Reducing the Cycle Time of My Projects

Writer's Journey: 37 Minutes per episode

15 minutes to record, 15 minutes to listen to what I recorded, 2 minutes to edit and apply effects, 5 minutes to upload and schedule on WordPress and Libsyn

Writing Tip of the Day: 14.5 minutes per episode

4 minutes to record, 1.5 minutes to edit and apply effects/export, 5 minutes to upload to Libsyn

Author Level Up: 170 minutes per episode

Production: 35 minutes per video to shoot and upload to Adobe Premiere. Post-production: 65 minutes to edit and upload to YouTube and social media

Fiction & Nonfiction: 30-60 days

Depends on the book, but an average book takes me about 40 hours of production time

Writer's Journey

Very manual process

Episodes are exactly the same process-wise

Fiction & Nonfiction

See my Forecasting Content problem for how I addressed this (click red button next to this bubble)

Writer's Journey

Question: How many steps are involved in the process?

34 Steps:
1. Add front sound bite
2. Record
3. Stop
4. Add back sound bite to end of track I just recorded
5. Highlight track I just recorded (it's the middle track—soundbites do not need to be edited)
6. Amplify
7. Normalize
8. Compressor
9. Save file as Episode “X” on my external hard drive
10. Export to MP3 titled Episode “X” with my default ID3 tags
11. Close Audacity
12. Open Firefox
13. Go to www.libsyn.com
14. Click Login
15. Insert username
16. Insert password
17. Click Login
18. Select Show Writer’s Journey
19. Click Content
20. Click Add New Episode
21. Click Add New Media File
22. Select file that was just exported
23. Select checkbox Update ID3 Tags
24. Enter Episode Title in Title Field
25. Click 2. Details
26. Copy text from file X
27. Paste text into Description field
28. Write remainder of episode description
29. Click Schedule
30. Enter date
31. Click Publish
32. Publish blog post from Ulysses to Wordpress
33. Copy embed code from Libsyn to top of blog post
34. Publish

Can I hire a VA to do this for me?

VA estimates: about $30 to edit and upload each episode of the Writer's Journey...or $1560 per year. Too expensive for content that doesn't drive ROI for me.

Hmmm...can I automate some of this?

Turns out, Applescript can do a lot of this.

Researched cost for a developer to do Applescripts: Anywhere from $100-$350...flat

Posted a job on Upwork. A developer offered a proposal within 1 hour to automate EVERYTHING.

Developer and I worked closely together to create new streamlined process.

Final Story: 48% reduction in podcast cycle time by automating post-production and no longer publishing to Wordpress. Takes my overall production time from 32 hours per YEAR to 16 hours per YEAR. Major success story.

Another thought...why am I uploading episodes to Wordpress? Do people even listen to the show there?

Per good ol' Google Analytics, only 4 people listened to my podcast from my website in October 2019, and 18 listened to it in the past year. The podcast gets close to 2,000 listens per MONTH. Instead, it would be better to put the Libsyn player on a dedicated Podcast page and have it update automatically whenever I have a new episode. Still allows me to put the show on the site for prospective listeners to hear samples but also cuts my content creation time further.