Learn exactly how to submit your podcast to iTunes and Stitcher Radio with this easy to follow tutorial. Follow these simple steps to get thousands of listeners from the biggest podcasting directories on the internet.

Hi, and welcome to Start A Podcast Fast, the series where I help you get your podcast started really quickly. I’m Ryan McLane from podcastfast.com and in this lesson you’re going to learn how to submit your podcast to iTunes and Stitcher Radio which are the #1 and #2 places where people listen to podcast.

The great news is you only need to do this step once because once you have done it your podcast episodes will automatically update every time you release a new one. In order to submit your podcast to iTunes and Stitcher Radio you need first your RSS feed URL. There are two ways to get this. First you can use the SoundCloud RSS feed which I don’t recommend because it doesn’t give you full control. However if you don’t have your own website and you only have a SoundCloud account then this is what you’re going to have to use. The second method that I recommend is using your own website with the Blubrry PowerPress Plugin.

First I’m going to show you how to find your SoundCloud RSS feed for submitting to iTunes. Go to soundcloud.com and log into your account. When you’ve logged in up the top right you’ll see this little cog which looks like a settings bar, click on it and then find the Settings tab which is located just about the logout tab. Inside the Settings tab you’ll see your RSS Feed. You need to be a SoundCloud podcasting beta user to have a RSS feed so if you’re not a beta user you’ll need to become one. So here’s our RSS feed here and we can simply copy that to use in our submissions to iTunes and Stitcher Radio.

At this point I’m going to show you how to use your own website and find the RSS feed Before you do this you do need to set up the blubrry PowerPress Plugin and I have created a lesson to show you exactly how to set that up correctly so check out that lesson and follow those steps if you haven’t done that already. To get the podcast RSS feed for your website go to yourdomain.com/wp-admin and log into your back end area which will then bring you to this dashboard. We then want to go down to the PowerPress Options and we want to click on Settings and we want to make sure that we are on advanced mode. If you are on this default mode you want to click switch to advanced mode to ensure that you’re in the advanced mode and then you want to go to this feeds tab here and it will show you this special podcast on the feed and the feed is there and you can basically copy the link address and that will copy that feed for submissions into iTunes.

I’m now going to show you how to submit your podcast to iTunes which is by far the #1 way people listen to podcast episodes. The first thing you need to do is open iTunes and go to the iTunes Store. When you’re in the iTunes Store you need to navigate to the podcast section. To do that you can click on these three dots up here which means more and you’ll find the podcast section. When you’re in the podcast section on the right hand side there are some different links there and you can see a link here: submit a podcast. So let’s go ahead and click submit a podcast. That will bring us to this page and we need to submit our podcast feed URL. Now remember if you’re using SoundCloud the RSS feed is in that settings bar here and so you can copy that RSS feed and use that. If you’re using your own website then it’s located in the PowerPress settings under the feeds tab and we want this link here. I am therefore going to go ahead and put that in and we then click Continue. You then need to sign in using your Apple ID. If you don’t have an Apple ID you can go ahead and create one (it is free) and then click Continue.

You can turn any wordpress blog into a podcasting platform with Blubrry. Learn how to set up the BluBrry Powerpress Plugin Correctly so you can begin podcasting.

Hi and welcome to Start A Podcast Fast, the series where I show you how to get your podcast started really quickly. I’m Ryan McLane from podcastfast.com and in this lesson you’re going to learn how to set up the Blubrry PowerPress plugin correctly. This is the plugin that makes WordPress a podcasting platform that you can run your podcast from. I’m going to show you exactly how to set up correctly so you don’t make any mistakes.

The first step is to install the Blubrry PowerPress plugin which is really easy to do. First you need to log into the back end of your website by going to yourdomain.com/wep-admin and you’ll then come up to the dashboard page. We need to add the Blubrry PowerPress plugin and in order to do that on the left hand side we need to find this plugin section and we need to go down to add new. We can see a whole bunch of different plugins that we can add but in the top right we want to click on this search bar and we want to type blubrry and the first one to come up should be this Blubrry PowerPress podcasting plugin. Hit the Install Now button and then confirm it. It will then install and then we click the Activate plugin button. The Blubrry PowerPress plugin is now activated.

The second step is to publish your first podcast episode. It’s important to note that you cannot set up the Blubrry PowerPress Plugin correctly unless you publish a podcast episode. If you haven’t published your first episode please go back and do that lesson How To Publish Podcast Episodes Using WordPress.

Step number three is to enter the basic settings. If you’ve installed the Blubrry plugin which you should have by now you should see down the bottom this PowerPress option. We want to click on the Settings tab that drops down from the PowerPress option. We can see the Blubrry PowerPress settings in default mode which is where we want to be. If by some chance you end up on advanced mode and we will be editing this later, you can simply click the switch to simplify default mode to come back to the default mode. This is a really easy way to set up Blubrry.

What we need to do is go through. For the program title this is going to be the title of your podcast in iTunes so if you leave it blank it will just use your blow title which I always advise against. It’s just better to put in your title. So I’m going to put podcast fast podcast how to start and run a successful podcast. The iTunes program subtitle is a short description of your podcast. I actually don’t know where iTunes uses this. However I do still advise putting it in there just in case they use it and try and put in some key words at the same time. You can see here I’ve done tips and tricks on how to podcast successfully, how to start a podcast and how to make the most of your podcasting on an ongoing basis. I wanted this keyword: how to podcast, how to start a podcast and also the word podcasting in there. So that is what I have done.

We then need to go ahead and enter the iTunes program summary. The iTunes program summary will become the description of your podcast. So again try to put some keywords in there so when people search for you in iTunes they can easily find you. However you do want it to make sense. You can see my description here and I did include a lot of keywords in this description, however I did try to make it make sense. The Podcast Fast Podcast will show you the latest tips and tricks of how to make the most of your podcasting so I’ve got the word podcasting in there and I’ve got the word podcast fast which is my brand name.

Starting from the basics I will show you how to start a podcast and the best ways to run your podcast. We share tips for recording a podcast,

Learn how to publish podcast episodes using wordpress. See my exact podcasting workflow and learn how you can quickly and easily publish new podcast episodes to your wordpress blog.

Hi and welcome to Start A Podcast Fast, the series where I show you how to get your podcast started really quickly. I’m Ryan McLane from Podcastfast.com and in this lesson you’re going to learn how to publish Podcast episodes using WordPress. I’m going to show you everything, from uploading your audio file to your media host all the way through to getting it live on air using your WordPress website.

The first step is to upload your audio file to your media house, that might be SoundCloud, it might be Libsyn, it might be another media host that I haven’t mentioned. There are two ways that you can upload your file to your media host. You can use auphonic.com which is a post production software that I recommend which helps level out your sounds and makes everything sound great or you can upload it directly to SoundCloud or to your media host which I don’t recommend. I’m going to show you right now how to upload to your media house using auphonic. If you want to see how to upload directly to SoundCloud then check out my free advanced tutorial on podcasting with SoundCloud. Just go to www.podcastfast.com/soundcloud to get direct access to that.

To upload your media file using Auphonic go to auphonic.com. Sign up if you don’t have an account, otherwise simply log in. Once you’re logged in you are going to need to integrate an external service so you are you going to need to integrate your media host, so for me that’s SoundCloud. To do that go up to the top menu bar and click on the Services tab. From the options at the top click on your media host and for me that is SoundCloud. You then need to authorize Auphonic to access your SoundCloud account so simply enter your SoundCloud login details and click Connect. We can now see down here we have the integration with SoundCloud for user name Podcastfast which is exactly what we want.

To upload a file we go up into the top menu bar again and we click on the production’s tab and we then click new production. The first thing we need to do is to select our file so I’ll go ahead and do that. We can then add intros or outros if we want. We then need to go ahead and name our file. I do suggest that you name your file using the same format every time – it needs to be at least three letters or numbers. For me I like to use the letters Ep and then the episode number. So in this case I’m going to do Ep1. This will prove important when it comes time to go to Step #2 finding our direct file link. It’s going to make life so much easier if we name these consistently and you’ll see that laid out in the video.

We then need to choose our cover image so go ahead and do that. We then need to put in our artist details and now album details. With the extended media data you can skip over that because iTunes actually pulls this data from your blog post summary. With the output files we want to make sure we just have mp3 there so if you have anything extra, (like for me I’ve got the video file) you just hit the X to get rid of it. And then down here on the publishing external services we want to click add service and then we want to find the service we just added. For me that’s SoundCloud and username podcastfast. We then want to change this type to podcast. Leave all the audio algorithms the same. Click start production and then click start production again. That will now begin uploading the file and it will then go through the process of making sure that the file is level but isn’t too loud, etc.

We can now see that the file has uploaded successfully and if I click on this link it should take me to SoundCloud and it should show us the file that we just uploaded.

Having a website for your podcast allows you to build an asset and make money from your podcast much easier than if you just had a podcast hosted on SoundCloud.

In this lesson you’re going to learn how to create a website for your podcast. Every podcast that I have has a website associated with it and I believe this is essential if you want to build a business around your podcast.

I’m going to explain why I recommend this.

Why You Need A Website To Successfully Run A Podcast

1. A Website Gives You Full Control Of Your Podcast

The first reason I recommend having your own website is that it gives you full control of your podcast.

It’s much easier to rearrange the order of your podcast. You can get SEO benefits by using your own website which will help you rank higher in iTunes

and it just means that if SoundCloud goes away tomorrow or you media host goes away tomorrow you can switch over to someone else and there’s going to be no issues with your podcast at all. Your listeners won’t even know and you can continue to build your audience.

2. A Website Becomes An Asset You Can Make Money From

The second reason and the main reason I recommend that you use your own website is that you can actually build an asset that you can make money from. You can control it and you could potentially sell that down the track.

A website is a place where you can collect email addresses by giving away freebies and you can market to these people over and over again.

You can create and sell products on your website which is something you definitely can’t do on SoundCloud.

You can get Google traffic as well as iTunes and SoundCloud traffic by getting transcriptions of your podcasts and putting them on your website and you can turn web browsers into podcast listeners. People therefore come to your website, they see your stuff because they’re reading it, they realize you have a podcast and they start listening so it’s a great way to build your audience. Getting more listeners allows you to maximize your revenue.

If you want to learn more about making money from your podcast and building an asset using your website then go to www.podcastfast.com/money to get our free tutorial on the best way to make money from your podcast.

How To Create A Website For Your Podcast: Step-by-Step

Step #1: Buy A Domain Name

The first step in setting up your website is actually buying a domain name. So this is your www.yourdomain.com. For me, it’s podcastfast.com.

This is going to cost you $10 a year in order to own this domain.

I recommend you purchase your domain from Go Daddy. You can get there by going through my affiliate link at www.podfast.com/godaddy.

Finding a domain name using Go Daddy is really easy.

In the search bar, simply type in the domain name that you want. For example “podcastfast” and then click search domain.

5.1

 

We can see that unfortunately podcastfast.com is taken and that’s because I already own it.

5.2

However, we can see suggestions of different names that we could call ourselves, like podcastquick.com, and there are lots of other suggestions down there or we can simply search again.

5.3

So in this case let’s search podcast and we can see that that’s not available at all so you basically just keep searching until you find one that you’re happy with it. Let’s say I type in “podcasting for you”. Yes we can see that that is available.

You can also search for domains if you click the domains tab. You can click this bulk domain search

5.4

and you can search from multiple domains at once using this

5.5

But “podcasting for you” is available so I’m going to click continue to cart.

Go Daddy will now try and upsell you so I just want to let you know you don’t need any of these upsell so jus...

SoundCloud is the #1 place to host your podcast if you want more listens. Here are the step-by-step instructions on how to set up your podcast with SoundCloud.

First: Why SoundCloud?

SoundCloud is by far my #1 recommended media host for anyone who is doing podcasting. There is another service called Libsyn which I have used in the past and I just want to quickly show you why I recommend SoundCloud over Libsyn.

1. Price

The first thing is the price. SoundCloud smashes Libsyn in terms of the price. SoundCloud is $15 per month for unlimited storage and Libsyn is $75 per month for 1.5 gig of new storage every single month. So that is the top tier account. You can see the massive price disparity there.

2. Access To Their Audience

The second reason is that SoundCloud gives you access to an existing audience. SoundCloud has their own audience and you can get more views, more listeners and everything like that being on SoundCloud compared to Libsyn which basically has no audience at all.

While the SoundCloud audience is small compared to the Apple Podcasting app rembmer that podcasting started on iTunes which up until that point was almost exclusively for music. So SoundCloud has the potential to grow huge audiences just like Apple did and just like YouTube has done.

3. Awesome Player

The other reason is that SoundCloud has an awesome player which you can use on your website and all the options for players that Libsyn have are actually pretty crappy.

4. Statistics

Lastly, Libsyn does win out in the area of statistics. They do have better statistics than SoundCloud. However, I would rather get access to an existing audience and be able to reach more people than have more visibility on that audience. SoundCloud still has pretty good statistics and they’re good enough for me.

Why Not Just Host The Files On Your Own Website?

You might ask, “Why do I need to even get an account with SoundCloud or Libsyn? Why don’t I just host it on my own website and upload it to my own website?”

The reason is media hosting is actually really expensive. If your podcast is going to be successful then there are going to be a lot of people downloading your files. As the files are pretty big this will quickly chew up your server and it’ll either be extremely expensive for you or it will slow down and eventually crash your server meaning no one can visit your website.

Therefore by going with someone who is dedicated, so by going with either SoundCloud or going with Libsyn you’re going to save a lot of money.

How To Get Your Podcast Set Up With SoundCloud

Now let me show you how to set up your podcast with SoundCloud.

1. Go to soundcloud.com.

2. In the top right hand corner click the sign up button.

3. Enter your details and click sign up

4. Then you need to choose a user name for your podcasts. I suggest that you choose your brand, like podcastfast for me or you choose the name of your podcast like “start a podcast”.

Enter your date of birth and then click get started with SoundCloud.

5. Confirm your email address. Before you can do anything else you need to go into your email and you need to find the email from SoundCloud that says “please confirm your email address”.

Open that email and then click on the “confirms my email address” button.

6. Upload your first podcast episode. I will now explain why you needed to record your first podcast episode before getting your podcast set up. You will need this episode to move forward.

Before you can get a podcasting account with SoundCloud you first need to have an existing podcast. This means you need to have a SoundCloud profile and have uploaded at least one full podcast episode or you need to have an established podcast which is uploaded somewhere.

6A. Once you have signed up you need to login to SoundClo...

Every podcast needs album artwork. In this lesson you will learn how to get great album artwork for really cheap. We are talking $5.50 cheap!

Good Album Artwork Is An Absolute Must

When you go into iTunes or Stitcher Radio you will see that every podcast has artwork associated with it. Good artwork will help you get more listeners and more downloads and I’m going to show you how to get that for cheap.

NOTE: These artworks won’t win any awards but they will be decent enough for you to get started. Once you are further down the line you can always hire a professional designer to improve your artwork.

What do I mean when I say cheap? Well the cost of getting this album artwork will cost you $5.50. That’s right just $5.50.

We’re going to be using a service called Fiverr

Step By Step Process For Ordering Your Artwork

1. First go to Fiverr.com. You will instantly see that there are so many different people doing so many awesome things for just $5, but we want to find someone who is willing to do our podcast artwork.

2. Type podcast artwork in the search bar up the top and then click enter. This will show us people who are willing to do podcast artwork for us.

3. Open designer ads to see more details. We can see in the image below a few different people who will design podcast album art for us. You can open these ads to find the designer you want to hire.

5. Look through the artwork they have done. You can do this by clicking on all of their examples down the bottom of the large image. Looking at their past designs is a great way to work out whether or not they will create a good design for you.

6. Choose the person that you want to hire. Once you have chosen it all you need to do is click the order now button.

7. You can add extra features to your order (eg. high res, faster turn around, different image options) but it’s going to cost you extra money.

8. Provide the details of your project. Once you pay you’ll then be brought to a page where you can enter the details for what your podcast is about the specifications you have (what you want it to look like etc.) You can then send that description off and it will then take anywhere from 1-10 days for that person to come back and provide you with their artwork.

Some Example Artworks I Ordered

I actually renamed this series a couple of times so I actually ended up ordering a couple of different artworks.

Here’s the first artwork that I ordered:

Here’s the second one that I ordered:

Here is the last one that I got and is the one I ended up sticking with.

Special Tip For Getting Great Artwork

Here is a special tip that you can get access to more than just the 4 people that are offering podcast artwork on fiverr. When you’re in fiverr up the top simply search for “logos” in the search bar instead of “podcast artwork”.

There are so many different people that make logo designs and the great thing about this is you’ve got massive choice as to which people you think are the best. Spend some time going through these people and find out who the best desginer is.

Once you have found someone that you love go to their ad and click the “contact me” button and then ask them something along the lines of:

“I love your logo I really want to hire you. I was just wondering if you can do a podcast artwork for me”

Just make sure you let them know that it needs to be 1400 x 1400 pixels as the size. That’s exactly what I did with my 3rd artwork design which was the one I ended up sticking with.

Rather than going through fiverr yourself using lu...

In this lesson you’re going to learn how to edit your podcast quickly and easily so it doesn’t take you a lot of time and so it sounds absolutely awesome.

99% of the time once your podcast episode is recorded you will need to do some editing before you are ready to publish your podcast and share it with the world.

So you will want to know:

– How to edit your podcast quickly and easily

– How to add music or voiceover tracks

– How to make your audio crisp, clear and professional.

Editing your podcast doesn’t have to be hard and it won’t be after you learn these tips.

I will be sharing a lot of screenshots to explain how to perform these steps however I do believe it is easier to learn this process via video. I suggest watching the video at the top of this post.

The Software We Will Be Using

Just so you know the software I’ll be using in this lesson is called Screenflow and it’s for the Mac computer.

It is $99 as a paid product however there is a free trial available which is a fully functioning product but just watermarks any video you create. So if you’re just podcasting then this will be absolutely free.

To get your free copy of Screenflow download the software through my affiliate link.

Click here to download Screenflow for free

I will also be using the free program Audacity which is for Mac and PC to to edit my sound and make it clear, crisp and professional. You can download this for free using the link below.

Click here to download Audacity for free

Tip #1: Have a Template

If you want to edit your podcast quickly and easily one of the best time saving tips is to have a template for your podcast. For every podcast I have a preset template associated with that podcast.

A template generally contains:

– Your intro and outro music

– Any voiceover tracks required

– Any built in advertising segments

What a template allows you to do is pull in your podcast audio file into the editing area and immediately begin syncing it up with your intro/outro music and voiceovers without having to find and import those files. It saves a lot of time and makes editing much easier.

If you are looking for intro/outro music for your podcast then it is important you use royalty free music so you don’t break any copyright laws. You can get royalty free music for free or you can pay for it.

If you want to learn how to get royalty free music that you can use in your podcast without consequences or you want to get voice overs that you can use for cheap then click here to get free access to those tutorials.

Tip #2: The Best Way To Save Time Editing Is To Not HAVE To Edit

The best way to save time editing is to not have to edit or to not have to edit much.

What I mean by that is it’s so much easier to do your podcast in one take and then just edit the start and end of the podcast to make sure there is no dead space than it is to actually go through and edit everything in your podcast.

This means recording your podcast in one go even if it means it won’t be absolutely perfect. One of the great things about the podcasting format is people don’t expect things to be perfect and often they prefer some errors as it allows your personality to shine through.

Take a 1 hour podcast for example. If you have to make edits throughout the podcast this could take anywhere from 1-5 hours to complete. However, if all you have to do is quickly edit the start and the end the entire editing process can take as little as 5-10 minutes.

Welcome to the Start A Podcast Fast Series.

In this series you will learn how to start a podcast quickly. I will show you everything from recording and editing your podcast all the way through to setting up your website and submitting your podcast to iTunes and Stitcher Radio.

This is a short 8 part series to help you get your podcast off the ground as quickly as possible.

In this episode I will go through exactly what you are going to learn from this series and I’ll also talk a little bit about how you can easily get access to this series if you want to go through from lesson 1 all the way through to lesson 8.

There are 8 different lessons in this series that will take you from the beginning all the way through to getting your podcast up and running.

Lesson 1: How To Record Your First Podcast Episode

In the first lesson you will learn how to record your very first podcast episode. We go through different equipment options for you as well as different software for recording and show you exactly how to use that.

Lesson 2: How To Edit Your Podcast Quickly And Easily

In the second lesson you will learn how to edit your podcast quickly and easily. Once you’ve recorded your podcast, how can you add music? How can you add voice overs? How can you edit out mistakes and all of that sort of stuff? That’s what you’re going to learn in lesson number 2.

Lesson 3: How To Get Cheap Album Art For Your Podcast

In lesson number 3 you’ll learn how to get cheap album art for your podcast. So when you go into iTunes and you see people’s podcast and they all have that artwork, I’ll show you how to get that for really cheap.

Lesson 4: How To Set Up Your Podcast With SoundCloud

In the 4th lesson you will learn how to set up your podcast with SoundCloud. I recommend everybody sets up their podcast with SoundCloud because it gives you access to the soundcloud platform and the audience that they have onSoundCloud which is growing every single day.

No other media host offers that so I’m going to share with you exactly how to set up your podcast with SoundCloud and make it really easy for you.

Lesson 5: How To Create A Website For Your Podcast

In lesson number 5 you will learn how to create a website for you podcast. Most podcasts have their own website, this allows you to build an asset to drive traffic to, get peoples email addresses  and make money.

I’m going to show you step by step how you can create a website (and it’s actually not as hard as you might think).

Lesson 6: How To Publish Podcast Episodes Using WordPress

In lesson number 6 I will show you how to publish podcasts episodes using wordpress. So once your website is set up I’ll show you the work flow of publishing podcast episodes so you can do it every single time and really easily.