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Podcast Answer Man
483 - Does Podcasting Take Too Much Time and Cost Too Much Money to Produce?
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In this episode of Podcast Answer Man, I am going to address the idea that podcasting takes too much time and costs too much money. Well, hello my friend, and welcome back to another episode of the podcast, answerman. My name is Cliff Ravenscraft and this, my friend, is the podcast devoted to podcasting, helping you take your message, your business and your life to the next level. That's right, my friend. It doesn't matter if you are brand new to this content creating world or if you've been creating content for many years. There's something we can all do to take everything we do in life to the next level. That's right. And as I have been answering a lot of LinkedIn birthday wishes via DM, I have been asking the same question to a lot of people. You see, every year on my birthday, LinkedIn sees fit to tell everyone it's my birthday. And so I get tons of direct messages simply saying happy Birthday. And I look at this as an opportunity. So one of the things that I do is I go in and I hit reply, I write that person's first name and I hit comma and then I copy and paste this message to every single person. Thank you so much for the birthday wishes. Have a question for you. What role does podcasting play for you in 2026? And I love the responses that I've been getting. Now there's been a common theme that has come up with a few of the responses that I got and also that seem to be in alignment with some of the questions that have been submitted on my Speak Pipe voicemail feedback hotline. One of the individuals who responded to my question about what role does podcasting play for you in 2026? She wrote back and said, we've actually just taken a break after 236 episodes. Not sure yet when or if we're going to reinstate. Takes so much time and money. Now for me, I have seen people who have stretched all of the different spectrum of how much is invested in the creation of podcast content. I know individuals who simply get behind a microphone, they do their conversation with their guest, and they have either one or multiple people on a team who are doing various aspects of the editing, even the scheduling of the interview in the first place, but then the editing and post production and then all of the show notes and then social media and the chopping things up into various different clips and all of the different stuff. And I've seen people who are investing in a single weekly episode for a weekly podcast. I've seen people that are investing at 2 to $3,000 per month. And then you have somebody like myself who is currently producing a minimum of two one hour shows every single week. And I also am at the same time doing a monthly show with my wife that's about one hour each month. And then also I have an interview only format podcast where I'm averaging one to two episodes per week for that. And those episodes are generally between, well, let's just say right around an approximate hour as well. So I'm putting out about four hours worth of content, four separate episodes, pretty consistently on a weekly basis. And the monthly cost of all of my production is $0 per month. Now, I will tell you that I am investing heavily in my own time, my own effort, and my own energy. And it does take a significant amount of focus and energy and attention to produce any show. You have to prepare for episodes. You need to maybe come up with an outline. Some people come up with a script or a list of questions that they want to ask a guest, do some research on that guest. If it's an interview or format episode, or an interview format podcast, whatever all of that stuff is, then there is the actual recording of the episode. And then depending on your level of the quality of the recording, there's post production. Now, in my interview format podcasts, I oftentimes will be interviewing somebody who does a lot of those ums all throughout their conversation. A one hour podcast episode with a guest who does that a lot can take me about an hour to an hour and a half of post production before that's ready to go. Now, if it is somebody who is like me, very comfortable with silence, doesn't necessarily feel as though they need to fill every single millisecond of silence if they think about what they're saying. And I am also thinking about what I'm saying. And we're both comfortable with silence, and yet we are having real deep conversation. I can have a one hour podcast interview and it will take me no more than 15 to 20 minutes to go through that episode. I can speed things up, by the way, if I happen to be recording with a device or into software that lets me mark the recording. And marking the recording is nothing more than just pressing a button, either on the device that has that feature or on your keyboard for software that supports that feature. And every time you press that button or press that key on the keyboard, it puts a little line in the wave recording such that when you open it up, you can go straight to every place where you marked the file. It can speed up the post production workflow, especially for my solo hosted episodes where I can stop talking for a moment, I can hit that little mark button and I know that I don't have to go back and listen to the entire episode, but instead I can simply open up the recording, look for those marked sections, and edit out the parts where I had messed up and or started over. Now I will share with you in my current scenario the way that I am currently recording Podcast Answerman and also currently recording the Cliff Ravenscraft show. Every week I'm recording directly into Adobe Audition. I have my HIL PR40 microphone right here next to my mouth. I have no camera involved because there is no video version of this show. I have an XLR mic cable that's going into my Zoom Podtrak P4 next device. I'm not even currently recording onto the SD card of the PodTrack P4 next. It would probably be a good idea to do that just as a backup, but instead I have a USB cable going from the PodTrack P4 next into the USB port on my MacBook Pro. That audio from this device is coming straight into Adobe Audition and the audio levels are pristine, clear, quiet and perfect. And what I'm doing is I'm actually recording the episode in segments. In fact, I just now started my third segment of recording in this episode. The first segment of this particular episode was when I clicked the play button and did the opening jingle music and I did the intro going all the way through to where I talked about getting the happy birthday wishes and my question that I would copy and paste and that there's a common theme theme and all the way up to where I said that even with some questions that were submitted on the voicemail feedback hotline, that was the end of the first segment. What I did is I hit stop on the recording in Adobe Audition. I even went ahead and ran my multi band processing on that particular segment and I know that there was no real mess up in that. So it was ready to go. The only thing I did is I went to the end of that recording and listened to where I left off and then I started right in the same file and picked up right from there with the discussion of what this person said about the fact that they've done 236 episodes and they're just now taking a break after all of that time and not sure yet when or even if they're going to reinstate the podcast. But because the podcast takes up so much time and money, I went all the way to the Place where right before I just told you that I'm starting this third segment. And so for me, I am recording these episodes, my solo hosted episodes, in little bits and little chunks and I'm kind of processing and editing along the way. Now, for me, I'm trying to create content where I am not making as many mistakes or if I do make a mistake, I either mark it and or I will just hit stop recording. And if there's been enough length of audio that's been laid down into the file before the mess up, then I will go ahead and process that segment that was just recorded and I will listen to it. And when I get to the part where I messed up, I'll delete that out, I'll find the last good bit of laid down audio that still works and I will hit record and pick up from there and well, this is actually the fourth segment of me doing just that. This is the fourth time I've hit record in this same Adobe audition recording. And that has allowed me to create however long this podcast episode is in such a way that everything is fresh, everything is laid down, it is clearly thought out and it's professionally edited. And by the end of this episode, the only thing I may do is go in and record something at the end that will be cut out of the end and pasted right before that intro music. Something like in this episode I'm going to be sharing Fill in the blank that cold open that little teaser of what you're going to get in this episode. I might do that at the end. I've been doing that for the last several weeks. It's worked out really well. And the reason why I'm sharing this, and I know that I've talked about this not too long ago in an episode a couple weeks back, but I also know that every episode of Podcast Answer man is somebody's first time ever listening to the show. So welcome if that's you. Anyway, the reason why I'm bringing this up is because creating content doesn't have to take up so much time. You can have a very clear picture of what you want to say in an outline and you don't have to script everything out. In fact, if you already are an expert and you have a experience and you have an area of expertise in the topic for which you are speaking, you should be able to communicate to the person on the other end of your microphone, the person with their headphones on. I should be able to communicate with you about whatever topic I'm addressing in this episode. Just the Same as if you were to ask me a question over lunch if we were having a conversation at a restaurant. Now, I recognize that I am saying this as someone who has recorded, edited and published nearly 5,000 podcast episodes, but I will tell you that I didn't always have this clear way of communicating. I was just as nervous and anxious behind the microphone saying and ah all throughout every line. And all of the stuff I was just all over the place when I first started. One of the greatest benefits for me in the early days was that I did all of my own editing. As a result of doing all of my own editing, I heard every mistake I made. Sometimes I was so annoyed with the mistakes that I would re record the entire thing over. It was too much to try to patch up and fix in post production. Instead, I would re record the entire episode. Eventually I found the nervous tics, the ums, the ahs. I'm getting better at not saying incredibly about everything that I talk about. I slow down. I leave long pauses. You might be surprised to know that while you hear mostly natural sounding pauses in this recording, a handful, not many, but a handful of those pauses were two or three times as long as I was waiting to think about how I wanted to phrase the next phrase. And when I finished recording that little segment, because remember I told you I'm recording in segments, I simply shortened the pauses. The whole point that I'm making here is that I believe that if a podcast is still valuable, something still worthy of your time, effort and energy, if it's still getting you the results that you desire, and time is one of the factors that's keeping you from either bringing it back now or even contemplating whether or not you would ever bring back your show. I would just make the case that there are ways to drastically reduce the amount of time that it takes to create your episodes. Maybe you're committed to doing interviews and so you're not going to be able to reduce the amount of time it takes to go back and forth, schedule interviews, deal with people who might no show you from time to time, and all of those hassles. But even if going to a solo hosted show is not for you, one of the things that you could do to speed things up is to include the intro to your podcast right when you're working with the guest. Did you know that you don't need your fancy intro music? If you were to look at episode number 806 of the cliff ravenscraft show over at thecliffravenscraftshow.com just look for episode number 806, click play. You will hear no intro music in that particular episode. And the reason why is because time was scarce for me that week. I came home from podfest, I had a pretty significant case of illness. I don't know if it was a mild case of the flu or a very severe cold, but I will tell you right now, I suffered the entire week after I got back, just barely keeping up with the minimum commitments that I had that week, on top of so many other things. I'm not going to go into all the details and my throat was killing me, but yet I was committed. I am definitely going to make that deadline for releasing a new episode of the Cliff Ravenscroft show every Monday morning. And so what did I do? I simply hit record and went with an unplugged format. No intro music. I just spoke, I talked and went through from beginning to end. And it was live to hard drive. I even told people I'm not going to edit unless I have a coughing fit. And I did have one and I edited it out, I marked it. It took me about, let's just say 55 minutes to record that episode. It took me five minutes to do all of the post production and within an hour of hitting record on that episode, it was scheduled for release. Now I will share with you that while I had put that file uploaded to the media host, I also had a transcript made that took about three minutes to get the file completely transcribed. And then I was able to go in and ask AI to help me come up with the title and the show notes based upon the transcript. And so it's a 50 minute episode and it took a total of one hour for the production of that episode. And it was one of my more authentic direct me and you having a conversation kind of episodes. And oftentimes the feedback I get from that particular kind of format is, oh my gosh, I loved this. Thank you so much for sharing this. I love how much detail you share about what your experience. I love that story. I love hearing this. It's like kind of reminds me to give myself some grace that I don't have to push so hard. I don't have to try to perform when I'm not feeling my best, but there's value in showing up. Gosh, this was amazing, Cliff. One hour and I put out a 50, actually 49 minute and 16 second podcast episode. And here's the key. No intro music, no audio branding. Just hit record, start having a conversation with the person you know is listening on the other end. Talk to them about whatever it is, it's on your heart, your mind, whatever your. You have to share, whether it's from your heart or from an outline. Just speak. It could be that simple. And if it's an interview, by all means say, hey, we're gonna get ready to start here. I'm gonna hit record and I'm going to go ahead and do your introduction and we'll get straight into the conversation. And then you say, okay, here we go. And hit that record button. In this week's episode, I'm honored to bring on my guest who is an author, a speaker, a coach. They've been in business for 20 years. They've done these amazing things, won this award, and their biggest passion in this world is fill in the blank. That's my guest today who goes by the name such and such, and we're honored to bring them into this conversation. John, how are ya? And this. Go into that conversation again. If you have done your own editing on your own work and you've solved for and trained your voice for your own ticks, if you will, that would typically cause you tons of production, then you've drastically reduced that portion of the recording. If it's an interview now, if it's an interview and you've allowed the other person to have most of the speaking time, yeah, there's, there's definitely going to be some more editing required if you have a desire and a highest standard to make them sound amazing, to cut out some of those mistakes and those audible tics that they might have. And here's what I want you to know. There are software tools that supposedly are able to go and automatically remove these for you. And yet, with nearly 5,000 episodes and knowing these tools have been around for years, I still do not use them. And I still have done the post production on every episode I've ever recorded and published. And the reason for me is I kind of feel that what I'm doing here is an art form. I see myself as an artist and I paint not just with my voice, but I also consider what I do with the software and what I do in post production as a part of my art. It is a part of my communication. How much of a pause is just as important to me as having a pause there? How many of the ums do I leave in? How aggressive do I tack some of the things that I edit out? Occasionally I may take a segment that I said at the beginning of an episode and put that entire segment closer to the end of an episode. I like the idea of making all of those decisions for myself. Because what gets put out is my work. It is my representation of this content, this communication, and even it is my representation of this conversation that I've had with this guest, even in my interview format podcast. Now, I'm not harping on anyone out there who hires editors and stuff like that, but I also want you to know that there are not only ways that you can reduce the amount of time in the production of your show, but you could reduce the cost even by doing some of that post production work yourself. Now, is there a cost on learning curve, teaching yourself the software, the tools to do it? Yes. But if it's the difference between a couple of thousands of dollars a month or doing it yourself, you could ask yourself, is it worthy of the savings? And for some people, it's a clear decision. The time it would take to do post production on their weekly show. It is such an obvious choice that hiring somebody else or even a team of somebody else's to go and do for them. That makes sense, especially if they've already figured out how creating that content gets them a financial return of the investment of not only the time put into the show, but also the amount of money that's invested in the team that does all of the production after the show's been recorded. I guess what I'm getting at, when it's all said and done here, there are definitely things that you can do to drastically reduce the amount of time it takes to do the production of your show. And yes, there's likely a number of ways that you can reduce the amount of money invested in other people doing various aspects of the production of your show. And of course, there are things that can be done to make sure that you're getting a greater return on the investment of your time and energy and financial resources related to the production of your show by making sure that there are very clear outcomes that you're going after and measuring metrics that indicate whether or not you're succeeding with what you're doing in leading to those outcomes. But when I hear somebody say that after 236 episodes, I'm not yet sure when we're going to bring the show back or if we're even going to reinstate it. What I hear is that it's really not about the time and it's not about the money. It's usually one of two other things. There's not enough return on investment for the time and money that I've been investing, or I've simply lost my heart for it. I'm no longer interested. In fact, I was having another conversation with somebody who reached out and wished me Happy birthday via dm. And. And I asked the same question, what role is podcasting playing for you? And they're like, hey, it's funny you should ask. I'm getting ready to bring back my show. I haven't done anything in several years. And so I went and did a little bit of research. This is somebody that worked with me back in 2012 in my podcasting A to Z course. I wrote back this message in the dm. I said, I see that you launched a total of three different shows with nearly a total of 200 episodes published between the years 2012 through 2022. I'm curious what caused you to shut down podcast production in 2022 and what would you say has changed now that makes you see podcasting as an essential part of your visibility strategy? Once again, by the way, that's language that she shared with me. She's like, cliff, podcasting in 2026. I now see it as an essential part of my visibility strategy. So I asked her this question and she wrote back. She says, I was uninspired by the show that I was doing, so I felt like it should end after three seasons. And there you go. This is an honest answer. I was uninspired by the content that I was creating. She also wrote and then Covid happened and I did a weekly LinkedIn live show with a friend of mine that lasted for over two years. So that was partly my replacement for it. But since that's ended and nothing's really filled the gap, she's recognized that her visibility is far lower than what she had when she was consistently producing content from 2012 through 2022, an entire 10 year period where she produced nearly 200 podcast episodes. And she was very clear. The reason I stopped back in 2022 is because my heart was no longer in it or the way that she said it. I was uninspired by the content that I was creating. I love that. Because now she gets the opportunity to restart Fresh and say, I want to do something that is inspiring. And I think this is a perfect segue into our very first audio question submitted on the Speak Pipe voicemail feedback hotline. And this first question comes in from Alan.
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Hi, Cliff, My name is Alan Mead. I've been podcasting for for almost 12 years now. I'm curious to know what you think about. When do you know a podcast is done? I've been kicking around the idea of wrapping up My podcast, I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to wrap it up either. I'm not even sure that I'm going to wrap it up or maybe change it. I'm not sure. But how do you know when. When you're done? How do you know when. How did you know when you wanted to stop Podcast Answer Man? And how did you know when you wanted to start it back up? I'm just curious. It feels like I put a lot of work into this. I don't want to walk away, but I got to do something different because it just doesn't feel the same as it used to. Just curious. Thanks a lot for all you're doing.
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Well, Alan, thank you so much for your question. And I can kind of hear it in your voice. You've lost that loving feeling. As they say, 12 years is a very long run. Congratulations on putting so much of you out into the world for the benefit of others. I think that is incredible. The first thought that comes to my mind about how do you know when a podcast is done? I think the first indicator is that you're starting to ask yourself that question. My guess is the fact that you've submitted that question to me tells me you've probably been thinking about this question for quite some time, maybe even for more than a year or so. It sounds to me. Based upon your next line, you said, I'm kicking around the idea of wrapping up my podcast, which means that you're still producing that show and you're not exactly sure how you're gonna wrap it up or even if you're gonna wrap it up altogether or maybe transform the show into something else. Alan, there is no correct answer to that question. Whether or not you should wrap up the show, change the shows branding, start a completely different show from scratch. There is no right answer. There's trade offs to each of the different paths that lie before you. The most important thing I would say is, is I would begin having a conversation with somebody who can help you tap into why you first fell in love with podcasting, and particularly podcasting about the topic that you've been creating content for 12 years ago. It may be possible that the love for that is still there, but the story you're telling yourself about that content has shifted over time. And the most important story that you will ever hear is the story you tell yourself about yourself. Or in this case, the story you tell yourself about the things that you are doing. Then again, it very well may be that once you do that evaluation, have that conversation it becomes very clear that it's run its course. There is certainly a case to be made for seasons of things in our lives, and it may be that the season for that show has come to a conclusion. Now, as far as what do you do with has everything to do with what do I want to create next? And that's what I would get clear on before you make any real decisions here about whether or not you want rebrand the show you already have, or even how you communicate its ending. If you choose to end the podcast, going away for a couple of days, journaling, self reflecting, maybe having a coaching conversation with somebody like myself could maybe help you dig in and get some clarity on those next steps. Not the right steps, but the next steps that are obvious to you when you've got a more clear picture of where you're going to next. You asked me how did I know when it was time to shut down Podcast Answerman, and I've documented this so many times. But I will just share with you briefly that after 12 years of helping more than 40,000 people to launch a podcast back in 200515 I was inundated, working 60 hours a week answering an endless number of technical questions related to podcasting. And back then I did not have access to the same kind of knowledge based tools that I have today, such as Notion, and I certainly didn't have access to AI. So questions that people would ask it might take them 30 seconds to ask a question. It could take me anywhere between as little as five minutes to come up with a decent answer. And some of those questions could take more than an hour, and very rarely but at times multiple hours to give a sufficient answer that would live up to the standard for which I desire to provide to those who are asking those questions. These are people who were paying me thousands of dollars for my podcast coaching and consulting back in those days. And I recognized that there were people who were willing to pay me a great deal more for work that was related to business strategy and mindset coaching. People were more interested in having an encouraging conversation that shifted their belief system, and they were willing to pay far more for those conversations because they removed roadblocks in their minds that were keeping them from, let's just say, going from $50 an hour to $300 an hour in their coaching prices. And as a result of working with me, I've helped them in many cases 3x5x or even 10x their income from their online business pursuits. And so I was having a hard time filling my calendar with people who are willing to pay me a great deal more for business strategy and mindset coaching. Because there were at that point millions of people in the world who knew me as the go to person to answer your questions related to podcasting. It was just nonstop. I mean, people who I admire, who I love, who are mentors of mine, they have audiences in the hundreds of thousands and are consistently saying, you've gotta talk to my friend Cliff Ravenscraft. He's the podcast answering. He's the only person you should go to to get your questions answered. And turning those people down was not on my list of things that I was looking forward to doing because they came from such an incredible referral source. And it was this cycle. And so this started for me in 2015, and I began to ask myself, I wonder, can I validate the business model for Mindset Answer man as a brand and identity instead of Podcast Answer Man? And I began working on that. It took me about 18 months to finally confirm that I think for certain that I could replace my income from Podcast Answer man if I shut down 100% of everything I was doing related to podcast coaching and consulting to make a clean break. And in November 2017, I read a book called the Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. And it became very clear that now is the time to do it. And so that's a very abbreviated version of the story. It was so much more involved in all of that. But I made a clean break. I decided it must come to end the Podcast Answer man, the podcast, the brand, the identity, it all needed to be shut down down completely so that I could cut myself off as the go to guy for podcast technical related stuff so that I could make a name for myself, build a reputation for myself, and begin getting these mentors and friends of mine to stop talking about all of the value that I bring as it relates to podcasting, but instead so that I could get them to start talking about the mindset and business strategy value that I bring to the table for entrepreneurs. And thankfully, I was able to do that over the course of the next eight years. Now, for me, I did not just shut down the podcast, I rebranded the original Podcast Answer man podcast to the Cliff Ravenscraft show. And I continued to produce content consistently over the years. In fact, I've just recently recorded episode number 806 of that podcast. But then you asked, how did you know it was time to bring back Podcast Answerman? And for that, I'm simply gonna put a link in the show notes to episode number 802 of the Cliff Ravenscraft show. That episode is titled why Podcast Answer Man Is Back. The full story. And so I would encourage you to listen to that. It's a 41 minute podcast episode. All of the details of how I knew it was time to bring Podcast Answer man back. And then of course, if you want to hear all of the details behind the scenes of what it took to bring Podcast Answer man back, listen to episode 803. I'll put a link to both of those in the show. Notes As I look at the time that we have here on the clock, I think I'm going to go ahead and wrap this episode. It went on a little bit different direction than I thought it would, but I knew that it would stay on this theme. Does podcasting take too much time and does it cost too much money to produce a show? Or is there something deeper involved? When we start having thought thoughts like that, for example, did it all of a sudden just start taking too much time and costing too much after 236 episodes? Or did some things change along the way, along the podcasting journey? And maybe it could be that the content that you're creating, you just no longer find it inspiring. Or as I alluded to early maybe the story you're telling yourself about the role of podcasting in the things that you are looking to create in this world has changed. And who knows, there may be some truth to that narrative. The one thing I can say is that podcasting is still alive today. It is an incredible medium. I mean, just think about the fact that you've been sitting here and listening to me for more than 42 minutes. That is huge. I will never take for granted the fact that you and I have been sitting here having this conversation. I know that I'm not hearing what you're saying, but in many ways I do. Cause I've been in the seat where I've had to shut down shows because it was time for them to come to an end, but never for the reason that they took too much time and never for the reason that they were too expensive to produce. Don't get me wrong, I understand there are some people who choose not to go into learning how to do post production and any time spent on that, it just would be not an efficient use of their time. They get a greater return on investment on so many other things that it makes sense for them to hire somebody else to do it. But even then it's not a question of the cost as much as it is. Are you able to get a return on the investment from that side of the perspective. And if you've done that for 236 episodes, what changed? Why all of a sudden? Why didn't that become too expensive after 36 episodes? Why did you continue to do another 200 after that? Again, I'm not judging anyone here for their podcasting journey. I mean, anyone can stop podcasting for any reason. There is no right or wrong reason. There's. You do not owe it to anyone to create content. It's never, never about that. But the I guess what really got me on this topic today is is podcasting too much work? Is it too hard? Does it take up too much time and is it too expensive? Or is it that your why is not big enough for the amount of time, effort and energy? Or is there not a good enough picture on the return on that investment of time, effort, energy and financial resources? The interesting thing today is that with the tools that we have available to US now in 2026, I can create a podcast in far less time than it took 20 years ago when I got started. Not only that, but today I could go and launch a podcast for free, never costing me a single penny. If you're interested in having a conversation with me, whether you're a brand new content creator just getting ready to launch your first show, or if you've been creating content for more than a decade and you're contemplating shutting things down, or maybe you have taken some time off for any number of reasons, maybe there's been medical emergencies and you're wondering, can you get back into it? Have I lost all the momentum? Or maybe you're in a place like Alan, where you're not even quite sure what you want to do with this show you've been producing for 12 years. If you would like to engage with me, I have some starter coaching packages that are available just with I could do one session, three sessions, whatever it takes to get clarity on what you want to produce next. All you have to do is email me cliffliffravenscraft.com and ask me for my rates for one on one coaching. And I would be delighted to help you get clarity and to help you see ways that you can save time, save money, get a bigger return on your investment, or find the right story that gets you inspired to create that content once again. I can't wait to hear from you. Until next time, I encourage you to take everything you do to the next level. Podcast and some man.