The Silent Why: finding hope in grief and loss
Claire Sandys is on a mission to see if it's possible to find hope in 101 different types of loss and grief (often joined by husband Chris). New ad-free episodes every other Tuesday. With childless (not by choice) hosts, this podcast is packed with deep, honest experiences of grief and hope from inspiring guests. You also get: tips on how to navigate and prepare for loss, blogs, experts, exploring how loss is handled on TV, and plenty of Hermans. For more visit: www.thesilentwhy.com.
The Silent Why: finding hope in grief and loss
Behind the Scenes: How I make a podcast
#136. (We'll... we've actually done 226 episodes in total. You'll hear me talk about the annoying decision around episode numbering in this 226th episode!)
This is The Silent Why, a podcast on a mission to open up conversations around grief, asking if hope can be found in 101 different types of permanent loss.
This episode is a little different. No blog, no interview, no Chris, and no focus on loss. It’s just you and me, pulling back the curtain for a behind-the-scenes peek at how I create this podcast.
I often get asked:
- What does it really take to produce an episode?
- Can podcasting make money?
- How do you find guests?
Today, I’m answering those questions (and more) while walking you through my own process of hosting, producing, and publishing a show.
Plus, if you’ve ever thought about starting your own podcast, this episode will give you a real sense of the time, effort, and resources involved. As well as some lessons I’ve learned along the way.
A huge thank you to everyone who supports this podcast and helps keep it going.
Special gratitude goes to our “I Love The Silent Why” members and above, on Buy Me a Coffee, who not only get a shout-out on the website but deserve a mention here too: Evelyn Calaunan, Peter Ellis, Jackie Waring, Diane Fopp, Greg Williams, and Emily Luckham. You’re amazing, and I’m so grateful for you.
Thanks also to those who support through one-offs or other levels on Buy Me a Coffee, and of course to everyone who tunes in each week. I truly couldn’t do this without you.
To learn more about the show, about Chris and me, our childless journey through loss, Herman, and everything else, visit: www.thesilentwhy.com
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Episode transcripts: thesilentwhy.buzzsprout.com
Thank you for listening.
Hello, I'm Claire and welcome to The Silent Why podcast, and this is an episode with a bit of a difference, because it's just me. No loss, no hope. Well, there is hope. No guest, no Chris. No blog. Nope, it's just me and you, with a behind the scenes episode on how I produce a podcast. Now, now I've got some notes to go off, but I'm sort of winging it a bit for this episode, so let's see how it goes.
Claire Sandys:A lot of people ask me about what I do during the week, and when I mention I host a podcast or I produce a podcast, their next question is either a very blank look, a very curious look, or what does that involve? Or maybe can you make money from that? A lot of people don't really know what producing a podcast involves and what takes up the time when you're putting one out. So I thought I'd answer all the most asked questions in one handy episode and tell you exactly what I do when it comes to producing a podcast episode what takes the time, how you can make money, how I find guests, etc. Etc. It's a look behind the scenes, if you will, to see what goes on behind the episodes that you listen to. I'm really hoping this will be interesting for those of you that listen and maybe resourceful for those of you that had considered setting up your own podcast. Now, I've been podcasting for four years now and I've never done anything like this before. I had no idea how to do it when I started and it's been a steep but fun learning curve to get to where we are now, and the first thing I'm going to tell you is that it's not easy. It's incredibly time consuming and if you're thinking about doing it on top of a full-time job, think very carefully. You've probably seen podcasts pop up and then shut down six months later, or even six episodes later. Well, after you've listened to this episode, I think you might understand why, because it's a lot of hard work and, unless some lovely people are willing to support you financially, it also costs to do it Not just money, but time as well, unless you're a celebrity with some kind of big network that pay you to podcast.
Claire Sandys:To give you a bit of context on the different types of podcast, some of the bigger podcasts that you might listen to that are part of big networks or that are hosted by a celebrity or something like BBC Sounds or those kinds of things. The difference between those and a small indie one like mine, independent one like mine are huge. Some of the big podcasts have teams of up to 20 people working on them. Some podcasts are financially funded by the host or investors and sponsors, and so all the production, editing, social media, marketing, etc. Can be outsourced to professionals. Some podcasts just have a host that walks in, presents the material and leaves again. Some podcasts have income coming in from subscriptions and other models that give them up to well. The last one I heard was $200,000 a month for a guy who was just putting a $5 per month subscription on his back episodes. That's passive income. None of these are mine. I'm a sole creator that does it all myself, with the help of a lovely co-host and husband and some people who support me financially.
Claire Sandys:So, although I'm not going to give you all the details on how to set up a podcast from scratch, I will give you an overview of the things you need to consider. First of all, you need a podcast idea. What do you want to share? What do you want to say to the world? What is your niche going to be or niche if you're American and listening, and the more niche it is the better you're likely to do, which didn't make much sense to me when I started, but now I really do see the value in that. Once you have all that, eric Newsom's book Make Noise, which I thoroughly recommend reading, tells you you should narrow down your podcast idea to 10 words. Describe it in 10 words and get very specific. Think about who your audience is. Who is the one person that you want this podcast to go out to? Describe them, give them a name. Would this person like this episode?
Claire Sandys:Chris and I thought about a few ideas at the beginning of our podcast journey. We decided we didn't just want to do one on childlessness, which was our first idea. We wanted to go a bit bigger and a bit wider than that. We didn't really want to stay in that world all the time, so we thought, well, if we're facing this sort of grief a grief that nobody really warned us about, we don't know how to fully process there must be others going through similar things with other losses, so let's find them and chat to them. We knew we didn't want it to be too depressing, though, so we just start again. We knew we didn't want this to be too depressing, though. See, I'm not going to edit it out for you, I'm just going to leave it in. This is what it looks like when you do it raw, so we didn't want it to be too depressing. So we added in finding hope in these situations. Could you find hope in every grief? Then, to make it more specific and a bit of a challenge, we decided to see if we could find 101 different types of loss.
Claire Sandys:Then you need to think about your format. Do you want to interview people? Do you want to write and record blogs or news stories? Do you want to have guests? Do you want to put out episodes weekly, monthly, in seasons, how long are your episodes going to be, etc. Etc. We knew that we had to speak to people who had been through each loss firsthand, or else it wasn't going to be very credible. It couldn't just be us talking about things we'd never been through. So we decided we'd be doing interviews and we'd mix in some other types of episodes that we could do in between.
Claire Sandys:Then you have to think about things like your tech setup. This is where I had a head start, because my husband works in radio production, so he had a good idea of what we needed. However, I've also learned that just because they use the same tech and they do a similar job, it doesn't mean that radio people are naturally good at podcasting. They're two very different skills, as Eric did warn us about in his book. So tech-wise, you need a computer, at least one microphone If interviewing guests in person, you might need more Headphones for editing and interviewing.
Claire Sandys:Software for recording and editing. Pop filters, baby. If you pop your peas a lot, those fluffy things that you see on the end of microphones or the big round circular bits of net, they catch those. So you don't get lots of on your audio, as you might have just heard. And acoustic foam or something similar in the room that you're recording in is a good idea. I mean, you can sit in a cupboard full of clothes. That also works. But if you want the best audio you have to treat the room. That was something I learned about. That was a long session of searching for acoustic foam, which is very expensive, but you want it to create an atmosphere where the sound's not bouncing around loads of hard surfaces. So ideally you want it absorbed into something. This gives you a much better interview. So if you're being interviewed anywhere, good idea, stick a cushion right in front of you and that absorbs the sound when you're talking and makes your audio sound better.
Claire Sandys:Then you need to think about a podcast host. I don't mean the person that's literally talking into the microphone. These are like website hosts, so they hold all your episodes and then they put them out when you tell them to and they send them out to all the different places that you get podcasts. So when I put a podcast episode out, I upload it to my podcast host, who happens to be Buzzsprout, and then I set a date and a time for it to go and when it goes, it's Buzzsprout that sends it out to Spotify and Apple and Pocket Cast and my website and everywhere else that you listen to podcasts. That's where everything goes. It's also where you write the show notes for each episode, control the artwork for your podcast and see all the stats where people are listening, how many downloads each episode gets, all those kinds of things.
Claire Sandys:There are ways to host a podcast for free if you're not putting many episodes out, but it's usually best to have one where you're paying a monthly cost depending on the hours that you use, and they store the episodes for you, they keep them there. You get a back catalogue, all that kind of stuff. This costs around £10 to £20 a month. I say it's probably about normal. Like I said, I use Buzzsprout. They're absolutely lovely. I have no complaints about them at all, some of the loveliest people in podcasting. So, yeah, thoroughly recommend them if you're thinking about doing a podcast, and I've probably got a link somewhere that I can get some reduction for you for if you're interested in doing that. So, yeah, let me know. And this is where you would have all your stats and things. So if I go onto the Buzzsprout website in fact I'll go there now Let me have a look while we're here, I can look at how many episodes we've put out.
Claire Sandys:I can look at how many downloads every episode's had. I can see that. I mean, we're not a big podcast, it's not like a big download, but I think over the time we've been doing it we're hitting nearly 43,000. Of those were Europe, 16 were North America, 68 downloads just 68 in South America, 300 in Africa, 988 in Asia, nearly hitting a thousand, and Oceania, which I always thought was Oceania, three to four thousand.
Claire Sandys:I can see that the top countries and territories. So the top countries UK, then US, then Australia, then Canada and Ireland, then Singapore, then Germany, then Netherlands, then New Zealand, ireland, then Singapore, then Germany, then Netherlands, then New Zealand, then France cities Gloucester that's our most local one, which I'm actually surprised. That's the highest down low, but obviously we've got some local fans, which is good then London, then Cheltenham Cheltenham's also very local to us then Virginia Ashburn I don't know if you're listening there, but are thank you then Adelaide, south Australia, then Dublin, then Sydney, new South Wales, then Reading, then Perth in Western Australia and then Brisbane in Queensland, so well up there with the Australian places. So thank you for that and it gives me, yeah, all the information for all. That's over all the time we've been podcasting, or you can do it by the last episode, all that kind of thing. So that's what your podcast host is doing and producing for you there. There's lots of other stuff they do I'll mention as we go on as well.
Claire Sandys:So I'm going to do a step-by-step guide, kind of in order, of how I put out a podcast episode and what it takes. I would love to say it's a 10-step guide. It is not. I gave up on the whole numbering thing. It got way too complicated, so I'm just going to do it in order for you. So on the silent, why we started the whole podcast by doing two episodes a week One interview on a Tuesday and one blog episode that I wrote on a Friday.
Claire Sandys:Then we listened to a lot of feedback over the first year or two and we've heard people saying things like gosh, you put out a lot of content or I'm still trying to catch up on that episode, and I thought to myself why are we doing so much? Let's just do one a week. People can't catch up, it's a lot of work. Let's just do it weekly, which felt very refreshing. So we did that for a while. Then one summer I reduced it down to every other week and that felt like a much more manageable pace for us and for other people listening. So now we're stuck to that. We put out a new episode every other Tuesday and I can't remember how we ever managed to do two a week.
Claire Sandys:But my advice is start with less. Don't do what we did. You can build to more if you've got the capacity, but it is very easy to overdo it and come in too quickly with too much and then just burn out. Or you can do seasons. You can get a whole season ready of maybe up to eight episodes, put that out, have a few months or weeks break and then do another season. That's another way of doing it where you can work on it, put it out, work on it, put it out right.
Claire Sandys:So first thing I need to think about when I want to put out another episode is the topic or subject. For us, that might be the next loss that we're doing in our 101 loss list, or it might be a guest that I've got on, or it might be a blog that I need to write, or some audio from a chat with me and Chris or something else. But you need something. I need a topic, I need to know what the next episode is, and I plan my episodes a couple of months in advance so I know what's coming. I try and space out the losses and the let's chats and the blogs so that people get a bit of a variety of different things. So I need to find a guest or write a blog.
Claire Sandys:One of the number one questions I get asked is how do you find your guests? Well, they arrive in a number of ways In the early days. You have to find them because you're a new podcast. No one knows who you are and God bless the first 10 or so podcast guests that we had on who were willing to chat to us without really knowing what the podcast would be like at all. Every podcast host will be so appreciative of the first people who say yes, when you haven't even got a podcast for them to listen to, so thank you for that. And usually they're probably people you know or people that trust you in the early days.
Claire Sandys:So sometimes I approach people still who are talking about a loss in public. In some way I know that if someone's talking about their loss in public they're OK to share their pain. They're not nervous about it because it's not something that everyone would want to do publicly and I totally understand that. So sometimes if I see a particular loss I'm like I'd really love to speak to someone about that and they're already talking about it. I might approach them. Sometimes I get a reply. Sometimes I don't get anything at all. Sometimes I get a yes Not very often, but sometimes I get a yes.
Claire Sandys:I do get a lot of PR emails that come to me from people who are employed by authors or other guests to approach podcasts to be on them. I always reply to these because I like to be polite, but I'm cautious about them. They rarely know anything about my podcast. They might have listened to the last episode and mentioned something from that, but on the whole I can tell they know that all they've seen is that it's a grief podcast. They haven't really looked that we're doing 101 losses. They haven't tried to fit in with anything we're doing. So occasionally I found a guest that way, but not very often. More likely to pick them if they're coming out and talking about a loss that I just know is going to be very hard to find anywhere else. But a lot of people do kind of generic loss stuff and that's not really what I'm looking for, unless I fancy doing a let's Chat with them because I'm interested in their story.
Claire Sandys:Sometimes the guests are people that we know in real life. Like at the very beginning we had to ask people we knew. Not all that often, but that has happened. We have got guests on our podcast that we know personally. And then sometimes guests approach me and I think that's actually some of the best ones that we've had have come through that route. So there are three ways a guest might approach me through a PR person, like I mentioned, through an email or a message from the website or through social media that says something like I lost my sister and there's no more details or even a name. I always reply to these again, but it's not really how I'm going to book a guest. And the last way and it's my favourite is through an email or message that knows the podcast has taken an interest in what we're doing, identifies a loss we haven't covered yet that they want to talk about, and sends me a lovely message with details of their loss and why they'd love to be on the podcast. You guys are podcast guest gold, whether they've done a podcast before, whether they've never done one, whether they've never even spoken about it in public, whatever their situation is, even though they're a complete newbie. I love these emails. They tend to often be the best guests and that's mostly because I think they're invested in what we're doing and there's a real interest to be a part of the kind of lost family that we're building.
Claire Sandys:And if you ever want to be a guest on a podcast, then this is your best chance to get on there. When you contact the podcast, do the same thing Show them that you know them. Show them that you know why you'd be a good guest. Listen to their podcast, get a feel for it. Don't get yourself on something that you then regret later. Tell them that you've listened to it. It makes a huge difference for a podcast host to know you've got someone coming on that already knows some of your back catalogue.
Claire Sandys:Now if I get approached by someone but I'm not sure they're the right fit for the podcast or would be the right guest, then quite often I ask them to go away and listen to a few episodes, if they haven't done this already, to see if this is something they really want to do. Because it's a very in-depth interview about grief and not everyone is going to want to open up to that level. So if they say they want to come on and chat about the loss of their sister or something like that, they don't actually want to talk about the grief. They only focus on moving forwards. That's not really the kind of interview we're looking to do. We want them to open up about how hard that's been before they then talk about the hope and how we move forward. So I'll tell people just to go away, have a listen, get a feel for what we do, kind of give them a bit of a feel of how deep we go into the grief so they can get a feel for that. Ask them a few more questions about it, see what happens. Some of them at that point never come back. At that point I think that's probably the right thing. Some come back even more keen once they've listened to stuff and that's great.
Claire Sandys:So I don't book guests that are just wanting to push a new book or a product. I will say that I do value you as an audience way too much to just give you someone who is just trying to sell you something. So I tell people if they've done things like that, they can reference it. Of course, if it's part of their journey and it's part of their healing. You know why not, and I'll put details in the show notes of anything they want. But we're not going to interview anyone solely about a project. We're not going to have someone with a book and say tell me about this unless it really relates to something we want to know about.
Claire Sandys:A good example on the podcast of where I think this did work was actually Mary Frances O'Connor, who came on a let's Chat episode to talk about a book that she just put out called the Grieving Brain. Now that was really interesting. I wanted to talk about that subject. What did it look like in the brain? So that kind of came from a book that had been released, but I approached her. If she'd approached me saying can I flog this book or can I talk about this, I would have been a bit more sceptical.
Claire Sandys:So sometimes, as a subject, I just think, yes, I really want to talk about that. I know my listeners will like that, but I don't have people on that are just specifically pushing their own stuff. So, and I also want to point out, I've never paid a guest to come on and they have never paid me to come on the podcast. That is something that goes on with some other podcasts as well. That's not something I've ever got involved in, not something I'm ever going to get involved in. The other thing is that, yes, I want good stories, I want a bit of grief, I want a bit of hope, whatever. But I don't mind if the person isn't experienced or even really great at being on the podcast.
Claire Sandys:So some podcasts won't put out interviews. They do that they don't think are perfect or amazing or inspirational, or it wasn't very great. I'm a little bit different to that. I do want to honour all our guests. So if I've done the interview and they want it to go out, then I'm very happy to do that. I want their story to be heard. I think everything has value in it and, to be honest, if it's not a great interview, that's down to me, that's not down to them, so it should go out anyway. So, yeah, I always put an episode out. However, it measures up against perfect podcast content. I'm not all about that. I feel like everybody has something to give someone else. Everyone has a story. Everyone has something in that story that helps somebody else. So I'll always put an.
Claire Sandys:So once I've found a guest, I do my research on them. I Google them, I find out who they are, where they are, what do they do, what they've done before. Sometimes there's nothing, sometimes there's loads. It really depends If they've done loads of interviews on podcasts before. I need to listen to some of those. I need to find out how can I make mine a bit different for them and for the people that are listening. How can I take a different angle? How angle? How can I get something new out of them.
Claire Sandys:Sometimes I do a pre-interview chat with guests on Zoom. If we're not really sure what the exact loss is going to be, or they're nervous about doing it, or they've got questions, or they just want to meet me first, then we have a Zoom chat. We meet, we go through everything and we see if it's something they want to follow up on. Mostly we do, but just occasionally it might fall away at that point and they might be less interested. Then I get out my trusty Calendly app. That word is so difficult to say, calendly I just use the free version. But this has been brilliant for me. It was recommended to me by somebody else.
Claire Sandys:I put all the dates and times in that I could do for an interview, and if it's 101 last episode, I have to bear in mind Chris's work shifts and all that kind of stuff. So I put in everything that I can do time-wise. I send it to the guest and they can pick and book a slot and a time to chat. And the great thing about Calendly is that it automatically adjusts to their time zone when they're looking at it. So I don't have to worry about trying to sort all that out and make mistakes, which I just know would happen because we're always speaking to people in different time zones. So I send out what I can do on my time zone. Calendly transfers it into theirs. When they're looking at it, they book something. Once they've booked it, it sends an email to me and them and it has all the details on it and puts it in my calendar and theirs if they want to, and this is typically about a month in advance.
Claire Sandys:I might be doing this sometimes sooner. Sometimes it's two to three months away, really depending on the time of year, how much I've already got scheduled and just life in general. So I like to try and not make guests wait too much after they record an interview before it goes out. So I try to record nearer their release date, but I also have to have allowed time to edit. So most guests probably wait anything from one to five months for their episode to be released. It has been longer in the past, but I keep them updated on this so they know when roughly it's going to go out. They're not going to be surprised by it suddenly appearing.
Claire Sandys:Once I've done all this, I need to create three documents for that guest in the folder that I have on Google Drive. So the first document is their bio and with this I put all the information on, not just for me but for Chris so he can read it before the interview. Where are they? What do they do? What's a rough age? Are they married, single, widowed? Are they parents? Put dates on there? If they lost somebody, when did the person die? How long have they been grieving?
Claire Sandys:I also put on here links of websites, social media that they might have given me or that I found. And when they book through Calendly, it also asks them questions on my booking form. So it'll ask them where they live, how to pronounce their name if that needs clarification, any links they want to use in the show notes, any hashtags on social media they use. Have they been on a podcast before? And I get them to confirm. They can use an updated version of Chrome, which is what most recording software will require.
Claire Sandys:So I add all the information that's come in from that into my bio sheet and that gives me a good indication of who they are, which is really helpful if I'm not going to be interviewing them for I don't know, let's say, two or three months, but I've just had a Zoom chat with them. I get it all in there so that I'll remember it in a few months time. The second document that I create is one with questions on for this interview and the third document is a text that I will have for the intro outro that we're going to record for that episode. So I've got templates for all of these and then I just copy and paste them for each new guest, so I fill out their bio information and I note down any names that I need to know how to pronounce or specifics about them. Maybe they're just famous for not using the word dead or maybe they don't like certain language around death. So I note that down and then I start to write some questions for the interview on the other document that I have.
Claire Sandys:So we might not stick to these during the interview, we might use all of them. But I start to think around the subject or loss and ponder what kind of questions people might naturally have for that situation. I imagine what might be hard for them, how they've dealt with that. I find it helps, if they've been interviewed before, to listen through to anything they've spoken about and I can jot down questions that come to mind that weren't asked or that I was thinking during that interview. Ultimately, though, once we're interviewing, we do tend to just go with the flow and go with the guest, but it's good to have some backup questions, because if you have a guest, that is particularly I don't know how to describe this in a nice way but if they're not forthcoming with information, it doesn't flow out of them.
Claire Sandys:Some people are very chatty, some people are not, and if you get a guest that's a lot less chatty than you're expecting, you need those backup questions to go to. You can't just rely on it just being a conversation. I think that can waste a lot of people's time if you're not really being intentional about what you're going to ask. It's good to have those questions, but we don't always use them Out of interest. An hour interview will have anywhere from about maybe four to ten questions, so I usually have way too many. I never run out really. I've always got more than that. I'm always surprised at how few questions you actually need to ask people in an interview, especially when you're just chatting about other things along the way. So before the interview so the guest is sorted, the interview date is booked, I've got my information on my bio. What do I need to do before the interview, apart from prepping questions. Well, we record all our interviews remotely. So I'm currently using StreamYard's two hour free a month plan, which suits me well because I've got to pay for it, but when I was doing up to five hours a month I was paying for something like Riverside or Squadcast.
Claire Sandys:These are all websites that record audio and video for you. It's a bit like Zoom, but they do it in a sort of a better way. They record the audio at your end as the host and at your guest's end, so you're not reliant on the internet connection of the call. It basically records what goes straight into their microphone, what goes straight into my microphone, and then it uploads it to a cloud and then it sends it to me. So the audio is as good as whatever is happening in the room between that person's mouth and the microphone. It's not relying on an internet connection that might make that be stuttery or drop out, and it records this all on separate tracks for me, which helps when I'm editing. And you can pay anything from £15 to £60 a month for these kinds of services probably over 100 pound a year anyway which is well worth it if you're doing a lot of hours, but we're not really. So I just use this free plan that StreamYard has, which gives me two hours free a month, which is plenty for what I'm doing at the moment.
Claire Sandys:We don't record the video, but a lot of these are giving you video at the same time. We just record audio only so guests don't have to worry about what they look like, what their background looks like. But if you were recording and editing video then you'd be paying for more for that, because obviously it's providing the video and the audio. So to have somewhere where you can record one of these meetings, you need a link, just like zoom. If you want a zoom meeting, you send someone a link. It's the same kind of thing.
Claire Sandys:So I need to go into stream yard, set up a link for this recording. It creates a link and then I can get out my template email that I keep. I keep that in my gmail folder in drafts and I amend it for the guests so that I can send it out in good time to them. So on this email I'll put the link that I've just created for the recording and then I'll tell them also that they can check their tech setup on this link anytime before the interview you can go in check your microphone, check your headphones all work and then I confirm the date, time and the year of the recording. I used to work as a PA and I've learned a lot of lessons about confirming in writing meeting times, including the year always very important. And then I also attach my podcast prep sheet, which is a generic pdf that I've created that I send to all guests. It contains everything they need to know on there so I don't have to keep writing out in the email, and it helps them get ready and kind of puts them at ease a bit so they know what's happening.
Claire Sandys:I can tell them it's not going to be video, so they know they'd have to make their background look good. They don't need to look good themselves. I can tell them that we edit so they don't have to worry about what they're saying. I like to know when I'm going into an online meeting whether my camera is going to be recording the video. But there is video so we can chat to them. I give them tips for good audio. Like I said, a room with soft things absorbs stuff way better than the room with hard floors and surfaces, where it echoes.
Claire Sandys:I tell them. They'll need headphones, ideally with a microphone on them, if not a separate microphone, a webcam and, most important, I urge them to never use Bluetooth headphones for the interview. It does not give good audio. All the recording platforms that I've used have advised against it, so I put that down there. I also make sure they know about the Herman question for 101 lost list, because a lot of guests will have no idea what that is. And then for my metaphorical tool shed question that I have for let's Chat episodes, I give them links which give them more information. Explain about that. So they've got time to think about it and they know they need to need. They need to know this ahead of recording. I probably send this out about a month or so before recording and then I also follow up with an email nearer the time to remind them about the date and time and check they're still okay to go ahead with it. I believe that it's all this kind of planning that's meant. I've only ever had one or two people not show up for an interview, and they were with very good reasons. Everyone else has always turned up.
Claire Sandys:Then, on the day of the recording, I set up our podcast studio, which is a small bedroom in our house that we've put all our podcast stuff in. I get the mics ready. I make sure we've got pen and paper each to jot down questions we might think of while we're chatting. We also have a couple of printed bits of paper in front of Chris and me that we can tap on or move. One says I have a question, so we know the next question can come from that person, which saves a lot of awkward silences or me and Chris trying to talk over each other to get a question in. And the other one says ready for the Herman question. So we know when each of us have asked all our questions and we're now ready to wrap up.
Claire Sandys:On the wide computer monitor that we have in the podcast studio we have a webcam on the top so the guests can see us. We have questions on one side of the screen that we're going to be asking them. We then have our Zoom-like window of StreamYard in the middle, which is where we can see them and they can see us. We've only ever done about three or four interviews in person, even if they're in the UK, and then hidden behind that we have an amazing free program called Audacity which records our interview at our end and I use this to edit the audio as well. It's a great program for recording and editing and we always record our audio through Audacity as well as it coming through StreamYard. It gives us a slightly better quality audio because it's just right in the room recording and sometimes it's a good backup if StreamYard was to fail, and vice versa.
Claire Sandys:So we spend usually around an hour doing an interview. Sometimes it's longer. We ask guests to allow an hour and 15 minutes if there's two guests plus me and chris. Sometimes it's even longer than that, but ideally it's around an hour. We start to wrap up. So when we're ready to go, we get ready to connect. Our guest is about to come on chris and I quickly pray before we connect to our guest.
Claire Sandys:These are really delicate topics and we really want our guests to feel safe and enjoy their time with us. We want to make sure that we're kind and empathetic and understanding and wise, so we just do that quickly. Then we connect the call and if we're meeting them for the first time, we say hi and I go through my checklist. And my checklist is very important because I've never been someone that hasn't pressed record on an episode and I've heard this horror story many times on podcast chat rooms and then you have to go to the guest and ask to redo it. So I've got a checklist to make sure I never forget to press record. But it also has other things on it, like reminding me to tell the guests that we edit all the interviews so they can pause if they need to or if they don't want to answer a question. They can say they don't want to. We can take that out. That's never actually happened yet, but I think it just relaxes going to happen.
Claire Sandys:This can be useful when I'm editing later on and then we record our guest agreeing to being interviewed for us to use this on the episode or on social media or clips. This was something that was recommended to us and it just helps protect us so no one could say they didn't know that they were being recorded. So we do all that. Go through my checklist, press record on Audacity, press record on StreamYard. That all starts recording. We record their agreement and then we sort of start the interview.
Claire Sandys:Before that, we might try and look at if there's any tech issues. Chris is my tech man, for that helps sort out these things. We might make sure the right microphone is picking up the sound, make sure there's no echo or background noises that we could turn off. Things like that. It can be quite complicated. Sometimes somebody has got a microphone in front of them but the setup on StreamYard might be trying to use their laptop microphone instead, so we're not hearing them as good as we should do. We have to work things like that out. Make sure we've got the best audio we can get.
Claire Sandys:During an interview we try and go with the guest and see what they want to share and ask questions about that. Keep it quite natural. But we also use our prepared questions as well. We don't always use all our questions, like I said, but we do try to ask all our 101 lost guests the same questions about whether they've ever asked the question why, what's their experience of hope and, of course, what's their Herman or what's their tool. If they want a let's Chat episode and if it's a blog episode, then obviously all of this is out the window. It just me and the microphone. I'm facing some acoustic foam on the wall and I'm just recording what I've written.
Claire Sandys:So once an episode is finished, we say goodbye, we cut off StreamYard, but depending on the guest internet speed, we might have to wait a little while for the audio to download. If it hasn't finished downloading at their end, we do need them to keep the StreamYard window open until it has, and then we can shut it down, and then I have to wait for them to just process and come from the cloud down to my computer. While this is happening, I always email the guest immediately to thank them for being on, let them know that I'm going to be in touch soon to let them know when their episode will be out, and I'll be requesting a photo for the episode, artwork on social media and any links they might want to add to the show notes. Then the next job is to download the audio that has come into StreamYard onto my computer. I then immediately upload it onto Google Drive, just in case at any point it's not on StreamYard if I go to look for it or you know, I can only keep so many hours on StreamYard and then deletes it because I'm on a free account. I don't want to lose anything, so I immediately download it and then I put it straight on Google Drive, so that I've got that there, because I might not be touching it for another couple of months, so I just need to know that's safely there. So I sort all that out and then the next job will be to edit the interview before it can go out, and record the intro outro with Chris. So while I'm editing the interview, I have a document that I referred to earlier, which is the intro outro one, and I have that next to me and as I'm editing I take information that they've used or that I think I might want to use for the introduction and I put that into that so I can remember topics they've covered, details they might want to highlight what we spoke about, clips of what they're saying. I put all that in there so I can form the intro outro at a later point. So editing I do all my audio editing in Audacity and it's the audio editing.
Claire Sandys:I think that takes up most of a podcaster's time if you do it. Not everyone edits their episodes. I think you can tell very quickly if someone doesn't, and episodes can tend to be longer. Sometimes if it's just people chatting, that's fine, it's actually really enjoyable. Sometimes you get a lot of waffle and a lot of stuff that I just sit there thinking this should have been edited out. But anyway I like to respect's time. So I do spend a lot of time on editing to make sure that you get the best interview possible without anything you don't need to hear. So as a rule it takes around the double the amount of time of the interview to edit it. So for an hour interview it could take anywhere up to two hours to edit.
Claire Sandys:In theory, I would say for most people it's between two and six hours to edit, really depending on your skills whether you're a newbie or a starter or a pro at this, probably the programming you're using as well. I'm sure there's programs have a lot of things in them that speed them up, but it also depends on the audio, the person speaking, any imperfections we need to get rid of, like we might need to try and sort out some fluctuations in sound. Maybe there's some popping sounds on their words we want to remove. Maybe Maybe there are way too many ums and ahs, maybe there's a fan in the background or a dog barking at certain points. You just go through it, just remove all these kinds of things and just clean it up. Also, because most of us aren't professionals at this, it takes extra time to learn all this stuff at the beginning until you get quite good at it. So overall, you want to try and keep the natural tone and cadence of how someone speaks, so you don't want to take out everything they're saying. That's not like quite right. But equally a lot of people, when they're recorded, do start to erm and make thinking noises or repeat certain phrases over and over. This isn't something that anyone wants to listen to, especially the speaker, so I try and cut these down to make it easier listening for them and for other people.
Claire Sandys:We also bleep out any swearing. Now, we don't ever tell our guests not to swear, but we do take it out for a specific reason. If you have swearing on a podcast, you have to mark that episode as explicit when you upload it to your host, although a lot of people don't. Another bugbear of mine. It's just good etiquette because it warns people who might be listening with small children or might not want to play it in certain situations. Just warns them there's going to be swearing. In theory, you can get pulled up for not doing this. However, if you do mark an episode explicit, then there are a few countries that automatically don't allow your content to be played. So since we felt it was important that our content was available everywhere because of what we're talking about. We bleep out the swearing, so we don't have to mark them as explicit and therefore our episodes can go wherever they want to in the world.
Claire Sandys:And a top tip if the audio really does need to sound a lot better than it is because there's a lot of background noise or for whatever reason it's just a bad line, then I really recommend Enhanced Speech by Adobe. It's brilliant. You do have to pay for it. I'm on and off whether I'm paying for it or not, but there was a free thing. I think it only does up to half an hour or something for free, but it is really good. I'm fascinated by what it can take out and how much better it can make something sound. So that's a little top tip there. If you're really struggling, it can be worth it even just for one interview just to find something like that. A lot of hosts also offer this kind of thing. Buzzsprout has something called Magic Mastering, which will do something similar, and you can pay to have that put on your episodes to make them sound better as well.
Claire Sandys:Another thing we do is to check that the levels are all right, so I don't know any of the techie words for this. So if you're a professional listening, I'm so sorry for this next bit. I hope I'm describing it correctly. Chris knows more about this than I do. But basically we want to make sure the podcast sound level is at a set number and that number keeps it so that when someone speaks really loudly or laughs loudly it doesn't blast in your ear. And then when someone gets really soft, it's not so quiet that you can't hear them. So it keeps everything at a set level so you can hear things getting louder and softer. You know when someone's laughing loudly or when they're whispering, but it doesn't blast and change in your ears. And you'll know this when you listen to a podcast. If they don't do it, because you'll be adjusting the volume constantly, you'll have trouble hearing them when you're right up loud or they'll be way too loud when your volume's up high. All podcasts really should be around this particular level, this particular number that helps you listen in ease without having to adjust your up and down button. So I really hope that's a good description. I'm embarrassed if anyone's listening who knows what that really is all about.
Claire Sandys:But we do that. Chris is my person that does those bits, so I'm very grateful for him for that. We also then use the silence. So you know, I said we record 10 seconds of silence with our guest. We do that with us as well. Basically you can record 10 seconds of your room, which will basically be silent, but there's often a lot of noises going on that you can't really hear or you're not aware of, especially electrical noises and then you can use that and apply it to the whole episode and it will remove that kind of baseline of background noise which makes it just sound a bit crisper. So we use that.
Claire Sandys:And then when I'm editing the 101 episodes, I'm also doing things like taking out clips that we'll use for the intro outro as well. While I'm editing I'm taking out clips as well as keeping an eye on all these different things sounds, taking out ums, errs, anything that's been repetitive. Maybe if someone goes on a bit of a waffle and I think this is way off topic, no one needs to know about this I'll cut that out. So I just try and make it. Try and keep it relevant. Um, I can edit a whole hour and someone's only removed three minutes and I feel like I've done loads. So editing is difficult. If someone has to edit something down from 20 minutes to two minutes, which a lot of audio editors are doing, I have a lot of respect for them, because it is not easy to be able to hear stuff and know what's important and what isn't. I just feel like everything's important, so I find it very difficult. But on the whole, making it sound better. I think I'm good at that side of things.
Claire Sandys:So I thought I'd give you an example of what it's actually like before and after we edit something. So this is very crude. I just wanted to show you what's possible. This is a quick recording that I did. The original is bad with background noise. I stood right next to a fan. There's a stutter, there's a cough, there's a bit of waffle. Yeah, I've tried to put things in that we might get in a normal recording. And the second one I've cleaned it up, so I've cut out the words that I don't think are needed, I've adjusted the background noise, I've removed the fan. Like I said, it's very crude. I didn't spend long on it, but I just want you to see an example of what can be done in an interview and how we can make people just sound a lot crisper and sharper when they're talking about something specific. So here we go.
Claire Sandys:Hi, so my name is Claire and I host the Sign Up, my podcast. It's sort of well. We're based in Gloucestershire, england. I'm married to Chris. I love to write, drink, drink. Ah, I love to write drink earl grey and eat marzipan not sure if you tried that. It's one of my favorites, um, and one day I dream of owning a donkey. Hi, my name is claire. I host the sign up, my. We're based in Gloucestershire, england. I'm married to Chris. I love to write, drink Earl Grey and eat marzipan, and one day I dream of owning a donkey. Right, hopefully you could tell the difference. It gives you an idea of sort of what we're doing and if you imagine doing that on our interview, you can probably start to see the kind of work you're looking at.
Claire Sandys:Okay, so once I write the intro outro for the episode, chris and I will then record that. For the outro, we try to vary what we mention because apparently, if you mention too much, people switch off. So rather than mention everything we'd like to in one episode, we try to space it out. So we might use this time to either ask people to rate and review the podcast for us, which is really important, or to suggest ways they could support the podcast. We might tell them about buy me a coffee or buying a herman, or sharing the episode with people, or maybe we'll talk in more depth about hermans or something else we're up to. We try and pick something each time and try and vary it a bit.
Claire Sandys:Now. Then I put the whole file together with the interview, which is three different audio tracks for me, chris and the guest, the two audio tracks with both me and chris, the music that we need to put in and the clips from the guest, and I pass it to my senior editor, aka christopher, and then chris sorts the music for me, so he makes sure that the music dips and rises in the right places between the speaking. The bit he does I cannot do is the music track that we've got. It's I don't know, two, three minutes long, and we need to be longer than that quite often, so we'll need to cut it at a certain point and then put another version of that the same track on. That's not. I'm really going to explain this really badly. We need to make it longer, basically.
Claire Sandys:So we're using multiple versions of the same song to just cut into the middle so that the middle bit can extend, if that that makes any sense. Chris is really good at that. He can match the beats underneath the talking, all that kind of thing. I can't do that, so I give it to him. He does the music, he checks all the levels for me, makes sure that overall it's a good kind of production, and this is where all his radio editing comes in handy. And then we're done, and when he's done that, he downloads a WAV version of the file and we save this with the title and then afterwards it says Buzzsprout ready on the end. So I know that this is the final version. And then Chris also saves a dry version of this which is basically all the talking without any music underneath, just in case we need that at some point in the future, because if we've put all this project down into one WAV file, you can't then pull out different sections of it if there's music underneath. So we have both those versions. I suspect that's something that they do in the radio industry that I'd never heard of. Right, and then if we get time I'll listen to it, make sure it's all okay, but having listened to it already for hours while I'm editing.
Claire Sandys:I don't always want to do this bit, so it depends. If it's a let's Chat episode, then Chris won show notes. I tell them roughly when it's going to go out. Then I upload the final file to my host, buzzsprout. So once I've got my WAV file which is an audio file, by the way, if you don't know what a WAV is then once the file is there, I upload it to Buzzsprout and I need to schedule when it's going to be released. So for us they go out at 2am on a Tuesday morning. Why? Well, I did a lot of research and a lot of people were saying avoid Mondays and Fridays. You know people are busy, stuff's going on. So Tuesday, wednesday, thursdays are good. I wanted it to be there for UK people when they get up first thing in the morning. So it's always there if you start work at 6, if you start work at 10, whatever.
Claire Sandys:While I'm uploading the file, I also need to write the show notes that you'll see next to all episodes. That's got all the information about it in a link and underneath that there is information that automatically attaches to every episode. So I don't have to do it every time and that's the bit that mentions the website, the information on Herman's how to support the podcast. So that's there already for me. So in the show notes I introduce the podcast for new listeners, just briefly. I introduce the guest podcast for new listeners, just briefly. I introduce the guest.
Claire Sandys:I give an idea of what we're talking about in the episode and any links to anything that we want to reference or that the guest wants us to mention. It is a bugbear of mine when I open a podcast episode that tells me nothing about what's in it or doesn't give me any links to stuff they're talking about Really annoys me. It's very easy and quick to do. So yeah, if you do a podcast, please put the information in. It makes me listen. Some of us just don't bother listening if I don't know what it's about.
Claire Sandys:I also fill in the other details on the episode information. So there's more information that I can put on there, like the episode number, who the host and guest is, keywords and there's a set number of characters for all the stuff you're writing in the show notes. So I also have to title the episode. This would be trickier if we hadn't glued ourselves to a format of 101 loss and then I put what it is and who the guest is. So that kind of sorts itself out for me. Really, if you're doing just different episodes every time about different things, then you do really have to think about this. It is something you need to think about grabbing people's attention, bringing people in. I haven't really got into the depths of all that, but I can see why that would help.
Claire Sandys:There's also lots of different discussions about whether you should put episode numbers in your title. I haven't done this. It was advised against it. I did put episode numbers and I do in the show notes at the beginning next to a hashtag symbol Hash symbol Is it a hash symbol or hashtag symbol? Next to one of those. I wished I hadn't started numbering my episodes the way I did, because it looks like we're up to episode 130 something, but actually we're over 200 because I didn't number the blogs. I put them in as bonus episodes rather than actual episodes, so that it doesn't represent how many episodes we have. So I don't really like that. But the idea of going through back through 200 episodes and renaming them all is also not particularly fun, and we refer to episode numbers a lot in the episodes we've recorded. So if I change them now it confuses everything. So, yeah, just think about stuff like this at the beginning.
Claire Sandys:It's the same as naming a podcast. If I could do it again, I would probably rename it. Um, I like our name. I think it works well. I think the question why is often silent. People don't know why someone dies. They know the who, when, how, what, but not the why. So I think it works. In that sense it works well because there's a silent why in our surname there's lots of levels. I like the title, but ultimately people pick podcasts quite often from the title because it needs to say what it's about, and ours does not say what it's about. So I've put a strapline with it that says about grief and loss and hope and stuff. But I think if it had been the griefy, loss, hope podcast, I possibly would have got a bit further with people finding it for the right reasons. But anyway, that's a side note, so I've titled the episode.
Claire Sandys:Then there's other aspects to podcasts and that's producing transcripts. So you can produce a transcript of every episode. This is optional. I, from day one, decided I was going to do this because I heard a lot of people saying it makes the podcast accessible to people who are deaf, or to those who want to translate it into another language and hear it, or for those who just prefer to read these things and go back and pull out quotes and stuff. So I've done this from day one and I used to pay otterai for that. It was around £90 a year.
Claire Sandys:I put my episode in. It would come up with a transcript and I'd painstakingly go through it word by word and correct it, which took me an hour or more, and I really did not enjoy it. Eventually I realised they're good to have, but they aren't used enough on my podcast, as far as I'm aware, to keep them perfect, like I was. So I stopped doing them through Otter and I found out that Buzzsprout had released an add-on that produces a transcript for you, so I decided to use that instead. So I pay a bit extra each month and every time I upload an episode, buzzsprout produces a transcript for me and then I go in.
Claire Sandys:I just edit the main things at the beginning and the end now, stuff that they all seem to get wrong, like our names, the podcast name and all the links. So I go in and do that. I don't edit the rest in between, it's just too much work and I just don't think it's necessarily needed. It will improve as AI improves, but it's there if people need it. I've still got one for every episode, but it's not perfect, and I do warn guests about this. As soon as I have the photo of the guest, I then pootle over to Canva I used to use Photoshop, but now I'm on Canva and I pop it into the template that I have for the new episode. I amend the title, name, episode number, lost number, whatever and then I download that into my downloads.
Claire Sandys:Once the episode is live, I wake up that morning, I check it's gone out, then I hope there's no messages from loyal listeners that are saying there's 10 minutes of silence in the middle of your episode. Although if there is, I can fix it, because you just fix it and then upload the new audio and it replaces it for me. So it's quite easy to do if that is the case. And then there's a few things I need to do. So I have a Wix website which has a podcast player on it and it automatically uploads a new episode when they're released, because it's like a plug-in from Buzzsprout. So as soon as the link to that page is available. I add it to the episode details on Buzzsprout because you can put in their specific web pages to that episode, which I think Apple uses. Then on the website I also update the 101 loss page or the let's Chats page or the blog page with the episode link and the photo of the guest.
Claire Sandys:Then I immediately email the guest that morning with an email template that I have in my drafts folder on Gmail. It's got all my information in that I'm going to need and I just populate it with the new information I need to put in so it tells them that the episode is now live and where they can find it. That's where I get my link from the website and put that in there, where the transcript is. I give them a link to the episode on a different platform, on Buzzsprout, which shows you the transcript where they are on the website, with the photo they sent me, and I attach the social media artwork that I'm using in case they want to also use it to promote their episode somewhere.
Claire Sandys:Then I need to let people know that it's out there, because not everyone just follows a podcast and gets notifications when the episode comes out. You can do that. By the way, on most of them you can set a notification and if a new episode comes out if you're for one it will just ping you and tell you it's there. So I've got that on a couple of podcasts I listen to. So, yeah, I need to let people know. So sometime within the next 48 hours of the episode being out, I will post the artwork on social media with the link and more details. I post on Instagram, facebook, linkedin, twitter and threads. The episodes automatically put themselves on YouTube as well, but I don't really do anything with those and they're audio only.
Claire Sandys:I do think social media, annoyingly, is quite vital for this. I do find that people listen more if I put it on social media and remind them it's there. So for people not doing any kind of promotion and expecting people to find your podcast, it's incredibly difficult unless you've got a celebrity or something involved. I think that's probably something that's not going to happen. So I do need to put it on social media, but I don't do a lot of social media at the moment. I could do a lot more, but it's not an area that I find particularly easy.
Claire Sandys:I think the more you can engage with people on social media in different areas, not just about your podcast, the more people are going to find your podcast. It's also really good to engage with other groups that might like your podcast grief groups for me, areas where people are congregating that will be interested in that kind of thing. There's loads. There's loads you can do to get a podcast out there. But, as you can see, there's a lot to do anyway. So people only have so much time they can do all this. So that's, I think, mostly everything that I do. I've probably forgotten some stuff, but it gives you a good idea of what's going on behind the scenes.
Claire Sandys:And if you're that also does video, well then you've got all that to contend with as well. You've got video editing to sort out and clips that you can put on different things, and you know I could put audio clips of my podcast on social media. I'm sure that would be well received. I'm sure it'd be great. I'm sure it'd get more listeners. But the idea of having to sit down and put those together is just a step too far quite often for me. And that's when I get emails from people saying you could do more with your podcast if you do this, this, this, this and this and we can do it for you if you pay us this much money. I don't have a budget for that, but a lot of people do outsource it and then they can have lots of cool clips of their guests and video of their guests and all this kind of stuff. But yeah, it's a lot of people would say audio only is the pure way to do it. So I'm going to cling to that kind of mentality.
Claire Sandys:So, as you can see, it's a lot of work, especially if you want to do it right. Of course, however, can you say those two things together? You could just record yourself chatting or interviewing somebody on your phone, upload it and be done with it. I mean it can be that simple. It doesn't have to be as in-depth as we're doing it. Mean it can be that simple. It doesn't have to be as in-depth as we're doing it. That's another way of doing it, but it does come out very differently and you know it's not easy being small and independent. It is hard to get found by new people unless you put in lots of extra work and money. So, yeah, spare a thought for the little people.
Claire Sandys:As one of my friends that's a very loyal listener said to me the other day she was listening to a podcast. At the end of they were reeling off all the names of the people who had put it together, this long list of production people, and she said she was saying to herself, yeah, but Claire does all hers on her own. So I was like, yeah, I do so. Yeah, appreciate those of us that are trying to do this for you just on our own, because it's a labor of love at the end of the day.
Claire Sandys:So the other question I get asked a lot how can you make money from a podcast? Well, that is not easy. If you are not a celebrity, if you're not well known, if your podcast isn't on BBC Sounds or some other big platform they have in America, it can be very difficult to do this and make money. There are several ways. I'm going to miss a few out, I'm sure, because I don't know all of them you can put ads in your podcast. I could put ads in my podcast. Our host offers ads that you can put in. They come in. I think you can have them at the beginning or the end, or mid-roll, as they say, and it finds a place for them. Personally, I don't like listening to podcasts with ads, although I totally understand why they're doing it because if you want to make money, you need to. I don't think many of my guests are going to want to listen to ads, so I think most of them would maybe appreciate it if they knew that was what it needed to keep going. I'm trying to keep away from that as long as possible.
Claire Sandys:Subscriptions you can have people subscribe to your content, put it behind a paywall, all that kind of stuff again. I kind of wanted this to be something that people could use as a resource for anything, so that doesn't right to me. I don't know if people would pay for it anyway, because it's quite a specific area. I don't know, I haven't looked into it. We could have bonus episodes that we put on Patreon or Patreon Patreon I always get that wrong or buy me a coffee or that kind of stuff. But as you can see, it's a lot of work. So the idea of doing special extra episodes really fills me with a bit of terror. If I was putting out an episode every two, three months or something, then yeah sure, let's do bonus episodes, but when you're doing it as often as we are, it's just extra work to put on top of that. I just don't know how to factor into life. No-transcript. It support you. You would need to get into those kinds of areas. As you know, I just have buy me a coffee and people can donate towards it, which works well for me at the moment.
Claire Sandys:I did get offered not to be in an the other day. This is the kind of thing you get when you're a small podcaster. It wasn't a very well-known publication. I'd never heard of it. It was to be in a list of 10 podcasters that are uplifting and motivating audiences. Well, that's lovely and I'm sure that would be great publicity for me. And you know you're kind of reading the article thinking, oh, this is nice, somebody's finally found me, they want to use me in some way. This is great. And then at the end it tells you it will cost you $500 to be featured in this list.
Claire Sandys:I did get him down to $350, not for any reason that I uh, I wanted to be on there, but I replied and said look, I'm a small podcast, I don't have a budget for anything like this. He's like how about $350? I was like, to be honest, I'd have to think twice if it was $20. Um, he, he appreciated how candid I was, but, um, yeah, I was like this isn't going to happen to me. But that's the kind of thing. You know.
Claire Sandys:Some podcasts will be doing that and they get a lot more publicity from it. There's podcast awards which we, you know, entered a few when we first started as new and up and coming and all this kind of thing, and they're great to boost your profile, to get more listeners, but they cost money to enter. You have to enter these awards and you don't often get anything back from it. And I found out very quickly I was up against huge productions with massive budgets. I think the one that won the new up and coming was a BBC Sounds podcast. I was like, ok, they've got teams of people working on them, celebrities hosting them. I don't stand a chance against something like that. So it is tough. It's like a lot of creative industries. The book industry is not a lot dissimilar.
Claire Sandys:So, yeah, it's awkward, but there are costs for running a podcast and so people do need to find ways to cover those if they want to keep going. Things like podcast hosting, like I said, you've got 10 to 20 pound a month there Recording programs to record the interviews. They can cost up to 100 pound a month your website hosting and domain. That can easily be 100, 150 quid. Social media and marketing to be effective on any of these, to get new listeners you need to be boosting your posts and paying to find them. If I boost a social media post on the silent y and spend 20 quid on it, which might be five days, I'll be reaching new people. I might get 10 new followers. I can't get those any other ways, not really. They don't come in any other way unless I'm out and about talking about it somewhere a lot. So it's really difficult for stuff like that.
Claire Sandys:There are quite a lot of costs and it's because of that that I want to just take another moment to say a huge thank you to those of you that are supporting my work financially. Because of some very kind people who donate monthly to the podcast, all my fees are covered to produce it. I don't take any money from my time because there's not enough coming in for it to go that far, but the money does help to fund that and the Herman company. It finding more listeners. It funds all the tech that I need to do the podcast at home and on the road. I have some lovely little microphones now that I can do things with out and about, and you need to stay tuned for what we might be doing with those when Chris and I go away. So this kind money that's coming in allows me to fund this and keep doing it, and doing it with nice microphones that we got in the beginning and all that sort of stuff. So I'm so grateful and I hope that you'll join me in thanking them, because without them I'm just not sure this podcast would have been able to continue.
Claire Sandys:It does cost money. It costs a lot of time and, whereas I don't mind it taking my time while I'm at this season in my life, if it was costing us financially it would have to stop. So thank you so much. If you give money monthly to the podcast and if you would like to just join them, that would be amazing. You can do that from as little as £3 a month at buymeacoffeecom. Slash the silent Y link in the show notes. As you know, it puts it on there automatically for me and you can do that as a one-off. You can just buy me a fancy tea or a few of those, or you can support monthly going forwards. We really appreciate it.
Claire Sandys:It's amazing to me to think that people want to pay to help things like this continue, that they have such a big heart, that they want to help other people that are grieving that much and that they want to support what I'm doing. So thank you, thank you, thank you. But also, if you can't support the podcast financially, and if you're listening and if you've listened to all this and you listen to loss episodes and you're a pretty special person, there's loads of other ways that you can support me, if you want to, of course. If you don't want to support me, then you won't be doing any of these things, but if you do want to, it doesn't take nearly as much time as putting a podcast together. You could just rate and review this on Apple. I am still sure there are more than 17 of you listening. That's what my downloads are telling me, and yet that's how many podcast reviews I have. So when other people are looking at the grief podcasts and they see that the ones on the big networks in America have got 45,000 reviews, they are going to pick that over me. I would. So it makes sense. So the more reviews I get, the more important it is. So if you haven't done that, please find somebody with an Apple phone and give me a review. I know not everyone has Apple, especially in the UK, but you can always find someone with one and do it that way. So that's one thing.
Claire Sandys:The other thing you can do is you can share an episode on your social media. You might have like 20 followers, you might have 30 followers, you might have 200 followers If they all see the podcast. That's exposure for me. So whether you're saying good or bad things about it hopefully good you can share it and that just gives me a little bit more exposure. That's another way of doing it. Or share an episode with a friend that's struggling. If somebody out there just needs to know they're not alone, send them the podcast or a specific episode so that they can just feel better about where they are. That is why I did it in the first place. That means so much to me.
Claire Sandys:And the other option, of course you can buy a Herman. Hermans are on the website. You can just go and buy one and you can send it to someone that is going through loss or that just needs a smile right now, someone who maybe is just having a really hard time and initially I was a bit worried about Hermans because I was like, is this the kind of thing people want to receive in the depths of a nasty grief? Is it a bit trite in some way? But actually they've seen the test of time. Now I've sent enough of these out to people that have lost children, to people who have lost family members, partners, to people who are going through chemo, to people who've got a nasty diagnosis, to people who are alone, to people who are in hospital. A lot I've sent them to people in so many different situations and I've only ever had nice feedback back again. People really appreciate them. I've got a friend right now that's going through a horrible loss and she's getting flowers turning up, which is great.
Claire Sandys:But what do you do with them? You have to sort out vases. It takes a lot of effort. You don't always want to do that when you're grieving and then they die. So it's like, yeah, maybe try something else, and a Herman is perfect for that. It's something that they can stay with them throughout life, throughout their loss, and just remind them that they're not on their own. So that's another way you can do it, and that massively supports the podcast. When you buy that, it goes into the same account as everyone else that's donating to the podcast and that also helps fund stuff for me and that actually pays for my time. The Herman cost actually pays for the time of me to make one, so that's the only thing that actually pays for a bit of my time as well. So there we are. These are all ways that massively help my work and encourage me along the way as well.
Claire Sandys:Thank you for listening to this. It's longer than I thought, which makes me realize how much work I have to do for each episode, but I hope it's been helpful. I hope you've enjoyed it. I hope you've given you an idea into what's going on. I hope for those that are paying money to help this podcast keep going. You can see what you're paying towards and the work that's going into it, and thank you for listening. If you are a regular listener that gives me a download, then a huge thank you to you. I'm so appreciative of people that come and join us on this and want to kind of be interested in our guests in the way that we are as well. So thank you for that and thank you to all my guests, because every single one of you has helped me in my own grief and I love that as well.
Claire Sandys:We've got some exciting stuff coming up over the next few months. Stay tuned. We're going to do an episode with me and Chris to explain a bit more, but from September to December things will be a little bit different, but don't worry, we're coming back in January and things will go back to normal. So, yeah, keep tuned for that episode. It's coming up. We've got another Lost episode coming up and some other stuff before that, so I'll be back soon. But thank you for listening and wherever you are today, whatever you're doing and whatever you're going through, I just really hope that you know that you are not alone and that there is always hope and marzipan.
