Two babes from New England, talking about local crime, mystery and spooky shit in the New England area

Hi! We’re two babes, Katie and Kirby, from New England, talking about local crime, mystery and spooky shit in the NE area! We are two best friends who are interested in the unknown and local stories of mystery, crime and death. We’re adventurous and looking to document our journey. When possible, we try visit the setting of our stories. We research it, but we also want to get a feel for it. Sometimes, we stop for a drink or two along the way. We are totally unqualified to debunk myth or mystery and we bring random guests on the podcast BUT we love hanging out and talking about murder, mystery and more.
Our listeners include anyone interested in the New England area but statistically, it's females ages 23 - 34.
 

Our podcast started at the Night Shift Brewery in Everett, MA over some good brews. We wanted to start a podcast as a joke but then somehow the longer we stayed at the brewery the more detailed the plan became. We brainstormed some topics and common passions and landed in the middle of the true crime and paranormal genre. As far as listening to other podcasts, we're avid podcast listeners so we knew what styles we enjoyed and what types of podcasts were popular.
Our initial goals and motivations included stickers. Our most important piece besides the name was branding the logo. This was far before we picked topics we wanted to cover.
Our first podcast was released 2/18/19 but we started out podcast a month before that. It took us a little bit of time to release our first episode because we had recording problems. The platform we tried to use ended up not recording the entire podcast and we lost 2 hours of work. The second time we we to record it, our mic went in and out so that was also a fun struggle. Then the editing and then figuring out how to plug and publish it was also a hurdle.
 

We try to release an episode a week but life happens. No one is mad if we skip a major holiday weekend and for the most part, our audience is pretty forgiving. It takes about 2.5 hours to produce the podcast between bathroom breaks, drinks, food breaks etc. and then the editing takes about the same amount of time. It's a good Sunday afternoon project.
Since we do both work full-time and were taking classes at one point we honestly have no idea how we found the time to podcast. I think it helps that we really only do it on the weekends and we decided to do "seasons" - October to April/May. We've been taking summers off and it helps us stay sane.
The podcast itself makes $0 and we haven't set up a "buy me a coffee" account but we're thinking about it! The podcast is fully funded by us and the start up cost has been minimal. Our hosting platform is free and we probably spent about $200 for a mic., $50 for stickers and gas to go travel to some of our locations. We do our own marketing and promotion as well. So far, the most money we've actually spent was to sleep overnight in the Lizzie Borden Museum and it was worth it.
 

We don't take sponsorships and we don't make any revenue. We've had multiple brands reach out to us but no one really seemed worth it.
The benefits from podcasting are personal. We have fun traveling together around New England and meeting people who are interested in the same topics our podcast covers.
 

We use Anchor.fm for our podcasting hosting and editing. It's a very easy program and the best part is it's free! We've only interviewed 2 people so far and they were both related or involved in the cases we were covering.
To prepare, we research the topic beforehand and write out our script and then we just go with it. Some days it works better than others. We've done a variety of methods over our time from Skype to Phone to Zoom to sometimes do our podcasts from separate areas and we've interviewed people on Skype and Zoom. I think we've settled on Zoom for now as it has the best audio and video capabilities.
 

The only marketing we use is social media. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The breakdown of listeners does vary on certain platforms analytics but for the most part, 36% is apple podcast, 25% is stitcher, 12% is spotify, 4% is podcast addict and 23% is other.
44% of users are apple, 32% are android, 3% are web and 21% are other.
We've cross promoted with other podcasts by putting promos in each other's episodes but that's pretty much it. The podcast community is so welcoming and helpful.
 

Some things we've learned from our journey was to just have fun with it. The more relaxed and comfortable you are as a host the more your audience will feel it. We're embarrassed by season one but it's a learning curve. You're going to mispronounce things, forget things and sometimes you can edit it out and sometimes you can't.
We didn't really use any resources. The platform we use for hosting, producing and sharing is so easy and user friendly. The only thing we wished we had in front of us was a list of microphones other podcasters use. That was the hardest decision because the price range and quality range on those from 0 - 100000. We use the blue snowball now but for awhile we were using a $20 microphone.
 

https://linktr.ee/killerbabespodcast
^ this is our one link for everything!
Killer Babes Podcast: available on wherever you listen to music or podcasts!