How much time does it take to run a podcast
So you’re keen to start a podcast - yay!
But how long will it take exactly?
Having a great idea for a show is the first step but determining how much time you invest each week depends on a few different factors.
So before you get cranking, I’ve got a few things for you to keep in mind to make sure you’re good to go.
In this episode, I give you the rundown of the key aspects of producing a show and an idea of how much time you’ll need to invest to keep pumping out your episodes each week.
The biggest deciding factor is the length of your episodes.
Will they be short and sharp solo episodes or chatty conversations with guests?
I talk about how this all plays into the investment of time for research, recording, editing and show notes.
I cover the basics of producing a show and also talk about extra add ons such as creating graphics and audiograms to post on social media, different types of transcriptions and whether or not you’ll be uploading to your website.
There’s heaps you can do so now it’s just a matter of deciding how much time you want to spend doing it.
Have fun!
Transcript:
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Welcome to pump up your pod alrighty, everybody, welcome back to pump up your pod with me, Brianna from Bamby Media. Today, I'm going to run through with you what it actually takes how long it takes to produce a show every week, like to run a show, there's a few things that you kind of need to know here from the outset, how long it takes you to run, your show will depend on how long each episode is. So if you've got super short episodes, then how long it takes you to run that show every week is going to be significantly less than something that you produce to a really high quality that you've got lots of guests that you're interviewing, and these episodes, you know, like the Joe Rogan style can go on forever and ever. The time that it takes you to produce that show is going to be different, right?
So when I give you these ranges, you have to decide where you sit within that range. Okay. So the first thing that you're going to need to do is put some form of research into the topic that you're going to talk about. That can be a very small amount of research, or a very lot, a very lot, a lot of research depending on what it is, if you're interviewing a really amazing guest, obviously, to have questions ready for them, you need to do a significant amount of research into who they are, you know, that kind of thing, get your topic sorted, that sort of thing, and really map it out a little bit. If it's a topic that you know, really well, you might not need to do too much research. Because like, for me, for example, this episode for me to put this together. And record, it won't take very long because I know what I'm going to talk about because I can talk about this all day long.
So the amount of research I need to do is pretty small. As an estimate, if you know the topic really well, maybe it's 15 minutes to kind of get your head around what you're going to talk about. Whereas all the way up to if you're interviewing a guest, and you need questions, and that sort of thing that could take you maybe a couple of hours to do that properly every week.
So just keep that in mind when you're thinking about starting a show is how much can I actually invest into that section. Right. So once you've actually researched the show, and then you're ready to record it, you've obviously got to then record the show. And that is the next thing that can take a little while. If you've done your research, sometimes some people actually script their shows as well. So then they actually write it out and that sort of thing. And that plays into the actual research and then recording time as well, because they do a bunch of takes and that sort of thing to get the scripting, right.
So to actually then record your show can take anywhere from let's say, again, if your episode is 15 minutes long, it might take you 25 to 30 minutes to do all the way up to if it's a big long podcast, it could take you maybe two hours to record that, depending on those sorts of factors that I've mentioned already. So that's a pretty good range as well. Alrighty, the next thing that you've got is the actual editing of that show. How long is that going to take? Again, you have to decide how you're going to edit the show and whether you're going to edit it at all, because editing is one of the most time consuming aspects of producing a show. If you're doing a short episode, and it requires limited editing, again, that could take you about 3035 minutes, 40 minutes, maybe around that, too, then if you're doing a really detailed edit of something that is an hour long conversation that could take you if you are a bit of a novice, it could take you up to six hours to edit yourself. And I have had clients say that exact thing that an edit was taking them six hours to do. Hmm, because there is a fair bit involved with actually editing a show really, really well. Some shows require that amount of editing, depending on the topic.
And if you've got like a really good guest on and you want it to sound really shmick you need to edit it for story development and make sure that it's like really flowing smoothly and that sort of thing. Getting your levels, right, that sort of stuff at all takes time. So that can be quite a large range that you have to decide how much time you can actually invest into the editing. Do you want to do the editing? Or do you want to outsource that this is the most outsourced aspect of podcasting, getting someone else to actually do your editing. Cool. Okay, the next thing that you would do is actually writing the show notes.
So show notes can take well again, it depends on how much research you've done, and how much like how long the episode is and that sort of thing if you've got a guest that sort of stuff. But if it's a really simple episode with really likes Simple takeaways. Your show notes might only take you 10 minutes, all the way up to if it's a detail guest and you're wanting to do full show notes with a blog post that could take about an hour and a half. To do that properly.
That's what we found here as well, when we're writing those sorts of things for people to do it really, really well. So the key aspects of a show, as to what you would actually need to run the show, you need to do some research, you need to record the episode, you need to edit the episode, and you need to write some show notes, all those aspects. And then you've also got the time that it takes to upload the show. But that's minimal that sort of thing to your podcast host. So you don't need to worry about that too much. From there, you do have some add ons for different things that you can also do when you are producing a show.
One of the massive ones is creating some sort of graphics that go with the episode. These are the things that you can share on your socials, your LinkedIn, you know, stuff that you can post to YouTube, if you've got a YouTube channel, that sort of stuff thumbnails for different things, headers, all sorts of stuff. So to create graphics for each episode could take about an hour to two hours depending on how involved those graphics are. And that includes possibly making those little audio grammes like the headliner. I don't know if you've used the headliner app before, but that's what we started using before we got really fancy and use proper software now.
Okay, so that could take some time, then you've got the transcript, if you're wanting to do a transcript of the episode, you've got two options there as well, you can either get an actual person to transcribe that, and I suggest using rev.com to do that. Or you can get AI transcriptions that they can be done through otter.ai. And happy Scribe is another one that we like to use. But the thing with that is, is that if you haven't got it done by a person, and you've got it done by AI, then you have to check it. So that can take significant time. So for transcription, if you get a person to do it, it's going to cost you more money. But it means that you don't have to really check it. So there's like limited time that it takes to do anything there. If you get AI to do it, it might take you an hour or so depending on the length of the episode, it could take longer for you to actually grammatically check that and turn it into a document that someone would actually want to read. So that's another add on.
The other one, add on bonus there that you might want to do when you're producing a show is to add it to your website. So if you're adding it to your website, then there, that's where those graphics come into play as well. Because you'll need like a title graphic, you might need a header graphic and that sort of thing, to put it on your website, make that page or that sort of thing. If you're running it every week, you should have a template set out for the actual stuff that you put in to the website every time. But yeah, that can take anywhere from 20 minutes, if it's pretty, you know, well done all the way through to if it's quite involved, then that can take about an hour or so there's quite a few steps there, there's quite a few things that you can do. And some of them don't take very long, some of them will take quite a while. If we tallied it all up, how long will it take for the standard stuff, you know, like the actual recording it, researching it, editing it, and shownotes that can take you anywhere from a minimum about two hours, all the way up to possibly about, you know, eight, nine hours for that normal part that everyone kind of does for a podcast. Yeah,
So that depends on again, how long the episodes are, how much research you need to do, but know that you've got about a two hour at least investment on that. If you're going to add on the add ons like making graphics and the transcript and the adding it to your website and that sort of stuff, then the investment is probably more around the like three and a half, three and a half ish hours all the way through to about 15 hours, the editing Bing, the bulk of that, right. So there you go.
That's kind of the way it goes here. So as far as how long it takes to run a show depends on how long your show is, is the biggest deciding factor as to how much time it takes to actually pump through that show every week. So I would think about that when you're thinking about starting a podcast is how much time can I actually invest into this? And also, am I going to be doing the editing myself. Iif you've never used editing software before, then that's going to be a learning curve as well. There's lots of things that you need to get familiar with when you're starting a podcast, but that's my quick run through on what time it actually takes to run a show. I hope it was useful. If you have any questions you can certainly contact him Hello at www.bambymedia.com, which is the email address that goes straight through to my inbox.
Or you can also just check us out Bamby media.com And follow us on Instagram and that sort of stuff as well. So thanks so much for listening and or watching. And I hope you have a lovely day.
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