Your packages: edit-only, full-post, producer

Package the ladder, don't improvise it. Edit-only ($30–150 an episode) is cleanup, leveling, music, and a polished master at −16 LUFS — the client handles notes, upload, everything else. Full-post ($80–300) adds show notes, chapter markers, and the hosting upload; this is the tier most working freelancers live on, and weekly-show bundles at this level commonly land at $600–1,500 a month. Producer ($200–800 an episode, or $1,500–5,000+ a month as a manager retainer) adds planning, guest briefing, recording oversight, clips, and distribution — you run the show's operation, not just its audio.

Every package states the same four things: what's included, the turnaround (for example, three business days from raw audio), the revision line (one round included, extra rounds priced), and what it costs. Leave any of the four fuzzy and the client will fill in the blank with the most expensive interpretation. A producer retainer also names the episode count it covers — four episodes a month is a different product than "whatever we record."

Price each tier from the math in Module 8, not from a competitor's page. Check the effective hourly at your realistic speed (2–4 hours per finished hour of audio for full post) and make sure the tier still pays at the slow end. If your full-post takes four hours an episode, $80 is a $20-an-hour job wearing a costume. The worksheet below makes you write the tiers down — packages you can't state in two lines aren't packages yet.

The sample-edit pitch

Every other freelancer pitches podcasters with adjectives. You pitch with evidence: 60 seconds of their own show, re-produced. Take a rough stretch of a recent episode — a noisy answer, a buried opening, dead air before the good part — clean it, level it, tighten it, and send the before and after. Sixty seconds is enough to prove ears, judgment, and taste, and it costs you under an hour. No résumé line competes with a host hearing their own voice sound better.

Pick targets like a producer, not a fan. The sweet spot is an active show, 20–100 episodes in, publishing on a schedule they clearly struggle to keep, with a business behind it — a coach, a consultancy, a course, a local service company. Shows with a business attached can pay the ladder's rates; hobby shows mostly can't, however much they love the craft. Irregular release dates are your opening: that's a production problem, and production is what you sell.

Example DM (to a business coach on Instagram): "Hi Dana — I produce interview podcasts, and I took 60 seconds from your March episode with the pricing discussion and re-produced it: cleaned the room echo, tightened the pause before your answer, leveled it to broadcast loudness. Before/after is here: [link]. Your release dates have slipped from weekly to every two or three weeks — that's usually a post-production bottleneck, and it's the part I take off your plate. Full-post episodes (edit, notes, upload) run $250 with a three-day turnaround. Want me to do one full episode as a paid trial so you can hear the whole process?"

Example email (to a founder with a company podcast): Subject: "60 seconds of your show, re-produced." Body: "Hi Tom — I re-produced a minute from episode 34 of the Build Log podcast: the segment where your guest explains the hiring mistake. The original has HVAC hum under his mic and a 6-second gap before his best line. Mine is attached as before/after files. I produce shows end to end for two other B2B podcasts — planning, edit, notes, clips, distribution — on a retainer, so episodes ship every week without you managing the pipeline. If the sample earns it, I'd suggest one full trial episode at my standard rate, delivered through the real process. Worth a 15-minute call Thursday? — [Your name]"

Send ten of these a week, each with its own sample — the sample is the personalization, so it can't be templated away. Follow up once, a week later, with one new observation about a newer episode. Then stop; the next show on your list deserves the hour more than a third nudge does.

Trial episodes: one episode, full process, real deadline

The trial episode is this trade's interview, portfolio piece, and first date in one. The terms: one real episode, produced through your complete pipeline — intake, edit, notes, review, upload-ready file — delivered on a real, agreed deadline, at your standard rate or a clearly stated trial rate. Paid matters. A client who won't pay for one episode was never going to pay for forty, and free trials attract exactly the shows that churn.

Run the trial like it's month six, not a demo. Send the intake questions. Confirm the turnaround in writing. Deliver early if you can, with the file named properly, mastered to −16 LUFS, notes formatted the way they'd appear every week. Then do the thing most freelancers skip: a five-line delivery note saying what you changed and why — "cut the six-minute tangent at 22:00 because the pricing story lands harder without it; your call on the final version." That note is the producer tier introducing itself.

Judge the client during the trial, too, because you're also auditioning them. Did raw audio arrive when promised? Did feedback come as one consolidated set, or as nine texts across three days? Did they pay the invoice without a chase? A great show with chaotic feedback will eat your calendar; a smaller show with clean habits compounds. At delivery, close the loop the same day: "This is the process every week. The full-post package is $250 an episode or $900 a month for four — want me to hold your slot?" Trial, verdict, offer — no gap for momentum to leak out of.

Onboarding: assets, calendar, review workflow

Onboarding is where the release calendar gets protected or lost. Collect the asset checklist before the first episode: intro and outro files and their music licenses, cover art and brand elements, the hosting platform login or collaborator access, existing episode files and templates, the guest release process if they use one, and the list of places episodes get distributed. Chasing assets mid-episode is how three-day turnarounds become six.

Then lock the release calendar in writing: publish day and time, when raw audio is due to you, your turnaround from that moment, and the batch-recording rhythm if they record ahead. Build the calendar backwards from the publish slot, and include the late-asset rule from Module 8 — audio that lands late moves the date or triggers the rush fee. A calendar everyone has seen is a calendar nobody can claim surprised them.

Last, agree the review workflow before anyone presses play: where feedback lives (one document or one thread, never scattered messages), who gives it, the window they have to give it in, and what happens when the window passes. One consolidated set of notes inside the window triggers your one included revision round. That single agreement is worth more than any clause in the contract, because it's the one that keeps a weekly show weekly.

Start the engagement with the earliest easy win: get the first episode out on the new calendar, on time, sounding better than the last one they made alone. Reliability demonstrated once is a story; demonstrated four weeks straight is a retainer renewal that sells itself.