Use Descript for Your Mini Podcast

Intro: Real quick before we get started. I wanna tell you about an upcoming free webinar I have on November 2nd, 2022 at 1:00 PM Eastern Time. If you’ve been thinking about launching a podcast, but you’re worried it’s gonna take too much time, or your current podcast is taking too much time, then I have a better way for you. It’s called Mini Podcasting. These are 20-minute or fewer solo shows, and I’m going to be doing a free hour-long webinar on how to launch, stay consistent, and monetize your mini-podcast. 

So here’s what you’ll learn in this free 60-minute webinar:

1. Why a mini-podcast is easier than most other formats. 

2. How to define the mission of your mini-podcast. 

3. How to come up with episode ideas,

4. Staying consistent through batching and monetizing

Plus, there will be a Q&A session where you can ask me any questions you’d like of me. I will stay on as long as you need to. You can register for free at [makemoneypod.com/webinar]. It’ll also be in the show notes for this episode. That’s [makemoneypod.com/webinar]. Join me on November 2nd at 1:00 PM Eastern Time for this free webinar on how to make a mini-podcast. 

One of the things that I have been hammering on social media in my newsletter and on this podcast is if you wanna start a podcast today, you should make it a mini-podcast. 

There are lots of reasons why you should start a mini-podcast. I cover that in a previous episode, which will be in the show notes over at [makemoney.com/216]. But, a follow-up question I always get about mini podcasting is, what should I use to record? How do you record? How do I still make this easy?

Today, I’m going to tell you the tool that I use to record my mini-podcast. It’s called Descript. And I love it.

Hello, and welcome to Make Money Podcasting where I teach you how to make your first $10,000 with your podcast. On this show, you’ll learn tried and true methods to increase your revenue and turn your podcast from a money pit into a moneymaker. 

Joe Casabona: Hi, I’m your host, Joe Casabona. And my podcasts have been making money from day one without a lot of downloads. I’ll share everything I know with you here on Make Money Podcasting. 

Okay. So first of all, if you haven’t listened to any previous episodes or seen any of my stuff if this is your first episode, welcome and thank you. 

A mini podcast is a solo podcast that is 20 minutes or less. I recommend people start with a mini-podcast because they are generally easier than most other podcasts.

You’re picking your area of expertise. You are outlining or writing a short script and then you’re reading it and releasing it. So there’s no coordinating with guests, and there’s no advanced editing. And actually, one of the reasons I recommend Descript is…we’ll get to it in a minute. But you can sound good without actually having a super good setup. So, that is why I think people should have a mini-podcast. 

Now, Descript is a video and audio editing app or program that allows you to edit via transcript. So, with De-script or Descript, I say De-script, so I’ll keep saying it that way. They bill it as all-in-one audio and video editing as easy as a doc. And the real power here is that as you talk or when you drop in a recording, Descript will transcribe that recording. And then to edit, you highlight text from the transcript, delete it, and that audio gets deleted as well. So, as far as editing goes as they say, it’s as easy as editing a Word document or a Google Doc or a text file. You delete text and the audio disappears as well. 

So, I use Descript for everything. I record directly into Descript so that I can see what I’m saying as I’m saying it. And then if I mess up, I just stop the recording and delete that text and pick it back up. I’ll talk more about how I use Descript at the end of this episode. But that is a mini-podcast. That’s what Descript is. 

Now, I wanna tell you my Top 3 Descript features. There are a lot of features. So, you know, you kind of, I recommend that you go to the Descript website to check out all the features they have to offer. But these are my top three favorites. 

1. I’ve already mentioned the editing via Transcript. So that is my first favorite feature. And I should say that they’re like a full, like, it’s not just like record and do a few things. They have like fading and like full video editing. They have this overdub feature, which is really cool. But, I really like the ability to edit via transcript. I think that’s, I’ve got my setup like really dialed in. And so,  just the ability to delete text,  or if you pay for the right plan, add text. They’ll overdub your voice, which sounds not bad, which is a little scary. But, anyway,  I’m just gonna gloss over that feature for now. My first favorite feature is editing via transcript. 

2. Second is, now, I call this templating. This doesn’t technically template.  I’m just copying a project, but I have this template file. And that’s what I always use for my starting point. And so I guess my second feature is basically like the ability to easily make, they’re called new compositions. 

So you have a project and inside of a project, you have compositions. And so I have a project called Make Money Podcasting, and then inside of Make Money Podcasting, I basically copy the template or duplicate the template composition. And then I have the starting point for my new episodes. So I have the music and the ducking and the intro set, and I just talk. And again, I’ll talk more about that in a minute. 

3. The third feature I really like is the Studio Sound feature. I don’t use this because I have a professional podcast set up and it actually makes those sound worse. But if you’re using like a built-in microphone or a very echoey microphone, or there’s like a lot of background noise, Descript has this killer feature called Studio Sound that will totally clean up the audio for you.

 Now, obviously, if there’s like random sounds like dogs barking or whatever, like it might not get that. But, if you sound like low or echoey the whole time, it’ll make it so that you’re using, it. Sounds like you’re using a professional microphone. I think this is a great feature for new podcasters because it means that they don’t have to spend a ton of money on a microphone. They can just start a mini-podcast with the equipment they have.  And I do recommend you invest in a decent microphone. But if you don’t have like the sound dialed in yet, you can use studio sound instead of having to like learn all this other stuff like high pass and low pass filters or whatever in Garage Band or Logic or anything like that. 

So, Descript really lowers the barrier for editing and sounding good. 

Now, I’ll give you one more bonus feature Since the templates aren’t really a feature. Their publishing, like sharing features are really great. You can share videos directly to YouTube but I can also upload directly to both Castos and BuzzSprout from Descript. It works a little better on BuzzSprout, if I’m being honest like Descript or Castos. It hasn’t worked reliably. But with BuzzSprout, I record the episode, I name it, and then I publish to BuzzSprout and it does the uploading and I get an email when it’s done processing. So, then I go in and add the show notes and stuff like that. So that’s a really great feature as well. And again, just kind of fits with the mission of Descript which is to make, creating multimedia and publishing as easy as possible. 

So those are my top features.  Oh! You know, I did have a bonus feature in my outline. Remove filler words. I don’t do this… Again, well, I shouldn’t say that. I try not to say a lot. I don’t think I say it too much.  Maybe now that I’m pointing it out, you will notice I say it a lot. But if you say, “a lot”, you can use this feature, Remove Filler Words, and it will remove um’s, oh’s likes, so’s, you know, you can pick the filler words that it removes.

And while I don’t use Remove Filler words, I think if you remove all the um’s and oh’s, it sounds unnatural. But let’s say I have a guest who swears a lot, and I wanna remove the swear words. I can choose the word I wanna remove. The other thing that it does with removing filler words is it’ll remove duplicate words. So if I say, or like it’ll remove the second like or the second. 

So again, Transcript, `it’s doing text find in her place, right? But it’s editing the audio as it does that. So that’s another killer feature. Just makes it a lot easier. 

Okay. With the remaining time, I wanna tell you how I use Descript. I’ve kind of given you the overview throughout, but I just wanna lay it out for you so that you can get a few ideas when I put together my mini-podcast, Make Money Podcasting, Right? 

I outline it in Craft. That’s my notes app. So I’ll have a list of everything I want to talk about. I don’t usually script my shows. I have a template for Make Money Podcasting in a project called Make Money Podcasting. And so that template has the intro music, and then I have pre-recorded my intro. 

So, I have that and the music layered so that there’s ducking, so I don’t have to do that every time. Before, and I also have, it’s called like a gap clip. So it’s just like three seconds of silence. That’s a really cool feature in Descript as well. So I have that template, and then before the gap clip and the music starts, I put the cursor on my timeline and or the scrubber on my timeline, and I start talking directly into Descript. I record directly into Descript. And I do the intro, so like the cold open teaser that you hear before the intro. And then I place the cursor or the playhead at the end of the intro and I start talking again. I hit record and I start talking again, and I talk for a while. I watch the Transcript. If I mess up, I pause the recording, delete the words that I messed up on, and I pick up the recording.

So I record right into Descript. I don’t make edit points because I can see the words and delete the word. So if I mess up, I stop. I delete the mess up, and then I keep going. And then I’ll review everything once more, and then I’m done. And I click share and I publish directly to BuzzSprout. 

So recording a mini-podcast for me takes about 10 to 15 minutes for the outline. And then however long it takes me to record, and then a few minutes to share and process. 

So I have a full episode in probably 40 minutes, maybe an hour if I’m like working on good copy. And it’s much closer to a 1:1 ratio than the normal podcast. Like if you’re doing an interview podcast, they say it takes four hours for every finished hour of content.

So if you have an hour-long interview show, it takes you at least four hours to produce that show. And maybe that doesn’t even include research or scheduling. So that’s something to think about. It’s about an hour for a 20-minute video for me, so like a three-to-one ratio, I guess. three to one time versus finished product. So, Descript just makes it so much easier. 

But that’s it. That’s it for this episode of Make Money Podcasting. I hope you enjoyed it. Definitely check out Descript at [makemoneypod.com/descript]. There will be a link in the show notes that is an affiliate link and I’ll get a kickback. But it doesn’t affect your price at all. It could be your little way of supporting the show if you want. So that’s [makemoneypod.com/descript]. 

Thanks so much for listening.

For all of the show notes, you can go to [makemoneypod.com/216].

And until next time. I can’t wait to see what you make.