Have you ever had something go wrong with your Podcast at the worst possible time?

We’re all aware of Murphy’s law: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong", so if you decided to go with the flow and not have content consistently stored for later, sooner or later there’s a chance that you may be up for a nasty surprise.

What’s the best way to avoid the stress of weekly content creation and a drop in episode downloads? The answer is to develop a strategy to stay consistent.

Have a log of three pre-recorded episodes at ALL TIMES

In my 10 years of experience producing and hosting Podcasts I’ll tell you this: there’s nothing more stressful than creating content mindlessly week by week. To me that will definitely take the joy away of Podcasting in the long run and make it a stressful experience.

I’ll even go further and say that you shouldn’t even launch your podcast publicly if you don’t have a backlog of at LEAST 4-5 edited episodes.

Here are the reasons why you should start backlogging multiple episodes:

❌ You were so excited to finally book a celebrity that you got carried away and forgot to press 'Record'.⁠

❌ The audio had feedback but you thought that “you could fix it”. Guess what: it is actually a BIG problem and the audio is unusable. ⁠

❌ Your guest had a change of heart and cancelled on you and you don’t have enough time to book another guest.

⁠❌ Your computer overheated and shut off.

❌ There was time-sensitive information on the episode that isn’t relevant anymore.

❌ Your router took a trip to the Middle Ages and your interview sounds very choppy.

❌ You suddenly don’t have enough time to edit and upload an episode.

❌ Your guest did something very wrong and you don’t want to be associated with them - think about disgraced celebrities.

❌ The file is now corrupted.

❌ You want to go on vacation but don’t want to spend a week creating extra content.

In conclusion, having multiple episodes in 'the back burner' CAN be a lifesaver! These will help you stay the course, avoid missing any releases (which will hurt your weekly podcast downloads), and keep your audience happy! This practice paired with batching helps you create a bulletproof podcast release strategy!⁠ ⁠ Please read our article on the benefits of batching Podcast episodes to learn more about the practice. You can also print our Episode checklist to avoid any mishaps!

Ready to up your Podcast game? Subscribe to our weekly Newsletter to receive Podcast tips in your inbox!

Receive free podcast resources directly in your inbox: