On the PC, my favorite is Sony Vegas. It does just about everything you need and it’s very affordable. It handles HD video and audio production tasks with ease and produces professional level video. It’s easy to use and learn. It has wizards to import and export projects so that you can get started quickly.

The program is chock full of Show Me How interactive tutorials that help you learn to use the software quickly. The Show Me How tutorials make it easy to complete a project step-by-step.

On the Mac, the king of video production software is Final Cut. It’s kind of expensive, but it’s great software if you are really serious about producing the highest quality video.

You can download Audacity at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/

Here’s a short video from YouTube showing you how to use Audacity.

My strong recommendation for anyone who wants to make a screen cast is to use a software tool called Camtasia Studio. It’s easy to use, it works great and it will save you lots and lots of time. The price is about $300, but it’s really worth it. If you can’t afford that and you have lots of time to work on this, then you can try the free software option CamStudio. Camtasia and CamStudio are NOT the same thing. They totally different products.

If you want a great looking screen cast I strongly recommend Camtasia (aff). It gives you all the tools you need to capture the screen cast with audio, edit the end result so it looks the way you want it and then encodes the files to be used in just about any format you will need.

Here’s a video of Camtasia in action:

There is a long list of directories below. Start at the top and work your way through the list. You will need the URL of your podcast and information like the title and description of your podcast. Make sure your description is as comprehensive as possible, because that’s how the search engines will find your podcast.

If anyone asks you to pay skip that directory.  All the listings should be free.

I would start with these directories as I think they tend to be the top ranked sites in the search engines.

• Digital Podcast
• Podcast Alley
• Podcast Pickle
• Podcast.com
• Podcast.net (link seems broken right now)
• Podcasting News (link seems broken right now)
• Digg for Podcasts
• Podfeed.net
• Podcast Directory

There is a long list of other directories you can submit to over at Podcast411 and you may also want to try PodPusher to get to an even longer list of directories.

Here’s a video about how to make this work.

If you set up your hosting at Dreamhost(aff) then you can use their one click install to get your Wordpress set up fast and easy. Here’s a video of setting up Wordpress using the one click install process and how to change the look of the site.

And here’s a video of how to set up your Wordpress to support podcasts. Note: you don’t have to upload the Podpress plugin as it was included in your one click install.

I have set up a special deal with Dreamhost(aff) that saves you $30. Just use the promo code COOKBOOK.

Here’s a video of how to set up your domain name at GoDaddy and then get your hosting set up at Dreamhost(aff).

I think having a unique brand is important, but if it’s unrelated to the topic your talking about it can come at the expense of natural search rankings. The more you can integrate your keywords into your brand the better your natural search results will be for people who may not know you, but want to learn about your topic.

Click here to check out your keyword search volumes in this free tool.

Some good examples of podcast names that convey their topic well include Grape Radio, This Week in Tech and Let’s Knit 2gether.

To find out about whether a domain name is available you can go to a domain registrar and search for the name. If you’re in the US try to get a name that ends in .com as it will rank higher on the search engines. I also like to buy the .net and .org names if they are available. Also, think about singular and plural versions of the name. When I got digitalpodcast.com, I didn’t register digitalpodcasts.com at the same time. Fortunately, I was able to buy it later but it cost me ten times more.

A good domain name provider is GoDaddy
. They have very reasonable rates and the site is relatively easy to use.