Despite being consistent with my podcast for two and a half years, part of me still wonders whether it’s actually a worthwhile business endeavor, or just something I do because I enjoy it.
I recently changed my mind about that. And I’m excited to get into why.
So today I’m sharing the honest version of what podcasting long-term looks like in my life right now. What changed, what didn’t, and what it actually costs me.
Because I know how this goes. It’s mid-summer as this airs, but fall is going to hit, and a lot of you are going to start wondering if now is the time to start a podcast. Then January will be here before we know it, it’ll be 2027, and you’ll be asking yourself the same question again: is this the year I finally do it?
This one might help you make that call.
Let’s get into it.
Table of Contents
If you’re new here, there’s a decent chance you found this post through Google, because that’s how most people find the show. Welcome. I’m so glad you’re here.
I’m Kara. I run a content marketing agency where we do blogging for SEO, Pinterest, and turning podcast episodes into blog posts for people who are tired of the social media hamster wheel. So that’s what this show is about, plus whatever business thing is on my mind that week (usually something about scaling).
And if you’ve been here a while, hi friends. Some of you have been listening since day one. I think about that a lot, and I’m so appreciative.
Today we’re going all the way back to the beginning, and I’m going to be as honest about the good and the bad as humanly possible.
After two and a half years podcasting long-term, the long game was longer than I expected
If you’re seriously toying with the idea of starting a podcast, listen to episode 28 after this one. I know you’ll have to scroll back forever in the app, but that one was recorded six months in and it’s a very transparent look at what the beginning actually feels like.
In that episode, I talked about knowing podcasting was a long game. I wasn’t expecting an ROI or any leads by the six-month mark. And I didn’t get one. Honestly, I felt like I blinked and the six-month mark was here.
What I wasn’t prepared for, two and a half years in, is how long “a long game” actually is.
It’s the last six months where I finally started seeing a more consistent ROI. Which means it took a solid two years.
And I wasn’t coming in cold. New to being behind a mic, sure. But I’d been listening to podcasts forever, I’d worked with podcasters behind the scenes, I knew the workflows, I knew how to promote, I knew SEO, and I’ve blogged every single episode since the start. Still about two years.
Next week I’m getting into what I’d do differently if I went back to day one, so come back for that one.
The Reality of Podcasting Lulls
The other thing worth saying at the two and a half year mark: you will go through lulls. Or at least I did.
This sounds cheesy, but nobody prepares you for that part, and it’s hard to push through. You hit a stretch where it feels like you’ve said everything you have to say. You’re busy, so you’re doing it at the last minute, scrambling for ideas, not excited to record.
It’s not that you stop liking it. Only about 1% of podcasts make it past the first 20 episodes, so if you’ve cleared that hurdle, you probably like it a little bit.
But I equate the podcasting side of my business to being a content creator. The second it feels like a chore, you stop making your best stuff. That’s the advice content creators always give, and I think it holds even if you’d never call yourself one. I don’t have an influencer-style business, obviously. But when you’re creating content for your business, you know better. You know that if you’re not bringing your energy to an episode, it’s not going to do as well.
And when the thing has to go out every week, that gets complicated fast. Because if your energy isn’t there, do you just not record? Do you pause? Publish something short? Take a break? Those decisions weigh on you when podcasting long-term.
I’ve probably gone through two real lulls in the last two and a half years. They only last a couple of months, but during those months you’re stuck in this loop of “I don’t have time for this, I don’t feel inspired, and the episode isn’t going to do well anyway because I’m not bringing my A game.” That’s my most honest self on it.
And as a professional marketer, I know exactly what a good episode requires from me. I need to research the topic a bit. I need to show up with real energy. And I need an outline, a decent one. I don’t script the podcast at all, but this isn’t three bullet points either. It’s usually one to two Google Doc pages.
Knowing all of that doesn’t make it easier when you’re tired on a Tuesday. Or in my case, on a weekend, because for some reason that’s when I always record.
So it happened to me. It will probably happen to you. Just knowing it happens to most people helps, because you’re not doing anything wrong if you’re not waking up inspired to record for three years straight.
My personal numbers behind podcasting long-term
I always find this part interesting when other people share it, and then when it’s my turn I’d rather listen to nails on a chalkboard. But here they are.
My first few episodes got maybe 10 to 15 listens a week. Around six months in, I was averaging 50 a week. Now I’m at about 250 a week.
That’s exponential growth, and I’m still nowhere near a top 1% podcast. And the honest shape of it wasn’t a smooth line. You get to 30 and sit at 30 for a while. Then 50. Then 80 every week. Then 100 every week. And on it goes.
Choosing not to niche when podcasting long-term
My numbers are also a little different because I blog every single episode, which makes my episodes far more searchable than the average podcaster’s. I know that for a fact. Episodes tied to blog posts that rank on Google pull noticeably more downloads, and I can see it in my analytics. BUT, that means I probably have fewer loyal listeners than someone else at 250 weekly downloads who doesn’t have an SEO strategy. They’re getting people who keep coming back. I’m getting a lot of new people who may not stick around.
Part of that is that this show isn’t super niched. If I taught blogging or SEO tips every single week, I’d have people who are specifically interested in that showing up every week for more. Instead, this is more of a “what’s on Kara’s brain” show.
I have tried to keep a niche. When I started, it was scaling topics, things that would be interesting to people like me who are actively scaling an online business. I’ve stayed pretty true to that. But it’s not very specific.
So when someone finds a random episode through Google, like my 10X Is Easier Than 2X book review, which is one of my top performing episodes of all time, it’s not necessarily related to what I actually do. Amazing for new eyes. Less amazing for retention.
Two and a half years in, that’s the thing I have to look at. I’m good at the SEO part. I know that. The part I need to work on is podcast conversion strategy.
When Podcasting Long-term Started To See an ROI
In the six-month podcast update episode, I said zero people had inquired.
By episode 99, where I got into the brutal truth about podcasting and everything no one tells you, that number was up to about two. Two people, ever, who said they found me through the podcast. Worth a listen after this one.
By then I did have listeners who were clients, though not all of my clients listen, to be honest.
But I was on the fence about whether the podcast was earning its keep. Two leads in two years is slow by any standard.
What shifted in the last six months
Even when the leads weren’t there, I could see the podcast doing other work. It nurtures people. It keeps me honest with clients I’m not chatting with every day. It’s a way to prove my expertise and show my process and my workflow.
So I was on the fence, but I genuinely enjoy podcasting, and I wanted to keep going. I just wasn’t sure about the ROI of podcasting long-term.
In the last six months, that shifted. I’m now getting leads semi-regularly, maybe once a month.
That doesn’t sound like much. For a service like mine, it’s good. If you’re listening to this and you hire me for blogging, that’s $500 a month, and maybe you stay for three years. I don’t even want to do that math out loud. But the ROI is there.
The membership changed the picture
It also made a noticeable difference during my membership launch.
In case you don’t know, I launched The AI Blog Sprint as a beta membership in Q2. I’m continuing with the same members through Q3, and it opens in Q4. If you’re not on the waitlist yet, get on here.
A real chunk of the people who joined found me through the show and had been sitting on my email list. That’s been really interesting to me.
Because here’s the thing. As a service provider, it took about two years to see an ROI. But if I’d had something lower ticket sooner, that might have changed how much money the podcast made me.
Going from “I like listening to her podcast” to “I’ll join her lower ticket membership” is not a huge jump. Going from listening to being ready to hire someone for an ongoing monthly service is a much bigger commitment, and probably a bigger one than most new listeners are ready for. For those of you who’ve been here two and a half years, maybe I’m on the list of people to hire one day. Maybe not. All good either way.
Hindsight is 20/20 on this one. But it’s worth thinking about if you’re building a podcast around a service-only offer suite.
Will the membership lead to more DFY marketing clients?
I do wonder how many membership members eventually convert to done-for-you clients. That is not my goal, to be transparent.
One mistake I made with a course I launched in 2020 was making it way too big. A bunch of people went through it and then hired me to do the work for them. On one hand, great, they liked the content and they clearly trusted me. On the other hand, I hadn’t made it easy enough for them to actually do it themselves. I kind of feel like I failed there as an educator, even though it made sense monetarily. I wouldn’t have called that a win. I wanted to empower people to do it themselves.
So my goal with the membership is that people don’t join, feel overwhelmed by blogging, and conclude they need to hire me. That’s literally why I built an AI tool that helps you write the blog post with my brain.
That said, if someone joins and decides even the small edits are too much and they’d rather outsource and get higher-level strategy, perfect. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with members who stick around for a year or two.
Either way, this experience isn’t unique to me. As a service provider, it usually just takes a long time to get clients from your podcast.
What it costs to start podcasting long-term
It wouldn’t be a two and a half year update without the money.
The podcast still costs me about $200 to $400 a month depending on the month. That’s the same range it was at six months in, back in episode 28.
I still have an editor. I still have someone on my team turning the transcript into a blog post. And there’s my own time recording the episode, which I’m not counting in that number.
So it was never going to be a free little hobby project. My business was already busy when I started, which meant outsourcing from the start.
You can absolutely learn podcast editing yourself. But my editor is amazing, and I love that I can hand her a messy file and she works her magic on it. Worth every dollar of that invoice.
How much time does podcasting long-term take?
The amount of time I spend on the podcast ranges quite a bit. But to do it at the level I actually want to be doing it, it’s three to four hours a week per episode.
That includes planning which episodes I want to record and outlining them. And I usually come back to an outline more than once. Say the idea is “two and a half years in, what I’ve learned about podcasting.” I’ll save voice notes to myself where I talk things through, things like what I wish I knew, talk about the money, talk about this, and so on. Then I’ll consolidate all of that into an outline. Then I like to let it sit and come back the next day, because I think you get better outlines that way.
That’s what I mean about it varying. I don’t have time to run the perfect process every single month. But I do notice that when I’m more prepared, the episode does better.
That three to four hours includes my editor’s time and the blog post too. Some of it has gotten faster, because AI helps a lot on the repurposing side.
My AI blog membership is very close to launching a new tool that turns your podcast script into a blog post
If you’re not familiar with my blogging membership, here’s the quick version. I’ve built an AI blog tool where you fill in a form and it emails you a blog post written with all my prompts, expertise, and knowledge baked in. You get an email that says your blog is ready, and you upload it to your site.
It’s been going so well, and I am this close to releasing one that turns a podcast transcript into a full blog post.
I know what you’re thinking. Can’t ChatGPT just do that? No. Chunk by chunk, maybe. But dropping a whole transcript in and asking for a blog post skips the nuance, summarizes everything, and makes it sound painfully general. You might get something your clients would skim. You’re not getting something that ranks on Google and works as a real alternative to listening to the episode.
This tool takes your transcript chunk by chunk and rewrites it that way, so you end up with a ready-made blog post based on what you actually said, without losing anything.
So yes, AI has sped up our workflow. It’s still about three to four hours a week between all of us. Sometimes more if I’m struggling to land on a topic.
What I got for the time and money
Ten toes down: I feel like I’m perceived as more of an authority now than at any point in my career, and a big part of that is podcasting long-term.
I think that comes from being past the 100 episode mark, being consistent this long, and putting out things that sound like me. It helps people trust me.
That’s been bigger than I anticipated at six months in, when I thought it was doing what I wanted but wasn’t really sure.
I’ve Changed My Mind About Podcasting Long-term
For a long time, my position was: this is more of a hobby. It’s a long game. It’s part of the brand.
Now my podcast is making me money.
That’s what I mean when I say I changed my mind. I really, honestly hadn’t been sure. And now I’m at no, it’s earning its keep, and I think I can take it up a notch.
I’ve been proud of my last six weeks of episodes. When I looked at what’s on the calendar coming up, I was excited about all of it. After a long stretch of humming and hawing, it’s finally turned the corner.
I think everyone should have a podcast if they have the capacity to keep it going. That “if” is why I like to be so realistic about what it takes.
Trendy versus timeless podcast episodes
This is something I’ve been experimenting with more and more.
As a general rule, I stick to evergreen content anyway. It’s more my vibe. I like to build something once and get found for months. That’s literally the name of my private podcast, and honestly it’s how I like to live my life. And like I said, the episodes that perform on Google are the ones that keep pulling downloads.
But the experiment I’m watching right now is hooky titles versus obvious SEO titles.
Here’s an example. Two episodes that both did much better than my average were back to back in June. One was “the sales strategy being passed around in private coaching rooms right now.” Not exactly trendy, but it was something I was seeing at the time, and the title was designed to be hooky and engaging.
That one had the most downloads out of the gate that I’d seen in a long time.
Compare it to the episode right before it. These are 124 and 125. Episode 124 was “Is Blogging Dead in 2026,” which is obviously an SEO title and obviously what I do. Regular listeners probably saw it and thought, oh, she’s going to tell me blogging isn’t dead and to hire her. And you’d be correct. There was more to the episode, but yes, that’s absolutely correct.
That one got fewer downloads out of the gate. Then it surpassed the hooky one after about a month.
So the sales strategy episode was my top episode for a month and still performs very well. It just took about four weeks for a good SEO title to pass it. I have plenty of SEO titles that never passed it, to be clear. I’m only comparing two of my strongest recent episodes.
So the obvious move is go SEO, right?
Not quite.
I actually think baking in something trendy or hooky was a smart move, because it brings people in. Then I can sell them on the more SEO-heavy titles.
You need both. For the sake of user experience, not every single thing can be optimized for search, because your regular listeners will get bored. That’s part of why I didn’t just want a blogging for SEO show.
I’ve been underestimating titles
Honest confession: this is something I self-sabotage on. I tell myself names aren’t that important. Not that I want something dumb, but I’ve been underestimating just how much an episode title matters.
Look at how well “the sales strategy being passed around in private coaching rooms right now” performed. It way overperformed my recent episodes. And it did that even though you can’t really tell what the episode is about from the title.
Two weeks ago I posted one about the Yap Challenge. That’s also looking strong, though at the time of recording it’s only been three or four days, so I can’t say for sure.
But the pattern is there. When I put something trendy or genuinely hooky in the podcast title, it makes a humongous difference in downloads.
Which is silly for a marketer to be surprised by. We know these things matter. I just underestimate how much.
The guest podcast episode experiment
In episode 99 I was pretty ruthless about the challenges with guest episodes, and I said I was pausing them.
Since then I’ve had a few, but not many. What I tried instead is a guest expert format, where the guest records their portion themselves, almost like a training.
Easier for me, obviously. But I genuinely think it’s better content too.
Why I prefer the training format
I should say up front that I’m biased. I don’t love listening to business interviews. Gabbing interviews, sure. But the business ones follow the same script every time. How did you start? What’s your expertise? What about this? You waste so much time going back and forth instead of getting to an actual takeaway.
So as both a listener and a host, I prefer the training format.
The catch is that it’s more work for the guest. When someone pitches to come on my show, they want to show up for half an hour, answer a few questions, and get on with their day. That’s the level of effort they’re signing up for. I’m asking them to plan, prep, and record a 30-minute training that I’ll write an intro for. Much bigger ask.
I don’t mind asking, because I’m putting them in front of my audience and that’s valuable. I’m an SEO girly, so our episode goes on Google and gets listened to three years from now.
But for most people it’s too much work. It becomes one of those “oh yeah, I’ll definitely do that” things that nobody ever actually does. Which is fine. Honestly, totally fine with me.
I might bring interviews back one day, but it’s not on my radar. Solo episodes are how I connect with you. It’s how I share what’s on my heart, and how I record episodes I actually think you’ll be interested in. I have total control. And I don’t have to block an hour in the middle of my day, which drives me crazy even though I love talking to people. It’s disruptive when you spend most of your day writing.
One more thing worth knowing: the guest expert trainings have longer average listen time. If a guest interview gets 60% average listen time, the trainings are closer to 80%.
So the format clearly works better. It’s just harder to find people willing to do it. And honestly, if they’re not willing to prep a training, are they going to prep for the interview?
Where I’ve landed about podcasting long-term
Podcasting and long-form content are the way of the future. I’ve been saying that forever, and investing in this podcast has been such a good move for me. Even with the uncertainty. Even with the wavering.
If you’re thinking about starting a podcast and expecting it to replace your lead gen in year one, it probably won’t. It didn’t for me.
But if you stick with it, I think it could be really good for your business. And for you as a person. This kind of thing challenges you personally and pushes you to develop in ways you don’t expect.
I’ve learned so much as a podcaster, and I’m excited to see what the next two and a half years brings.
LINKS MENTIONED
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