Welcome to Tech Podcast Network weekly show. I’m Mike Dell, host of Geek of the North – Relaxed tech talk. Offbeat tech such as Farm Tech, Aviation, Ham Radio, Broadcasting (Radio and TV), Automotive and some History and The Podcasting Tech coach – How to for the nuts and bolts of podcasting. The Website, plugins, audio recording, software and such.
Feedburner’s 301 is now “permanent”. I’ve been testing this since I discovered this a couple of months ago. SO, it appears from my testing that the 301 redirect that feedburner uses is longer then the 30 days it used to be. (See my test feed here: feeds.feedburner.com/mikedelltest2 which redirects to my blog’s feed)
So, now if you want to leave feedburner, you can do it almost pain free. (you will still have to replace the email thing with another service)
I have been missing in action. There will be new episodes starting in the first part of April. If you would like me to cover a topic, drop me a line by either recording by clicking the speakpipe wiget at the left side of the site, or by emailing me mike@mikedell.com
First off, let me add to the 1000′s of people to wish you Happy New Year!
In 2012, I have been working hard on my business pursuits and it has felt like I’ve been going in 10 different directions at once and not getting anywhere in any one of them. At the beginning of a new year is the best time to take a look at what is working and what is not working, So that is what I’m going to do. It’s great that I’ve stayed “busy” but, it leaves little time to do a great job at some of the things I want to do.
As you know, I haven’t been focusing on my podcasting last year. I’ve had a lot of other things that are taking up my time and my thought cycles. Now, I’m not making any promises, warranties or “new years resolutions” here, but…. I do want to get focused on my podcasts. I do 3 of them these days (when I do them at all) and I am planning on somehow geting it to be a habit to record Geek of the North (Audio) once a week. I think I can commit to that. I do like doing video, but until I get some other fires put out in my personal and professional life, I’m thinking that the video will be low priority at least for the near future.
The Podcasting Tech Coach Podcast (podcastingtechcoach.com)is another one I do. As you can tell from the name, it’s all about getting a podcast website setup with all the best tools and tricks of the trade. I think what I’m going to do with that one is write a bunch of outlines for episodes and then when the mood strikes this winter, record a bunch of them all at once. Then over time, edit and put them out likely in a weekly schedule. The nice thing about that subject is the content is mostly evergreen and doesn’t really go out of date much. If I get 10 or 20 of them “in the can” I can record a new one when the mood or content is right and have some backup shows to fill in the gaps.
The third “show” I do is Mike Dell’s Audio blog. (mikedell.com) This is where I can experiment with podcasting and just talk about whatever it is that strikes me. It also gives me a chance to podcast from the car. One of the businesses I’m working on is as a independent owner-operator for a courier company. I like to drive and for the hours I put into it, the paychecks are very good. In my “audio blog” I talk a lot about that. Driving a lot also gives me a lot of time to think, listen to audio books and podcasts. Seems like a win-win to me (for now).
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I want to focus on the things I’ve committed to and learn to say no more to time-wasters that have captured my time this last year. I look forward to bringing you more content, not just more, but better content in 2013.
Todd went though the stats on the shows that were reviewed for this year’s Podcast Awards. There were some very interesting stats about how people setup their website.
You will also find some familier advice (Did i say that before?)
Before I go into feedburner, a bit of news about it. Google Announced a year ago, that the Feedburner API was going away next month. (Oct 2012). Does this mean feedburner is going away? Maybe and maybe not. Just something to think about.
Feedburner started in 2004 as a feed management service. Back in the day it was the easy way to add all the tags that iTunes needed for podcasting (after itunes started doing podcasts in their iTunes store). It was started by Dick Costolo who is now the CEO of Twitter.
In 2007 it was acquired by Google for $100 Million. Google quickly made the stats and “my brand” service free.
What does feedburner do?
Feedburner basically takes an RSS feed and “burns it” What that means is it adds all kinds of things to the feed to make it compatible with feed readers and other services. It also redirects your feed from an unformatted XML file to a Web-friendly page with subscription buttons at the top of the page. So if someone goes to your feed with a web browser, it doesn’t look like Gibberish.
What about podcasting?
Back in 2005, when podcasting started, there wasn’t an easy way to edit your RSS feed (XML file) so you either had to write your own using a text editor and hope you got all the tags just right, or you could just write a simple feed and let feedburner do the tags for you. This is now known as “Smartcast”. This allows you to have a very simple feed that you redirect though feedburner and then feedburner formats it for podcasting in iTunes and other services.
Reasons NOT to use feedburner….
1. Feedburner is a 3rd party service. Yes, it’s owned by Google, but, it can (and will sooner or later) shut down.
2. You do not OWN your feed if it’s on feedburner. It’s owned by feedburner / Google. Now, most of the time, Google will allow you to redirect or download any content you might have on a service they have shut down (such as WAVE and BUZZ). and WHEN (Not if) they shut down feedburner, they will likely to do the same. There is a redirect option now that I’ve been testing and so far it’s working on a couple of feeds I had there from way back. I will let you know how long that works and if I had any trouble.
3. Branding. You want all your URL’s to be your brand. You paid for your domain name, you might as well use it. Instead of feeds.feedburner.com/mypodcast/ You can have MyPodcast.com/feed/podcast/. Much better to have your own domain. You can setup feedburner to use your domain, but it’s cumbersome and of little use if the service goes away.
4. Feedburner basically hasn’t updated anything in at least 4 years and maybe longer. It doesn’t take into account, changes in the RSS2 specs, and more importantly for podcasters, itunes changed podcast specs.
5. Their stats service is of little or no use. All they track is hits on your rss feed. One week they will show that you have 1000 subscribers and the next 200. Trust me, neither one of those numbers is close. What you want to track is downloads of your podcast files.
Reasons to USE feedburner?
Only one I can think of. IF, as we discussed last week, you HAVE to use a free or cheap podcasting service, you should use feedburner to make sure you own (at least a little bit) of your feed. But as I said before, this is only if feedburner stays around.
There is an email subscription service attached to feedburner that is kind of cool, but with all the disadvantages that feedburner has, I would use something like MailChimp or Awebber. There are lots of mailing list services out there.
Question of the week:
Q. I am using blubrry powerpress on my wordpress blog for podcasting. My blog’s name is not the same as my podcast show name but my Podcast only feed does have the same name. How do I change the name of my podcast feed without changing my blog’s title?
A. In blubrry Powerpress, you need to enable podcast channels. This is at the bottom of the main powerpress settings page in your dashboard. There is a checkbox there for podcast channels and category podcasting. Click the box next to Podcast Channels.
Then you will notice that under powerpress in the sidebar, there is a new item… Wait for it…. Called podcast channels. Click that and you will see the default feed listed. Edit that. You will notice it has the same tabs as the main settings only in the feed tab you have a spot for a feed title and description. This is where you would change it. This option will only affect your feed’s title and not your blog’s title.
If you would like me to answer your question on the show, call in a voicemail at 702-757-1104 or click on the voicemail tag on the side of the website.
Free podcasting. Is there such a thing? Well, in a word…. Yes… BUT!!!! Not really…
Over the years since podcasting started, there were several “free” podcast hosting and total solution podcasting services that have come and gone.
Today, there are some services out there that are “free” podcasting sites. They do it all for you. You either upload a podcast that you record or you record right on the phone. Some of them even let you take callers and live stream. Sounds cool doesn’t it? Well, it is sort of. The problem with all of these services is that they OWN your content. It’s hosted on their website, they host the RSS, they put in the the iTunes listing for you. If you are not a paid member they even put ads in your content for you (and you don’t get paid). On top of that, the sound quality stinks! There isn’t a better way to say that…
In reality, it doesn’t cost too much start out right. Instead of starting out on a free service and then realizing you want to stick with podcasting and having to go though a big pain in the rear to switch.
The same can be said for paid services. Some of them will hold your feed captive. What I mean is they will have your feed submitted to iTunes (and other directories) and when you quit paying them, not only do all of your episodes go away but your feed goes away. They will not redirect it to another feed so your subscribers are just left hanging and you have no way to tell them the new feed.
Services like Blubrry.com and Libsyn.com can do everything for you and if you want to change later, they will put in a redirect for you. Places like podbean will not.
This week’s question comes from someone with the problem we have been talking about.
Q: “My podcast is hosted on Podbean and I want to move to blubrry.com and my own wordpress site. How do I keep my subscribers?
A:
IF the service you are on will do a redirect, have them redirect your RSS feed to your new feed once you get it setup on wordpress.
In this case, because I know that podbean will NOT redirect and since you haven’t made the move yet, we can save *most* of your subscribers. Or at least the ones that are really engaged with your show.
1. DON’T Cancel your podbean account yet.
2. Get your wordpress / powerpress site setup and your blubrry hosting setup.
3. Post your show in BOTH places but in the version you put on Podbean, put an announcement in the beginning and at the end that says the show has moved and after X date, you will no longer get new episodes on this feed. If you are hearing this announcement you need to re-subscribe at (give website address) *** Make sure you have a big SUBSCRIBE message at the top of your page for the people that come over from hearing your podbean episode.
4. Post in both places for at least 4 episodes (or 1 month)
5. Submit the new feed to itunes and other directories using a slightly different title and description
6. After itunes accepts your new show listing, go in and change the title and description of your new listing and click on “report a concern” and select Out of date on your OLD show listing.
7. Delete your podbean account.
It will take several weeks or even months, but at some point, itunes will delete the old listing and you will be free of podbean. (or whatever other captive service you were on)
There are free “podcasting” type things that I like to compare like blogs are to twitter, these services are like twitter for podcasting. Kind of a social micro-podcasting thing.
These are AudioBoo and iPadio. These are kind of an addition to your podcast if you choose to do it and shouldn’t be your MAIN podcast.
If you would like me to answer your question on the show, call in a voicemail at 702-757-1104 or click on the voicemail tag on the side of the website.
iTunes started supporting podcasting in June 2005 with version 4.9. Once that happened, podcasting took off! iTunes can get very confusing when you upload an episode to your media hosting provider and it doesn’t show up in your itunes STORE listing. By the way, notice, I didn’t say UPLOAD TO ITUNES.
The term “iTunes” can mean 3 different things.
1. iTunes the Application that you have on your computer
2. iTunes the store on the internet that your iTunes application uses for you to discover music, video and apps (and whatever else they sell there)
3. iTunes the server where music, movies and apps are stored (but NOT podcasts)
The way the itunes APPLICATION works on your computer is you find a podcast in the iTunes store, you click ‘subscribe’ and it then sets up a listing in the podcast section in your music library. The last episode will start downloading. You will also see all the rest of the episodes in the feed you just subscribed to. You can click the “get” button next to an episode and download that one also. You can click “get all” to, well, get them all. At this point you are subscribed to the RSS feed of that podcast in iTunes. You are NOT however downloading those episodes FROM itunes. You are downloading that media from that person’s media host server. From now on, your itune application on your computer only talks to the feed you subscribed to. Not back to iTunes store. Your itunes app will check that feed every so often and when something new shows up in the feed, it will download it for you and have it ready the next time you plugin in your idevice or want to listen on the computer in the iTunes Application.
Your iTunes store LISTING is totally different then the RSS feed coming from your website. The listing will reflect what is in your RSS feed the last time iTunes checked it. This is where it gets a little weird. iTunes (the store) will check your feed every so often. I say “every so often” because there seems to be no rhyme or reason for when and how often they do this. On some podcasts, they do it within an hour. Others it takes a few days. The nice thing is, and something you need to keep in mind, that even if the store listing doesn’t have your latest episode in it right away, your subscribers will get the newest one. AND, if you have a new subscriber they will get it too. The last episode listed in the store listing isn’t necessarily the last episode. (since it’s looking at your rss feed instead of what itunes has listed in the store) In other words, don’t worry so much about it.
Now, if you have some sort of feed problem, itunes may stop pulling your feed for a while. It could be 2 weeks or a month before they try again. If your feed is fixed by the next time, they will update your store listing based on your feed. If it’s still screwed up, they won’t. After so long they will pull your listing all together. SO it’s a good idea to check it 2 or 3 days after you post a new episode just to make sure things are working. Also, it’s good to go to FeedValidator.org after you post and make sure your feed still ok. This will prevent itunes from getting stuck.
A little editorial about itunes…
A lot of podcasters nowadays think that if they are in iTunes, that is enough. On average, my podcasts get downloaded in iTunes only 40%. SO, the rest of the time, people either listen on the website, though blubrry.com, Techpodcsts.com, android or IOS apps and more. So the importance of iTunes isn’t as great as some think. It’s still important, but just don’t think of it as the be-all-end-all of podcasting. They are a good place to discover podcasts, but more than 50% of your listeners (or viewers) will get your content in some other way. So it’s very important that you keep your feed in good shape.
I had a question about feeds and itunes just the other day from a Client of Blubrry.com
The question was: “Why is it that my itunes listing only shows 10 episodes in my store listing when I have 45 episodes in my RSS feed?”
There are several things that might be going on.
1. You submitted your main site feed to itunes and you are blogging between episodes of the podcast.
2. You have your “reading” setting to only syndicate 10 posts in the feed
3. iTunes store has quit pulling your feed
Don’t forget to use my Bluehost banner if you need webhosting.
Also, if you are going to buy something at Amazon, please go though my amazon banner at podcastingtechcoach.com before you shop. It will really help me keep this show going.
Thanks for listening!
Next week we are going to talk about the FREE podcasting services and why, even if you are just starting out, you don’t really want to use them.
If you have any questions or comments, email me mike@mikedell.com or call the voicemail hotline at 702-757-1104 and I may include your question on the show.
Configuring WordPress for Podcasting with Powerpress
Listen to the new intro I have this week.. cool huh? That was provided by Greg Rempe from the BBQ Central Show.
Today I’m going to talk about how to fully setup your wordpress site for podcasting using Blubrry’s Powerpress podcasting plugin. I will go through the steps you NEED to take to get the basic podcast RSS feeds and a few little tricks I’ve learned over the years for best results.
I do plan on adding a screencast demo soon of this process. Look for that in the coming weeks.
Last week we installed wordpress. How did that go? Feel free to ask questions that we can go over on the show here.
Now that we have the basic wordpress installation online we are ready to get things ready for podcasting. At this point, I wouldn’t worry about how things look. You can work that out over time.
Listen to the show for details! (I will post better shownotes here soon)
Catch me Later!
If you have any questions or comments, email me mike@mikedell.com or call the voicemail hotline at 702-757-1104 and I may include your question on the show.
Setting up your website and where do you host your media files
If you are going to start a podcast, you need a place (or places) on the web where your podcast website and your media will live. I recommend using a self-hosted wordpress site as the base for your podcast.
WordPress is the most popular system for blogging. There is such a thing called WordPress.com which is a free blogging system hosted by wordpress itself. The company behind wordpress is called Automatic. Automatic does the hosting and you end up with an address like http://mypodcast.wordpress.com You don’t want this so forget about wordpress.com for podcast website hosting. The best way is to use WordPress.org. WordPress.org is the open source version of the same (well mostly the same) software that is used on wordpress.com. With your own installation on your own domain name, you have much more flexibility to have the design look the way you want it. There are many other advantages of this that I am sure we will talk about in future episodes.
Setting up your own wordpress site is easy nowadays with MOST web hosting companies. Today I will focus on 2 of the most popular web hosts. Godaddy and Bluehost. (Disclaimer, i have an affiliate relationship with bluehost and if you buy though my link, I get a commision. You don’t pay any more, but it helps the me out)
Godaddy hosting is somewhat easy to setup. They have this thing called “Hosting Central” and when you login to your hosting control panel there is a link to hosting central. With Godaddy, you also have to buy a domain name (which is extra). Once you have all that all you have to do is find wordpress in hosting central and click install. You answer the questions that come up and in a half hour or so, your wordpress site will be ready for you to configure for podcasting.
Bluehost uses a thing called Cpanel. This is a very common interface for a lot of web hosting companies so if you are using someone else, the procedure should be about the same. The nice thing about bluehost is that the domain name is included in your hosting plan. CPANEL uses a thing called “simple scrips” to install wordpress. Same as godaddy, it will install and configure your site by asking you some questions and then just putting it online. One word of caution, do not install wordpress in a folder. IF it suggests a folder (on both Godaddy and Bluehost) just blank it out. Install wordpress in the root of your domain. This is, of course, assuming that your podcast will be the main thing on your site. If you need it installed in a custom place you might want to hire someone to do that for you. (Plug one on one consulting here:) )
The next thing is Themes. There are 1000’s of free themes out there for wordpress. They will make your site look just about any way you want it to look. There are paid themes also. These are much more configurable than the free ones in most cases. I use one called Thesis on podcastingtechcoach.com. It costs about $70 and it very customizable. You don’t HAVE to pay for a theme if you can find one you like in the free themes area. To check out the themes go to your dashboard in wordpress hit appearance and then Themes and “Install Themes”. You will get a search box and a whole lot of options to find the theme you are looking for. You can install one from there. Another word of caution, some themes will cause issues with your podcast feeds and on site players. It’s not common, but can happen.
A word about Media hosting:
Yes, you CAN just upload your mp3 to a folder on your website hosting account and it will work….. UNTIL you get popular. Once that happens, your website will be competing with media downloads and will become VERY slow on these cheap shared hosting plans. The hosting plans are great for a website / wordpress blog but were never meant to host large files for download. This is where you need a dedicated media hosting account. Yes, it is another expense, but if you want your podcast to become popular this is something that can not be overlooked. There are 3 companies that will work just fine for this. Blubrry.com (disclaimer: I work for Rawvoice, the parrent company of Blubrry), Libsyn.com and Amazon. There are advantages and disadvantages of each of these.
In a nutshell, the cheapest over time is Libsyn. As far as how easy it is to deal with, It’s the 2nd easiest. With libsyn you have to upload your podcast files using FTP or from their website. Then you have to remember the URL to your podcast media and paste that into the podcast episode box in your wordpress post.
The hardest one to deal with is Amazon. I don’t know very many podcasters that use this. It’s best left to the tech savvy geeks out there.
The easiest one is Blubrry. Since, if you are following my advice, you will be using the powerpress plugin on wordpress, blubrry hosting is integrated with the powerpress plugin and gives you the ability to upload right from your wordpress post. Blubrry also has stats that you can configure from within your wordpress dashboard. This will give you the download stats right within wordpress. The disadvantage is the monthly cost is a bit more then Libsyn.
One final thing. DON’T BE SO PICKY!!! Yes, a nice looking website is great, but know when good enough is good enough. Trust me, it’s way more important what your audio or video content is then it is that the player looks EXACTLY like you want it, or that EVERY episode is shown on one page. The way the player looks or whether the download link is below, beside or on top of the web player matters very little. The VAST majority of your listeners are going to be listening via the RSS Feed by downloading the file and using it somewhere else. Your website will be 20% or less of users. It’s much more important that you website works then how it looks. I would almost say that your content should be fancy and the website should not. The best way is to make a functional website look good then a fancy website that doesn’t work so good.
This will get you started. Next week we will go in and configure wordpress and powerpress so you can upload the first episode you recorded last week.
Thanks for listening!
If you have any questions or comments, email me mike@mikedell.com or call the voicemail hotline at 702-757-1104 and I may include your question on the show.
