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Podcast Hosting

Lesson 19 from: Launch, Market and Monetize a Podcast

Sam Laliberte

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Lesson Info

19. Podcast Hosting

Lesson Info

Podcast Hosting

Okay, So you've picked out your mike, you've decided where you're going to record an episode. You've even recorded your first episode, you've edited it, you have that file exported and now you want to make it available on Apple podcasts and Spotify and all the places that people can listen to it and you can share it. So contrary to what people think you're episode doesn't actually live in Apple podcast or Spotify or any of these places, those are actually readers where you can distribute your podcast. It isn't actually where everything lives. So more coming on that when we get to the fifth step in the Core Five, which would be your distribution channel, but first you need to decide who do you trust with housing your podcast. Okay. So this is where everything from the artwork that we discussed. So that really high quality marketing image you created, that's actually gonna live in your hosting provider. The descriptions for every single episode, the description for your show itself, the ...

title of your show, um the category and genres that you pick for your show in the subcategories. These are all going to get decided with your hosting provider when you first make your account. So you're going to give it all that information and in return, it's going to host all of your episodes and it's going to give you an rss feed and that rss feed is the most important part in this entire process. Okay, when you create a profile for Apple podcasts and you submit your show to Spotify. All they're going to ask for is that rss feeds. So it's really important and we're gonna get to that in the final step, the core five of the whole equipment and technical aspect of this. The fifth step. So before we get to there, we really need to decide who are we going to trust with hosting our show. There are a few different options and considerations here. So I'll start with who's basically doing this for free because this is a fairly new phenomenon, essentially you've always had to pay to host your podcast. That's been pretty much the non negotiable thing you have to pay for even if you are recording on your smartphone, you pretty much are paying for that at least if you have several episodes until talk shoe and anchor came around. So you might recognize the name anchor. We talked about it before, but they were purchased by Spotify earlier this year and they're really offering an all in one solution where you can record your episode, edit it, host it and distribute it to all of the major players for free. Um super user friendly and talk shoe there, a Toronto based company. There have been a really amazing partner for me. They're also offering a free option where they just want to increase the number of people who are podcasting and making it really easy, which is so amazing for this market and movement in general if you're just kind of doing this as a hobby and you're just getting started and you just want something simple and free. These could be really great options for you. So both of them, they offer unlimited free hosting. The problem though is that they have really limited analytics talks, you actually currently has none and anchor doesn't speak that well with the other platforms, so you might find yourself having to go back to each of the platforms like Spotify and google play and get the individual analytics from all of them versus some of the more paid premium hosting providers will have more features for that. Another thing is just as new features get rolled out from Apple or google podcast. Not every hosting provider is going to increasingly do all those updates so that you can take advantage of them, which is essentially the situation that I got into. So now we're talking about paid hosting platforms that are really user friendly and easy to use. I got into SoundCloud when I first started and that was because I was familiar with SoundCloud, right? I remember using it to listen to music when I was younger and it has a really amazing discovery aspect to it. So it is a marketplace where if you put your show on SoundCloud, people can find it and people can listen to it where something like Buzz Sprouts, similar price point. Also easy to use really nice features and players that you can embed into a blog to click right from a web page. Both of them do that really well. Buzz Sprout though is really committed to podcasting. So when Apple comes out with new features, for example, the ability to pin a trailer at the top or organize your episodes by season's Buzz Sprout has all of those features built in which SoundCloud. I'm kind of missing out on those. So I've been making the switch to Buzz Sprout. Both offer a free option where the first couple of hours are free to upload. So you can still do this for free and still, you know, play around with stuff before you make a decision. And if you do find yourself in a situation like mine where you chose a host and you want to switch, there are redirect options. Um, a lot of these platforms are making it really easy for me to switch to one to the other. They're both user friendly. They both have analytics built in that can get decently granular. You know, you can get down to the city, you can get down to behaviors and demographics of your listeners. We know what device that they're listening to and and which channel is bringing you bring you in the most. Listens what I really like about Buzz Sprouts analytics though is they can tell you the Um, the average 30 day analytics you're getting so in 30 days, what's your average download rate? Um, why that number is really important because advertisers will sometimes ask okay if your episode comes out, you know, early at the beginning of the month, 30 days later, how many downloads can we expect to get? So it has that number in real time for you, which I think is really helpful. The next option would be Lipson, which is very, very popular. The most successful podcast shows that are earning a ton of money and getting tons of downloads are using Lipson. It is basically hosting on steroids. It has every feature you could ever want. It is a pro hosting provider, it has even more analytics you can use, it has plug ins with Wordpress, sometimes you can even have your own app. Um it's really great, but for me and for a lot of people we've decided not to use it just because it's so difficult to navigate. One look at the Livingston website, it doesn't look like they've updated that website since they launched years ago. It's not that user friendly, it's not easy to navigate. So for beginner podcasters like us, I think you're better off going with something like a Soundcloud or a buzz sprout where it's not gonna be intimidating, you're going to be able to manage this process yourself, it's going to be enjoyable and you're still going to be able to have a high quality show with a reliable platform that, you know, isn't going anywhere and that you can really count on. So these are the options we're gonna next talk about, Okay, so you've chosen the hosting provider to give you the rss feed now? What how does that work? Let me know how I can get it on Apple podcast.

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Ratings and Reviews

Armando Cartaya
 

Big Up's to Sam Laliberte, awesome course. I have been podcasting since 2020 and I took the course to improve my podcast structure along with my marketing skills and for sure it paid off. I learned so much in this course that I have been applying it to my podcast and how I promote the show. I highly recommend this class to anyone who is podcasting or thinking about it. Thank You Sam putting on the right track. Great tip on Instagram, thanks.

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