You don’t need to look far to find a heated debate or surprising statistic about video in podcasting right now. Video is killing podcasts! Video is saving podcasting! If you’re not doing video, what’s the point? It’s a lot. Regardless of which side of the fence you sit on, there’s one thing I’m sure we can all agree on: Every show is different, and adding video unnecessarily could kill your podcast. So rather than continuously examining contradictory data or choosing which hill to die on, I spoke to some podcasters about their real-life experiences adding video to their workflow and the results (and challenges) it can bring. Darren Lake/ DLakeHost of the 1% Better Runner podcast “Video is three times harder, but worth the effort” Darren Lake, otherwise known as DLake, never actually set out to be a podcaster. He just wanted to create a platform where he could explore “weird content” about running. In the first three years, he produced about 40 audio-only episodes. But despite trying “every trick in the book” to grow his audio podcast, it struggled to gain traction: “I couldn’t crack the [running] niche, for whatever reason. Maybe I was too late.” Adding a video component became a no-brainer. For one thing, running is a subject that has a lot more impact when visuals are included. His listeners repeatedly told him, “You should be on YouTube,” and “You have the perfect style for YouTube.” It also helped that Darren already had a lot of experience in front of the camera from his days as a music artist. It felt like “a very natural transition” for him. He began experimenting with video in 2021 but didn’t immediately publish any content. Instead, he accumulated a backlog of 25 videos, which he then released all at once in 2023. The impact of this strategy was fast and transformative. The “YouTube algorithm is beautiful.”Within 18 months of adding video, he gained 3.5 times the audience he had built in 6 years with audio-only content. He told me his content regularly performs 10-100 times better on video platforms than audio-only, with one particular video alone earning him 1,000 YouTube subscribers. Since posting regular short videos twice weekly, he gains approximately 100 new streams per month on Spotify too. “When people know you have a YouTube, they’ll go to your podcast, they’ll go to Spotify, they’ll go to your Instagram“—but rarely, he says, the other way around. Lake discovered that YouTube offers tremendous leverage: “I put in a little bit extra work for video, and I get 10, 20X, a hundred [views in return].” It’s worth noting that Darren’s video content is quite different from his audio-only; he adapts it heavily for YouTube so he can optimize for visual audiences. So instead of simply filming his long-form podcast sessions, he totally repurposes his content for a YouTube audience. Here’s how he does it: He shortens episodes to 10-15 minutesAdopts an “explainer style” format, talking directly to cameraImplements scripting to make content more focusedOptimizes topics based on YouTube search trends – “pillar content that people are searching for”While he acknowledges that “video is three times harder” than audio, for him, the return on investment justifies the effort. Lake’s financial investment in YouTube has been relatively modest—approximately $500 in total. 2. John KundtzHost of The Disruptor podcast “To produce a successful video podcast, you need to either outsource post-production or take the time to learn how to edit videos effectively.” When John Kudtz launched The Disruptor podcast, he recorded both video and audio from day one. “I recorded the shows in video and audio. Then, during post-production, I would publish either the audio-only or video podcast,” he told me. He did this because he’d been hearing a lot about the benefits of YouTube for growth and monetization: “I heard that YouTube was an easier platform to monetize and that the reach could potentially be greater because of the search nature and the algorithms of YouTube.” Video investment challengesBut publishing a video component to his podcast wasn’t as straightforward as he’d hoped. John quickly discovered the hidden complexities of video podcasting, including: Time investment: “I examined how much time I was spending on pre-production compared to post-production. [Video editing] led to a significant cost in terms of my time.”Technical hurdles: “I’m not a video engineer and found video editing quite time-consuming and not enjoyable.”Cost: Eventually, John hired someone to handle the post-production video editing and creating thumbnails, costing him around $300 to $400 per show for a one-hour episode.After publishing eight video podcasts, John reevaluated his workflow and pulled back to publishing audio-only, re-platforming his show to Buzzsprout. “My video podcasts weren’t gaining much traction,” he says, “so I couldn’t justify continuing the investment of time and money into post-production and editing.” Since going audio-only, his production output has increased substantially. He’s currently sitting at 33 episodes. He says he owes a lot of his audio podcast production to modern tools – especially AI. “With tools like Descript, I can edit an audio podcast extremely quickly, upload it to Buzzsprout, use the AI tools in both the Descript and Buzzsprout to create show notes, and then stage and release the show – usually within a couple of hours after recording.” This sort of workflow simply isn’t possible when video is involved. Doing what makes sense for your podcastJohn says he’s happy he tested the water with video, but made the pragmatic business decision to pivot back to audio as video just didn’t make sense. It’s also worth noting that, as a business podcast, John’s primary goal isn’t growth: “My strategy isn’t to drive views, downloads, or engagement. It’s a marketing and branding exercise. I primarily use it to promote my business one-on-one.” John Kudtz’s journey is a masterclass in adaptability. His most significant insight? “The biggest lesson I learned is that to produce a high-quality video podcast, you either need to outsource the post-production work or take the time to learn how to edit videos effectively.” dCarrie Host of the Travel n Sh!t podcast “It’s absolutely been worth it.” dCarrie is the host of the Travel n Sh!t podcast. Her journey into video podcasting was born from a ‘why not?’ approach. After 53 episodes of audio-only content, D saw video as a natural extension of her podcasting workflow. “It felt easy to add!” she says, “All I’d have to do was add a camera and upload the footage.“ But she had one major advantage: She already had a free video editor on board. “I generally ‘employ’ an editor [conveniently, her fiancé!], and I don’t do much editing to my audio as is, so there weren’t too many extra steps to getting the extra content,” she says. Therefore, all the common technical barriers podcasters experience shifting to video were minimal. But adding video wasn’t just about pressing ‘record’ and letting her fiancé do the rest. D invested time and resources into creating a quality recording space. “Setup does take effort,” she admits. “Getting lighting in order, and occasionally updating my recording set are things that I have spent time and money on. I love my recording space though, so it’s absolutely been worth it.“ Unexpected benefits of videoFor D, the best part about adding video to her podcast wasn’t seeing growth in her analytics, but something more fundamental: engagement with her listeners. “Unfortunately, no“, she laughs when I ask about tracking data, “I don’t really monitor any of that. I will say, though, that my video episodes are the only places where I see any comments.” “I actually receive likes and comments on the YouTube content, but not the audio.” Like many of the podcasters I spoke to, D also finds that bringing video into her interview episodes makes the whole experience more engaging and enjoyable: “I enjoy being able to see the faces of the people I’m talking to. It gives me a sense of how the convo is going and how or when to shift the discussion.” 4. Matty Lansdown Host of the How to Not Get Sick and Die podcast “Audio, I could do any time of the day… whereas with video, I feel like you’ve got to put a lot more thought into it.” When Matty Lansdown’s podcast hit a download plateau, he knew something had to change. Over the years, he’d established a loyal following, but growth had stagnated. “I hit a ceiling,” he said. “I bounce somewhere between 19,000 and 24,000 every single month with audio only.” At episode 230, Matty made the bold decision to introduce a video component to his podcast. The primary driver was the post-pandemic podcast listening dip: “I moved to video in an attempt to reach more people, realizing that COVID stopped a lot of people driving to work, listening to podcasts in cars and on trains as regularly as they were before.“ Two years and 200 video episodes later, Matty admits he’s a bit underwhelmed by the results: “To be honest, from the data, it’s pretty uninspiring.” His YouTube channel has 800 subscribers, with 5,000 to 7,000 YouTube views per month. Decent, but not yet as transformative as he’d hoped. Biggest learning? Video and audio are very differentVideo podcasting proved to be far more resource-intensive than Matty initially anticipated. “The most time and most money that I spend is on video editors,” he explains. Where an audio podcast might take around 4 hours for him to produce, video editing( especially creating shorts) became a much more complex process. Matty’s biggest learning has been that video and audio are very different, and if
