The short version: a podcast is just an audio (or video) show published as a file that gets pulled into apps like Apple Podcasts and Spotify through something called an RSS feed, and once you understand that one mechanic, the whole thing stops feeling mysterious. You do not upload separately to every app. You upload once to a host, the host builds a feed, and every platform checks that feed for new episodes. The hard part was never the tech. It’s showing up week after week when episode four gets 61 downloads and you start wondering why you bothered.
What a podcast is, in plain terms
A podcast is a series of audio files, published on a schedule, that people can subscribe to and get automatically delivered to their phone. That’s it. No live element, no broadcast licence, no studio required. When Ben Hammersley coined the word “podcast” in a Guardian piece back in 2004, he was describing exactly this: a way for anyone with a microphone and an internet connection to publish a show without needing a radio station’s permission.
The confusion most people have isn’t about what a podcast sounds like. It’s about how it gets from your laptop to someone’s ears in Manchester, Melbourne, or Milwaukee without you doing anything different for each app. That part is worth slowing down on, because it’s also the part almost every “what is a podcast” article skips or waves at vaguely.
The part everyone glosses over: RSS feeds
Here’s the mechanic. When you record an episode and upload it to a podcast host (Buzzsprout, Libsyn, Captivate, and Transistor are the four I’d consider), that host does two things. First, it stores your audio file on its servers. Second, it updates an RSS feed, which is a small text file that lists every episode you’ve ever published, along with its title, description, and a link to the audio.
You submit that one RSS feed link to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and Pocket Casts, once each, when you launch. After that, those apps check your feed periodically (usually every hour or so) and when they see a new episode listed, they pull it in and show it to your subscribers. You never touch Apple’s dashboard again after that first submission. This is why podcasting scaled the way blogging never quite did: one upload reaches every app, automatically, forever, as long as your feed stays live.
If your host ever shuts down or you switch hosts, you have to redirect your feed or you lose every subscriber’s connection to your show overnight. I’ve seen podcasters lose two years of episodes in the apps because they cancelled a hosting plan without exporting their feed first. It’s not dramatic, it’s just a quiet, permanent loss that nobody warns you about.
What you need to start one, step by step
I get asked this more than almost anything else when I’m talking to clients about content strategy, so here’s the real list, with real prices, not a vague “all you need is passion” answer.
- A microphone. An Audio-Technica ATR2100x-USB costs around £70 to £90 and is what most working podcasters I know started with. You do not need a studio.
- Recording software. Audacity is free. Riverside.fm or SquadCast run £15 to £30 a month if you’re recording remote guests and want separate audio tracks, which you’ll want the moment a guest’s connection stutters.
- Editing time. Budget roughly three hours of editing for every 30 minutes of finished audio when you’re new to it. That drops to under an hour once you know your workflow, or you outsource it.
- A host. Buzzsprout starts around $12 a month, Libsyn around $15, Captivate around $19. This is what generates your RSS feed and hosts your audio files long term.
- Cover art and show notes. Apple requires a 3000×3000 pixel image minimum. Show notes are the description text listeners see before pressing play, and they matter more for discovery than most people think.
- Submission to directories. A one-time task per platform, done through each app’s podcast submission form using your RSS feed link.
That’s the entire technical setup. What takes the time isn’t the tech, it’s the recording, editing, and consistency after episode one feels exciting and episode fourteen feels like a chore.
What it looked like when I started mine
I launched my first podcast in 2016, recording interviews over Skype using a call recorder plugin and editing in Audacity on evenings when I should have been doing anything else. Episode one got 41 downloads in its first week. I remember checking the number obsessively, refreshing the host dashboard like it would change if I stared hard enough. By episode ten I was at roughly 180 downloads a week. By episode forty, around 1,100. It took the better part of a year to feel like the effort matched the numbers, and honestly there were weeks I nearly stopped.
What kept me going wasn’t the download count. It was a message from someone who’d listened to episode 22 on a train and then booked a call with me the same day. One listener, one client, from an episode that had maybe 200 total plays. That’s the bit nobody puts in the marketing decks: podcast downloads are a terrible vanity metric and a surprisingly good business one, because the people who finish a 40-minute episode about your industry are already halfway to trusting you.
The number most podcast advice avoids saying out loud
Here’s the uncomfortable bit. Buzzsprout’s own hosting data, which covers hundreds of thousands of shows, consistently shows that most podcasts never make it past their first ten episodes. Not because the idea was bad, but because week six arrives, the guest cancels, the download count hasn’t moved, and quitting feels reasonable. If you’re starting a podcast expecting a quick audience the way a viral TikTok might give you one, you’ll be disappointed and probably gone by episode seven.
If you’re starting one to build relationships with a small, specific group of people who need what you sell, ten listeners a episode who become five conversations who become two clients is a perfectly good return, and it’s the actual pattern I’ve seen work for consultants and small agencies far more often than the “grow a huge audience” version ever does.
Podcast versus blog versus video: when it’s the right format
A podcast makes sense when your audience does dead time (commuting, dog walks, gym sessions) and when your expertise comes across better spoken than written, which is true for a lot of consultants and coaches who think better out loud than on a page. It makes less sense if your audience is scanning at a desk between tasks, where a written post or a short video wins because it can be skimmed.
The smart move, and the one most people skip, is not choosing one format and abandoning the others. Record the audio, pull the transcript, turn three good answers into LinkedIn posts, cut the strongest two minutes into a short video clip. This is exactly what repurposing content means in practice, one recording session becoming a week of material instead of one 40-minute file that ninety percent of your audience will never click play on.
Getting found once it exists
Publishing a podcast doesn’t mean people find it. Apple and Spotify’s search algorithms weigh episode titles and descriptions heavily, so “Episode 14” as a title is a wasted opportunity every single time; “How I Grew a Client List to 40 Without Ads” tells both a human and a search algorithm what you’re offering. Increasingly, AI answer engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity are also pulling from podcast transcripts and show notes when someone asks a question in your niche, which is one more reason a decent transcript matters now more than it did three years ago. If you want to see whether your existing content, podcast included, is even visible to those tools, running your own site through the 15-minute AEO audit is a faster way to find gaps than guessing.
Promotion is also where most solo podcasters run out of hours. Recording, editing, writing show notes, cutting clips, and posting across four platforms every week is a full second job, which is why a lot of the shows I see sustain themselves past episode fifty have someone handling the back end, whether that’s a system for social posting automation so clips go out without manual work each time, or a dedicated podcast virtual assistant handling editing, uploads, and show notes for somewhere between £15 and £35 an hour depending on experience and turnaround time.
What it costs to run one for a year
Rough numbers, based on what I’ve seen clients spend: mic and basic setup, one-time cost of £70 to £150. Hosting, £150 to £250 a year. Editing, either your own time (three to five hours a week) or outsourced at roughly £30 to £60 per episode for a 30 to 40 minute show. Add cover art and the occasional paid guest booking tool and you’re looking at somewhere between £500 and £1,500 a year if you outsource the editing, or close to free if you do everything yourself and only pay for hosting. It’s one of the cheapest content formats to start and one of the most time-expensive to keep going, which is the trade-off nobody quite says plainly enough.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need expensive equipment to start a podcast?
No. A £70 to £90 USB microphone like the Audio-Technica ATR2100x-USB, free recording software like Audacity, and a £12 to £19 a month hosting plan is enough to launch a professional-sounding show; the audio quality difference between that setup and a full studio is far smaller than most beginners assume.
How does a podcast get onto Apple Podcasts and Spotify?
You submit your show’s RSS feed link, generated automatically by your hosting platform, to each app once through their podcast submission form; after that, the apps check your feed for new episodes and pull them in automatically every time you publish, so you never upload separately to each platform again.
How many downloads counts as a good podcast?
There’s no universal number, but for context, most independent podcasts get well under 500 downloads per episode in their first year, and plenty of business podcasts with 150 to 300 downloads still generate real client leads because the listeners who finish a full episode are unusually pre-sold on the host’s expertise.
Is it too late to start a podcast in 2026?
No, but it is too late to start one hoping for easy discovery through the app charts alone; what still works is a specific, useful show for a specific audience, promoted through your existing channels and repurposed into other content, rather than a general show hoping Apple’s algorithm does the work for you.
