How to Create Your Own Podcast

Ok This is the really fast and dirty guide to Podcasting, mainly because I have a ton of other things to do, so if anything is missed out or such.. no emails about it please lol. Just take what is good and throw the rest in the garbage.. Following this below will get you up and running without you having to fork out money on some extensive course, or spend countless hours in a forum asking questions.

Once you have followed this you should be able to have your own podcast with intro and outro music, a feed you can distribute to directories including itunes, and a understanding of podcast readers

What you will need

- Webhost / Blog ( Hostgator or similar )
- Recording Software / Converting to MP3 ( Total Web Audio )
- Microphone ( $30 , nothing fancy )
- Mixing Software ( Mixcraft you can use free version )
- Editing Software ( Sound forge or Free Audacity )
- Intro and Outro Music ( no copyright stuff or someone will come by your house to spank your bum)
- podpress ( free )

Optional if You plan to do Interview style podcasts

- Skype
- Hotrecorder or something similar to record your phone call from skype

Steps

Ok, Setup up your mic, make sure its all working by doing a quick test with your windows recorder, next load up your recording software. I prefer to use Josh Andersons software called Audio Recorder Optimizer which is part of his Total Audio Web Package ( Killer Deal and a must have )

Ok once loaded up, usually i have it set to 44hz 16bits and it records in wav format, Have a topic or a theme your going to talk about, even type out what your going to say if it helps, or at least have a few points that you can go through.. whatever.. You really want to try and keep your podcasts fairly short, as most people have a short attention span plus if your podcast is long you will end up with a long file, and each time people listen, that is a lot of bandwidth being used.. I.e. 5mb file listened to by 10 people will be 25mb bandwidth used. Anway you get the idea.

Now there are places you can host your mp3 files on for free, instead of using your webhost. There are places like http://www.ourmedia.org/ which give you free space and bandwidth but you will need a free account at http://www.archive.org/index.php. Now there are other places out there such as shockpod and switchpod, the list goes on.. just google for free podcast hosting or do a search in the podcast directories. Personally I stick with my own host as then I can keep tabs on technical things if things go haywire.

Ok once you have your podcast file in WAV format, you can either convert that to mp3 and just use that with no intro or outro music or you can take it and use the same software from josh called Audio Recorder Optimizer, load up that wav file and select 22050Hz and 24bit ( good all round setting ) and have the software convert it to MP3.. how well does this work? well your wav file might be like 200mb but josh software will make it like 2 or 3mb.. its pretty cool.

Ok.. Now if you want to add intro and outro music you need to get some, dont whatever you do rip something from a favourite cd, as you might end up in trouble, there are plenty of free places out there for music you can use. You can get it professionally done by www.audiobag.com I have used their services and its very high quality and fast turn around time, plus this way you get more of a radio professional feel vs just a 30 second music intro.

So where can you get music intros and outros?..http://www.magnatune.com/ then there is http://www.frontandbackmusic.com/ by mike stewart or http://music.podshow.com/ just make sure its about 30 seconds and dont worry about having it cut off you can blend it in with mixcraft. Now your going to bring in your podcast file and your intro and outro file into mixcraft.. watch this
http://www.audioadmaker.com/tutorials/mixcraft.html ( mike shows you how here )

You basically just position it all where you want and then at the ends of the intro music and the start of the outro music you fade it using the method shown in the above video. Once done you save it as a MP3 or as a WAV and then you can take it into josh software and change it to MP3 using settings above.

Anyway you will end up now with 1 MP3 which has a nice intro – podcast – Outro Ready to go up on to your website.

Now in theory you could just upload it and then link to it from your blog or regular website and people could listen and download it.. BUT.. that really aint a podcast.. you want a way of distributing it.. using an RSS FEED and a way of TRACKING to see how listens via web, via download, via itunes and who is subscribing to it.. otherwise its pointless really.

Anyway.. Next thing is to make sure you have PODPRESS PLUGIN installed on your BLOG ( wordpress ).. this plugin is incredible and its FREE it does so much for you.. You can get it here at http://www.mightyseek.com/podpress/ right now its version 4.8. All the installation instructions are in the zip file and on the site.. Plus once you get it installed which basically all you do is upload the PODPRESS folder from the zip into your /wp-content/ folder and then activate it in your wordpress ADMIN under PLUGINS.. After that you can customize it and set up the settings.. You can see how to do that here

http://www.mightyseek.com/podpress-tutorial/

They also have a forum if you get stuck, but it really is very easy to use, it comes with a way for you to TRACK who listens, downloads and subscribes to your MP3 plus lets you use external stats like http://www.podtrac.com/.. where all you do is setup an account. tell podtrac your blog and feed which in my case would be http://www.affiliatebusinessadvisor.com/blog/feed unless I used FEEDBURNER which for this blog I dont. Then once an account is setup with podtrac ( optional as you can still track using podpress own stats ) you then just continue setting up your podpress settings and podpress inserts the podtrac code automatically in front of your MP3.. WALA.. cant get easier than that!.

Ok be sure to create a folder in your blog for your podcast mp3s to go in.. so for mine its
http://www.affiliatebusinessadvisor.com/blog/podcasts/

Ok at this point you should have

- Your MP3 Podcast
- Podpress installed and setup
- MP3 Uploaded into a folder called podcasts or whatever.

Next you just create a post and to let it know where you want your podcast to display all of which is shown on the site how to do that.

then below the post is a button that says ADD MEDIA FILE click that.. it will ask you for the location of your file.. type in the complete address to it. so your full domain URL www.whatever.com/blog/podcasts/whatever.mp3 then select the type MP3 and it will detect the size .. then just hit PUBLISH..

Go view your blog post you should see now a PLAYER which people can listen to, and a download link plus popup if they want to open it in popup.

Ok in theory you are now done.. BUT if you want to get it out there you will want to submit your BLOG FEED to directories like podcastalley.com, http://podcast411.com/page3.html, ipodder, podcast pickle, itunes and well again do a search on google.. there are tons. You only need to do it once then your new podcasts will be picked up by these directories as you do your new ones..

To submit to itunes you will have to put a credit card on file.. dont ask me why… but I had too. they dont charge you.

Nice thing about podpress is it puts all the code needed for itunes in your rss feed where if you didnt use podpress you would have to do all that.. and well its a pain in the butt. So thank you podpress.

Now… people can subscribe to your podpress using podcast readers, like
ipodder, juice, Ziepod or itunes.. loads more out there.. do a search.. you basically just put the completel RSS URL INto the program and hit go.. and it subscribes you to it.. then each time new ones come out you get them.

- Podcast Interviews

Now a great way to create good podcasts is to interview someone, or chat with someone you can do this via skype to skype or skype to landline phone and then use software to record the call which you can then convert to wav or mp3.

I use Skype and Hotrecorder from www.hotrecorder.com but you can use gizmoproject.com, wiretap pro for mac, totalrecorder from highcriteria.com, deepcom.com, programo.com or http://www.pamela-systems.com/.. that is tons for you.

Hotrecorder comes with its own conversion program which lets you convert to mp3, wav or ogg vorbis.. i usually do it to wav then use josh software to convert to mp3 as it gives you more control over the output and size.

THATS IT!!.. End Result is like what you see below.. I hope that helps you.. I know its a quick explanation but heck the main thing is it gets you on the right track.. be sure to use podcastalley they have some great people there who can answer tons of questions. Peace!

Below is Quick 12 minute Podcast

[display_podcast]