The Podcast Life is a newsletter by Deanna Chapman that helps you create a great podcast.

This week’s episode!

Travis Newton joins the podcast to dig into DIY podcasting. We talk about what it takes to stay consistent, how you can iterate on your show, and more. You can watch below on YouTube or listen on your audio platform of choice.

Your Podcast Doesn’t Need Video

Travis and I has a post-episode chat about where we think podcast is heading in 2025 and emphasized that not all podcasts need a video component.

Deanna: So it's January of 2025, a whole new year for podcasting. Do you have anything that you're looking forward to with the podcast industry in general in 2025, or do you have any pet peeves that you would wish would go away in 2025 with podcasting?

Travis: Podcasting is, I think, at this time, still in a very unstable state. We still have these companies kind of competing to be the place for podcasting. YouTube is still trying to find out how to be a podcasting platform in addition to being a video platform. I inherently think of podcasts as an audio format and I see the greater push for it to be a video format.

And I do think a lot of people now see it as a video format by default. And I, for the life of me, kind of can't figure out there are a lot of shows where it's like three people sitting around sure SM7B's in a basement somewhere. And I'm like, you'll watch that for three hours? So video content for me, being a person who does video production and video editing professionally, I don't understand the appeal in that as a video format, because I'd much rather just forget about the video, put my headphones on and do the dishes or cook or not have to worry about the visual component of it.

I think podcasting in 2025 would do better to focus more on the audible aspects of the shows. They'll only get easier to produce. Podcasting is going to get easier with Adobe's podcast platform and things like that. There will be fewer and fewer excuses to produce poor tape.

Deanna: Yeah. And I've noticed too, as someone who works on multiple shows that are people in a podcast studio with not necessarily SM7Bs in front of them, but the same Rode mic that I have in front of me right now, I think the way some people are consuming those types of podcasts in particular is that they just listen to stuff on YouTube, so they might be doing the dishes and just have it on YouTube on their phone and they're not looking at the actual video because there have definitely been some times where there's like a little bit of a weird jump cut with an edit or something but as far as I know like nobody's pointing those things out.

So I do think a lot of people are largely listening while they're doing other things or they might like have it on their TV while they're like cleaning or whatever and I tried to avoid doing video podcasts specifically for so long, so I understand your sentiment with that, and I gave in, and there are some episodes of this podcast that have done better on YouTube than they have with audio downloads, and that's just how it is.

There are also episodes of this on YouTube that have gotten 7 views, and it's because I'm not good at packaging, and that is something that I'm going to be working on throughout, like, the process of this podcast. I really just want to be, like, transparent with what it's like making a podcast, because yes, I know all of the things I should do, it doesn't mean I always want to do them, or do them.

Travis: Yeah, it's the same as any kind of chore, which makes it sound very negative, but one of the things that I found about podcasting and how it evolved was people were constantly trying to guess where the algorithm was going. And I'm like, this is just YouTuber stuff.

Drew and I have less than zero interest in YouTuber stuff. We're not trying to worry about the algorithm. We're very grateful for this, but our show has reached a point of self sustaining stability, where we don't have listener growth. We don't prioritize growth.

We have a few hundred people who really like to listen to our show consistently, and we have enough people who support us on Patreon to cover our costs. That's it.

Deanna: Sometimes that's all people want. I would love to just have my costs covered.

Travis: Sure and honestly, Drew and I loved doing the show so much, even when it was a money losing endeavor, because it was worth the monetary investment for me and for, for myself and my friend to sit down together and spend that kind of time creating and talking and devoting ourselves to a creative cause.

It was worth that investment. And I hope for people who are maybe getting into podcasting in 2025, that they don't limit themselves to thinking of it as a video default format, because it's not.

Deanna: Yeah, and there are a lot of podcasts that don't lend themselves to video. There are a lot of narrative shows that I've listened to. There are a lot of fiction shows where, you know, people are selling their audio fiction podcasts to be made into TV shows. So obviously you can have some sort of visual component to it, but it's probably not going to be you making it if we're being honest. So at that point just focus on making the best audio experience that you can and See what happens from there.

Travis: Yeah. My favorite audio fiction shows have amazing sound design and it's really difficult to appreciate things like amazing sound design on YouTube because the format doesn't just, it's just not really cut out for it.

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