What do you say to the naysayers who are like, well, as the celebrities take over this medium, we don't matter anymore. I mean, I don't think that's true. A lot of these celebrities, they suck at podcasting. They get these deals. It's true. I mean, now that I've been around a bit in this space, you see like, I don't know, so and so from the Jersey Shore gets a podcast and it doesn't exist a year later. Or the first lady gets a podcast.
You really have to have like a love for this medium to show up to it. So they could give these celebrities tons of money. Some of them will do well. Absolutely. Comedians tend to do well because they need to talk to their audience directly. But I yeah, and don't forget, these celebrities, they've, they've worked their butts off for 1020 years building a brand. Now, are they going to build a podcast, it doesn't guarantee anything.
What it guarantees is they'll probably start at a higher level download than you, but it doesn't guarantee that they'll last and majority of them pod fade. They take the money, they barely release one or two episodes from these Spotify deals. So I wouldn't worry about that.
I would say stay in your lane, focus on what the consumer wants, what your audience wants, focus on your search engine optimization, your graphics, what your logo looks like, your messaging, your sound design, and you'll be fine. So what would you say to the person who's considering starting? Do they need a specific niche? Do they need a certain amount of equipment? What do they need to get going? So I think a good mic would be great.
So a dynamic microphone, we all use different ones, but I would just say there's a lot of great ones from Shure Audio Technica, Hile, some are more than others. Start wherever you want budget wise, but you could start under $100 for a really decent mic to start podcasting. The next thing I would say, I would spend more time researching before you get started on your niche, your title, your art.
I can't tell you how many people I see with cheap artwork and they don't realize that that's the first thing I see. Therefore I might not even click on your cover. And then what are the words? Do they mean something? So I remember once someone told me that the name of their show was their literal name. And I said, what do you do? And they said event planning. I go, I don't get that from seeing, you know, Suzy's show. And they, I go, who told you that was good? All my friends.
I mean, talk to experts in the space. They're there. They're great. School of podcasting is a great resource. And I remember the person saying, if I called it an event planning show, there's a lot of event planning podcasts. And I said, maybe there's a reason for it. And maybe you could find a niche within that event planning niche. So like you said, niche down a little bit and find your audience.