How Long Does It Take
It takes me 8 to 10 hours to make one podcast episode, and in this video I walk you through every single step.
A lot of people assume podcasting is just hitting record and uploading a file. It is not. There is planning, research, recording, editing, sound design, show notes, distribution, and promotion all stacked on top of each other. I made this video because I wanted to be honest about what the process actually looks like behind the scenes.
Whether you are thinking about starting a podcast, already producing one, or just curious about what goes into it, this breakdown gives you a real look at the full workflow. If you have ever wondered why good podcasts take so long to produce, this is your answer! Watch the full video see exactly how it all comes together from start to finish.
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SPEAKERS
Chris Hall-Franzkowiak
Chris Hall-Franzkowiak 0:00
If you're thinking about starting a podcast, and you know that your episodes are going to be, say, 45 minutes long, how long will the whole process take you to get that episode out there in the world? That's what I'm going to go through in this video very, very quickly. And let's do it. I've been doing this for about 10 years, and you would be amazed at how long it still takes a professional podcast producer to create everything, to do everything, and to get everything live. Producing a podcast is not a quick thing, but that is not necessarily a reason to not do it. The podcast itself will be amazing for all the resources it can create for your business, all the publicity, all the potential relationships you're building, all the potential ROI that you're able to to bring into your business, but even before you start recording, if you're having guests, you've got to put in the time to find those guests, contact those guests, book them in, be prepared for rearranging guests, or have topic ideas. If you're doing a solo podcast, this for, say, let's say your month of episodes will be a good couple of hours' work to do the research, get the bookings, and set everything up so you're ready and prepared for the questions you're going to ask in that episode. The recording is actually the shortest bit of the whole process, because if your episodes are 45 minutes, invariably you're going to record about that amount of time. You might have a little bit longer in the recording, but realistically it's going to be five minutes more at a push, 10 minutes more to cut down, but that will still be a lot to take out if you're doing a 45 minute episode, so within an hour you've recorded it, it's done to produce it, to create the social clips to write the show notes to design the thumbnails for the episodes to get that episode scheduled on your audio platforms on YouTube to get the shorts created and then scheduled on YouTube as well onto your socials, all this kind of stuff, get the video up onto Spotify, get a clip up onto Spotify. That whole process, after you've recorded the episode, is going to take a good six to eight hours to get everything done. The actual edit of a 45 minute episode, you always sort of have this idea it's going to take three times as long as the episode to actually edit it and produce it, even with AI platforms, you are going to have to go back through the episode to make sure everything's all right. You're still going to have to edit things, move things about, that still takes time, and AI does not always get it right, so be careful. So, overall, you were looking at, for one episode, a good eight to 10 hours with that initial research, booking of guests, all this kind of stuff to get your episodes out each week, eight to 10 hours, and, like, I say, this is not to say, "Oh my god, this is so overwhelming, there's so much to do, I'm just not going to do it. There are so many benefits to actually doing it, but it is to show you the reality of what the time commitment is to podcasting, and that is exactly why we exist. We do all of the production work, we do all of the show notes writing, the thumbnail design, the shorts creation, the scheduling of episodes on the audio and the video platforms, the scheduling of the shorts, all the titles and descriptions of those shorts, all of this kind of stuff that adds up is everything that we do for our clients, so if that time sounds like it's just way too much to be taking away from your actual business to do all of that production work. Then that is what we're here for. Get in touch, there's a link in the description, so you can book a call to talk about your podcast and how we can help with the production of it. That's it for today. Short, sharp. See you next week.
Chris Hall-Franzkowiak 4:19
Bye.
