10 issues I face as a podcaster

I host a weekly podcast titled “Learn Educate Discover”, aimed at helping students and young professionals discover new careers and learn more about jobs they’re interested in (Website). It’s been quite a ride so far!

10 months, 50 episodes, and 18,000 downloads in, here are 10 things that I struggle with as a podcaster:

1. I need a place where I can easily get transcripts of my episodes, and most importantly — cheap transcripts. I don’t want to (or rather, I can’t!) pay for expensive tools, or hire someone who will charge a crazy hourly rate. At ~60 mins per episode and weekly episodes, this cost can easily add up.
2. Better way of sharing links in an episode — today, most podcasters “spell out” the link in their podcasts, and add them to the description at best — not the most effective ways.
3. Better analytics — I want to know who has subscribed on iTunes, how much of an episode was heard, what kind of audience do I have?
4. Finding guests — since I have an interview style podcast, this is critical for me. Maintaining a pipeline of guests is really hard.
5. Editing — takes time, but is important. You can go all the way up to Gimlet Media quality shows or keep it simple. Either way, it takes a lot of time.
6. Audio Quality when recording remotely — using Skype works fine but the quality is not the same as sitting in the same studio. Some podcasters ship a mic to the guest (which costs money!). So if there was a good (and easy) solution here, that would be great
7. Growing my audience — standard marketing problem I guess. But it is HARD.
8. Monetizing my podcast — podcasts have great content, but there is no clear monetizing path today. Advertising works only if you have tens of thousands of downloads per episode.
9. Engaging social media — sharing an audio file is not as exciting as a video or an image. So you have to get creative and share other kind of content that is more social media friendly
10. This is more out of curiosity but can i know what is working and what is not working about my podcast? Eg: Which questions should I ask more? Which less? Vocal style?
11. [BONUS] Audio search! I wish Google would suggest a podcast as one of the search results
12. [BONUS+] Ability to quickly share section of a podcast — like highlighting and sharing a section of a post on Medium

That’s my list so far!