Who am I and why should you listen to me? I’m Jordan Schneider, the host of the ChinaTalk podcast. My show every week has guests talking about China’s political economy and tech scene. 225 episodes in, I’ve made plenty of bad shows, some decent ones, and grown my audience to around 10,000 listeners. Though not an industry leader by any means, Here’s what I’ve learned about the various steps it takes to put together a podcast.
For workflow details on how I use Riverside (a recording platform) and Descript (my audio editor), see this youtube tutorial I recorded for some friends in April 2022.
Booking Guests
- Be polite! You’re asking people to spend an hour and a half of their time with you for little to no tangible reward. Until you grow to Tim Ferris size, your guests by and large are doing you a favor coming on your show, not the other way around. Also, reference something specific in their work to show you do your homework and make the guests feel like they’re not getting some form email.
- Be persistent! Oftentimes a follow-up a week after the first email, and a month after the second follow-up, could get folks to agree to do a show with you.
- Be brave! Especially if you’re starting out, you may think that you’re not worth anyone’s time. But particularly if your show is niche enough, the guests you’re inviting on won’t necessarily have a ton of media knocking down their door. If you target people who aren’t famous, you’d be surprised at the response rate (for my show, whose guests are generally academics, journalists and think tankers who follow China, around 60%).
- How to ensure guests don’t suck? Booking guests who’ve just written something you find interesting guarantees they have something to talk about you find interesting. If they’re not the type to write things, try to find an interview of them on another podcast (search Listen Notes or on Spotify) or tv show (search YouTube).
- It helps, but isn’t essential, to have a website to send along to guests.
Planning
- Do your homework. If you’re going to invite someone onto your podcast, you owe it to your guest and to your audience to read their book or articles in full. No matter how good you are at bullshitting, it will show (listen to an episode of Conversations with Tyler—who reads literally everything his guests have ever written for an hourlong podcast—to understand how much prep can help make a show stand out). Plus, if your show is about one general topic, the prep you do for any given show has compound learning effects so that for future shows you’ll be able to ask better questions.
- Don’t just outline, write out your questions. Especially at first, you’re likely to pause and say “um” far more than will sound nice. Practice reading the questions once or twice before the show.
Recording
- Get comfortable interrupting your guests. In normal smart conversation, which is what an interview-based show is usually trying to approximate, people talk over each other all the time. As the host, what’s interesting to you is generally what’s interesting to the audience. Don’t feel guilty pointing your guest in the direction you want them to go and redirecting them away from something boring.
- Use Riverside.fm to record online, it’s 10x better than Zoom or any other platform. It’s reliable and does a great job backing itself up, and the quality by recording locally and on separate tracks for each guest is wonderful.
- Buy a real mic (check out this mic buying guide). Starting out with a Blue Yeti is a great choice. Try to record somewhere quiet (shut off your AC beforehand) and with decent acoustics (like this).
- Buy a pop filter so that your Ps and Ts don’t sound awful. It matters a lot and they’re super cheap.
- Podcasts aren’t live radio so don’t have to be done in one take. If you hiccup on a question saying too many ‘um’s or speaking in a long-winded manner, just restart the question and cut out the bad take
inpost -production. Allow your guests to do the same.
Hosting
- They’re all pretty much the same, your podcast will be discoverable on all podcast whichever you pick. No need to pay money when you’re just starting out.
Post-production
- Get Descript, use studio sound, maybe cut out some ums and likes. See here for a video tutorial I recorded on how to use the program.
Growing your audience
- It ain’t easy. You have to hustle, especially if you’re not famous or affiliated with any media outlets. Make sure your guests tweet out episodes they’re in and spend the time to email relevant newsletters to link to your shows.
- Write twitter threads that blow up.
- Join a network. Podcast networks can help with visibility, marketing, and promotion. Plus, you’ll get built-in podcaster friends who you can whine alongside with about guests bailing last minute! A featured episode on a big channel can multiply your subscriber-base overnight. It’s best to reach out to a network until after you’ve done some episodes you’re proud of so you can prove to them you’re worth their time.
- Don’t expect to make money anytime soon. You can charge maybe $25 per ad per thousand listeners. Podcasts are for fun, for having interesting conversations, and “building a personal brand,” but monetization for niche shows that provide
even minimum wage for the hours you put in is an uphill battle.
How to get better
- Ask guests for feedback. Most are too polite to say much, but every once in a while they’ll have a gem for you.
- Listen to shows that are better than yours. Russ Roberts of EconTalk and Terry Gross have been doing interview-based format shows longer than you have. Listen to whenever the guests say “that’s a great question” and try to think about what it took for those interviewers to come up with those questions.