Last updated on April 14th, 2022

By Cole Burkhardt and Tal Minear

Most standard rate guides, like the Screen Actors Guild guide, don’t exactly work for independent artists or creators not signed to an external-funded network. Those bigger budgets often do not take into account the general time, energy, and money constraints of smaller, unpaid teams. While we would all love to be paid seventy-five thousand dollars to produce our shows, independent artists might struggle finding more attainable crowdfunding and budget guides.

A common “joke” within the indie podcast sphere is that we are all just passing the same $20 back and forth. Any profit made from a successful crowdfunding campaign is tossed back at another campaign and another, a cycle of support without anyone gaining anything from it. One of the leading causes of this is the lack of visibility surrounding rates, proper budgets for independent creators and the struggle to pay someone for the work they do for fun.

Crowdfunding

Let’s take a quick look at a few crowdfund campaigns in the past few years and compare their success. Shout out to Anne Baird for creating this list of Audio Fiction Crowdfunding success. As of February 2021, out of the 34 crowdfunding campaigns collected, only fifty percent meet their target crowdfunding goal. Out of those 18, nine of those were for a second season. Eight of the remaining successful campaigns were created by folks already well established within the audio drama community or who had created other, unrelated, audio dramas previously.

The single stand out audio drama, who had a successful campaign and had no other audio dramas under their belt, was Childish, a podcast musical inspired by the rap artist Childish Gambino. While they were never before seen in audio drama circles, their show was one of the first musical audio dramas and offered a unique and exciting premise. 23% of the shows on the list did not meet the halfway mark of their crowdfunding goal. It is important to note that more than half of the failed campaigns started during the initial onset of the global panorandemic, which as we know caused a massive spike in unemployment rates and lack of disposable income.

Based on all this data, successful campaigns tend to occur when the creators running them have a proven track record of content. Not only does having previous work mean more people are willing to put their faith (and money) into the campaign, creators are able to appeal to a wider, pre-established audience. Creators trying to raise funds will have a harder time proving to potential backers that their work is of quality and worth investing in. This may seem like a deterrent to first time crowdfunding creatives but a few podcasts have found a way to break free of the first time crowdfunding curse. Mainly, through ‘proof of concepts’, like mini or full length episodes, released before or during your campaign. These should give your audience more of a sneak peak in the content you will be producing and demonstrate the skills and viability of your content. Dreambound and Hit The Bricks both released pilot episodes before the launch of their campaigns, which helped to contribute to their remarkable success in raising funds. 

Building a budget

So what exactly determines the cost of your budget? Well, it all depends. Because podcast creators wear so many hats, it’s difficult to have an exact breakdown of how much each individual should be paid. Plus, audio drama creators are terrible at paying themselves. In an informal survey by Tal Minear which polled 111 audio drama creators, 89 creators did not pay themselves and 18 paid themselves “a little.” The data also showed that 80% of shows funded in part by a crowdfunding campaign did not have a creator who paid themself. When you consider the fact that most creators will also be acting as writers, editors, and directors, an exact cost for hiring them will be a bit muddled. It is also relevant to note that because a large majority of indie podcasts are passion projects, cost of initial labor isn’t really considered when forming budgets, if a budget is made at all.

For the sake of this article, we’re going to focus on creating a general budget for the up and coming podcast production entitled Tal and Cole’s Very Real Podcast.  Let’s break down what costs are going to affect our budget and what we need to account for going forward. We asked around and gathered rates from a variety of writers, directors, sound designers and compiled them below.

Your cast

A big chunk of your budget is going to be for your cast. You should also keep your overall production timeline in mind when determining how much you’ll be paying your actors. If you’re going to be doing in-person recording sessions, don’t forget to account for studio time as well as any transportation costs your actors may need. If you’re paying people small stipends, instead of a per episode price, you need to give them longer time to do the work. Try to have your show written before you start casting, because it will cut down on your timeline and mean less time commitment for your actors.

Asking around for indie voice actor rates will inevitably send you towards the Voice Acting Club Indie Rate Guide, a self-described “ongoing collaborative effort to increase transparency on smaller-budget online projects.” This page has listed rates for per-hour, per-line, per-word, and per-finished-hour work on suggested tier, mid-tier, and lower-tier scales. Per-hour is suggested for live direction, and per-line is suggested for when actors are recording and sending lines in on their own time. For audio drama, the VAC guide suggested a rate of $1-2 per line or $50-75 per hour. In our experience as voice actors, we find that stipend payments per-episode are the most common for paid work. These rates are highly varied, and can be anywhere from $5 to $100 based on how long an episode is and how present a character is in that episode. $20/episode for supporting characters and $40/episode for lead characters seems to be fairly common.

Your sound designer

The second major chunk of the budget is usually going to go towards your sound designer. This will probably be the most involved role and should be paid accordingly. Your engineers will be doing all the dialogue editing, mixing and sound design so your creative vision can come to life. This chunk will also help cover the cost of any sound effects they may need in order to produce you episodes. 

There is no existing guide for indie sound designer rates, but we would recommend scaling your sound designer payment according to what you’re paying actors. Your sound designer is going to be spending a lot more time on a single episode than any of your actors (quite possibly, longer than all of your actors combined), and they should be paid accordingly. Ester Ellis of Station Blue said, “If an actor is making more than your sound designer, you probably don’t value sound enough.”

Can you afford to pay your lead actors $20 per episode? You should be paying your sound designer at least $150 per episode. Be aware of the relative time a sound designer is spending on this episode compared to the actors. An actor might spend an hour or two on a 30 minute episode, but a sound designer is easily spending ten or fifteen hours on that same episode. Don’t snub your sound designer by paying them a few dollars an hour for their time when you’re paying your voice actors at least minimum wage. In indie audio drama, nobody is being paid what they’re worth, but stipends should be equally fair.

We asked a handful of sound designers for their rates, and we got answers that varied from $75-$300 per 30 minute episode of less intense sound design, to $100-$325 per 30 minute episode of more intense sound design, to a $40/hour hourly rate (of time spent by the sound designer and not episode runtime). These rates do not include dialogue editing, the act of picking and stitching takes together from the actors. Some sound designers will also do dialogue editing for an additional charge, which ranged from $100-$200 extra per 30 minute episode for the sound designers we spoke with. Rates for sound designers are rarely found as a per-season stipend.

Your content

There is also no existing guide for indie audio fiction writer rates. We suspect that this is because most audio drama producer/showrunners are also the writers. In the handful of paid writer’s calls we found, both Sidequesting and Less is Morgue offered a $50 stipend to writers (who could apply to write a single episode of the show). MonkeyTales offered $35 CAD to writers for a single episode of the anthology show. Null/Void initially paid a total $50 stipend to their writers which, after crowdfunding, became $50 per episode. Someone Dies In This Elevator’s goal was to pay writers $15 per page.

We asked what people had paid editors (when bringing a different person on board to edit than to write) and got two data points: $100 per script and $5 per page. It was difficult to find rates for editors as this is another case where for most shows, editing is done by the showrunner. 

Rates for sensitivity readers vary based on the person and the topic. Sensitivity readers tend to charge based on hours of their time or the word count of the script. Hourly rates can range from $50/hour to $150/hour or higher. Rates based on word count can range from $7-$15 per thousand words, or higher. 

It’s frequent that showrunners are also directing their show, so cases of hiring someone specifically to direct are fairly rare in indie audio drama. But when it does happen, rates for directors are usually set as a per-page rate. We talked to a few audio drama directors, and they charge between $4-$5 per page. The other data point we got was a per-episode rate of $30. 

Your art and music

Composer rates are a mixed bag. Many audio dramas rely entirely on free-to-use music for their shows, others commission a show theme from a composer and use available music for the rest of the show, and yet others are made with unique music for the show. It is difficult to find per-episode or per-season rates for a composer. More frequently are rates made per minute of music.  We asked a handful of composers for their rates to compose a theme, and received answers that varied between $30-$150 per minute of written music.

Artist rates are as varied as the artists themselves. It is fairly common for audio dramas to commission their cover art, and some go farther to commission character art, art for merch, or more. It’s important to negotiate for commercial rights if you’re planning to sell merchandise with the work of the artist on it. It’s also important to tip your artist. We asked a handful of showrunners what they paid for their cover art, and got prices ranging from $75 to $250, the average being around $100.

Some podcasters have also designed their own art, in order to cut down on costs. If you’re like us and don’t have much artistic ability, here are a few places to find non-copyrighted art. Be careful though, as some of these sites have stipulations or require some sort of credit. 

Your overhead

Hosting fees can vary wildly. There are free hosting services (such as Anchor) and ones that can go as high as $49/month. The average paid hosting platform seems to be around $10 to $20 a month. Podbean is $9/month, Pinecast is $10/month, Libsyn is $15/month, and there are many other options. If you’d like to read about some hosting free options, check out this article by Discoverpod Staff, or The 10 Best Hosts of 2020, by Brian Benton.

Speaking of many options, the same goes for website fees. There are free options, such as carrd, wix, or wordpress.org, and paid options like Squarespace (or the paid plans for carrd, wix, and wordpress.com). The cheapest wordpress.com site is $4/month, but you can pay more and get more features. Squarespace costs $12/month; for wix, $14/month. Carrd, our outlier, is $19/year (for 10 websites!). There’s a huge variety of websites and hosting services out there so it ultimately comes down to what you need. 

If you’re planning on doing a crowdfunding campaign for your show, the remainder of your budget will be going to backer rewards, like stickers, posters, pins, and art. The cost for this can vary widely. Some shows even opt to do solely digital rewards to save on the cost of buying and shipping physical goods. This is an item that can cast however much you want it to. Don’t forget to budget for national and international shipping costs! With the United States government doing everything in its power to butcher the USPS, those rates have gone up.

Our budget breakdown

We’re making the first season of a new podcast. We want for ten, 30-minute episodes, where each script has about 3,500 words, which comes to 30 pages.  What can we expect this to cost? 

Writers:

Let’s put aside $50 per episode to pay writers. 10 episodes: $500.

Editors/Sensitivity Readers:

Let’s put aside $35 per episode to pay script editors. 10 episodes: $350

With a 300 page script, it might be better to do a general consultation with a sensitivity reader or provide someone specific scenes to look at, instead of having them read over the entire script and provide feedback. As our very real podcast doesn’t currently have a plot, we’re not sure where we’d need feedback, so we’ll put aside $100 for general sensitivity reading. 

Directors:

Let’s put aside $25 per episode to pay directors. 10 episodes: $250

Voice Actors:

We’ve got: 2 lead characters, 3 supporting characters, 5 minor characters.

Your two leads are in every episode, and you’ve got on average 2 supporting characters and 3 minor characters showing up each episode.

For one episode, let’s put aside:

  • $40 per lead, two leads: $80
  • $20 per supporting character, two supporting characters: $40
  • $10 per minor character, 3 minor characters: $30
  • Total per episode: $150. 10 episodes: $1500. 

Dialogue Editor:

We’re going to have our sound designer do the dialogue editing. 

$150 per episode, 10 episodes: $1500.

Sound Designer:

We want to have some scenes with intense sound design and some scenes with more minimal sound design, so we’ll put aside $200 per episode for our sound designer. 10 episodes: $2000

Composer:

We’ll put aside $100 to commission a short theme to play under the credits of our each episode. It’s perfectly fine to use creative commons music for your show, but we both think it’s really fun to have a unique show theme. 

Art:

We’ll put aside $100 for some really awesome cover art. If we don’t, this is the sort of cover are we’re looking at: 

Fake podcast art for Tal & Cole's Very Real Podcast

Hosting and Website:

To save on cost, we’ll go with a free hosting site, like Anchor, and a free website, like Carrd.

Backer Rewards:

We want to do stickers, posters, and behind the scenes digital access perks. We’ll put aside $50 for stickers, $100 for posters, and $0 for digital rewards. 

And now for the scary part where we add up the numbers.

  • Writing: $500
  • Script Editing: $350
  • Sensitivity Reading: $100
  • Directing: $250
  • Acting: $1500
  • Dialogue Editing: $1500
  • Sound Design: $2000
  • Composing: $100
  • Art: $100
  • Hosting: $0
  • Website: $0
  • Rewards: $150

Total: $6,550

We’ll round it up to $6,750 because there’s going to be $200 of unexpected costs somewhere – the need for another actor, surprise shipping costs, etc. It’s always nice to have a little bit of wiggle room. 

We’re not saying this is the amount of money you need to create an audio drama. All sorts of people are making audio fiction on all sorts of budgets. We understand that raising money and running crowdfunding campaigns can be difficult and not everyone has the time, money, or energy to run a successful one.

This article is meant to give an idea of what the average audio drama costs and walks you through the steps of crafting your budget. Think something should be at a different rate? Great! Use that one! There’s no 100% right answer here. Good luck!

(Editor’s note 4/14/2022: This piece has been updated to accurately reflect Ester Ellis’s name.)

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