… add in the intro/outro music (which I performed, mixed, and recorded myself), briefly consider relapsing, and then the audio editing is done! And the thing that really sucks about audio editing is this: nobody except other audio editors listens to something and goes “Hot damn, that’s some fine audio editing!” You’re not making your product better; you’re just making it less bad.
So that means we’re done now, right? The episode is done? You poor, sad, non-podcasting chump. Of course it isn’t done. Next I Photoshop up a little art asset to promote the episode and to use as a thumbnail on the various streaming services. This usually doesn’t take me too long, but sometimes I get way too into it, like with this one I did for Roaring Fire, also known as Hoero! Tekken:
So after all that, I get my Don Draper on by writing copy — the copy is a brief description of the episode and anything our guests want us to promote, plus all the tags for YouTube — then I use the art asset as a static background and render out the podcast as video for our YouTube channel, stopping only to google “sex wizard viable career path?” Then, at long last, it’s over. The grueling marathon is done … for two weeks, when we’ll do it all again.
Except even when it’s done, it’s not done. We still manage the podcast’s social media account, monitor listens so we know what is and isn’t working, think about advertising, talk about SEO, and a million other little things. So we must be getting paid pretty well to do all this work, right? Well, I don’t want to brag, but:
We’ve been doing the podcast for about a year now. Between the upfront costs of audio equipment and the hosting services we use, we’ve actually lost money on this (to say nothing of the hours spent on it that could have been spent doing something that pays better, like being a centenary-only birthday clown). Podcasts are a bubble. Part of their appeal — that they have a relatively low barrier of entry — is also what makes it so difficult to make money from it. It’s a huge field, so it’s really difficult to stand out.
Clearly, we do this because we’re insane. And because we’re having fun and we love movies or whatever. The real lesson here is that it’s fun to be creative with your friends. It can be a great outlet. There’s nobody to tell you you’re doing it wrong or give you notes or ask you if you still might go to med school, mom. You’re accountable to no one and nothing except your own creative vision. As someone who sometimes works in Hollywood, that’s incredibly refreshing.
But, to quote Joe Pug, if you’re in it for the windfalls, don’t be surprised when your will to fight wavers and eventually dies. Maybe there’s something kind of defiant and beautiful in making something with absolutely no value to capital, and continuing to spend hours on it despite that.
So, with all that being said, we are currently accepting sponsors!
William Kuechenberg is a repped screenwriter and Nicholl Top 50 Finalist looking to get staffed or be a writer’s assistant in your room! Of course, he is also on the podcast Bad Movies for Bad People, the world’s FIRST and ONLY comedy podcast about movies (available on all major podcast platforms!). He is on Twitter.
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