Podcasting Tutorial - Video 4: Web and Media Hosting Video Lecture | Become an Expert at Podcasting - Career Development

hey what's up it's Pat again and welcome
to video 4 of this podcasting tutorial
at this point you should have your mp3
file already exported and tagged and
ready to go so what do you do with it
where do you put it that's what we're
going to talk about in this video so let
me go ahead and draw something for you
on the whiteboard ok so to help you
understand how this whole podcasting
thing works why we need to host our
media files on a server outside of our
own website server and basically how to
take that mp3 file we just created in
that last video and syndicated to all
the different places we need to
syndicated to I'm gonna draw this
helpful diagram it's hopefully gonna
help you understand exactly how all this
works and it starts with your website so
you need some sort of web presence in
order to serve a podcast and let's just
imagine this is your website here you
can maybe you already have a website
maybe not if not then I'm gonna show you
some of your different options in just a
second now on your website you might
have things like blog posts you might
have pages of some kind or multiple
pages of different things and of course
now that we're adding a podcast onto
your site you're gonna have podcast
episodes and I'll represent that with
this little player button here which
I'll reference in just a second now of
course you have a website you need to
host that website somewhere some web
host of some kind and this is where the
data is stored that serves your website
now there's different options for your
web host you can go the free option
which is with services like
wordpress.com blogger calm tumbler calm
those are places you can go for two free
freely create web sites where you can
host your podcast for free that's that's
awesome
now there's also the popular place like
blog talk radio and other similar sites
which provide the website for you where
you can host your show so blog talk
radio and also that's good for
syndicating a lot of your content too
since they're connected to all those
things already and of course there's a
self-hosted option where you're paying a
small fee every month to where you're
paying a small fee every month to host
your own website basically so let me go
through each of these
options really quick and the pros and
cons of each now the pro for going the
free route is obviously it's free but
that's basically the only good thing
about it because you actually give up a
lot of control by going the free route
you give a blot of control over the
design and look of your website the feel
of it the first impression that people
have when they go to your site because
when you're when you have your podcast
you're telling people on your podcast to
come back to your website and if you
give up a lot of control of which
website look the light looks like that's
just that's just bad I mean for
WordPress to com.com specifically you
know you also give up the option to
include advertisements on your site to
make money through affiliate marketing
so you know really all that all those
reasons I wouldn't use wordpress.com or
any sort of the free options out there
now there's BlogTalkRadio which is great
like I said because it's pretty much
just plug-and-play you just take your
mp3 file and you you know you host it on
BlogTalkRadio they have the website
already there for you is everything set
up but there's a couple things here also
where you're giving up control one your
content they're gonna add buff or you
know what they call buffers in front and
behind your content little branding
things maybe advertisements so
potentially before even people listen to
your content for the first time they're
gonna hear some advertisements and blog
talk radio branding stuff which is not a
good thing you want to control exactly
what people listen to also the website
that your show is hosted on I mean the
only thing you can control on that it's
pretty much your icon or your little
artwork that that you know represents
your show and that's it everything else
on the website is blog talk radio's and
for that reason you know I wouldn't use
blog talk radio as well I would
definitely go the self-hosted route why
because you have total control over
everything what your site looks like how
people experience it you know what goes
on it you can make money from your site
if you wanted to and also you own and
control all that content so there's no
chance of you know your site dying and
then losing everything because you have
all of it hopefully you back everything
up but for example if you were on blog
talk radio and they died you know
everything would be gone you know
everything will be gone so you want to
go to self hosted route for me I
recommend bluehost.com to set up your
website and I'll have a helpful video
for you underneath this video a link to
it it'll help you create your your
WordPress blog on your Bluehost site in
you know under five minutes really and
you use that blog that WordPress blog
on bluehost or any sort of host that you
want to I mean that's just the one I
used recommend it's really easy to set
up so if you want to go through my
affiliate link and help me out a little
bit you know you can go to
smartpassiveincome.com slash Bluehost
again you don't have to there's no
additional cost to you but I do order
Commission if you go through that and if
you do go through that thank you so much
and if you need some support even if you
don't go through that link just let me
know ask and I will do my best to help
you out
so that's your hosting options now when
it comes to your mp3 file you know we
have your mp3 file here that you just
created in your last video you know it's
awesome it's great it's ready to go we
have to put on the server somewhere now
a lot of you might think that the best
place to put it is right here on your
web host you know you have that space
already it's gonna serve you know your
text and your blog post and everything
you might as well serve your large media
files there as well well what happens
when people play your media from either
your own website or from places that
it's sitting into like iTunes it's gonna
tap into the bandwidth of your web host
so what happens the experience that
people have on your website you know
it's just gonna slow down your website
and it's gonna slow down the people have
you listening to your show and it's just
not good because sometimes you know more
likely than not many people are gonna be
listening to your mp3 file at the same
time especially right when you come out
with an episode I mean how many times
have you heard of people being featured
on places like YouTube or reddit or Digg
or you know stumble upon and then all of
a sudden their site dies because they're
getting so much traffic you know that
happened because they were getting so
much bandwidth you know the web host was
using too much bandwidth at the same
time in mp3s you know the rather large
files so they're gonna eat up a lot of
bandwidth at the same time so what do
you do you want to host your mp3 file on
a separate server that is just for the
media this is your specific media host
I'll give you specific one in a second
or some of the options at least and so
what happens here you put your mp3 file
on your media host not your web host and
so what happens is when people play your
podcast from your website it actually
plays from your media host instead of
your web host and you know iTunes will
pull from your media hosts and and and
the link for the mp3 file that comes off
your media host not your web host your
web host and your media host or separate
so hypothetically speaking you can
like a million people listening to your
show and it wouldn't affect the
bandwidth of your web host I mean it
probably would a little bit just because
you would tell people on your podcast to
come to your website and that direct
traffic would would you know suck up
some of that bandwidth but you know a
lot of people can listen to your show
and that's directly is not going to
affect the experience people have on
your website and these media hosts are
you know fine tuned and built to serve
medias a mediafiles so they're gonna
have a better experience as well so what
are some specific different media hosts
that you can choose from well there is
of course the famous Amazon s3 which a
lot of people use but you know I don't
like using that because I've gotten
surprised by some really large bills
they charge per I think per gig and it's
like I don't even know the prices like
point zero zero one eight cents per gig
but you know that adds up and the more
people you have listening the more money
you're gonna pay I mean that's a good
problem to have you know when you have a
lot of people listening but you never
know I mean you could hit be hit with a
rather large bill not even know it I use
libsyn Li b sy n dot-com and they have
flat fees and I'll go over to that
website in a second when I show you how
I use it but you know I pay fifteen
bucks a month there's also a $5 a month
plan but you know fifteen dollars a
month for publishing three to four
episodes a month plenty of space and I
always know what the price is gonna be
so it's more easily able to fit in my
budget or I'm a more easily able to
predict how much it's gonna cost
so libsyn calm and please use the coupon
code spi
if you're gonna go to libsyn com you'll
get a discount there libsyn so going
back to this diagram here I'm actually
gonna move this over and shrink it down
a bit because we're gonna talk about
fees a little bit I want to share sort
of how this all ties together with how
these podcast episodes are syndicated to
different places so this is sort of what
happens your website has what's called a
feed if you have a wordpress site this
happens automatically it's done for you
if you have a static site you know you
might have to do this automatically and
create your own feed but anyways your
feed has enclosed the content that you
have on your website depending on what
you set it at it might have the latest
ten posts that you've written which may
or may not include podcast episodes now
happens is the feed takes the content on
your site and structures it in a way
that makes it easier for other things to
read the content on your site so you
know for example if someone subscribes
to your feed they might read it in their
RSS readers you know someone who
subscribes to your feed with an RSS
reader well every time you update your
content it'll update in the feed and
then then it'll update in their RSS RSS
reader that's how you get someone to
subscribe and read your content
automatically without them having to
come to your site your content goes to
them same thing actually happens with
iTunes and in your podcast now with
iTunes specifically it reads your feed
and checks every single post that you
have to see if there's an enclosed mp3
file on there and I'll show you how to
do that in a later video but it's really
simple it just looks to see if there's
an mp3 file on it if there is it's gonna
update the directory in iTunes with that
particular show and it's gonna know to
include that information on the show
name the show title and all that stuff
because it knows what's in this file as
the tag the tag that we set up earlier
in the last video same thing with
stitcher and other podcasting
directories you know stitcher blackberry
Zune again they all read your feed
you're not actually uploading files to
iTunes or stitcher you know that's why
it's so cool and so automatic and after
you set this up the first time all you
have to do is keep pumping content onto
your site and every time you know your
feet updates with something with an mp3
file it knows to update everything where
you've already syndicated your podcast
episode and your blog posts so really
that's exactly how all this works and in
the next video we're gonna talk
specifically about how to set up your
feed that's in video number five but for
the rest of video four since we're
talking about hosting we're gonna talk
about media host again specifically with
libsyn dot-com and again coupon code
espy I to get a discount there so let's
go ahead and go over to libsyn comm I'll
show you how it's set up and I'm
actually gonna upload episode or
actually session 49 of the smart passive
income podcast for you and show you the
link to that that is given to us
afterwards which we're gonna put on our
blog which is gonna be read by our feed
and read by every place that is a
ready syndicating my podcast so let's go
ahead and go to libsyn comm okay so here
we are at libsyn calm that's li b sy n
calm before i log in and show you how i
upload episode 49 i'm gonna go to plans
and pricing really quick and just show
you some of the options you know you can
get 50 megabytes per month for five
bucks a month I'm on this plan here the
classic 250 for 15 bucks a month that's
plenty for the number of episodes I do I
mean typically most of the episodes I do
are between 50 and 70 megabytes in size
so you know three to four episodes a
month which is my frequency typically
usually less actually is you know the
classic 250 is plenty and I love this
because it's a flat fee there's no
contract I can go up and down in plans
at any time if I need to and it's great
and what happens is at the end of every
month that whatever I uploaded within
that month clears out of that 250 and I
get a brand-new 250 to work with it's
almost like a cellphone plan I guess now
I'm going to log in and before I get to
uploading an episode I wanted to share
one more thing I love about lips in it
you know it does pretty good at keeping
track of stats so on the dashboard here
I can see I get a snapshot I've all-time
downloads you know 2.15 Million number
of downloads for the last couple months
if I go to statistics it'll actually
show me some more information
you know nice little graph here but
below I can I can get data for every
single episode so I can see within the
last three months how many people have
downloaded each episode I could see a
total you know check out this one SPI 0
4 6
it's episode 46 that what's downloaded
about 60,000 times compared to the few
before that which aren't even close to
that I mean that's a very popular
episode you should listen to it if you
want to but then it'll get some more
data down here like countries regions
and things like that obviously here you
can see United States one point three
six million makes up most of my
listeners now I'm going to return a
dashboard and go through the process
just like I am uploading an episode
which I actually am doing I'm uploading
episode 49 for you so what I'm gonna do
is I'm gonna go to publish and I'm not
going to publish a new podcast episode
you know they have their own sort of
podcast marketplace here where you can
share your
you know you can create titles and
descriptions and stuff but you know I'm
basically just using libsyn for serving
my file for hosting my file that's it
just for storage so I'm just gonna go
click on this button here file for
download only then I'm gonna go to my
hard drive and there's SPI 0 for 9 mp3
right there and then it's in queue right
now a lot of pain dismiss take I thought
it was uploading already and then I go
and check and I hadn't even started yet
you have to click publish so that's what
I'm gonna do right now it's gonna take
about five minutes so I'm gonna fast
forward it time for you but you'll see a
little progress bar show up here at the
top and it'll tell you when it's done
alright and that's it so that file is
now uploaded onto Lib sins server our
media host and you can actually press
this play button here to preview the
file and make sure it's the right file
make sure it sounds right and just check
it out just for a second alright cool
that works
it's session 49 I know because I said 49
at the beginning of the show and the
most important thing here is this link
this direct download URL this link right
here this is the link that you're going
to include in your blog post or your
podcast episodes that you publish on
your blog this is the one that's gonna
be read by the feed the one that's gonna
be picked up by every place that's
syndicated iTunes everywhere else that's
the most important thing so write that
down I have it you know it's the same
every time it just changes the numbers
so I just copy paste for the previous
podcast episode but when you're starting
out make sure you copy paste that
exactly how it is cuz you're gonna need
that don't worry about this permalink
URL or enclosure files or anything like
that you want this file name here all
the way from them getting all the way to
the end where it says dot mp3 and that's
it so congratulations you've uploaded
your mp3 file to your media host and in
the next video we're gonna go over feeds
and how to set that up properly and then
we get to submit to iTunes and then all
the other places we're gonna syndicate
to so well done for getting to this
point
we're almost there but we still have
some important things to go over so just
keep going you know if you've gone
through all these videos straight since
the beginning you know take a break go
on a walk a drink of water come back and
we'll finish up