There are countless examples among the podcasts already in existence. Podcasts. com lists podcasts by categories, which include comedy, news, health, sports, music and politics. Some examples include Mugglecast, which covers “Harry Potter” novels and films; The Word Nerds, who discuss the etymologies of words and other linguistic matters; Fantasy Football Minute, a podcast to help all fantasy football coaches and general managers; and NPR Science Friday, a podcast version of the weekly show broadcast on local public radio affiliates, just to get your mind rolling. [1] X Research source Listen to some of the more popular podcasts to get a feel for style and content. Draft up an outline to keep the awkward pauses at a minimum. If you’re going to be doing interviews with your pets, this will be something you probably want scripted. [2] X Research source
Don’t rely on the standard (and iffy at best) microphone your PC came with if you want to sound as professional as possible. You’ll want a full headset with a noise-canceling mic to be positive your listeners aren’t getting distracted by the sound of your air conditioner in the corner. [2] X Research source For affordable voice recording, a unidirectional, dynamic-type microphone is good. Radioshack sells inexpensive ones and you’ll also find a good selection of higher quality mikes at most music stores. Is your podcast going to be portable or will you record at home? Maybe you want to podcast using your smartphone or tablet (Android, iOS). But the basics you’ll need are a microphone and voice recording podcast software. You’ll only need a mixer if you have multiple inputs. Smaller units with around four inputs will suit all but the most ambitious podcasts.
Industrial Audio Software’s aptly named iPodcast Producer is super podcast friendly. It takes care of the whole process from recording to uploading the finished product via a built-in FTP client. However, it’s just about the opposite of free. [2] X Research source Audacity (is free!) has an easy learning curve and there are Windows, Mac, and Linux versions available. It has a number of useful features and plug-ins. [3] X Research source If this is more than you bargained for, Sound Recorder (on Windows) does everything you need it to do, but only saves files in . wav format; you will still have to convert your final recording into an . mp3 file. MusicMatch Jukebox can also do this for you. If you go with Adobe Audition, you can get a monthly subscription through the Adobe Cloud that offers the entire Adobe site (with lower costs for students). Additionally, Lynda. com has an excellent video tutorial (about 5 hours or so worth) on everything Adobe (and lots of other technologies, too) that you can access with a month to month subscription that you can terminate at anytime.
Whatever it is, make sure you enjoy it. You probably won’t become rich from this endeavor. Spend your time discussing or promoting something you really care about; the reward will be in feeding your knowledge/humor/music to others.
You can have the perfect podcast delivered, but sometimes technical glitches run the show, ruining all your hard work. Before you begin the actual recording session, take a few samples to test the software, mess with the volume controls, and just plain make sure everything is functioning. [2] X Research source
Do not use special characters (such as # or % or ?) in the file name. Open it up into your sound editor and edit out extra background noise or long periods of silence. Put in intro/outro music if you’d like. Of course, you can always save it as a WAV file first, to give you a master backup to work from if something were to go wrong.
Be careful to name the audio file so that the name of the podcast and the date of the episode are clear. You may also want to edit the ID3 tags of the MP3 file to help people find and catalogue your podcasts.
Be careful to name the audio file so that the name of the podcast and the date of the episode are clear. You may also want to edit the ID3 tags of the MP3 file to help people find and catalogue your podcasts.
The easiest way to do it is to use a blog. So hop on over to Blogger. com, Wordpress. com, or another blogging service, and start a blog with the title of your podcast. Don’t make any posts just yet. If your host has limits on the amount of bandwidth you can use, you could incur overage charges if your podcast becomes very popular (fingers crossed!). A feed acts like a “container” for the MP3 file that tells feed aggregator programs where to get new episodes. It can be done manually with some XML coding. It’s similar to HTML. You can copy another RSS file and use the template to make your necessary modifications.
Go to one of the hosts you can find online and sign-up there (this may take a while). Then go to your files, and upload your MP3 file. Make a post on your blog/website – the title of the post should be the title of that episode of the podcast, and the content will end up as the “Show notes” or the “Description. " Put in a little about what you talk about in your episode. At the end of the post, put a link directly to your media file.
Go to one of the hosts you can find online and sign-up there (this may take a while). Then go to your files, and upload your MP3 file. Make a post on your blog/website – the title of the post should be the title of that episode of the podcast, and the content will end up as the “Show notes” or the “Description. " Put in a little about what you talk about in your episode. At the end of the post, put a link directly to your media file.
In case you were thinking it, podcasts cannot be sold in the iTunes store.
Be sure you’re not bombarding the listener with commercial after commercial. If your podcast is relatively short, a listener isn’t going to want to hear three commercials in that small time frame. Especially at the beginning.
Think about banner and sidebar ads. The latter has a bit more impact because it’s longer and you can’t scroll away from it. As a result, it has a higher click-through rate. [4] X Research source
