools in both the Descript and Buzzsprout to create show notes, and then stage and release the show – usually within a couple of hours after recording.” This sort of workflow simply isn’t possible when video is involved. 

Doing what makes sense for your podcast

John says he’s happy he tested the water with video, but made the pragmatic business decision to pivot back to audio as video just didn’t make sense. It’s also worth noting that, as a business podcast, John’s primary goal isn’t growth: “My strategy isn’t to drive views, downloads, or engagement. It’s a marketing and branding exercise. I primarily use it to promote my business one-on-one.”

John Kudtz’s journey is a masterclass in adaptability. His most significant insight? “The biggest lesson I learned is that to produce a high-quality video podcast, you either need to outsource the post-production work or take the time to learn how to edit videos effectively.”

3. dCarrie 

Host of the Travel n Sh!t podcast

“It’s absolutely been worth it.”

dCarrie is the host of the Travel n Sh!t podcast. Her journey into video podcasting was born from a ‘why not?’ approach.

After 53 episodes of audio-only content, D saw video as a natural extension of her podcasting workflow. “It felt easy to add!” she says, “All I’d have to do was add a camera and upload the footage.“

But she had one major advantage: She already had a free video editor on board. “I generally ‘employ’ an editor [conveniently, her fiancé!], and I don’t do much editing to my audio as is, so there weren’t too many extra steps to getting the extra content,” she says. Therefore, all the common technical barriers podcasters experience shifting to video were minimal.

But adding video wasn’t just about pressing ‘record’ and letting her fiancé do the rest. D invested time and resources into creating a quality recording space. “Setup does take effort,” she admits. “Getting lighting in order, and occasionally updating my recording set are things that I have spent time and money on. I love my recording space though, so it’s absolutely been worth it.“

Unexpected benefits of video

For D, the best part about adding video to her podcast wasn’t seeing growth in her analytics, but something more fundamental: engagement with her listeners. 

“Unfortunately, no“, she laughs when I ask about tracking data, “I don’t really monitor any of that. I will say, though, that my video episodes are the only places where I see any comments.”

“I actually receive likes and comments on the YouTube content, but not the audio.” 

Like many of the podcasters I spoke to, D also finds that bringing video into her interview episodes makes the whole experience more engaging and enjoyable: “I enjoy being able to see the faces of the people I’m talking to. It gives me a sense of how the convo is going and how or when to shift the discussion.”

4. Matty Lansdown 

Host of the How to Not Get Sick and Die podcast

“Audio, I could do any time of the day… whereas with video, I feel like you’ve got to put a lot more thought into it.”

When Matty Lansdown’s podcast hit a download plateau, he knew something had to change. Over the years, he’d established a loyal following, but growth had stagnated. “I hit a ceiling,” he said. “I bounce somewhere between 19,000 and 24,000 every single month with audio only.” 

At episode 230, Matty made the bold decision to introduce a video component to his podcast. The primary driver was the post-pandemic podcast listening dip: “I moved to video in an attempt to reach more people, realizing that COVID stopped a lot of people driving to work, listening to podcasts in cars and on trains as regularly as they were before.“

Two years and 200 video episodes later, Matty admits he’s a bit underwhelmed by the results: “To be honest, from the data, it’s pretty uninspiring.” His YouTube channel has 800 subscribers, with 5,000 to 7,000 YouTube views per month. Decent, but not yet as transformative as he’d hoped.

Biggest learning? Video and audio are very different

Video podcasting proved to be far more resource-intensive than Matty initially anticipated. “The most time and most money that I spend is on video editors,” he explains. Where an audio podcast might take around 4 hours for him to produce, video editing( especially creating shorts) became a much more complex process.

Matty’s biggest learning has been that video and audio are very different, and if you’re doing video you need to spend a lot of time and effort making it engaging. 

“You have to create engaging content just like you do with the audio podcast because otherwise, nobody will watch it,” he says. “Audio, I could do any time of the day… whereas with video, I feel like you’ve got to put a lot more thought into the visual aspect.” From lighting to wardrobe, video just simply demands more.

But despite the underwhelming returns so far, Matty is optimistic about the future of his video content: “My experience in business is that, at some point, there’s an exponential kick with the data, and then it’s like, oh, all of that work paid off.”

5. Joe Casabona 

Host of the Streamlined Solopreneur podcast

“As podcasters, we’re content creators, and creating content is a constant experiment.“

Joe Casabona is a podcast coach who’s been running his own show for over nine years. In the summer of 2024, Joe tried adding a video component to his long-running audio podcast when he noticed a dip in his download numbers: “For the last year or so, my downloads have been down. Anecdotally, it sounds like a lot of podcasters’ downloads have been down.”

As both a podcast coach and longtime content creator, Joe felt responsible to adapt: “The podcast landscape is changing, and as a podcast coach, and a longtime podcaster, I think it’s incumbent upon myself to try different things.”

“Creating content is a constant experiment,” he says, “Just like you need to get your car inspected and you need to change your oil and rotate your tires. You can’t just start a podcast, do it one way, and then never think about it again.”

After producing approximately 430 audio-only episodes, Joe began incorporating video last year. Adding video wasn’t logistically difficult because he was already using tools to record his show that supported video. His editor had also added video editing to their services, so he didn’t have to look for production either.

The “communal impact” of adding video

Six months in, Joe hasn’t seen significant growth in audience numbers yet: “Compared to other platforms, I’m not seeing an appreciable bump.” However, it’s still early days, and traction takes time: “Experiments take time, and you can’t just put out one video, and it fails and be like, ‘well, video doesn’t work.‘”

He also believes the slow traction is mostly down to his established audience habits: “Because I’ve been around so long, most of my listeners are on Apple Podcasts.”

Like other podcasters I spoke to, where Joe has seen change is in audience trust, interaction and feedback. “People see me, and they’re more likely to trust me,” he says, and this translates to increased feedback: “On these video platforms, I see more engagement because it’s easier. I have polls on Spotify, and I get answers to those polls….[it’s] way more than I get with audio… I think there’s a more communal impact to having a video component.“

The cost of adding video

Adding video has been surprisingly manageable for him from a time perspective. Since Joe was already recording with video-capable tools, he reports, “From a time perspective, no extra time.”

The financial aspect does require some investment, though. Adding video editing to his editor’s invoice has cost him an additional 30%, but Joe says, “It’s worth it for this experiment and for having a presence on YouTube and Spotify.”

Another big bonus of adding video is that Joe’s found himself more engaged as an interviewer: “I would say it probably makes me more engaged… because I want to appear as if I’m engaged, and so I’m not checking my email or writing stuff down while my guest is speaking. I’m looking at my guest and into the camera.”

Key Lessons from Video Podcasters

When researching this article, I spoke to a whole bunch of other podcasters who had also experimented with adding a video component to their show.

Here’s just some of the great advice they shared for their fellow creators:

Don’t stop publishing audio 

Remember that although YouTube has a lot of viral potential, as a platform, it can be incredibly fickle. Cal Newport recently referred to YouTube as the “Wild West” on an episode of the Deep Questions podcast: “Change one word, and 10,000 less people will watch it. It’s crazy.”

His producer and co-host, Jesse, also pointed out the dangers of focusing too heavily on one platform: “If you’re just a full-time YouTuber and your channel gets cancelled, what are you gonna do then?”

All of the podcasters I spoke to were keen to keep their audio podcast alive as well as video. Andrea Jones from the The Mindful Marketing Podcast told me that, despite her success with video, if she were to start another podcast tomorrow, she would “start again with audio-only until it built up a listenership that I could expand to other platforms.”

Go with what plays to your strengths

Regardless of hype, it’s important to stick to the format that aligns with your skills, resources and goals. Podcasters have never been big trend-followers, and now’s not the time to change that.

Video can take a lot of extra time, money and effort, so the worst thing you can do is jump into doing it if you don’t want to, or don’t realistically have the resources to make it work. And, of course, the podcasters who have success with video are those who actually enjoy being in front of the camera – it’s not for everyone, and that’s OK! It doesn’t make you a bad podcaster if you don’t want to turn the camera on.

Remember some formats translate better to video than others

Turning a solo show into a video podcast would potentially be harder than an interview format show.

Kathi Kamleitner from the Watch Me See podcast decided to stop doing video after a 12-episode stint because it was a lot of work due to it being a solo show: “I found it challenging to create engaging visual content for my podcast, which is primarily a scripted, narrative, solo show. It took time and money to pay my VA to help with the creation of the videos, but overall the takeup in terms of traffic was really minimal.“

Interview podcasts, on the other hand, translate more easily to video. Many podcasters prefer to use video platforms when interviewing remote guests anyway, meaning it’s just a matter of uploading the video file to a new platform. When you compare this to DLake’s strategy of completely reworking every episode to suit audio or video, it’s clear that the format of your show can make a big difference in terms of how much work needs to go into creating video.

Mielien from the Moving To Oneness podcast started off with video from day one because she had a co-host who lived on another continent: “I had a co-host the first 4 or 5 episodes, who was in the US. I’m in Germany, so we started this way. I learned that it was much easier to use Zoom than any other audio podcast softwares at that time.”

Other hosts I spoke to agreed that remote interview formats translate perfectly to video and even make interviews a better experience for everyone: “I like to have video just so I can see the other person and have more of a natural and organic response to the things that they’re saying,” Andrea Jones told me.

You don’t have to publish full episodes to use video platforms 

A while ago, we ran a survey that showed the vast majority of podcasters were using video platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram without committing to full video episodes of their podcasts. 61% were posting static images or audiograms to get their audio files on YouTube, and 16% were publishing short video clips to promote their shows on social media. 

This is how Andrea Jones was first motivated to make video podcasts. She began just posting audiograms of her show, and heard from new listeners that was where she was being discovered: “when I started putting just the audio streams on YouTube, people said they found it through YouTube, but then they would go listen in their preferred app of choice, so I knew I was onto something.“

Many podcasters I spoke to told me how effective video clips have been for promoting their podcast (whether that was a video or audio-only show). 

Alana from She Well Read said: “Video definitely helped with cross-promotion on social media for sure. We could see a direct correlation of when an episode had a spike in downloads from one of its clips gaining traction.”

Experiment until you find what works

To close, then, here’s some great advice from Dlake:

“Just because people aren’t listening or watching… doesn’t mean it’s bad. It just means you haven’t found either a combination of the right style with the right audience and the right platform. It’s like a puzzle piece… put out a bunch, iterate, iterate, iterate.”

And when you find that spark that resonates with an audience, “pour gasoline on that. Triple down on that.”

If you’re still torn on whether to add a video component to your podcast, Colin and Matthew answer all the big video questions in this quide.

And a huge thanks to all the podcasters I spoke to when researching this article!