1. It’s not about you – its about your audience’s passion.

Even when I do a show about me (Building a Better Dave) I still want the audience to do something with the info (laugh, cry, think, grown, learn). Answer every email. Respond to every comment. Connect in as many ways as you can. Chances are these people are just like you. In this episode I talk with one of my listeners who turned me on to a new tool for WordPress themes. We always say talk about your passion. That’s true. That’s podcasting 101. In the end it’s about your audience’s passion. In theory your audience will end up mirroring you and your passion.

2. Pick a Schedule and Stick with it.

I have done a podcast and a newsletter for musicians for 10 years (podcast for 7). At the end of last year I just couldn’t find anything to create shows around. My publishing was very unreliable. I was averaging anywhere from 700-1200 downloads per episode. This year I dedicated to putting out a show a week even if its shorter. When I checked my stats, I’m averaging 150-250 downloads per episode. I also changed the name of this podcast (but didn’t change the feed). All I can learn from this is people want to be able to count on you.

3. Abandon The Idea of Free Podcasting

You can paint with peanut butter. It’s true. Should you? Probably not. Can you podcast for free? Kind of. Should You? No. I recommend you get a website host ($7 a month), and a media host ($15 a month – use Libsyn promo code sopfree to get your first month free).

4. Resist the Impulse to Start Another Podcast

When you get your first one off the ground, your next urge is to start another five podcasts. Unless you have a lot of time on your hands, its probably better to focus on putting out great content.

5. Resist The Impulse to Spill All Your Beans

As Content is King, when you get a giant surge of content resist the urge to make a special two hour episode. Instead pace yourself, and while you deploy this information you will have time to find more great content that you will deliver when the surplus is gone. This is so easier said than done.

6. Content Is King

If your information doesn’t MOVE me, I’ve got way to many options to listen/watch your mediocrity. What do you want people to do with your information? How do you want them to feel?

7. Presentation is Queen

Don’t forget your album art. Get some decent equipment, produce an intro and outro, and have ways for people to contact you. If you are looking for sponsors, your website should be clutter free.

8. Promotion is the Jack

Man does not live by content alone. If you build it, they might stumble over it. You build your audience one at a time. Get to know them using tools like Polldaddy, Survey monkey (Blubrry, Libsyn, and Podtrac have tools as well), go to where they are, make friends, THEN tell them about your podcast. There is no giant switch that will give you 1000 subscribers. Make sure everyone in your family has a business card that points people to your site. Make sure site makes it easy to listen to your show. Then the content can suck them in.

9. If this is your first podcast, forget about going LIVE for a while.

CNET just put out a statement that they cancelled some of their podcasts because nobody was listening live. The power of podcasting is people can listen whenever they want. To the best of my knowledge, there is no Podcaster who has more listeners live then downloads (not counting Radio people who put out their show as a podcast). I’m talking about people who started in podcasting. Even Leo Laporte who HAS a radio show has stated publicly that his live to download ratio is very heavy on the download side. When you do “live” you add more technology, and more complexity and the return on your investment is very little. Yes its fun to get live feedback, but when you are first starting out I don’t think it’s worth the extra effort. This is strictly my opinion.

10. Drop the idea that your podcast should be “this long.”
Unless you’ve got a legit reason, I would not worry that your podcast is not “an hour” or “40 miutes” long. Don’t get me wrong. It should be in the ballpark. Don’t do a five minute podcast and then follow it with a 90 minute episode. For me, a podcast should be just long enough to cover your topics in the episode and not a minute more. But Dave what about talking about myself to build listener loyalty and that relationship you always talk about. THAT’s a great point. Lead with your best stuff first (the content) and anyone still listening will love to learn about you.

BONUS TIP Quit Waiting to Be Perfect

If you are waiting for the seas to part, and the perfect room with the perfect microphone, and after this, or if this would just happened THEN you would podcast, I want to share with you the immortal words of David Lee Roth (one of my heroes growing up ) he said, “I have a two word plan, “let’s go.” You can get paralysis by analysis, and eventually you WILL HAVE TO PRESS RECORD.

SUPER JUMBO DELUXE TIP

Be careful talking about your family. Be careful trying to be “Edgy”. You never know who is listening. It might be your future mother-in-law, or your future boss.

Reaching Out To My Audience

As this episode is all about my audience when I got an email from Tina, I sent back a reply asking her to ask the question live. Later that night we got on skype and made it happen.

Tina is starting a podcast about home schooling. She wanted to know how much to share about herself. I explained at first your audience doesn’t know you (and may not be interested in a 10 minute lesson on Tina). This doesn’t mean you can’t explain your motives, and give some “behind the scenes” info. I just wouldn’t lead with it. In radio, or TV (especially the news) they always lead with their “top story.”

You can find Tina at

Author of: www.lulu.com/tinasrealm
Webmama of: www.mommychats.com, www.fresnofamily.com, www.homeschoolrealm.com, www.tinaswebsiteshop.com, www.homeschoolpodcasts.com www.tinasrealm.blogspot.com
President of: www.fresnolearningvillage.com

www.tinaswebsiteshop.com

Davidrisley.com has made 6 figure incomes with his blog. Derek Halpern is another successful Internet Marketer who combines human psychology with Internet Marketing at socialtriggers.com. Dana Gould has been very successful as a stand up comic and writer for many sitcoms (he was a voice on the Simpson for 7 years). What do all these succesful people have in common? Even though they have experienced success in their life, they all started podcasts recently. The question is Why aren’t you?

Make Sure Your Podcast Media is Set Before Uploading it to the Internet.

Once you’ve recorded your podcast and you have a finished mp3, you think you’re done. This is where you really need to mind your P’S and Q’s. The information that is displayed in a portable media device (like a smartphone, iPod, etc) is saved within the media (mp3, video). Once you get it correct, you can upload it. If you make a mistake you can fix it, but you will need to upload it again. There is where a problem comes into place.

With my preferred media hosting providers Libsyn.com and Blubrry.com they limit the amount of space you can upload in a month. If you make a mistake there is no “Do over” option and that second upload will count against you. For me, this is not a problem as I produce a podcast once a week, and I’m rarely even close to exceeding my space requirements. However if you almost using all of your space every month, this could cause an issue.

I do not use iTunes to add my ID3 tags. For whatever reason, I can add my podcast album art in iTunes, but it won’t show up in Windows Media player. This makes you look like a hack. Instead I use mp3 tag (right-click on the mp3tagv249bsetup.exe link and choose save target as). This software is free. If you’re on a mac, check out http://pa-software.com/id3editor/ ($15).

UPDATE: I got this note from blubrry.com “If your client was on blubrry.com hosting… All he would have to do is delete the episode and upload the corrected version with the same name (or a different name for that matter) If you delete a file that is counted against your monthly upload, it will be taken off the limit right away.

Audacity Tip: Removing Noise From Your Podcast

While I love the service podcastvoicemail.com (affiliate link) the quality of audio that comes in (based on the person who calls in some cases) is not always high quality. Today I show you how you can clean these up before putting them in your podcast. This is under the effects menu. The first time you “learn the noise.” Then do a select all and preview the file with the noise removal turned on and adjust accordingly.

1. I would use wordpress. When I started I built my website in Dreamweaver, and I did my RSS feed in a different program. When I moved to wordpress, I do it all in one setp. I use Host Gator for my hosting, and you can install WordPress in a few clicks. I am surprised at the people who try to use things like Joomla to do a podcast (you end up with audio on a website).

2. I would use dynamics microphones instead of condensor. They pick up less background noise. Unless you have an extremely quiet room, go with something like a Sure SM 58. For more information on that check out www.schoolofpodcasting.com/equipment

3. I would get to the point quicker than I did when I first started

4. Don’t use a free service for your web hosting (wordpress.com, blogger.com)I didn’t do this, but I’ve helped people who have.

5. I would not use amazon S3 for hosting. It’s cheap when I started, but now my bills are over 28 bucks a month for media hosting.

6. Do NOT put time based titles (daily , weekly) into your podcast name.

7. Instead of doing three mediocre podcasts, do one really well.

I’ll be in Oklahoma next week. If you live there – let’s do dinner. I did that with Rich Palmer of Audio Gumshoe and Blogs Views and Blues.

I’m not sure if this has always been the case, but as I’ve set up a few new podcasts, I have noticed that the default setting under privacy is to have your website visible to the public, but BLOCKED by search engines. Obviously you want to set this so that search engines CAN find your website.

You can check these setting by going to Settings > Privacy in WordPress. If you are looking for a web host where you can install WordPress in about 7 mouse clicks, I suggest Host Gator

No Wave Out Recording on A Laptop

In the past Iv’e talked about the different styles of record and producing a podcast. One is to record the voices first and mix in the music later (which is how this podcast is produced). This gives you exact control over volumes, fade ins, fade outs. The bad news is there is a “compiling” step where you put it all together. For this podcast it takes about 5 minutes.  The other way is to record “live” where you mix in the sound effects, music, as you go. The bad news is if you mess up, or your volume settings are wrong, you either leave it, or in some cases go back and start from the beginning (in some cases you can go back and edit it out).  There is no compiling time, but you do have to make sure your volumes are set before hitting record.

Well I wanted to record podcasts on my lunch at my job using my laptop. Tim Dewey from the Sled Dog Podcast told me a while ago that manufacturers had been pressured into taking away the ability to record what is known as the “wave out mix.” In normal English, the Wave out mix is whatever you hear coming out of your speakers you can record. This is what podproducer.net uses (my favorite “live” recoding software). In a nutshell without the ability to record the wave out mix on a laptop, you can’t use Podproducer. The only option I have now is to send the output out of my headphones into a portable recorder like the Zoom H2, or H4 and use podproducer to play all the music, etc. Then I have to transfer the file from the recorder to the computer, tag it and upload it.  As the intent was to save time, this doesn’t really cut it. I just wanted to let you know that if you plan on using a laptop as your main recording device, you are probably going to have to use Audacity, mixcraft, Sony music studio music studio to assemble your podcast.

Help Dave celebrate his birthday at www.schoolofpodcasting.com/birthday

Radio Industry blog Radio Survivor has named podcasting one of the most important radio trends of the last ten years. They state that RSS podcasts feeds made it much easier to index podcasts and create easily searchable online directories organized by genre and keyword.

 I also found another blog post from Shel Hulz who does the podcast For Immediate Release. He (along with Nevile Hobson) has been doing it since 2005 and he recently put together a “looking back” post as they recorded their 514 show on their fourth anniversary. Here are some of the ways that Podcasting is helping Shel.

 Loyal Listeners – His show is published twice a week on a very regular basis. His fans are so loyal that when he was hours (not days) late he got email They have come to depend on his show.

 Mutual Respect – By having a co-host Shel and Nevile know the other person is working hard on gathering material, and they don’t want to let the other person down. It keeps them on pace, and it allows each other to share the load.

 Staying Current – They have started a fountain of knowledge. Shel checks over 100 blogs for information for the show, and he gets input from his audience as well. Consequently, he and Nevile are completely up to date with the latest happenings (and I would guess they have a good idea on what trends are coming).

 Client Work – By being so up to date, they are experts and this leads them to get more consulting clients.

 Because of these benefits Shel is committed to podcasting. How committed? He spends 14 hours per week preparing, recording, and editing his show. The best part if Shel says that all the work is worth every minute.

 You can read the full blog here

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.

64 kbps = AM Radio

Not bad for shows that are primarily talking.

96 Kbps = FM Radio
Not bad for shows who want decent sound quality, but don’t need CD quality (this show is done at 96 kbps).

128 Kbps = CD Quality

When I changed the bitrate to 96, it cut the file size in half, and (in their case being mainly talk) it made almost no noticeable change the audio quality. Keep in mind the higher the number the longer it takes to download (and the 190 kbps took forever).

For those podcasters who do a show that primarily features music. Anything about this (in my opinion) is overkill.

One Way to Make Money With Podcasting

My Friend Mark from the A1Blues.com podcast (great podcast if you love “rockin’ blues) features music from great musicians. He often pointed people to Amazon.com and I noticed he was not using affiliate links. I pointed out that you can become an “associate” (amazon’s term for affilaite) and make some cash (a little cash) sending people to buy these artist’s albums.

The easiest way is when you sign up to become an amazon affiliate, install the “associate bar” (I believe was the name of it). Then when you login to your affilaite area you can then browse to ANY page on amazon and make a link to the page (I typically use the “text link” settings).

If you are wanting to promote items on iTunes, their affiliate program is through linkshare.com

This show originates from www.schoolofpodcasting.com

I then went and started recording test shows. I wanted to use a set criteria to make it fair for all the podcasts I reviewed. I spent a large amount of time setting up the criteria, and it seemed that “bad” podcasts were still getting “Decent” reviews. I also ran into the problem of shows that were produced well, but the topic didn’t tickle my fancy.

I did some test reviews and sent them to the podcaster, and got my first batch of hate mail. The idea was to promote me as a coach to podcasters, and instead I was turning people against me.

I also found listening to podcasts that I didn’t choose to listen to made for some very long podcasts (as I would have to listen to a show to give it a fair shake).

In the end, creating these shows were not easy, were not fun, and I have officially “paused” this idea. If I had done the test shows first, I could’ve saved some of the time I spent designing the website, etc.

How Many Commercials are Too Many? is something I blogged about last week.

To get a decent sounding recording the first step is get a decent microphone. I recommend the Sure SM58 if your room is somewhat noisy, and the Audio technica 2020 if you room is very quiet. Then I typically recommend using a mixer just so you can (if nothing else) add treble and bass to your voice. There are lights that show your level at the mixer and you want these to be green and yellow, if it occasionally blinks red that should be ok. Be sure to be listening through headphones so you can hear yourself.

I typically send the tape out of the mixer into the line in of my computer. Now whatever computer software you are using SHOULD have some sort of meter. Again you should have green lights, yellow lights, and red lights. To get technical, at the top of the meter is a zero. When you go over zero the lights turn red. You do NOT want to go over 0. You do NOT want it to go in the red. If you go into the red the sound is distorted. I found a podcast called church leader insights and this was my first impression.

There is a master volume which adjust the levels of all the microphones you have plugged into the mixer. Then each microphone has a volume knob. This is called the channel volume. If the master volume is set to 10 o click, you would not want the channel volume to be 1 o clock (or higher than the master volume). This can cause distortion.

WordPress.com as A Podcast Solution

I am working with a consulting client, and they had just started a podcast so they decided to use WordPress.com. This version of wordpress is already installed and you can purchase additional space for your media files. However, all of the cool plugins that you hear about are limited to the plugins that wordpress.com allows people to use. The alternative is to host your Website on a website like coolerwebsites or host gator and install WordPress on your own (it takes about 3 minutes and 7 mouse clicks – easy). I prefer and recommend people to use this method in the past so you have complete flexibility. However, after working with this client I can say I’m not impressed with WordPress.com as a media host as well. Their reliability seemed suspect as files would sometime stream, and some time not. My client uploaded a file only to have it appear blank when I downloaded that site (I checked the original file, it’s not). The bottom line was there were strange things happening at wordpress.com

Some people ask, “should I start here?” After all its very inexpensive, and its easier (as there are less options). The idea being that you can move once you decide to “stick” with podcasting. Well much like real life, moving is never fun. NEVER. It’s not hard, but it’s a pain in the butt. So let’s look at the “Hassle” of going with yoru own hosted version of WordPress. If you don’t want to purchase a longer contract, Host Gator is 10 bucks a month. Let’s say you use Libsyn for your media, that’s 12 a month. So as you start you spend 22 bucks. IF you go with the WordPress.com version you put out 20 a year. Well in theory you’re going to know if you want to stick with podcasting within the first month. If you are you’re going to want to have your own hosted version anyway, so why not start there if spend the extra two bucks. If you stick with it, sure it will be another 22 bucks next month, but the good news is IT WORKS. Then you can call Host Gator, and change your account and only pay 5 bucks a month.

2 Buck Themes – Great Segway Royalty Free Music

In this episode I show how you can use music to transition between topics. By having the music come in towards the end of a segment a person listening knows that when the music comes up that segments is also over (and they can stop fast forwarding if they were not interested in that segment). I’ve been using Mike Stewart’s Two Buck Themes which gives you 5 different themes each month for $10 (hence 2 bucks each).

If you need one on one Podcast Consulting, or if you’re ready to learn to podcast using our Step By Step Podcasting Tutorials, then Dave Jackson can be your personal podcast coach. Start podcasting today, cause if you don’t your competition will.

Podato

The Jeff Outlaw Show

Turtlecast

Can you tell these shows are about online dating? me neither.

To start your own podcast go to http://start.shoolofpodcasting.com