That's kind of like I do it [1], I only have a RSS file and the mp3 uploaded to the server. I send that RSS link to that one iTunes service so it indexes the RSS file so that all the podcast apps which use their API for their search can find my podcast and subscribe to the RSS file on my server and download the mp3's from my server.
For the gear, I went fairly cheap, I got a Zoom H5 [2], which is super small, light and portable and two lavalier mics, one for me and one for the person I interview.
I then upload the two WAV files to Auphonic [3] and they add the jingles to it, clean up the sound, normalize it and let me download the mono mp3 which is really small but good quality, which I then upload to my server.
The whole workflow is surprisingly easy and fast. The most time I spend on finding people to talk to and trying to arrange a meeting at a specific time and place.
When I rebooted my podcast last year, Auphonic was a great discovery. It does a lot of cleanup and leveling with zero effort that, in some cases, could take hours of work previously if the volume levels varied a lot for whatever reason.
It's still good to get a decent quality recording. But seeing all the people who do video and broadcasts from trade show floors and the like got me to a point where I don't sweat it if I don't have pristine near-studio conditions. As long as I get interesting guests, 20-25 minutes of conversation IMO comes out pretty well without a huge amount of work.
Your time is very expensive. A good podcast is a full-time job. Some can be pulled off as a hobby, but most of my favorite podcasters are either full-timers. For a living wage in the US, that's perhaps $30-$40,000 a year... which is a lot of mattresses and underwear to hawk, or a lot of donations to cajole. Which requires even more time spent managing that, tipping it further to being a full-time job.
