Whenever we want to produce a podcast, the million-dollar question comes up: "How much would it cost me?"
Whether you want to create your podcast with a commercial purpose or just for the love of the art, this format usually involves an economic investment. Therefore, in this article we explain the factors that really influence the final price of production and, incidentally, we debunk one of the biggest myths about it.
But we don't want to get ahead of ourselves! So, let's get started.
💰 Is there a "standard" price for podcasts?
In reality, there is no single answer to this question.
It is best to say that there is a range of prices, in which many factors influence the final result. Therefore, although there is no exact figure to encompass the cost of producing a format as diverse as this one, there are questions that can help you specify where your content falls in the price range.
A good starting point is to answer the following question to learn the truth about one of the great myths of the podcaster world.
🤔 The longer an episode lasts the more expensive it is?
It is a myth, it is false! It is not true that the length of an episode has a direct relationship with the cost of producing it.
Surely, many times you have thought: "If a thirty-minute episode is worth, say, $$1,500, a ten-minute episode should be worth $$500."
But in practice this is not always the case.
It can happen that a long episode, with two hosts and a prepared round table, is much less expensive to produce than a ten-minute podcast in which very dense information must be summarized, including many sources and interviews.
In fact, the scenario is often the opposite: it can be much more expensive to make a short, complex one than a long, relaxed one.
So if your dream is to create a long podcast, don't worry, it might not be as expensive as you thought!
Now the question is: what elements really determine the cost of producing a podcast?
🫡 What DOES influence price.
Format and narrative complexity
This is the first element that contributes to define the cost: the format you choose and its narrative complexity.
Therefore, we will separate them into two groups: the less complex and the more complex.
In the first group, the less complex podcasts, we would have:
- Round table
- In monologue format
These are shows in which there are one, two or more hosts, who discuss one or more topics in a fluid and very natural way.
An example of a round table would be Sales machine y Understand your mind. In the case of the monologues, we have the example of Popularly with Vanessa Rosales.
And in the second group, the most complex formats, we find:
- From interviews
- Documentaries
- Fiction
These formats involve much more production and post-production work, as they can go from interviewing a different guest in each episode with one or two fixed hosts (as in Doubts are given away) to the creation of a documentary script with several sources and more interviews (e.g., Bancolombia Innovation) and the writing of a fictionalized script, involving voice actors (as is the case in Case 63).
Another detail to consider is whether your podcast will be produced in one or more languages, as this also adds more complexity to the format.
Obviously, each of these formats has a different narrative complexity, and this will largely determine how to start budgeting the investment.
But there are still more details you should keep in mind.
🧐 Food for thought: how many voices will your podcast have?
This is an aspect to reflect on very well!
It is not the same to produce a thirty-minute episode, where we will only find the voice of the host and an interviewee, than to produce a podcast of the same length, but including many interviews.
For example: in Medium Orange we have produced podcasts such as Truora's Universewhich, in a single 30-minute episode, easily covers eight hours of interviews, but we've also produced podcasts such as What Wattwhich, although it lasts the same amount of time, only includes an hour and a half or two hours of interviews.
In conclusion: the more sources and interviews, the higher the cost.
⏰ Research and production time.
From the choice of format of your podcast, aspects such as its narrative and production complexity, and, therefore, the research that each episode requires, can be deduced.
On the one hand, there are formats that do not require much prior research because they are more spontaneous while there are podcasts that can take months or even years of research, such as a documentary format, which addresses a specific case or complex issues with many sources to summarize a hypothesis to be reached.
On the other hand, in addition to the sources, interviews and hours of research as such, the production time of your episode may also be mediated by the time that other colleagues, teams or experts dedicate to the conceptualization or creation of the content as such.
In any case, whether or not it is a branded podcast, the more people have to dedicate more hours of their work to build the show in any of its stages -from the previous research to the search of audiences and content distribution- the more expensive it will be to produce your podcast.
🎼 Appropriate musicalization
Music gives it life and soul: musicalizing does make a big difference in the final result of your episode because it allows you to have a higher retention rate, with much more enjoyable content that provides a better experience for the listener.
That is why the musicalization, being so essential in the official result, will also influence the price of your show.
You can choose to have one where you will only have a musical input at the beginning, with no sound treatment for the vocals, or one with musicalization, beat tracking and full sound treatment. Of course, both scenarios have a different cost.
🎯 What will be the target and why does this also affect the cost?
Your podcast may have one or several objectives and, in order to conquer them successfully, it must have a strategy behind it. This will always be anchored to an additional cost.
- Entertainment objective: seeks to make the content engaging and attractive to the listener, without any additional tasks, so it can be simpler.
- Objective of branding or brand positioning: is a medium complexity because it involves making the content and involves additional production time to subtly, but relevant to the brand, include the additional message you want to convey.
- Commercial or prospecting objective: involves, in addition to the entire research, production and post-production process, the creation and execution of a strategy with capture engines for leads or a joint work with the commercial team to follow up.
📈 Finally, let's talk about distribution or audience growth.
We must be very clear that it is one thing to generate the content and have the audio on air and another thing to build an audience for the show once it has been published.
And in this case, the strategy to reach more listeners has very specific objectives, both in downloading and distribution.
To do so, you must count on consulting or distribution support hours, which may be limited or unlimited, as is the case of Medium OrangeOnce we are hired, we are available for any distribution consultancy.
Here we also work for deliverables that, effectively, give more strength to the show when it is on the air. That is to say: when you hire a production company, they can deliver a piece or cover for each episode or promotional content, they can also be reels or infographic content to accompany the episode.
Therefore, in that sense, depending on the number of additional deliverables to the audio content, this also implies an additional cost in the production.
And, finally, we come to the scope that the distribution has, i.e:
Of course, as you realize, the range of options to include these parameters in your podcast can be very wide: you can hire from a sound engineer who only cleans the audio to a production company, which includes everything we have already mentioned.
As for the production companies, the offer can also be varied: from those that create the audio file with a clean sound to podcast production companies. full stackwhich is how we operate in Medium Orange We take care of uploading the podcast to the air, the domain, distributing it on different platforms and creating audience growth strategies, meeting the goals you want to achieve.
👌🏼 As you can see, defining the price is not a simple job and requires analyzing many details.
And if you think about it, it's too much work for one person.
However, it doesn't have to be that way. That's why we love answering your questions so much: if after reading this article you have any doubts about which format would suit you best depending on the goal you want to achieve, what specifically the musicalization consists of, or any additional questions, just let us know.
The comments section is all yours, you just write and we'll get back to you!
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