Test Your Podcasting Tolerances

Podcasting isn't easy.

There's so much that goes into a quality podcast episode and that's before we even talk about the launch process, the marketing requirements and all of the pesky business "stuff" that goes into finding and managing sponsors, listener support and any other legal obligations you may have as you start to generate revenue.

It's why Captivate creates so much free educational content - anything that will help you to navigate the challenges of being a day-to-day podcaster is worth doing.

Podcasting is just podcasting, right?

"Podfade" is the term that people use to describe a podcast that started producing and then faded out.

First and foremost, I want to be clear that that's alright - this is podcasting, not life and death so please ignore anyone being grumpy or telling you that it's wrong to "podfade". There are some angry people out there with access to keyboards.

I say that not to be flippant, but so that you know that it's ok for podcasting to not be your whole life. Maybe it's a hobby - heck, I have hobby podcasts that get about 1/3 of the effort that this one does but that I love doing - maybe it's something that you do for other reasons than making money or a business.

In short: podcasting is just a *thing* that people do for different reasons and it's ok to put as much or as little into it as you want as long as the expectations of what you'll get "back" from podcasting are aligned to how much you put in.

You won't earn a passive living and retire to a beach through podcasting if you spend an hour conducting templated interviews and "automating" every piece of marketing that you do for your show because some guru told you that you can podcast in one hour per week.

But, you can make a really good living in the podcasting industry by treating it as a job. 

Or you can have a really great time in podcasting by understanding that you don't want it to be a job - much like me with playing my bass, going out with my camera or playing golf; I love them all but understand that I don't want to make a living doing them and so, if I have a week off playing golf, that's ok - no one is going to angrily tweet me about "golfading" or tell me that because I've only played one round of golf that I should be kicked off all golfing platforms and stop contributing to the number of "dead" golfers that make up the vast majority of the industry.

Doesn't it sound silly when you say it out loud?

One of the challenges with podcasting and in fact, with any other hobby or career path, is that the thing you "do" doesn't always articulate the depth or detail of the things that must be "done" in order to "do" it.

For example, "podcasting" is fun and easier than it has ever been but the thing that people associate with podcasting the most is sitting down to record and then seeing that recording on a podcast app for people to listen to.

In reality, though, there are so many more nuanced activities that go into a podcast's production and although you might love "podcasting", you don't have to like every act that you must undertake in order to be a podcaster.

Without understanding that concept you're at more risk, in my opinion, of "podfading", especially if the things that you don't like to do outweigh the things that you love to do.

Test your podcasting tolerances to keep publishing and start growing.

There's no point doing things that you don't like unless you simply must do them.

That applies in business and in life, in my view, but in podcasting we often have more control over these things than we would if we were trying to avoid doing the laundry which of course, I never ever do. I love doing laundry. Honestly. No,...