School of Podcasting: Expert Tips for Launching and Growing Your Podcast

This is show 209 originating from www.schoolofpodcasting.com The good news about Wordpress is it is free, and it is being developed on a constant basis. You get new features like the ability to search for plugins, upgrade automatically, etc. The bad news is sometimes they add new features that don't agree with old plugins. A plugin is [...]

As I have mentioned in the past, the easiest way to get a podcast up and running is to use Wordpress. This way when you update your website, you update your RSS feed, which updates your iTunes, etc. I'm not sure if this has always been the case, but as I've set up a few new [...]

I was chatting on Catherine Kames www.myspace.com/goosenotchicken and she had given up on trying to create a podcast. Where did she get hung up? Creating the RSS feed. Catherine is getting hung up on the same part that most people get hung up on (so don't feel bad). The good news is there is an [...]

Every time I hear "Talkshoe" or "Blog Talk Radio" I know the following show is going to have awful quality in terms of audio production. The last show I listened to was "book your self solid" and I couldn't take the scratch static in the line, the constant buzzing, etc. So I decided to see [...]

Today we talk about two shows who had their fans say "Stick to the topic." The good news is many people don't give that kind of feedback (they just unsubscribe). So when you are planning your podcast be sure to think about how wide a topic you want to go. Charley Hays has started www.wphelpcentral.com where [...]

Today we have a quick show with some podcasting news. First we hear that 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 [...]

Where is Podcasting Going in 2010? Well I’m going to state the obvious. Yes iPods and portable media players are wildly popular, but after purchasing a Droid phone, I now see clearly how everything is going to end up on your phone. I’ve known this for years, but didn’t really “get it.” I used a program [...]

Is podcasting for free a good idea?

People always ask me “What is the best plugin for Podcasting.” Originally I said Podpress, but the develop got too busy (and probably tired of working for pennies) and abandoned the plugin. I love the 1pixle player as you can change the color of the player to match the theme of your wordpress blog. 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).

On today's brief show, I explain how I took the name “Podcast Fast Pass” (say that out loud) from the “Fast Pass” idea at Disney Land (where you can legally cut in line). Well after a year or so, I finally changed the name as I had to over-pronounce the name every time I used it. 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 Laporte. 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 averaging 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.