By now, you’ve probably heard that you can start a podcast literally from your phone and upload it directly through an app. And that’s it. That’s all you need to do.

While we think that business owners should not over-complicate their marketing, we always recommend doing the best you can with the resources that you have. 

This statement could lead you to overwhelm, and wonder: 

• What is the other option? Do I need to have the highest quality?
• Do I need to install a recording studio in my living room?
• Should I wrap my walls around acoustic panels? 

Well, we’re convinced that good audio quality is important. We also know that the best audio quality means the best audio quality that you can afford.

And that begs the question that we hear from clients and prospects constantly: how much should I expect to pay to make my podcast a reality?

What is the real cost of podcasting?

So, while you could definitely rent a studio or set up a studio in your home or office, we don’t think that that would be the best use of your resources. The reason is that you’re creating content as a marketing tool, you’re not creating content hoping to monetize the product on its own.

The Quality of the Audio Matters More When The Podcast Is The Product

If you listen to shows like How I built this?, or My Great American Life, you’ll notice that those shows are not part of a larger marketing strategy, but they’re the product itself. 

For that reason, they need to have a very high professional studio quality. 

So if your podcast is part of your marketing strategy, you may be thinking: 

Can I then record directly from my phone? 

We don’t recommend that extreme either because the quality of everything that you put out there is going to be a reflection of the quality of your work in the subconscious mind of your client.

If you want people to pay top dollar to work with you, you want to have the best quality that you can afford right now.

That doesn’t mean that maybe at times, a week here and there, let’s say you’re traveling and you weren’t able to bring your microphone and your panels with you, then you record directly on your phone, that’s fine.

We all have circumstances, and a one-time thing can be addressed to your audience at the beginning of your episode. 

We had a client once who recorded at a physical location where she didn’t have control over her surroundings, so there was a lot of background noise.

We improved it as much as we could in post-production, but ultimately it wasn’t her usual quality. So she decided to record a quick intro explaining the situation.

That episode actually ended up being one of her most downloaded ever!

So that’s not to say that if you have bad quality in one episode, your podcast is going to fail. But we think that it is important that you have good consistent quality throughout your podcast.

Podcasting is Also About Customer Experience

Think about customer experience, always. We’re fans of thinking about the experience our customers and prospects are having every step of their journey.

So these listeners that are your prospects, or maybe are just getting to know you, they’re allowing you to be quite literally on their ears.

Personally, we think that bad audio quality is annoying and even a little disrespectful, especially when, as a listener, you’re having such a personal experience as podcasting. 

Here at Reach Higher Media, we like audio and music, not noise.

Customer experience is about the small details, so you need to pay attention to every interaction that your audience has with your podcast. When we’re secretly annoyed at the podcast, we’re ultimately at the business owner. 

The bottom line is: you want to launch your podcast with the best equipment you can afford right now and the one that’s going to hold you over for the foreseeable future because you don’t want to be doing another round of research just a few months into podcasting while having so many other projects and tasks in your business to take care of. 

We’re all about avoiding frustration and going for automatization. 

What You Should Invest In For Your Podcast and How Much It Costs

The real cost of podcasting is going to depend on the equipment and software you end up choosing. So, while we can’t give you an exact final number, you can get a pretty good idea based on the different categories that you can choose from. 

This series will explore all categories from production to creative to accessories. Let’s start with the basics that everyone needs: production. 

Category #1: Production  

This is a basic category that all podcasters need.

Wherever you are in your podcasting journey, whether you’re trying to launch your podcast or you’re trying to grow your podcast, you want to invest in production.

Podcast Hosting Options 

First, you want to choose a podcast host. 

There are many different podcast hosts, but we’re giving you our top three options only because we don’t want to overwhelm you. 

The first one is Anchor.fm

Cost: Free.

This is our favorite free option.

Our founder Eugenia’s first English podcast was actually hosted on Anchor and it was a great choice. With Anchor, you have unlimited free hosting, no running out of space 8 hours before publishing your weekly episode! 

Anchor allows you to record straight from the platform with a high-quality sound. This is a great option if you plan on doing minimal editing and want to save as much time as possible. 

Anchor’s platform is super intuitive and easy to navigate, so if you’re a beginner, you’re going to be feeling confident about your process in no time.  

They also connect your podcast to all major distributors such as Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Most podcasting hosts do this, but regardless it’s something we appreciate. 

FYI: Anchor is owned by Spotify, which can have huge benefits! Why? Because every time a company owns a platform, that means that they’re going to give “special treatment” and unique opportunities for creators within the platform. 

We’ve seen some interesting creator initiatives from Spotify for Anchor creators (yes, including business creators!), which can give your podcast a nice boost. 

With Anchor, you can also upload your video podcast directly to Spotify, which is a huge trend in podcasting right now. 

Even though we clearly love Anchor, we see it as a nice beginner option, not a long-term solution. The biggest podcasters in the industry aren’t hosted on Anchor because, as some Marketing genius said years ago:

“When you don’t pay for a product, that means that you’re the product.” 

So of course, paying for your hosting platform gives you more control over your podcast, and offers other incredible opportunities, which leads us to our second option.

Second Option: Buzzsprout

Cost: $12 – $24 per month.

This is our favorite option! There are so many things we could say about this platform, but we mainly love it because its functionality is incredible, plus it is SO intuitive and easy to navigate. 

Since we’re talking about cost, we think that this platform has the most straightforward pricing structure. 

While some hosting platforms charge you for monthly MB storage, BuzzSprout charges you for hours uploaded with unlimited storage.

We’ve had clients getting “penalized” for having heavier episodes with higher quality, being basically forced to upgrade plans last minute to continue uploading their episodes.

This doesn’t happen with BuzzSprout, you’re charged by allotted monthly hours of audio, and if you go over, they charge you on a per-episode basis, instead of making you commit to the next pricing tier.

This hosting platform has a very robust solution for podcast monetization, which you can also find with Anchor, but not to the level of sophistication that you get with this one. 

Basically, you have two options with BuzzSprout: an internal advertising network where you can promote your show on other podcasts, and an integration with Podcorn, a platform that helps you find sponsors. 

Now, monetizing your podcast through sponsorships is such a long game, but hey! We’re all for exploring our options. 

BuzzSprout also has an internal advertising network, which is super cool because it gives you the option of getting in front of audiences that are similar to yours. 

When paying for ads on other people’s podcasts, we don’t recommend going for the same type of podcasts as yours, but for a complimentary podcast. 

For example, if you’re a time management coach for busy executives, maybe you want to look into advertising on a health podcast for busy executives.

The point is to take advantage of this contextual marketing opportunity, where you’re putting your show in front of an audience that’s more likely to be interested in it, and who already listens to podcasts. 

Now, back to the actual platform advantages, let’s talk about the setup.

When you set up your podcast with BuzzSprout–and being honest, with most hosting platforms these days–you can also have your podcasting distributed to all major players like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. 

Another feature we really like is the reporting functionality. Granted, it’s a little more basic than Libsyn, our third recommended platform, but it’s still very intuitive and if you want some basic information about your podcast’s performance, it’s really all you need.

We, as Marketing-focused Podcast Producers, love that we get to be more granular with Libsyn’s reporting options, but we’ll get there in a second.

Another minor but great feature is the option of adding Dynamic Content. This means that you can include an ad, for example, before your actual podcast starts, and have it roll automatically in all your episodes, so every time someone listens, they get the most updated offer! 

In terms of support, BuzzSprout is also wonderful. They have a fantastic learning community filled with valuable trainings that are helpful for both creators and podcast producers like us.

If you’re looking into starting a podcast and want to give it a go yourself, they actually have a fantastic free guide! 

Third Option: Libsyn

Cost: $5 – $20/month

There are great things about Libsyn, and we’ll get there in a minute.

But we have to start by mentioning our main pet peeve: what we said earlier about being “penalized” for having heavier and higher-quality episodes.

Do you know how some email marketing platforms charge more as you have more email subscribers, and this feels like you’re getting penalized for growing?

Well, we’re clearly not fans of this structure, which is a huge turnoff and why we don’t recommend Libsyn when setting up a new podcast.

That and the customer service. Every time we’ve needed to speak to customer support to clarify some issue one of our clients is having with the platform, for example with reporting, they take days to respond, and many times their answer is not even helpful. 

We also don’t love the lack of innovation. Up until recently, their interface was very archaic and they were not prioritizing some of the great added benefits that other platforms like BuzzSprout offer.

However, we’d be remiss not to mention some of the unique benefits that Libsyn has.

First, this is the most respected podcast hosting platform throughout the industry. Some of the legacy media networks host their podcasts on Libsyn. 

Whether it is because they’ve been around for longer or because Networks really like them, Libsyn is an established platform that gives you the “confidence” that they’re in it for the long run and that your podcast can grow with them.

Another fantastic feature that Libsyn has is its reporting capability. If you’re data-driven like us, you’ll love how granular you can get with the reports. 

With Libsyn, you can choose a date range for your reports. BuzzSprout, for example, only shows you the last 7-30-60-90 days, but you can’t choose a custom date range. 

So, for example, let’s say you were a guest on a big podcast on a specific week, you could choose that specific week on your report, and see if your podcast received additional downloads during that week.

Another Marketing-nerdy feature is that you can also see the exact markets where your podcast is most popular. 

For example, instead of just seeing that your podcast is big in California, you’d be able to see that it’s specifically popular in the San Fernando area.

This is particularly helpful if you’re thinking about running ads. Knowing the exact market where your podcast is popular will allow you to stretch your ad dollars way more than if you just target a generic State, which tends to be more expensive just because it’s a bigger market overall to cover. 

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There are other podcast hosts, such as Podbean, with different pricing options and features. In general, you can expect to pay up to $20 per month for your podcast host.

Specifically, we see our clients paying $15 to $18 per month, so we’d say that if you’re trying to calculate a budget for your podcast, this is what you could be looking at. 

Hands down, though, our favorite option is BuzzSprout. We find it super helpful for business owners, and our clients keep finding value in all the innovative features they’re constantly including.

BuzzSprout is the most expensive option, but only by a couple of dollars, which is totally worth it!

Next up, we’ll be covering the other aspects of production costs: microphones and accessories.

And if you’re still wondering what to podcast about, make sure to check out this free guide with 5 Steps to Decide What You Will Podcast About.