ClubPod.co

I keep hearing people who pretend they are helping podcasters with rubbish advice, try to get podcasters to pay them to edit audio, as if it is hard and expensive to do.

In truth it is very easy and you can use free soft wear such as audacity.

On the iPad I use WavePad. This is not free, but in the UK I paid £9 for the full software.

In new posts, I shall show how to use the soft wear.

The main difference I have found with audacity and WavePad, is that you can add tracks to audacity. You can sort of get around this in WavePad by pasting files together.

This recording is very short as I must have hit the stop recording button by accident.

But this is a short one anyway.

Someone on Instagram contacted me to say for a fee they could get me listeners or likes or comments on my podcast.

Personally I would avoid such business as they tend to be a scam and could even have you loose your account.

They tend to use bots or pay people to come onto your site.

It is like owning a shop and paying someone to send you 1000 people, who do no more than come to your shop, open the door a bit, then close it and walk away. 

In most cases the visits you get are worthless and will probably never return.

I often ask them to provide a sample of what they can offer to prove they are legit. And they tend to say they cannot and will give you reasons as they want the money up front.

If any firm wants to prove they are legit, feel free to contact me and demonstrate they can do what they claim for real and I will promote them for free if they are legit.  I make this offer knowing full well they will never want to, knowing that they are offering a con service and I would end up exposing them.

Something I have said before and someone else stated on ClubHouse this week, not all podcasting advice is healthy or given for the correct reasons.

The chap speaking was in a small podcast clubhouse club. Often the small ones give far better advice. 

He pointed out that he had to leave a large clubhouse club as he was a moderator and was talking with someone else. The other person was telling a lady to buy a cheap microphone and to use his service to clean up the sound.  

In truth, the correct advice would have been to buy a decent mic, but this chap wanted people to hire him to edit people’s sound files.

ClubHouse clubs has become like what forums were. They get large and popular and those that run them gain great power and use them to push there products or service to people who lack experience and believe that these large clubs they are in give those that moderate the look of being legit. 

One suspects that in time the larger clubhouse clubs will do awards and such.  I have seem forums do the same. The awards have often no meaning and are awarded to friends, people who bung in some cash, or to those who brown nose. 

From using clubhouse for a few days now, my conclusion is to stick to the small rooms as they tend to give the best advice for free.

I would suggest when someone is clearly pushing there product or service that one should take far less notice of.

I have noticed too that those who run services for podcasters are getting annoyed that I am giving out far better advice for free than they are when they are charging.

3D Sound Experiment 2

Please use headphones to get the full effect.

Main site: ClubPod.co

3D Sound Experiment 1

Please use headphones to get the full effect.

Main site: ClubPod.co

On ClubHouse people seem to be panic buying .club domain names.

Is it worth getting .club domain names.

In truth probably not.

That said I have purchased about ten, simply because they are £1 this year. However I will probably not re-new them next year when the are due to be re-billed.

Personally I still feel .com or .co domains are with anything.  The other type to me are no more use than feeder sites to your main site.

So why would you need a .club domain name?

The chances are that if ClubHouse goes online as a website, they will let you opt for your club name.  So by this I mean something like joinclubhouse/yourclubname.

It is also probable that you will have more control over your clubhouse page, than you do now.  

So why would you even need a separate domain name/site?

And if you do need a separate website, would you not simply use your main website?

I suspect very few people purchased a domain name for there Facebook page or Twitter page or Instagram page, so why would you for ClubHouse?

But, as I have said, I purchased a few .club domain names, and at £1 it may be with getting one or two, but if you do not use them in the end, make sure you do not have them on auto re-new or next year you may have a huge bill.

Some people have got .club domain names thinking they will flip them for thousands. Good luck with that as a bet very few get re-sold. 

Are people getting far too excited about ClubHouse?

We know many sites are doing versions of ClubHouse and Twitter is almost live with there version.

It will probably not be long that you can get a plug-in to run your own ClubHouse type site on your Wordpress site. In the same way you can get many YouTube plugins to turn your Wordpress site into a YouTube type site.

The problem ClubHouse has is that it is not yet a web based platform, nor is it on any other phone than iPhone or iPad. This means that if another sit does there own version and is on all platforms long before ClubHouse is, then ClubHouse may loose out.

The other problem ClubHouse has is recording. In theory you are not supposed to record. And one suspects that people will have problems if they record a show and someone later objects to being uploaded to a podcast. 

While other platforms may not only allow recording, but may include the ability in there app.

The problem most social media sites/platforms have is most do the same thing.

For example, most let you connect with other people, send each other messages, post text, post vids, post vids, include hashtags. As such, it is likely most if not all well known social media platforms will include the same ability to talk in a group. 

So perhaps, people may be getting far too overexcited about ClubHouse.

I read today the footballer Ian St John has died.

Before I carry on, I am going to point out that I hate football.

So why have I posted this news?

The reason I have posted it, is because a few years ago he co presented a UK TV show called the Saint and Greavsie football show. A show I lived.

For me, this show he presented with Jimmy Greaves was one of the funniest shows ever. They simply would go off script and talk about anything they wanted.

In many ways this was the format of a podcast show.

If you get a chance, go on such as YouTube and watch these two in action.

The fact I hate football yet would not miss this show, clearly shows that if your good enough on your podcast people may listen even if they are not interested in the subject.

Over the years, I have concluded that there are very few who have such talent to do such a show.

The other two are James Whale who is still going, but would do a radio show based in Yorkshire, UK on Radio Air.  They converted it once a week to TV on Yorkshire Television, but it was never as good as when he did the show on radio.  People would phone in just to be insulted by him. I would often stay up till 1am to listen and would always be late for school.

I have not found his old radio shows online but you can find his old TV shows.

The other is Howard Stern.  He has a magical way, but in fairness, I often feel Robin Quivers makes the show.  

In time I plan to listen to podcasts, and find who I think is great on them.

A few days ago I was listening to a talk on podcasts, and getting traffic. 

People were saying they put sample clips out and doing like shows on such as ticktok and ‘begging’ people to listen to them on there podcast.

A chap called Glen who stated he used to be a webmaster made a very important point.

Not all traffic is valuable

He pointed out that you could have thousands of people listening, but if they think your show sucks they will not come back, and while you may think your a big player as you can get thousands to listen to your latest podcast, it means nothing if they think your show is dull and do not return to listen to your new shows or listen to your older shows.

It also is worthless if those who are listening are not going to be the people who may make your podcasts worthwhile. 

For example if you are doing a podcast on cars in the USA, it would be not worth advertisers to advertise there USA based garage on your podcast if all your listeners are in the UK as they are not going to fly to the USA to buy a car.

So in truth if your podcast has only ten listeners, that podcast can be more effective than one with millions of views, if those ten people are the ones who may buy or use a service you promote.

However, the great importance is not numbers listening to a show, but if they listen to other shows and keep coming back. If you find people listen once then do not return, then you are not doing well.

One suspects that those who are in truth doing well are those who find they get more and more listeners who keep returning with no publicity. 

If you only get listeners on the basis you have to keep promoting on Instagram and so on begging people to listen. It simply means nothing if people never return.

Number of listeners is not success. What is successful is if your listeners return, and if your listeners grow organically each month with no promotion. 

This is also something advertisers should think about. They may be wasting a lot of money if they advertise on a podcast that has millions of views, yet those who listen, only do so for a moment and never come back, and have not stayed on the podcast long enough to even hear the advert.

In this post I will cover some basic marketing advice.

These are a few simple methods.

1. Have a website

It is very easy to set up a Wordpress blog/site.

Post your podcast on a blog post using embedded script. You can post pics and text too.

Use your website as a hub and add all your social website links (such as Twitter). Also add all the links to your podcast on the various platforms.

2. Social Media

Get accounts on as many social websites as you can. 

Try to keep your username the same on each one.

3. SEO

While years ago, most website owners relied on traffic from google. I would suggest this is now less important and you can probably achieve more traffic and better quality traffic from such as Facebook and Twitter. 

However if you have a website. You may find by adding text on your blog/website, this will be picked up on such as google and bring in traffic this way.

4. Put your domain on your car

Many people listen to podcasts driving to and from work.  So why not put the url of your website on your car. Your car may be seen by hundreds of people each day.

5. Word of mouth

On the internet word of mouth can be seen as tweeting links to your blog posts.

If you have a Wordpress site, you can add a free plugin that will show icons from different social media. You can set these to show on your blog posts.

If people like a show, then they may press a logo and post it on Twitter or Facebook or whatever. They may have thousands of followers, who in turn may re-post the link.  So very quickly you can grow a huge amount of traffic very easily.

As your podcast show is free, it has more chance for people to re-post. 

Ask your friends to re-post links to your site too.