An interview video podcast about real expat stories for anyone serious about living abroad.
"Do a podcast about something you really like because if not, burning out is very easy."
Today Marc Alcobé, the creator of Expat Experts shares his story of places & travel podcast.
► Tell us about you and your podcast
Expat Experts is the go-to expat podcast and YouTube series for anyone serious about living abroad. We explore life overseas—from Greece to Bulgaria, Thailand to Germany and provide practical expat advice on visas, culture shocks, career changes, and building community abroad. Helping people planning their move or if they are already expats, discover insider tips and authentic experiences from people who made the leap.
Hosted by me, Marc Alcobé, an expat myself who spent more than 8 years abroad already in Germany, Greece and Italy while being originally from Barcelona. My listeners are expats also, or people who are planning to move abroad at some time soon in their life and are looking for tips and real experiences that other expats lived before them.
► Why & how did you start this podcast?
I started this podcast during Covid times in 2020 with a different name Die Ausländer, that means the immigrant in German as at that point of time I was living in Germany and mainly interviewing expats living in Germany. At the very beginning the podcast was created as a new hobby and to interview and know better my expat friends and friends of friends. My very first episode was released 1 month after the recording, because I recorded 2 more episodes during that time.
But with time, I started to love creating content about it and it transformed into a more official project with more ambitious goals and motivations like becoming a podcast of reference for the expats around the world, or monetising and having sponsors and growing as much as I can.
► How'd you find the time and funding to do this podcast?
I do release an episode every two weeks, and producing an episode might take months as I record with a lot of time in advance. The key for me to find time between my 8-hours day job and other hobbies is organisation. I'm a very organised person and I plan everything ahead, between the recording and the release of an episode it can easily pass 3-4 months, that gives me the time to work on my artwork, production and descriptions properly.
I spent a significant amount of money, mainly in tools for making my life editing, creating keywords, thumbnails and so on in an easier way. But I also run some marketing ad campaigns that cost quite a lot. The podcast is completely funded by myself so far, excluding a couple of minor sponsorships I took.
► What do you gain from podcasting?
I do take sponsorships but unfortunately I didn't have a lot of them. I use Audacity Creator Lab to find sponsorships but I'm planning to start targeting specific companies for sponsorship directly to find better fitting products and services for my audience. My downloads vary quite a lot depending on the episode interest but in audio format I move around 300 downloads per month but in the YouTube channel I can reach up to 18000 views per month.
Personally I benefit by enjoying doing the podcast, but also making contacts with other expats and learning about their experiences and acquiring tips about living abroad that I can use myself.
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► How does your podcasting process look like?
I use multiple tools on my process to record, produce and promote the podcast:
Riverside.fm for recording online episodes and I have recording hardware such as light panels, KOB lights, OBS cameras and so on.
For editing video and audio I use Veed, After Effects and Premiere.
For keywords, titles, descriptions and thumbnails I use Figma and VidIQ.
I host the podcast on Buzzsprout and use YouTube for the videos.
To be able to create shorts out of the long format videos for social media I use OpusClip and Meta Business.
I use also AI LLMs to help me write episode outlines, scripts, emails and descriptions.
And to get new guests I either contact people on Social media or use PodMatch and organise the recordings using Calendly.
Regarding the episode preparation I use AI to analyse the profiles of the guests and validate the results afterwards to write an episode outline that I send to my guests with information about the recording. Afterwards I prepare a more detailed episode script with questions that I use in the recording although I try that the conversation flows naturally in each interview.
► How do you market your show?
Majority of my listeners are actually YouTube watchers and I also have quite some traffic through Instagram arriving at the podcast. Google SEO is not optimal yet but I'm working on ranking the podcast in a better position.
For marketing I use mainly social media and I have running campaigns on YouTube also.
► What advice would you share with aspiring (new) podcasters?
Podcasting is a marathon not a sprint, it takes a long time to start being noticed in a sea full of other podcasts. Do a podcast about something you really like because if not, burning out is very easy. Last but not least, use any support you can get to produce, prepare and release your episodes, including using AI for all the repetitive tasks.
As resources I always recommend getting the correct software and tool stack with you as that will simplify your life. My favourite ones are: OpusClip, VidIQ, Buzzsprout, Riverside.fm and definitely chatGPT.
► Where can we learn more about you & your podcasts?
Website: https://www.expatexpertspodcast.com/
Apple Podcast:
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@expatexperts_podcast
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