Setup Guide · The Boss
Buzzsprout is where your podcast actually lives. The Boss writes each episode and ElevenLabs reads it in your voice — Buzzsprout takes that audio and puts it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and everywhere else. Set it up once and every future episode publishes itself.
Free for three months, then a modest monthly fee.
The free trial runs 90 days — no card needed to start.
It walks you through creating the show rather than importing an existing one.
Buzzsprout is free for 90 days and then becomes a paid plan. That bill lands three months in — after you've built a feed, gained subscribers and won't want to move. It's a normal podcast hosting cost, but it shouldn't be a surprise in month four.
This is what people see in Apple Podcasts. Spend ten minutes on it.
People search for places and problems, not for agents they've never heard of.
Your name goes in the description and in every episode. The title should answer "what is this about".
Look for the section called Podcast Info. Say who it's for, what they'll learn, and who you are — in that order.
Same screen. Business and Education are the usual pair for this kind of show. Apple uses these to decide where you appear.
There's a hard technical requirement here and Apple rejects shows that miss it.
Square, PNG or JPEG, at least 1400 × 1400 pixels. Anything smaller gets rejected by Apple, not by Buzzsprout — so you'd find out days later.
If you'd rather use Canva yourself:
1. Go to canva.com and sign in. 2. Click Create a design → Custom size. 3. Enter 1400 by 1400 pixels (3000 × 3000 is safer still). 4. Put the show name large and readable, your face or your logo, and your market. 5. Share → Download → PNG.
Your artwork shows up about the size of a postage stamp in a podcast app. Hold your phone at arm's length and look at it — if you can't read the show name, the text is too small or too thin.
Done from inside Buzzsprout. Then you wait.
Buzzsprout handles the submission for you — you don't deal with Apple or Spotify directly.
Spotify is usually faster. Nothing is wrong if it takes a day; that's normal.
Some directories won't accept a show with an empty feed. If submission is refused, approve your first episode in The Boss, wait for it to publish, and submit again.
A podcast ID and an API token. Both live in Buzzsprout.
Open your show in Buzzsprout and look at the web address at the very top of your browser. You'll see a number in it — six or seven digits. That number is your podcast ID. Copy just the number, nothing else.
Buzzsprout's own documentation confirms this: their address for your show ends in that same number.
Click your account name or picture in Buzzsprout and open the My Account area — that's where Buzzsprout's own documentation says the token lives. Depending on when you signed up it may be labelled API or API Tokens inside that area.
Where it lives in Buzzsprout: your account settings. Copy the token the moment it appears and paste it into the same note as your podcast ID.
Two of the three setup problems on this platform so far were a pasted value that a notes app had quietly altered, or a line that got cut short in a copy. Both showed up as a meaningless "unauthorized" error and took an hour each to find.
Paste both values into a plain note first and eyeball them before you use them.
Both values at once, then you're finished.
The Boss checks both against Buzzsprout before storing anything. A wrong token and a wrong podcast ID produce different errors, so it can tell you which one is the problem.
Open Approvals. Read the script — it's your name and voice on this. Change anything that isn't right, then approve. From there ElevenLabs records it and Buzzsprout publishes it, with nothing further from you.
From here The Boss writes each episode, you read and approve the script, ElevenLabs reads it in your voice, and Buzzsprout publishes it to Apple, Spotify and everywhere else. The only thing you ever do is read and approve.
Two things to remember: the Buzzsprout bill starts after 90 days, and your podcast page on your website reads from this feed — so episodes appear there automatically once this is connected.
If episodes ever stop appearing, check your Buzzsprout account is still paid and your ElevenLabs credits haven't run out. Those are the only two things that stop it.