2025 is shaping up to be a pivotal year for The Lazy Girl's Guide to Podcasting as we continue to support new and veteran podcasters alike. In this episode I’m sharing the 11 things I won’t be spending money on for this year. From avoiding costly podcast managers and editors to steering clear of unsustainable promotion tactics, I’ll explain my reasoning behind each decision.

It’s easy to get caught up in shiny object syndrome, but I’m determined to focus on what truly enhances the listener experience and streamlines my workflow.

Additionally, I’ll reveal the four key areas where I will invest, including website hosting and my trusted podcast platform, Captivate FM. Join me as I delve into smart budgeting strategies that prioritise quality content and effective SEO for the Lazy Girls Guide to Podcasting.

Takeaways:

• In 2025, I'm prioritising spending on tools that enhance the listener's experience and streamline my workflow.
• I've identified 11 podcast-related expenses I won't incur in 2025 to maintain my budget.
• Rather than using expensive podcast promotion strategies, I focus on organic growth through SEO.
• I'm sticking with my Blue Yeti microphone in 2025, as it meets my podcasting needs perfectly.
• Investing in my website hosting is essential because it boosts my podcast's visibility online.
• I believe that customised intro or outro music is unnecessary and I won't be investing in it.

Timestamps:

• 00:00 Intro
• 01:58 Not Spending on the Podcast in 2025
• 14:20 What I Am Spending Money On
• 19:08 Financial Strategies for Podcasting

Links referenced in this episode:

• Visit the blog: https://veritysangan.com/blog
• Try Captivate.FM free for 30 days: https://veritysangan.com/captivate
• Try Riverside: https://veritysangan.com/riverside
• Try Descript: https://veritysangan.com/descript

Hello there and welcome back to another episode of the Lazy Girls Guide to Podcasting with Me, Verity.

If you are new to the podcast, it is great to have you here.

I hope you subscribe, stick around, listen to future episodes, go and listen to the back catalogue as well.

If it is not your first time here, then it is great to have you back.

Thank you for returning.

If you're watching on YouTube, there is no video to go along with today's episode, so we're just listening to me.

However, you will still be getting the same amount of goodness regardless of the fact that my camera is not currently recording.

I have found in the last few weeks my YouTube algorithm for you page, whatever you want to call it.

And this links back into podcasting on a budget.

And if you' diving more into podcasting on a budget.

A couple of episodes ago I looked at how I slashed my outgoing podcasting costs by 65% so that particular episode will be linked down in the show notes if you want to go and check that out.

The reason why I'm doing this is I think it's so easy to get caught up in Shiny object syndrome, particularly with podcasting.

Is it going to streamline my workflow or is it going to do something to bring in new listeners?

And if it doesn't tick at least one of those boxes, then to me the cost is not worth it and I am not going to be spending the money.

The first one is a podcast manager.

Now personally I have never spent money on a podcast manager.

I've done podcast management for other people in the past.

Absolutely loved it.

However, that's not what I'm doing at the moment for various reasons, but I love managing my own podcast.

I personally do not see the need to be investing in a podcast manager.

That's not to say that you shouldn't get a podcast manager.

I know some amazing podcast managers.

But what I would say is just do your research before you give.

Give somebody potentially hundreds or even thousands of dollars to manage your podcast for you.

What are you actually getting with that?

Deliverable?

Because I know of some people charging well over a thousand dollars to manage your podcast per episode and to me that is a lot, a lot of money.

It could be completely worth it depending on what they are doing, but equally it might not be.

I love the whole process of managing my podcast, coming up with the ideas.

I like recording, I like editing, I like creating the canva graphics, I like doing the blog posts, I like doing everything to do with the pod.

As I said, I know some great podcast managers who do editing as well.

I know podcast editors who don't do the management side but only do the editing side.

And if you are somebody who does not like editing, then I can completely understand why this would be fair for you.

I've tried different options for editing before.

I have used.

I've never actually paid someone to edit.

I've always done my own editing.

But I have used things like Descript and Riverside in the past.

And you can check out the links in my show notes if you wanted to have a free trial with either of those.

And I've used those types of services for editing in the past.

At the moment, I just don't think it's something that I particularly need.

I enjoy editing my own podcasts.

It's something that I don't spend a awful lot of time on.

I've talked about in previous episodes how I tend to do a one for one or very close to a one for one.

So basically, however much time I spend recording, I spend that amount of time editing.

So if it takes me 15 to 20 minutes to record an episode, I will only spend around 15 to 25 minutes.

So maybe just a little bit over editing.

I don't go in massively for really heavy editing.

I realize that's not some people's approach, but it works for me.

I am not going to be paying for a podcast promoter.

If you have been a longtime listener of the show, you may remember episod55 where I talked about the worst way to grow your podcast audience.

And I talked about listen for listens and follows for follows.

If you didn't listen to that episode, make sure that you check it out.

The link will be in the show notes.

It was a really, really good episode and I got so many comments on social media about the content of this episode.

It generated some real talking points.

So thank you very much for everybody who got in touch about that episode.

As I said, if you haven't listened to it, the link is in the show notes.

For me, this really heavily links into podcast promoters who tend to cold pitch you on social media, saying that you X amounts of downloads, they'll get you X amount of subscribers.

You only need to pay them 5, 10, $20.

And it can seem like such a quick win and such a quick solution to boost your podcast rankings or ratings or numbers, whatever it is that you're trying to do.

But these growth strategies don't work long term because very quickly the algorithm will see that there's a spike and then there's nothing else.

There's nothing sustainable.

And you're paying people to subscribe or you're paying people to listen to literally a couple of seconds, because at the end of the day, a download is a download.

Somebody just needs to download the episode.

They don't to actually listen to any of the episode.

Listens and downloads aren't quite the same thing, even though from a podcasting point of view the terms tend to be used interchangeably.

But just because someone has downloaded your episode doesn't mean they've listened to it, doesn't mean they've engaged with it, and doesn't mean that they have become a fan or you've ended up with any additional credibility or a listener or what have you.

So I just find that a lot of these podcast promoters that are out there, it's just, it's not working.

I tend to get a lot of them LinkedIn at the moment, I don't know why of people saying pay me $5 and I'll get you X amount of subscribers or pay me $100.

I'll get you to number one in the Apple Podcast charts.

What does that even mean?

There's no strategy behind those emails or those promises that I get sent.

It's just I'll get you to the number one in the Apple podcast charts.

But what the overall ones, the ones for a really minor category like what are you talking about there?

It makes no sense.

So never going to be paying for podcast promotion from somebody who just randomly cold DMS me.

It's not going to happen.

I have got very, very comfortable in the last I'm trying to think how long now in the last few months using either Photo Booth if I'm recording video, or QuickTime if I'm recording just sound.

I started out with these back when I started with the Confidence CEO podcast, which was a couple of years ago now.

It's amazing to think how long I've been podcasting for.

I started out with these free tools and then I got sucked into the whole shiny object syndrome.

I used different tools to record and edit, but I found myself actually coming full circle and coming back to photo booth, coming back to QuickTime because I've actually found that these tools, even though they're free, they don't actually increase the sound quality by using the paid tools.

So I'm like, well what's the point?

I might as well just use the free tool.

So I'm not going to be paying for recording software when it comes to promotion.

I am not going to be paying any money for a social media scheduler.

I spent under a hundred doll a couple of years ago.

I can't remember exactly how much it was, but it was definitely under a hundred dollars for a lifetime subscription to Content Studio.

But what I've noticed is that a lot of the social media content that I put out there, it doesn't convert to listeners.

What I've been finding converts listeners and gets people interested in listening to the podcast and brings in new listeners and gets subscribers is actually having really, really solid SEO strategies in place so that your content is searchable and findable, for want of a better word on either podcast directory such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify etc or via Google YouTube.

I actually did a podcast episode about this just a few episodes ago, so I will link that down in the show notes.

And I have built up the newsletter and I did do that, but I'm not too sure.

I just find that whilst the newslet is going to continue, that is definitely not going away.

So if you're subscribed, you'll continue to get the newsletter.

When I put it out there, however, what I found was that I was paying for a subscription with Convertkit and I just wasn't using all of the features.

And then when I really boiled it down I was like, well why am I paying them $108 a year if I'm not using all of these features?

I'm still with ConvertKit which is now called Kit.

I don't know why they changed their name.

Personally, that made no sense to me.

But anyway, they are now Kit and I'm on their free plan and I still get so many features with the free plan, but I don't see the to spend more.

I talked about this again in episode 103 of How I was dropping my podcasting costs and I go into the reason for dropping my email marketing costs or subscription costs to ConvertKit a little bit more.

So you can explore that in that episode.

I use my blue Yeti.

I have used this from the beginning.

I know a lot of people hate blue Yetis.

I know a lot of people love blue Yetis, but I find that my microphone works absolutely fine.

It's not broken, it doesn't need any upgrades.

Unless breaks, I am not going to be replacing this microphone.

I do not find that the microphone quality changes the engagement that I have with the listeners for this podcast.

I've got a small little roving microphone which I picked up for literally £10 on Amazon and I've used that when I've been out and about recording episodes before.

And honestly I've seen no difference in the stats.

Nobody has ever commented or contacted me and said Verity, we hate the recording style of we can tell the difference between the different microphones you're using etc so I'm not getting a new microphone.

Think it's pointless.

Moving on in the same vein, I'm not getting new headphones.

Whereas some people collect microphones, I seem to collect headphones and I don't know why.

The ones I'm using at the moment are my soundcore ones.

These are noise cancelling, they are wireless.

Absolutely love them.

But not just these.

I've got these ones.

I've got some knockoff Skull Candy headphones which I randomly picked up on holiday when I went away and I didn't have any headphones a few years ago.

I've got my Beats which I use.

I've got Apple headphones that came with old iPhones.

I just seem to have at least four sets sets of headphones that I have on loop of using.

I don't know why I've got so many headphones because I've only got one set of ears.

I'm never going to use them all.

The next thing I'm not going to be spending any money on is a transcription service that is separate to my podcast hosting platform and what I mean by this is Otter or Riverside or Descript.

I'm with Captivate for my podcast hosting and they have now got something called Captivate Spark which I reviewed a couple of episodes ago.

Again, that link will be down in the show notes for you to listen to.

Captivate Spark for £5 for per 5 hours of transcription gives me transcription and loads of AI generated content for the podcast.

So I'm going to continue using that.

And if you wanted an even cheaper option then Apple podcast within about 24 hours of your podcast episode going live on Apple Podcast.

It does generate a free transcription for you, so you can always use that about 24 hours after the podcast episode has gone live if you wanted to.

But what I'm not going to be doing is using an additional service as I said, like Riverside, like Otter to get the transcription for my podcast episodes because I just don't need it.

I can either get it for free from Apple podcasts or I can be using this new feature for captivate spark.

I'm focusing on organic growth through SEO.

I've already talked about SEO and how useful and how important that is for growing Lazy Girls Guide to Podcasting and how it has so important and how it's so important for growing podcasts and generally.

And I'm going to be focusing more on my SEO strategy and creating engaging content rather than spending money on advertising.

Or just any intro or outro music.

I got rid of the intro and outro of this podcast months and months and months ago.

I can't actually remember when and I did a whole episode as to why I did that.

And again that'll be linked down in the show notes.

I might just actually create a playlist because there's a lot of episodes that are linking into this particular episode.

So I might actually just create a playlist that you can just link to and listen to all of those episodes that I'm talking about in this episode.

That might actually be the easier thing to do.

So yeah, I will do that.

I will create a playlist with all of these different episodes that I'm referring to.

But I got rid of of the intro and outro forever ago for this podcast.

So I don't need any music to create or update my intro, outro etc.

I've seen no decrease in engagement or listeners or listenership etc to the podcast through through doing that I've actually had people contact me saying they think it's a great idea and they are also getting rid of their intros and outros for various reasons.

But because of that, because I'm not doing any updates, I don't need to buy any more intro or outro music.

And I have got four things.

So the first thing is website hosting, which you might be thinking, well that's got nothing to do with the podcast.

But I love having a website where I can write blog posts, SEO keyword rich blog posts, see how important SEO is and having that website which has organic growth for the podcast.

Because I know that people I've seen analytics people go to Google, they type in different keywords, they will find my blog posts and then they listen to the episodes either audio on the podcast or they will go to the YouTube channel and watch the YouTube videos associated with that particular blog post.

I also love having complete control over the website.

I just find it such a creative outlet where I can just design the different pages, write the blog posts as I said, which correspond with the different episodes and just generally put resources on there which I feel enhance the listener experience.

By the way, it's@veritysongon.com if you did want to visit.

I'm not going to be switching over to anything free.

I'm going to continue to pay for my website hosting.

Captivate is my absolute go to for podcast hosting.

I've used a few different podcast hosts at this point.

Buzzsprout, Megaphone, Podbean, Spotify for podcasters and I'm now with Captivate.

I've been with Captivate for I want to say about a year now, something like that.

And in my opinion they are just well worth the money.

The analytics, the ease of use, the features they've got, the customer service, the features that they've got coming out, creation and then integration of AI using Captivate Spark.

I've done a whole review on Captivates.

I've looked at their different features that will obviously be linked in the playlist that I'm going to create for you to listen to those episodes as well.

But I'm going to continue to spend my 17 pounds a month month being a subscriber to Captivate for them to host my podcast.

I do pay for Canva Pro.

In my opinion, it is worth every single penny.

I use Canva Pro to create all of my social media posts for podcast graphics.

I know that I just said I'm not going to be using the social media.

I'm going to be concentrating on SEO.

For example, I will create a Pinterest pin for a blog post in Canva.

I will then put that in the blog post that I write about a corresponding podcast episode.

So then anybody reading that can then use that pin pin that blog post for later and then that in itself creates more engagement.

I also use Canva to Create the episode artwork for each podcast episode.

So many different things for the freebie resources that I have on the website as well for people to access.

So much is created in Canva.

So to me, as I said, it is worth every penny.

But Captivate Spark, even though it is part of Captivate fm, it is an additional bit of money.

So I'll continue paying my 17 pounds per month to have Captivate as my podcast hosting platform.

And then Captivate Spark is an add on.

You can either spend 5, 10 or 20 pounds monthly in order to get different transcription hours, or you can do one off purchases of 5, 10, 20 pounds pounds or you can do one off purchase of 5, 10 or 20 pounds for the corresponding amount of hours, 5, 10 or 20 hours of transcription.

And then what you can do is you just whittle that down and then pay for more one off hours as you want and need them.

And I think it's well worth it.

It is well worth the money.

It's actually probably one of the most cost effective transcription services that I found to date when you consider the output and what you get.

And also Captivate Spark has got loads of additional features.

It's not just about transcribing, it's also about helping you generate content, ideas, it look back, catalog, it looks at which episodes have done really well, what your audience is engaging with, etc.

And then it will suggest episode ideas based on that information that it has got from your podcast.

I've been using it for the last few episodes, been really, really enjoying it.

So I'm going to continue paying for that.

Probably just on the one off though, because my episodes are so short, I don't need hours and hours and hours of transcription.

So I'm not spending the money for the monthly transcription hours of Captivate Spark.

I'm just paying for the one off.

And then because five hours worth of transcription, you think all of my episodes are like absolute, absolute maximum of 20 minutes.

That's a lot of episodes worth of transcription I can get for just five pounds.

So I'm just using the one off at the moment.

The biggest thing for me for the podcast is just really doubling down on what matters and what works.

And for me, that is creating good content and really focusing on the SEO strategies of the podcast, which don't really cost that.

I would be really interested to know if any of these resonate with you.

Or what do you think that I'm not going to be spending money on, which you think is a huge missed opportunity?

I would love to know.

Reach out to me on Instagram veritysongon.

As ever, if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your podcasting bestie.

Make sure you are subscribed on whichever medium you are listening to.

Be that Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever it is.

Make sure you're subscribed for the next episode.

Otherwise, happy podcasting and I will see you next time.