After sharing a complete breakdown of my annual podcast earnings last week on The Bandrew Says Podcast, I went on a rampage trying to shave off as much as I could to reduce overhead costs. Below is a screenshot of the excel spreadsheet breaking down the original cost and the updated cost following the cost savings measures. I will breakdown exactly what I did.

1. Canceled Speakpipe: For years I was using speak pipe which is a voice mail service which allows people to submit audio questions. This costs $15/month or $180/year, and I was not getting much use out of it. I would get a submission every few months, so I decided to cancel this. Not only was it getting little use, but I learned of a workaround via my host which allows people to submit an audio file directly on my website without the need for a 3rd party service.

2. Canceled Google Workspace: I was using google workspace for my GeeksRising e-mail. This cost $7.75/month of $93/year. Again, I very rarely got any use out of this e-mail but figured I needed it in order to keep that branded e-mail. Then I realized that a premium encrypted e-mail service that I already pay for allows for custom domains, so I cancelled my google workspace e-mail, setup my domains in this e-mail service, and transitioned all my e-mail to this service I already paid for which saved me another $93/year.

3. Lowered Podcast Storage: For YEARS I have been using the $20/month tier at Libsyn so that I could upload over 168mb of audio per month and I could get higher quality analytics. I looked at the lower priced tier and it was $7/month but you had a hard limit of 168mb/month. In order to do this I had to adjust my mp3 audio quality down. Previously I was uploading 192kbps stereo mp3 files, but to get below the new upload limit I had to decrease to 96kbps mono mp3 files.
   
   For the spoken word information there should be ZERO change in audio quality because the stereo file has a left channel encoded at 96kbps and a right channel encoded at 96kbps, but now I just have a single center channel encoded at 96kbps, so the audio quality is identical. The only time this mono mix will become apparent is when there is music at the very end of the show. But I came to the determination that 15 seconds of stereo audio each week is not worth $160/year.

I am hoping to eventually cut back even further by lowering the podcast hosting to $5/month, and by canceling Midjourney if Adobe Photoshop AI Generative Fill ever gets good enough.

Also, I know that my website hosting is extremely high at $228/year and I could cut this down significantly by buying my own hosting and installing my own website, but I don’t have the time to do that kind of stuff anymore and the convenience of having all the backend handled makes running the show possible. So there are some services that may seem overpriced, but for the added convenience and time saved, I am paying that premium.

Through these cost saving measures I was able to decrease costs by $429/year, and increase the post tax tax home pay by over 70%! That’s how I went about saving money on my podcast.

Clip from BSP-401: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp4eDenb2Vk
Originally Aired: 15 SEP 2024