The Podcast Launch Checklist I Give Every New Host

A podcast launch checklist has five blocks: the show decision, the recording setup, the visual identity, the distribution plumbing, and the weekly production system. In that order, because each one narrows the next.

The show decision is your topic, your format (solo, interview, co-host), your target length, and your publishing day. Recording setup is microphones, cameras, room, and the platform you record on. Visual identity is cover art, an intro, lower thirds, and thumbnails. Distribution is the host, the RSS feed, and the directory submissions. Production is who edits, how fast, and what you get back.

Most new hosts spend eighty percent of their energy on block two and almost none on block five. Then episode three arrives and there are nine hours of unedited footage on a desk. Decide who is editing before you record a single episode, not after.

If you are still choosing a runtime, I wrote out the real tradeoffs in how long should a podcast episode be. Pick a number, then build the rest of the checklist around it.

Six weeks is comfortable and three weeks is doable if you already know your topic. Anything under two weeks and something gets skipped, usually the artwork or the trailer.

Here is the timeline I see work. Weeks one and two: lock the format, book your first four guests, buy or borrow the audio gear. Week three: record a throwaway test episode, watch it back, fix what annoyed you. Weeks four and five: record episodes one, two and three back to back, and send them to an editor. Week six: art, feed, directory submissions, trailer, and launch.

The non negotiable part is recording three episodes before you publish one. Launching with a single episode means new listeners hit a dead end. Launching with three means they binge, and a binge is what makes a subscribe happen.

It also gives you a buffer. Guests cancel. You get sick. Three finished episodes in the bank is the difference between a two week gap and no gap at all. If you want the whole production loop mapped out, the podcast workflow guide walks through it step by step.

Buy a decent microphone and stop shopping. A dynamic USB or XLR mic per person, a pair of headphones each, and a room with soft things in it beats an expensive mic in a tiled kitchen every time.

For remote shows, the platform decision matters more than the mic. Local recording is the whole point: the platform records full quality audio and video on each person's own machine and uploads it afterwards, so a shaky connection does not become a permanently glitchy episode. I compared the two most common options in Riverside vs SquadCast, including what each one does to your files before you get them.

A few settings that save me hours in the edit. Record separate tracks per speaker, always. Turn off any auto leveling or noise gate on the recording side, since I would rather fix a raw track than un-bake a bad decision. Have everyone clap once at the start, which gives me an easy sync point when a track drifts.

If you are shooting video with two or more angles, read multi-cam editing before recording day. Camera placement decides how many usable cuts exist later.

Cover art has to be readable at 55 pixels wide, because that is roughly how big it is in a phone app. Big type, high contrast, no thin serif fonts, no full sentence tagline. Test it by shrinking it on your own screen until it is the size of a fingernail.

Your intro should be under fifteen seconds. Nobody subscribed to hear a music bed. A short animated title card with your show name, then straight into the conversation. We build these once and reuse them forever, which is the whole idea behind intros and branding.

If your show also lives on YouTube, thumbnails are a separate craft from cover art, and they move the numbers more than almost anything else you can control. My sister studio ClickTheory does eight thumbnails for $250, which is roughly a month of weekly episodes.

One more packaging item people forget: show notes and chapters. Chapters let a listener skip to the part they came for, and they make your episode searchable. We add show notes and chapters for $35 an episode when hosts do not want to write them at eleven at night.

Your podcast host generates one RSS feed and every directory reads that same feed. Get it right once and the rest is copy and paste.

Before launch day, do these in order. Upload episodes one, two and three with real titles and descriptions, scheduled not published. Fill the show level fields: title, author name, category, language, explicit flag, and a description that reads like a human wrote it. Submit the feed to Apple Podcasts and Spotify first, because approval can take a couple of days and everything else is faster. Publish a sixty second trailer so there is something live while approvals process.

On launch day, publish all three episodes at once, not one a day. Then tell people individually. A hundred direct messages to people who actually know you beats one broadcast post, every single time.

If your show is video first, Spotify treats it differently to an audio only feed, and the export settings are not the same. I covered what changes in Spotify video podcast editing so you are not re-exporting the whole back catalogue in month two.

Edit your own first episode, then decide. One pass through your own footage teaches you more about pacing and your own verbal tics than any advice I can give. After that, the honest question is what your hour is worth.

A sixty minute conversation takes three to five hours to cut properly if you are new to it. That is a full working day a week gone, on top of booking guests, prepping questions, recording, and promoting. The hosts who quit almost always quit at the edit, not at the recording.

Here is how I price it. Starter is $199 an episode for a single camera show at 1080p with one revision round. Studio is $299 an episode for two to four cameras, 4K, and unlimited revisions. Both cover up to sixty minutes as standard, less for shorter episodes, more for ninety. A four episode pack saves 15 percent and monthly saves 25 percent, which is how most launching shows buy it.

A human editor watches the whole episode. Nothing is auto-cut by silence detection, so the pause before someone says the best line in the show survives. And you own the project files with us: footage, projects and exports are yours.

Publishing weekly on the same day beats publishing brilliantly whenever. The apps reward consistency and so do humans. Pick the day in week one of the checklist and defend it.

Budget for clips from the start. Vertical clips are how new listeners find a show that has no audience yet, and cutting them yourself doubles your weekly workload. We do vertical clips at $25 each, so four clips an episode is $100 on top of the edit. Compare that to the typical agency at $300 to $400 an episode plus roughly $400 a month for a clips package. There is more on picking the right moments in how to make podcast clips.

On turnaround, plan around 48 hours for the first cut and next working day on revisions. That means recording on Monday and publishing on Thursday is realistic without anyone panicking. Rush 24 hour delivery is $75 when a guest announcement forces your hand.

If you are weighing a marketplace freelancer against a dedicated editor for the long run, I laid out both sides in podcast marketplaces vs a dedicated editor.