10 Things I’ve Learned in 10 Years as an Independent Podcaster
In the closet, where all good audio comes from
Ten years ago this spring I made a pilot episode of a podcast called The Broad Experience. It was about women’s experiences in the workplace, and the many unspoken reasons why women, despite big educational gains, still lagged behind men at work. I’m still doing it ten years later. It’s always been a solo endeavor.
The last decade as an independent podcaster has been an education in so many ways. Here are some of the main things I’ve learned.
1. Seasons are a great idea. I wish I’d thought of seasons back in 2012. At that time all the advice to new podcasters centered around regularly of output. But if you’re an independent juggling other work, you can’t produce something thoughtful week after week. You need to take production breaks or the quality of the show will suffer.
2. The editing kills me every time, but it’s worth it. I hate most of my shows by the time they get out into the world. I have spent so much time cutting tape, adding tape, rearranging tape, writing narration, listening again and again, checking the final file, uploading it, writing web copy, etc. etc. that I am just…done. Having said this, I still edit the hell out of my shows. It’s worth the agonizing back and forth with myself to produce something that won’t waste people’s time. The feedback I get tells me I made the right decision.
3. When podcasting explodes in popularity, you will get left behind. I had a feeling this might happen. I launched my show during what now feels like something of a golden age for indies. You could put forth a podcast and because it was before Serial changed the landscape, people still paid attention.
I got some great press coverage that I never sought.
Not any more.
“Sometimes I despair at the glut of shows out there and how difficult it is to be found now.”
Inevitably I’ve lost listeners who, like me, can’t keep an ever expanding number of shows in their feed. There’s no answer to this. As a non-celebrity doing this entirely on my own, I feel invisible. (Quick rant: Why did celebrities have to take over podcasting?? They already dominate every other medium. I wish they’d slink off back to their glossy lives and leave us scruffy independent podcasters alone in our closets.)
4. Finding out who your listeners are is so worthwhile. For years I’ve looked at every message from a listener as a customer service opportunity: who are they, what do they do, how long have they been listening? Not everyone responds to these questions but the vast majority do, and I’ve learned so much about them. And the more you know about your audience, the more you can give them what they want (within reason - more on this in a minute). I’ve had some long on-and-off email/messaging relationships with listeners and felt supported by them at low moments.
5. Use social media as a communication tool, not just a way to push out what you’re doing. Social media is a fantastic place to ask listeners questions, engage with them, get their feedback and their ideas. We’ve had some very long threads on my show’s Facebook page, though I totally lagged on Instagram. The community I’ve built around the podcast is something I will sorely miss when I stop doing it.
6. Don’t produce episodes on topics you think you ‘should’ do, like something that feels important because it’s in the news. These episodes never work out well in my experience.
“If the idea isn’t deeply interesting to me or doesn’t come from something that sparked my curiosity, I can’t muster the level of enthusiasm I need to make the show sing.”
I get a lot of ideas from listeners but I don’t act on all of them, because if I take up an idea I’m half-hearted about, that’s a recipe for an underwhelming show. I have to trust that my listeners trust me enough to follow me wherever I decide to go.
7. Say no to pitches. 98% of the time they’re dreadful and the sender hasn’t a clue about your show’s sensibility. They may or may not have listened to an episode but they’ll pretend they have. The few times I’ve accepted a pitch all but one of the guests has been a dud. Trust your instincts: this is YOUR show, and the choice of guest should be yours, fueled by your interests.
8. Don’t bank on it being a business. I incubated and launched The Broad Experience while I was part of CUNY’s entrepreneurial journalism program. The whole idea was to make this a business. But I’ve always been a realist. I knew in my gut that it would be tough to make a living at this podcast unless I got lucky, or made an exhaustive effort, which as a solo producer I didn’t have the time and energy to do (or frankly want to do). I’ve always freelanced alongside this and made more money doing that than I’ve made doing the podcast. But that’s OK - in fact, some of my work has come to me because of my experience hosting this show, which has been hugely gratifying.
9. Doing it alone has been a challenge. But I’ve also enjoyed the freedom of being an indie. No one can tell me what to say and what not to say on my own show. Unlike in radio, there’s no editor to inform me that cut has to be 15 seconds and not a second longer. The audio can breathe.
Also, if you had told my self-conscious, reporterly ‘I can’t be part of the story’ self ten years ago that I would eventually allude to my own work debacles, miscarriages and menopause in this podcast, I would have been stunned and possibly horrified. There was no way the me of 2012 would have been comfortable getting so personal. But over the years you become a more relaxed host, and you get to know your listeners. Nowadays I’m more at ease talking about some things ‘with’ listeners on the podcast or social media than I am with friends or family.
10. You have to do your podcast for you. Otherwise your interest will wane. I know, I keep coming back to this, but you can’t keep producing something every two to three weeks for years unless you’re really fascinated by the people you’re talking to, and the subject matter.
This podcast IS me. There’s no getting away from that. It was not created by committee, it was created by me to solve problems and disseminate ideas I thought other women in the workplace might find insightful and interesting. I wanted to help people and I needed to express myself.
My curiosity has kept me and the show going. Without that, there wouldn’t be one.