This is the third and final “How I made it,” a short series of newsletters which look at the money and marketing behind BAD SEX.
I first set up the BAD SEX newsletter to give supporters “early access” to episodes. As time went on, I began to see the benefit of having a record of how I made the podcast. It’s so easy to forget the work that goes into our achievements. Furthermore, I wanted to be able to put the information out into the world for anyone else who might be thinking about making a podcast series, wondering how to approach it and, crucially, how to finance it.
Welcome to Part 3 of How I made it…
How I made it, Part 3: Budget breakdown
Hello, it’s maths day! I have been half dreading putting this newsletter together, and half looking forward to it. On the one hand, it’s going to be incredibly satisfying to lay out exactly what I spent, see how it broke down. On the other hand, I mean, it’s literally accounting! It’s like doing my tax return… for fun?!
I also think there are going to be some surprises for me. For the most part, the things I budgeted for were covered by the money I raised, but there were definitely little extras here and there (Canva Pro, I’m looking at you!) and I’m actually a bit nervous of what I’m going to find. Now, obviously I was making this podcast alongside my regular journalism work and commercial content-writing so it was far from being my only source of income, but being able to pay myself was definitely part of the financial plan. And I did! But what I’m expecting to see, when I tot this up, is that a fair amount of that money got eaten up with the extra, unforeseen expenses of making and marketing the podcast.
Still, only one way to find out. Are you ready to dive into the numbers with me? Let’s do this!
What I budgeted for
If you recall, when I launched the crowdfunder, I already had one sponsor in the bag. Yes! Lube signed up to sponsor three episodes at a rate of £400 (I quoted them £450, they bargained me down). I was looking to raise a further £5,000 which, at the time, I thought would cover most of my costs. Here’s what my pre-crowdfunder budget looked like:
“Your money will go towards paying a fantastic audio producer to help me create a beautiful-sounding piece of journalism,” I wrote in my Crowdfunder campaign. “It will cover the cost of equipment and recording, studio time and marketing. It will allow me to hire an additional reporter from time to time, not to mention an editor to help with fact-checking. Lastly, it will help to pay me, your host and the lead reporter and editor on the show.”
If you read the previous newsletter on publicity, you’ll know that I’d actually spent this marketing budget before I even started, making the campaign video and creating a logo for the podcast. Once you factor in the merch I offered as “rewards” for supporting the podcast, and the 5% + VAT that Crowdfunder takes from what you raise, you’ll see I actually spent double what I’d budgeted for on marketing. And that’s before we even get to the publicity and promotion I did once the series was launched.
I chose to do an “All or Nothing” campaign which means that, had I not hit my target of £5,000, all the money would have been returned to donors and I would not have had to pay any Crowdfunder fees. So that’s worth remembering. But even without that we were looking at an outlay of £781 before I’d even got going. It was a big gamble.
What I raised
Happily, the Crowdfunder was a huge success. I was absolutely blown away by the support and I actually managed to raise a tiny bit more than my target: £5,160. As I explained in Part 1 of “How I made it,” one of my sponsors came on board at the last minute, when we were about two days and £450 away from hitting the target. They wanted to sponsor the whole series at a cost of £850 which I was obviously keen for them to do, but my focus at that moment was on closing the Crowdfunder. When I explained the All or Nothing model, they offered to donate whatever I needed right now to hit the target and successfully end the campaign. I later invoiced them for the remaining cost of sponsorship.
What I spent
Once the money was collected, it was time to start spending it. Although actually, to begin with, there weren’t many costs involved. Once I’d paid the Crowdfunder fees and ordered and sent out the merch, there wasn’t much I needed to pay for. I already had my podcasting equipment and software. I was using Zoom as my virtual meeting space (I paid for Pro at the time but because I was also using it for other work meetings, interviews and, because we were in lockdown, my social life, I haven’t included this as a podcast expense) and my guests were recording their audio either with their own mics and recording software, or else on their phones as a voice memo. They would then email me their files once the interview was over. So for the first few months the money just sat in my bank account.
In the summer of 2021, lockdown ended and we were having building work done on our house, so I started using a local recording studio. While doing interviews, I would set up my laptop and do my remote interview on Zoom. Then, later, I did all my voiceover recording there too. I was also getting to the point where I needed to bring in my freelance editor to help me shape the story of each episode. Luckily, the editor in question, Lucy Douglas, is a really good friend of mine and she’d already been briefed on the fact that my budget for this work was pretty measly. £150 an episode is not a good rate for someone as experienced as she is but, because she’s my friend and because she was able to do it for extra pocket money alongside her day job, she said yes.
Once the episodes were in good shape on paper, it was time for Anouszka to work her magic on the audio. I’d originally budgeted for six days of audio editing (one day per episode) which actually wasn’t too far off what I ended up needing for the series itself. Some of the episodes ended up taking a bit more than a day so the total cost for making the series was £2,200, which was £550 over budget. However, since I’d ended up raising more than I originally anticipated, I wasn’t too stressed at this point. Unfortunately, I had already spent £125 on the crowdfunder and I also hadn’t factored in the bonus episode which cost me another £412, even though I didn’t come to make it until a year later. So my overall spend on audio production ended up being about 1.6 times higher than I budgeted for. Lesson learned.
After that, there were a few bits and pieces to pay for such as music licensing, which I hadn’t budgeted for because I’d previously used free music for my podcasts. But I wanted something different for this series, something that sounded slightly more serious, I suppose, and I wasn’t able to find that in the free music libraries so I signed up to royalty-free music library, Epidemic Sound. In their licensing agreement, you have to have a paid subscription at the time of publication, but you don’t have to keep paying indefinitely. If you were putting out weekly podcast episodes for most of the year, this would quickly become prohibitively expensive, but because mine was a limited series, I was able to just pay for the months in which I was publishing new episodes (and then again for the month in which I released the bonus episode). It came to £50 overall and I’ve added this cost into “audio production” in my percentage breakdown, below.
I also spent just under £20 on Headliner, which is an app that allows you to create audiogram clips to share on social media, and £44 on Canva Pro because I needed certain tools that weren’t available in the free version. I debated whether to add the Canva cost to the budget because I use Canva for all sorts of things, not just this podcast, but at the end of the day it was the amount of social media assets I was creating during the series run that led to me signing up (albeit temporarily) for Pro so… on it goes.
The rest of the budget went on paying myself! Or that was the plan. I had budgeted for £350 an episode (not including the bonus episode) which is a truly tiny amount compared to the blood, sweat, tears and, more importantly, HOURS I put into it. But as discussed, I overspent in other areas and that money had to come from somewhere. So, as you’ve probably worked out by now, it came out of my fees. I had budgeted to make £2,100 from this podcast. In the end I took home £1,364.83.
I actually don’t feel too sour about that. BAD SEX was never intended to be a serious income stream, it was a one-off passion project that I did on the side. Plus, it’s difficult to make any money from DIY podcasting and to go from not making any money at all with my previous series, to being able to cover all my costs and pay myself over a grand felt quite good.
Here’s how my final spend broke down:
How does this look to you? Does this seem like a lot? Or does it seem pretty reasonable? Please do remember, I’m not sharing this as a business model! Even though writing and talking about sex and relationships is my business, making this podcast was a side project. Working for free is not something I condone or recommend but I needed to try this. I needed to find out whether it even could be done.
From my point of view, it feels really useful to have this as a guide for next time. I don’t currently have the capacity to go in for another round of fundraising, of any sort, but if and when I eventually do, I now have some sense of what worked, what was good value, what ended up being a waste of money, and what I’d need to do differently. I also know exactly how much work I put in (not least because I have this newsletter, documenting it!) and would be better equipped to put a sensible price on that.
On that note, thanks so much for reading this short series on how I made BAD SEX. I’ve really enjoyed writing these newsletters and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading them. If you’d like to buy me a coffee or a glass of wine to show your appreciation, you can do that here:
What’s next
Not a lot! We’re very nearly done with the BAD SEX newsletter. The bonus episode was published on all major podcast platforms on Monday and I’m planning to make this entire newsletter public by the end of this week. So everything I’ve made, documented, or even remotely thought about for this podcast series will be available online in perpetuity.
HIya Franki. Loved reading these updates and I'm sorry that I've been rubbish in providing feedback! I thought I'd say in relation to this one especially that it's really important that your own time and effort is relfected as an explicit 'cost'. I remember when you launched the crowdfunder, I was confused at first at how much you needed to raise, because I was like 'Surely she has all the equipment already??'. And it was only about three campaign updates later that I realised 'DUH - she needs recompense for time!'.
I feel a bit embarrassed about that now, although in my defence I think I was probably influenced in my unrealised assumption by there being so much free content on so many platforms, that 'free' has almost become the default. But, I thought I'd mention it because part of my education from this series is the fact that podcast producers, presenters and other folks' time and effort, is literally undervalued as a result of all that free content. And I was part of that problem. Sorry, and thanks for all the work and entertaining education!
A.
Ahh, this is such a thoughtful comment! You’re definitely not alone in this. As you say, so much content appears “free” online that most people don’t think much about how it got made, who paid for that, and how. You’re also right when you say that undervalues the work of the people behind it - it’s a huge problem in the industry rn. Thank you for supporting, and for reading all these letters. I’m really glad you’ve found them interesting! Fx