Podcast Help Desk

“Free” podcasting services

Free podcasting. Is there such a thing? Well, in a word.... Yes... BUT!!!! Not really...

Over the years since podcasting started, there were several “free” podcast hosting and total solution podcasting services that have come and gone.

Today, there are some services out there that are “free” podcasting sites. They do it all for you. You either upload a podcast that you record or you record right on the phone. Some of them even let you take callers and live stream. Sounds cool doesn’t it? Well, it is sort of. The problem with all of these services is that they OWN your content. It’s hosted on their website, they host the RSS, they put in the the iTunes listing for you. If you are not a paid member they even put ads in your content for you (and you don’t get paid). On top of that, the sound quality stinks! There isn’t a better way to say that...

http://www.talkshoe.com/

http://www.buzzsprout.com/

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/

www.podbean.com

In reality, it doesn’t cost too much start out right. Instead of starting out on a free service and then realizing you want to stick with podcasting and having to go though a big pain in the rear to switch.

The same can be said for paid services. Some of them will hold your feed captive. What I mean is they will have your feed submitted to iTunes (and other directories) and when you quit paying them, not only do all of your episodes go away but your feed goes away. They will not redirect it to another feed so your subscribers are just left hanging and you have no way to tell them the new feed.

Services like Blubrry.com and Libsyn.com can do everything for you and if you want to change later, they will put in a redirect for you. Places like podbean will not.

This week’s question comes from someone with the problem we have been talking about.

Q: “My podcast is hosted on Podbean and I want to move to blubrry.com and my own wordpress site. How do I keep my subscribers?

A:

IF the service you are on will do a redirect, have them redirect your RSS feed to your new feed once you get it setup on wordpress.

In this case, because I know that podbean will NOT redirect and since you haven’t made the move yet, we can save *most* of your subscribers. Or at least the ones that are really engaged with your show.

1. DON’T Cancel your podbean account yet.

2. Get your wordpress / powerpress site setup and your blubrry hosting setup.

3. Post your show in BOTH places but in the version you put on Podbean, put an announcement in the beginning and at the end that says the show has moved and after X date, you will no longer get new episodes on this feed. If you are hearing this announcement you need to re-subscribe at (give website address) *** Make sure you have a big SUBSCRIBE message at the top of your page for the people that come over from hearing your podbean episode.

4. Post in both places for at least 4 episodes (or 1 month)

5. Submit the new feed to itunes and other directories using a slightly different title and description

6. After itunes accepts your new show listing, go in and change the title and description of your new listing and click on “report a concern” and select Out of date on your OLD show listing.

7. Delete your podbean account.

It will take several weeks or even months, but at some point, itunes will delete the old listing and you will be free of podbean. (or whatever other captive service you were on)

There are free “podcasting” type things that I like to compare like blogs are to twitter, these services are like twitter for podcasting. Kind of a social micro-podcasting thing.

These are AudioBoo and iPadio. These are kind of an addition to your podcast if you choose to do it and...

PTC 004

iTunes Listing VS. A subscriber in itunes

iTunes started supporting podcasting in June 2005 with version 4.9. Once that happened, podcasting took off! iTunes can get very confusing when you upload an episode to your media hosting provider and it doesn’t show up in your itunes STORE listing. By the way, notice, I didn’t say UPLOAD TO ITUNES.

The term “iTunes” can mean 3 different things.

1. iTunes the Application that you have on your computer

2. iTunes the store on the internet that your iTunes application uses for you to discover music, video and apps (and whatever else they sell there)

3. iTunes the server where music, movies and apps are stored (but NOT podcasts)

The way the itunes APPLICATION works on your computer is you find a podcast in the iTunes store, you click ‘subscribe’ and it then sets up a listing in the podcast section in your music library. The last episode will start downloading. You will also see all the rest of the episodes in the feed you just subscribed to. You can click the “get” button next to an episode and download that one also. You can click “get all” to, well, get them all. At this point you are subscribed to the RSS feed of that podcast in iTunes. You are NOT however downloading those episodes FROM itunes. You are downloading that media from that person’s media host server. From now on, your itune application on your computer only talks to the feed you subscribed to. Not back to iTunes store. Your itunes app will check that feed every so often and when something new shows up in the feed, it will download it for you and have it ready the next time you plugin in your idevice or want to listen on the computer in the iTunes Application.

Your iTunes store LISTING is totally different then the RSS feed coming from your website. The listing will reflect what is in your RSS feed the last time iTunes checked it. This is where it gets a little weird. iTunes (the store) will check your feed every so often. I say “every so often” because there seems to be no rhyme or reason for when and how often they do this. On some podcasts, they do it within an hour. Others it takes a few days. The nice thing is, and something you need to keep in mind, that even if the store listing doesn’t have your latest episode in it right away, your subscribers will get the newest one. AND, if you have a new subscriber they will get it too. The last episode listed in the store listing isn’t necessarily the last episode. (since it’s looking at your rss feed instead of what itunes has listed in the store) In other words, don’t worry so much about it.

Now, if you have some sort of feed problem, itunes may stop pulling your feed for a while. It could be 2 weeks or a month before they try again. If your feed is fixed by the next time, they will update your store listing based on your feed. If it’s still screwed up, they won’t. After so long they will pull your listing all together. SO it’s a good idea to check it 2 or 3 days after you post a new episode just to make sure things are working. Also, it’s good to go to FeedValidator.org after you post and make sure your feed still ok. This will prevent itunes from getting stuck.

A little editorial about itunes...

A lot of podcasters nowadays think that if they are in iTunes, that is enough. On average, my podcasts get downloaded in iTunes only 40%. SO, the rest of the time, people either listen on the website, though blubrry.com, Techpodcsts.com, android or IOS apps and more. So the importance of iTunes isn’t as great as some think. It’s still important, but just don’t think of it as the be-all-end-all of podcasting. They are a good place to discover podcasts, but more than 50% of your listeners (or viewers) will get your content in some other way. So it’s very important that you keep your feed in good shape.

Configuring Wordpress for Podcasting with Powerpress

Listen to the new intro I have this week.. cool huh? That was provided by Greg Rempe from the BBQ Central Show.

Today I’m going to talk about how to fully setup your wordpress site for podcasting using Blubrry’s Powerpress podcasting plugin. I will go through the steps you NEED to take to get the basic podcast RSS feeds and a few little tricks I’ve learned over the years for best results.

I do plan on adding a screencast demo soon of this process. Look for that in the coming weeks.

Last week we installed wordpress. How did that go? Feel free to ask questions that we can go over on the show here.

Now that we have the basic wordpress installation online we are ready to get things ready for podcasting. At this point, I wouldn’t worry about how things look. You can work that out over time.

Listen to the show for details! (I will post better shownotes here soon)

Catch me Later!

If you have any questions or comments, email me [email protected] or call the voicemail hotline at 702-757-1104 and I may include your question on the show.

Setting up your website and where do you host your media files

If you are going to start a podcast, you need a place (or places) on the web where your podcast website and your media will live. I recommend using a self-hosted wordpress site as the base for your podcast.

Wordpress is the most popular system for blogging. There is such a thing called Wordpress.com which is a free blogging system hosted by wordpress itself. The company behind wordpress is called Automatic. Automatic does the hosting and you end up with an address like http://mypodcast.wordpress.com You don’t want this so forget about wordpress.com for podcast website hosting. The best way is to use Wordpress.org. Wordpress.org is the open source version of the same (well mostly the same) software that is used on wordpress.com. With your own installation on your own domain name, you have much more flexibility to have the design look the way you want it. There are many other advantages of this that I am sure we will talk about in future episodes.

Setting up your own wordpress site is easy nowadays with MOST web hosting companies. Today I will focus on 2 of the most popular web hosts. Godaddy and Bluehost. (Disclaimer, i have an affiliate relationship with bluehost and if you buy though my link, I get a commision. You don’t pay any more, but it helps the me out)

Godaddy hosting is somewhat easy to setup. They have this thing called “Hosting Central” and when you login to your hosting control panel there is a link to hosting central. With Godaddy, you also have to buy a domain name (which is extra). Once you have all that all you have to do is find wordpress in hosting central and click install. You answer the questions that come up and in a half hour or so, your wordpress site will be ready for you to configure for podcasting.

Bluehost uses a thing called Cpanel. This is a very common interface for a lot of web hosting companies so if you are using someone else, the procedure should be about the same. The nice thing about bluehost is that the domain name is included in your hosting plan. CPANEL uses a thing called “simple scrips” to install wordpress. Same as godaddy, it will install and configure your site by asking you some questions and then just putting it online. One word of caution, do not install wordpress in a folder. IF it suggests a folder (on both Godaddy and Bluehost) just blank it out. Install wordpress in the root of your domain. This is, of course, assuming that your podcast will be the main thing on your site. If you need it installed in a custom place you might want to hire someone to do that for you. (Plug one on one consulting here:) )

The next thing is Themes. There are 1000’s of free themes out there for wordpress. They will make your site look just about any way you want it to look. There are paid themes also. These are much more configurable than the free ones in most cases. I use one called Thesis on podcastingtechcoach.com. It costs about $70 and it very customizable. You don’t HAVE to pay for a theme if you can find one you like in the free themes area. To check out the themes go to your dashboard in wordpress hit appearance and then Themes and “Install Themes”. You will get a search box and a whole lot of options to find the theme you are looking for. You can install one from there. Another word of caution, some themes will cause issues with your podcast feeds and on site players. It’s not common, but can happen.

A word about Media hosting:

Yes, you CAN just upload your mp3 to a folder on your website hosting account and it will work..... UNTIL you get popular. Once that happens, your website will be competing with media downloads and will become VERY slow on these cheap shared hosting plans. The hosting plans are great for a website / wordpress blog but were never meant to host large files for download.

Today I’m going to talk about getting your first episode recorded. What steps you have to do to make your first episode a good one.

Podcasting Tech Coach is a proud member of the Tech Podcast Network, find this and many other family safe and work safe tech related podcasts at techpodcasts.com

Today’s episode is brought to you by ME. Mike Dell, your podcasting tech coach. To hire me to help you one on one, visit geekofthenorth.com/coaching that’s Geek of the North dot com slash coaching

8 Steps to make your first episode a good one.

1. Get your mic, mixer, software and everything setup in advance. (Show zero anyone?)

2 Relax! You can re-record as many times as it takes and you can edit if you want. This is not like Radio or TV. Don’t be nervous.

3. Have your subject outlined. If it’s a free form podcast, have at least and idea of what you are going to talk about.

4. Make sure you press “Record” and test out the audio levels before you commit to recording the whole episode.

5. Set your environment. Quiet, phone off, dogs fed and happy. It’s a lot easier to NOT have to “fix it in post”. The best way to record is get it right the first time. (or the final time)

6. Don’t be overly picky either. As long as the audio is decent quality and you don’t sound like you're nervous, put it out there. Everyone’s first episode sucks when compared to their 20th episode.

7. LISTEN to your recording. Make sure something didn’t go wrong before you publish.

8. Have Fun! That is what this is all about. If it’s not fun, you won’t continue to to do it.

Next week, I’m going to tell you what steps I use to get my wordpress site up and running (just like podcastingtechcoach.com). What plugins you will want, a little about themes and what plugins you don’t want.

If you would like to help out the show, please consider using my bluehost link on the right sidebar of the website at podcastingtechcoach.com for some prime shared hosting.

Also, if you are going to buy anything at amazon.com, please click the banner at podastingtechcoach.com and then do your amazon shopping. This will give me a little kickback and will not cost you any more. Just one more way to help support this show.

Today’s show is show zero. Why would you need a show zero and what does it do for your new podcast?

I will go into that and do a little introduction of myself and my past in the online new-media world of podcasting. I will also tell you what this podcast will be about.

Why Show Zero?

Podcast episodes are distributed by a internet protocol called an RSS feed. RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. People subscribe (For free) to the RSS Feed in what is known as either a feed reader or a podcatcher. The most popular one is Apple’s iTunes application (and now the IOS “Podcasts” app). There are many other podcatching programs and apps out there that we will go into on a future episode, but the main thing is the RSS feed.

To get your show listed in the iTunes store and other podcast directories you need to have an active RSS feed WITH enclosures. Enclosures are an mp3 file or video file that is a podcast episode. You must have at least one enclosure for itunes or any of the others to list your show. Doing a show zero does this so that when you launch for real, your show is already listed in the directories.

Please hit the play button above or better yet, subscribe to the podcast at http://podcastingtechcoach.com/feed/podcast/