It’s been six months today since I decided to see if I could get a podcast up and running in one afternoon. The answer was yes! Curious? Here’s how it’s going.

Why I started

Well. I like the sound of my own voice? Ha.

Someone reached out to me via Instagram and asked me to be on her podcast. It was a fun conversation, and at the end she let me know it would be posted in about a week. And I thought well, if she can do it, then I can do it right?

The How

I did some googling and decided to start with Anchor.fm. It looked like I could record, edit, and post all from my phone. And since I was aiming for a prototype and not perfection, an all-in-one solution seemed like the way to go. I sat in my closet, fired up my iPhone 6, and recorded two ten minute episodes.

The sound quality was not great. But I had done it! Episodes published on Spotify and Apple Podcasts within a few hours.

The Content

I didn’t want to have to fuss around with getting guests. I checked out a few solo podcasters and it seemed like most people picked one topic and did a whole episode on it. I decided to keep mine short, about 10 minutes. That seemed like about as long as I wanted to listen to one person talk.

I didn’t set out for “money and anxiety” to be the theme, but after a few episodes, that just emerged as what I was talking about each time. Boom. We’ve got a niche.

The Set Up for Recording Episodes

Recording straight into my phone didn’t sound great. After a couple episodes I bought a $12 lavaliere microphone. Definitely an improvement! And then a friend convinced me to invest in a Blue Yeti microphone. (affiliate link) It’s a major upgrade, and that’s what I use today, with the mic plugged into my laptop.

I have gone back and forth between editing right in the Anchor web app and using free audio editing software called Audacity. A majority of my editing is really straightforward: deleting long pauses and ‘ums.’ I assume editing an interview is a lot more work.

For better sound quality, I usually sit on the floor in my closet, but sometimes I just sit at my desk in my home office.

Is it weird listening to your own voice when editing?

Yes and no. I really do like the sound of my own voice! But I’m also pretty critical of my own verbal stalls (um, you know, like, I don’t know). I also get hung up on the way I pronounce things sometimes. Like I’ll listen back and be like…did you just say “supposebly” instead of “supposedly”? I rarely go back and fix things though. It just takes too long!

Do you make money from the podcast?

A little bit! Once you post a couple episodes and get some traction, Anchor might offer you the ability to add ads. I’ve only been offered the ability to record an ad for Anchor itself. I’m more than happy to do that because I really love Anchor. It’s super easy and let me start a podcast within a few hours.

The pay rate is $10.50 per 1,000 plays. That works out to roughly 1 cent per play. So every time you listen I make 1 cent! I’ve made around $40 so far, almost enough to pay for my microphone.

Do people actually listen?

A couple people do, yeah! I just crossed over the 5,000 plays mark. I’ve published about 25 episodes, which means I’m averaging about 200 plays per episode. Here’s a screenshot of my dashboard when I log into Anchor.

Mistakes/Things I’d do differently if I started a podcast today

I don’t regret starting with a simple set up. If I could go back though, I’d just get this nicer microphone from the beginning. But I also didn’t know if I’d stick with it, so free and easy made sense at the time.

And then for some reason I decided to start “Season 2” after about a dozen episodes, and I thought I’d do a season on different themes. But I kind of abandoned that plan. And now I don’t know when to start a new season, ha.

When I started, I posted 2 episodes and then just posted sporadically when I had time. If you’re aiming for a wider audience, it’s smarter to launch with more episodes already recorded and ready to go. There’s two reasons for that. One, when you find a new podcast you like, you want there to be episodes to binge! And two, it might help you get picked up by Spotify or Apple’s recommendation algorithm because you’ll get more total listens when you launch.

Thanks for listening!

I have a lot of fun recording posting podcast episodes. Questions? Leave em in a comment! If you’ve listened and liked it, share with a friend or leave me a review on Apple podcasts, pretty please and thanks!