Amazon S3 is hosting from amazon.com It offers really inexpensive hosting. You pay for what you use. It’s .15 per gigabyte of storage. It’s .10 per gigabyte of transfer. What does that mean? Well I’ve got about 200 episodes of my logical weight loss podcast, plus some “Students Only” podcast, some videos, and more. In the end about 400 media files.  Here is my break down as of 12/14/09 (click on image to zoom in).

Amazon S3 Bill

So what do I get? I don’t get stats, but I get cheaper hosting ($9.59 but the month is not over). At the current rate (9.59/14) X 31 days means my bill maybe 21.24 by the end of the month (hence twice as much as Libsyn.com ). Last month my bill was $6.42, but this month has seen a large increase in downloads (and I’ve uploaded more stuff).

But what if you want to use Amazon S3 and you want Stats? The first thing is you have to use Firefox (with the Amazon S3 organizer plugin) or something like the Cloudberry Explorer (free). You need to configure these programs to see your account. Once those are configured there is a free service at www.podtrac.comThey offer many features for podcasters, and the one I use the most is their stats (they also have surveys, and pop up audio players). You have to put a “redirect” in front of EVERY media file (mp3 in my case). Well this is kind of a pain, but there is another fee tool. The blubrry Powerpress plugin (my favorite for putting audio players on websites). Under the Services and Statistics settings you can enter this redirect ONCE, and it will make sure to put it in front of all your media.

Blubrry Plugin Redirect Settings

I look at it like moving into a house. You can move into a starter house with one bedroom, etc. Then later if your family grows you can move into a bigger house. If you had the chance, and could afford it, wouldn’t rather skip step one? After all moving all your stuff is no fun.

Likewise when you set up a podcast on a free account, in some cases they set up an RSS feed for you (bad) and set up your iTunes listing for you (very bad), and then you are set with limitations (storage, etc). In other words, you get what you pay for.

If you can afford $10 a month for hosting your website (I use Hostgator - affiliate link), and $12 a month at Libsyn.com then that would be the route I would go. In some cases I’ve seen people host both their website and their media on Host Gator. This works, but you will have to struggle to get some stats, and if you get really popular you will be asked to move your media.

The other thing to consider is many free sites go out of business (forcing you to move again). If you can avoid it, I would. People go in with a negative attitude. They say, “What if nobody listens?” To this I ask, “But what if they do?! – you will want a more powerful site with more features.”

Plan to be successful. You’ll be surprised how quickly you can grow an audience with a little promotion.

I started this podcast back in October of 2005. Since then many other podcasts about podcasting have come and gone including:

Podcasting for Dummies (last show 11/19/2008)
Today in Podcasting (last show 10/21/2008)
Podcaster Confessions (all episodes have vanished)
Behind the Scenes (last show 1/6/2007)
Podcasting ABP (only did two episodes)
Learn to podcast (apple – ended 2006)
Podcasting 101 – (last episode 7/13/2008)
Podcasting Step By Step (Gone)
The Podcasting Blog ( 8/2008)
Podcasting Demystified (ended in 2006)

Also the yahoo podcast directory came and went (and people said “Podcasting is dead”). Software titles like “podcast station” and “mix craft live” have both gone away. In the mean time podcasting continues to grow, ways to create and receive them (phones, etc).

I am still here and ready to help you start a podcast no matter if you want it to do it yourself, or if you are looking for a podcast consultant to coach you through or do it for you.

One podcast about podcasting is the Podcaters Emporium. Anybody know of any others?

Last 5 in 5 From Fred Castenada

www.noagendashow.com
www.tech5.mevio.com
www.schoolofpodcasting.com
www.betterdave.com
www.businessweek.com

Fred has launched a new podcast at www.finance4startups.com in addition to his www.strugglingentrepreneur.com and www.gaincontrolofpyourday.com

Podcasting Reaches a Global Audience

We have a lovely note from my friend Lynn Pearson who sent in a message from Scottland.

Thanks to all the people I’ve helped get podcasts off the ground, and to everyone who listens.  You guys/gals are awesome. Special thank to the 2godcicks.com and Chris from the www.fillupyouripodshow.com

Some people wonder, “Should I start a podcast?” and they wonder if they have the material. I am always amazed at the number of people who give away a free newsletter, but don’t turn that exact same material, record it as audio, and turn it into a podcast?

As most of you know I recently got married and have three wonderful step-children. As I have never had children before I decided to read up on the subject and was advised to read “The Successful Stepfamily” by Ron Deal. So far I am very impressed with the book, and may actually lead a study of the subject at my church next year.

I went to his website at successfulstepfamily.com and was surprised that while Ron had books, he was a speaker at conferences, he offered personal coaching, he did not have a podcast. Was it that he didn’t need the publicity? I typed “Stepfamily resources” into Google and did not find him on the first, second, or third page (so I stopped looking). While podcasting will not boost your Google rankings, it will boost your exposure to people who may link to your website which may boost your Google ranking.

I contacted his company, and after some thought they decided not to go in that direction. What a shame they have great content.

If you have a newsletter, and you have content that is worth people reading, that should be a podast. All you do is read the newsletter into a microphone (be sure to add some inflection so it doesn’t sound like you’re reading), write a quick blog post, upload and attach the audio to the post. Yes, it’s that easy.

How much does it cost to start a Podcast? Most of my recommendations at www.schoolofpodcasting.com/equipment but if it’s just you recording its going to cost around $250. If you’re on a tight budget, about $125 to start, and an ongoing fee of $5-12 a month.  Meanwhile a membership at aweber.com (a popular email client) is about $200 a year.

Why people think e-mail is better?

The nice thing about email is you can get your reader one click away from buying your product (if your email promotes a product). The bad news about email is people get so much email. I can’t remember the last time I purchased something from an email. Don’t get me wrong, email is still the top way to communicate for a business. I just know more and more I’m going to my inbox, highlighting a number of emails, and pressing delete (before I even read them). But that’s just me.  In terms of getting your potential customer 1 click away, email does that splendidly.

Give Your Content in the Format That People Want

Movies are delivered on the big screen, then movies on TV, then VHS, DVD, now blue-ray and movies available for download. Why? Because good content is good content, but some people want to see it on a big screen, some people want to watch it at home; some people want to watch it on the go, etc. So instead of forcing your potential customers into a channel they don’t want, why not give the content in a format they will enjoy.

What podcasting has over e-mail

The first podcast I created was and is  for Musicians. Before it was a podcast it was a newsletter delivered via email. At one point that newsletter had about 1200 subscribers. I turned it into a podcast and it has around 800 downloads per episode (some higher some lower). However, as a newsletter only I think I sold about 2 copies of my book in a year. As a podcast I sell about 1 a month. Why? Because it has a tone of voice, and has made me more human. The podcast has enabled me to build a relationship with my listeners. If I travel I know of different cities where I have open invitations to stay at people’s houses, get tours of cities, etc as these listeners are more friends than potential customers.

Am I going to retire on my 1 sale a month? Absolutely not, but I don’t do the podcast to sell books, I do it because I love the subject (and make more money via sponsorship of the podcast). However, don’t over look the fact that marketing via podcasting is more effective (from my chair).

The Best of Both Worlds

The good news is you can do both. You can use free services such as feedburner, and have people that sign up for your email list be notifed when you do a new post (with or without a podcast). Now you have your product one click away, and they have the ability to listen (or watch) you talk about the topic.

The Bottom Line

Podcasting allows you to reach a global audience that wants to listen/watch (not read) content. If you have content already (articles, newsletters, etc) that you give away for free you can distribute that for next to nothing and build a relationship with your readers. If I was Ron Deal I would promote my email list in your podcast (along with your speaking engagements, and how the new book was coming), and in the email newsletter I would promote the podcast. You can always offer exclusive content that is only available in that format to get them to sign up for both.

Spoof Testimonial

Thanks for Chris from www.fillupuripod.com for taking the voice over I sent him and turning it into a “spoof” testimonial. Hillarious.

Sign up today and start a podcast!

I’ve been a fan of Powerpress when it first came out, as they added more functionality (to tie it in with the blubrry.com network) I kind winced a bit (I loved it simplicity). However, recently updates to the powerpress plugin have made it my official plugin of choice. They added the 1 pixel player (and four others) to the mix, so customization is at your fingertips (and without a huge learning curve to figure out how). To me, this makes Powerpress, THE podcasting plugin. I still use Feedburner for my iTunes stuff, but I love the ability to have different players, and the ability to offer a download link, a streaming link, and a “Play in new window” link.

I don’t use Blubrry.com for hosting (nothing against it), but they do have some great tools to make things simpler. Todd Cochrane, Angelo Mandato and the crew at blubrry deserve a round of applause for listening to their audience and over delivering on what we wanted. Check it out at http://www.blubrry.com/powerpress/

Other Plugins I Use

Wordpress Automatic Upgrade is a great plugin. I know this is part of Wordpress out of the box, but I like the plugin as it reminds me to back up my blog.

Wordpress Autmatic Backup is a great plugin that e-mails me a backup of my blog on a weekly basis.

All in One Seo Pack is a tool that allows you to add additional meta tags, and customized titles to your blog. I like this plugin, it is easy to use, but it seems lately it needs upgraded about once a week. This is annoying. The upgrade simply takes you to the page in the plugin that asks for donations.

Tweet Meme is an interesting plugin that allows people to “retweet” your blog post. They click the button, enter their twitter information and boom, they’ve retweetted and put a link back to your blog (through bit.ly if you want so you can keep track).

My consulting service is not under Podcast Mechanic at www.podcastmechanic.com Which makes more sense to people. Everyone understands what a mechanic can do for cars, etc. and that’s what I do for podcasts.

I also revisit the “podcasting is dead” discussion. I do not have a feud with Leo Lapote. I just hate it when anyone says podcasting is dead as potential podcasters may change their mind about starting a podcast.

Here are some new Podcasting Statistics

On 9/24/04 a search for the word “podcasts” resulted in 24 hits. Now it returns 60,700,000 results. To bad Leo Laporte thinks podcasting is dead. I’m sure he’ll say it again at the blog world expo in a few weeks.

Well a new report from Wizzard Media shows that podcast listeners are up from 15 million to 18 million. Here are some samples of that report:

Wizzard Media (NYSE Amex: WZE), the world’s largest podcasting network, today announced that for the third quarter of 2009 the Wizzard Media Network saw total podcast download requests of 332 million vs. 287 million in the third quarter of 2008, an increase of 45 million.

The number of podcast shows on the Wizzard Media Network grew from 11,600 at the end of the second quarter of 2009 to 12,281 shows at the end of the third quarter of 2009. Podcasters pay Wizzard Media to use its publishing platform and work with Wizzard to monetize their show through brand advertising and more recently, content sales (Apps).

Adam Corolla got fired from radio (After replacing Howard Stern) started a podcast and never skipped a beat. To bad podcasting is dead. Oh wait, the same company that fired him is now co-producing his podcast and will help sell sponsorships. Carolla is avergaing 130,000 listeners.

In the third quarter of 2009 Wizzard delivered over 12.7 million podcast advertisements, its second highest quarterly total on record and an increase of 130% from 5.5 million ads in the third quarter of 2008.

The interesting thing is Leo Laporte stated he was getting $70 CPM on this week in tech. Hello? Can you show a better example of how valuable podcasting is in selling to a niche? Radio is getting $15 – $40 cpm.

One can see that Leo is talking about a new network he wants to launch like CNN.

I would agree that more people will be streaming podcasts in the future. I am working on an iphone application for the School of Podcasting. So yes, more people will be handling podcasts on their phones.

What I hate is when people hear that “Podcasting is Dead” they think “Well I’m not going to start one.” NEW MEDIA is not dead, and how we receive it is going to change. Much in the same way we have evolved in the way we receive television. But people have not stopped making shows. People aren’t going, “TV is Dead.”

Leo said that Podcasting is too hard. BS. Go to www.schoolofpodcasting.com/itunes and click subscribe. Was that really so hard? Will Grandma be hip enough to have iTunes installed? Don’t know, but I’m not worried about Grandma. She’s is not in my demographic. She can sign up for newsletter reminders.

Podcasting growth has slowed? While it was easy to see spike of listeners when you had no competition, this is not the case in 2009. You need to promote your podcast to keep the listeners going up and up. I spoke about this in my last podcast. Feedburner reports the number of subscribers to podcasts, for which his company is managing feeds, is growing 20-30% a month.

Podcasting is not dead, and shame on all who use it as a publicity stunt. There are headlines that say Leo is trying to trademark the phrase “netcasting.” Could this be another reason why Leo wants to phrase “podcasting” to go away?

Cool RSS Reader

When it comes to show prep an RSS reader can go out and bring you back all the latest news from your favorite blogs. I previously used feed demon, but they “updated” their software to synchronize with Google reader (and in the process lost some of their key features). I am now using Great News RSS reader. It allows me to tag and save individual blog posts (which makes organizing information for your next podcast a snap). The only down side is it is a desktop application, and if you want to read your blogs at work, at home, on the laptop, you need to install the software three times.  If you are interested in a web based RSS reader then you might try Bloglines.com which allows you to make “Clippings” of blogs and put them in folders (where each folder could be a podcast or topic).

Defining Podcast Success

My last episode had 515 downloads in two weeks. If I compare myself to Leo Laporte who has THOUSANDS of listeners I will feel awful. However, if I got in a room of 515 people that would be a lot of people. There are podcast pioneers (starting in 2004) that have huge audiences. They were kind of luck in that they got the “Milton Berle” effect (having no competition). However, people like Michael Butler, Keith and the Girl, and Dawn and Drew have talent.

Promotion is Queen

I have a podcast that is in iTunes that I have not promoted AT ALL. I have about 10 downloads per episode. So listing your podcast in iTunes will not get you tons of listeners. You will need to promote your show to grow your audience. Someone asked “How many episodes do I need to get an audience?” it takes more than putting out a podcast.

You need to let people know about your podcast. I use business cards from places like Vista Print, and PSP Print and Over Night Prints

NO EXPO FOR ME

Unfortunately due to personal issues, I will not be attending the Blog World New Media Expo. You can still go (great pricing on hotels is still available) at www.schoolofpodcasting.com/expo

The Importance of ID3 Tags

I got an email from a listener of one of my listeners:

“I recently also subscribed to Weekly Web Tools and downloaded all the back episodes. When listening back to them, they are all out of order, since they are sorted by title if there isn’t a track number set. Most of the other podcasts I listen to have the podcast number in the track number field and/or put the episode in the track title, so all my other podcasts have played back in order on my iPod.

Make sense? Not a biggie if it’s too much trouble. I’ll be caught up soon, so it won’t matter as much then.
BTW, best wishes, and I hope the honeymoon is still going!  ;-

John

With my weekly web tools podcast I was using the Gigavox audio builder lite until it was sold, broken by podango so my ID3 tags are inconsistent on that podcast. You can see a few things from this email.

1. People will go back and download you back shows
2. People appreciate the little things that make it easier for them (like ID3 Tags)
3. Podcasting builds relationships as he knew I was getting married.

The great thing about this tag (track) is if a person downloads you back catalog (like this listener did) they can listen in sequence. For more information about adding ID3 tags to your mp3 file (you can use iTunes) check out the frequently asked podcast questions section at schoolofpodcasting.com/help

Free Podcasting Tools

Podcasting Toolbar
I have updated podcastingtoolbar.com this is a toolbar that puts lots of great podcasting resources a few clicks away. You have podcasting news, podcast discussion forums, free podsafe music, social media, links to shop for podcast gear, podcast reviews and more. I sue it to check all of my gmail accounts with a few clicks. It works on Internet Explorer and Firefox

Check it out at www.podcastingtoolbar.com

Tele Prompt Software

While I’ve played with other teleprompting software titles in the past and they were kind of clunky. This software not only has an easy to use interface, but it has a built in recorder. The great thing about this is in the past you had to have your audio recording software going, and the additional tele prompter software. Now this software allows you to record inside the tele prompter software (so you only have one program running). You can save as a WAV file and then through that into audacity, or whatever audio program you are using to add your intro and outro music (and don’t forget your id3 tags).

There is a free version available if you want to check it out at teleprompt.com (the paid version is $69).

Start a Podcast Today

You can reach a global audience, get your message out today start.schoolofpodcasting.com

Today I talk about the New Media / Blogworld Expo where I will be a presenter. You can get a discount on the expo and hotels if you order before the 14th of September. Check it out at www.schoolofpodcasting.com/expo

Last 5 in 5 from Jerry from Prepare Radio

The Morning Announcements

No Agenda Podcast (OK I was wrong, they DO have an RSS feed).

Phedippidations Podcast by Steve Runner

The Splendid Table

Avoiding Podcast Scams

Here is a checklist for choosing a podcast consultant:

1. Do they have a podcast?

2. Do they have an RSS feed on their website.

3. Do they have a contact page?

4. Have they been podcasting more than a month?

So many people from the Radio field are becoming Podcasting “experts.” Being a podcaster does not make me a live broadcaster, and being a broadcaster does NOT make you a Podcaster.