How to Make Your Own Podcast

Creating, promoting, and distributing podcasts to reach millions of audiences online isn’t too difficult. Podcasts are slowly gaining popularity as a lot of bloggers turn to online radio to promote their music/messages. You can create an online podcast in 5-10 minutes. All you need is yourself, a recording device, an Internet connection, and an interesting topic to discuss!

Table of Contents

Before recording

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Determine the nature of the podcast. What will the content be? Write it down on paper so you don’t forget it. Sketch an outline or some ideas to keep in mind what to discuss/or promote.

There are countless examples of podcasts. Podcast.com lists podcasts under the following topics: humor, news, health, sports, music, and politics. Some good examples include: Mugglecast, which covers the “Harry Potter” novel and film; The Word Nerds, discussing the origin of words and many linguistic issues; Fantasy Football Minute, a podcast supporting virtual football coaches and general managers; and NPR Science Friday, the weekly local radio podcast version. ^{[1] X Research Source}
Listen to some popular podcasts for style and content inspiration. Make an outline so that you don’t stop or stumble while speaking. If you’re going to talk to pets, you need a script. ^{[2] X Research Source}

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Choose the product you use on the Podcast. Podcasts require a microphone (USB or signal), a mixer (for signal mic) or a new computer. You can choose to buy a podcast beginner package that costs about 2 million VND.

Don’t rely on your computer’s built-in standard microphone if you want to sound like a pro. You need headphones with noise-canceling mic, so the new recording is not mixed with noise. ^{[2] X Research Source} If you’re looking for affordable recording equipment, a directional, dynamic microphone is the way to go. You can find it at any music store. ^{[3] X Research Sources}
Will your podcast be portable or recorded at home? Maybe you want to podcast using your phone or tablet (Android, iOS). Basically, you need a microphone and voice recording software. You only use the mixer if you use multiple inputs. A small unit with 4 inputs suitable for most podcasters.

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Select software. If you’re on a Mac, you can record using Garageband (which comes pre-installed). There are many free software (like Audacity) and expensive software (Adobe Audition). There is also a tiered version of the software, like Sony Acid (the studio version costs only VND 1 million, while the Acid Pro version costs VND 4 million). Some mixers and microphones have free software available.

Industrial audio software called iPodcast Producer is great for podcasts. It does all the steps from recording to uploading products via FTP. However, this software is not free. ^{[2] X Research Source}
Audacity (free!) is easy to use and compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux. It has many useful functions and plug-ins. ^{[4] X Research Sources}
- Sound Recorder (on Windows) does all the work, but only saves the file in .wav format; you need to convert the file to .mp3 format using MusicMatch Jukebox software.
If you choose Adobe Audition, you can use a monthly subscription through the Adobe Cloud, which offers the entire Adobe website (at a low student price). Also, Lynda.com has a great (about 5 hours) of Adobe (and many other technologies) video tutorials that you can access with a monthly subscription, which can be terminated at any time.

Create Podcasts

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Prepare content. You need to script how the show should open, and when to move on to another story. Arrange the content in order so you can read by list.

No matter what the content is, it’s important that you like it. You won’t get rich because of this. So, take the time to discuss and promote what you really care about, the main reward is sharing your knowledge/humor/music with everyone.

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Audio recording for podcasts. This is the most important step, without your voice the podcast cannot exist. Speak at the right pace and show passion for the subject. Read the script and don’t forget to focus on the content.

You can have perfect content, but sometimes a few technical factors ruin your whole effort. Before proceeding to record, test some software, adjust the volume to make sure everything is working properly. ^{[2] X Research Source}

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Save the audio file to the desktop. The file must be in MP3 format; bitrate (volume of data transferred in a certain period of time) 128 kbps is suitable for podcast talk, discussion; However, for music podcasts, you should choose a bitrate of 192 kbps or higher. ^{[1] X Research Source}

Do not use special characters (# or % or ?) in the name field. Open the file in an editing program to remove the noise or cut out the pauses. Add opening/ending music if desired.
You can save as a WAV format first, so you can edit it in case something goes wrong.

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Tag, add ID info (artist, album, etc) and cover art. Create your own, find free, royalty-free photos online, or ask a friend to help.

Be careful when naming audio files so that the podcast name and date are clear. You can edit an MP3 file’s ID3 tag to help people find and catalog podcasts.

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Create podcast RSS feeds. Feed must meet all industry standards of feed 2.0. Try comprehensive solutions and services like Libsyn, Cast mate or Podomatic (see external links below). For long podcasts, you may have to pay a small fee.

The easiest way to do this is to use a blog. Blogger.com, WordPress.com or another service, create a blog with your podcast name. Don’t be in a hurry to post.
- If the server is limited in bandwidth, you may have to pay extra if your podcast is viewed by a lot of people (good luck!).
Feeds are like “boxes” of MP3 files, notifying aggregators where new podcasts are available. It is done manually with XML code, similar to HTML. You can copy another RSS file and use the template to create the required message.

Post Podcasts

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Put RSS feeds on the Internet. Go to Feedburner and enter your blog’s URL and click “I am a podcaster!” (I’m a podcast user). On the next page, edit the element for the podcast. There are a number of factors that are directly related to podcasts. Your feedburner is your podcast .

Go to the server you find online and sign up for an account. Then upload the MP3 file.
Post on a blog/website — the post title should be the same as the podcast’s name, the content can be “View Notes” or “Description”. Briefly write about the content of the podcast. At the end of the post, insert a direct link to the file.

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Wait a few seconds. Feedburner will add this to your page, now you have a new post! You can submit to iTunes or some other podcast directory to share with the world.

Submitting podcasts to iTunes is pretty straightforward. The podcast page on iTunes has a big button asking for an RSS link and some info about the podcast. You can also submit podcasts through the website in the iTunes FAQ. ^{[1] X Research Source}
Plays a sound when the podcast directory is updated.
Put the subscribe button in the appropriate place on your website so people can subscribe to your podcast RSS feed.

Make money from Podcasts

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Sell podcasts. You can set up a website to charge a subscription fee for each episode. However, paid podcasts have to compete with thousands of other free podcasts. Content has to be compelling enough to convince people to pay for it, so very few podcasts make money this way. ^{[1] X Research Source}

You cannot sell podcasts on the iTunes store.

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Sell ads. If you insert commercials into the podcast, listeners can easily skip the ads when listening on a computer or MP3 player. One option is to apply for sponsorship for the podcast, or even for individual episodes of the podcast. You may need to change your title to promote your sponsor.

You need to make sure you’re not bombarding your audience with a bunch of commercials. If the podcast content is quite short, no listener will want to listen to 3 ads at once. Especially at the start.

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Use advertising website. This requires a lot of effort, because when someone subscribes to a podcast, it is downloaded directly to their RSS feed, so they probably won’t come back to the site again. The key is to link the podcast to a blog or website and mention it regularly in the podcast body. Doing this helps increase traffic to the website and hopefully generates advertising revenue. ^{[1] X Research Source}

Think billboards and advertising sidebars. The sidebar is often more effective because it is longer and when dragging the page it does not disappear, so it has a higher click-through rate. ^{[5] X Research Sources}

Advice

Make sure your site is in the directory. All Top, Digital Podcasts, All Podcasts, and Gigdial are good choices.
Make sure to select the appropriate services like FreshPodcasts (see below) after updating the podcast.
If you decide to use Audacity, download and install the LAME MP3 encoder to save your recordings in MP3 format, a format suitable for podcasts.
One of the most popular movie watching sites is Youtube. This is the perfect place to start a podcast.
If you’re going to play music, make sure you have permission to do so. While they can’t break your account for uploading music, if you don’t have permission to use certain songs, you could be sued.
If you want your RSS feed to work on Apple iTunes, you need to add a special field. Make sure your feed is valid on iTunes.
You can use the popular social bookmarking tool to create and manage RSS feeds for podcasts. After your mp3 file is stored on the internet, create a bookmark.

Warning

Make sure the podcast RSS feed is valid — especially if you write your own. Go to http://rss.scripting.com/ and enter the address where you post the RSS file to check if it is valid.
People don’t want to listen to boring or non-stop podcasts, so change and edit the script.
Some podcast users delete old podcasts. Subscribers still have the old podcast, but new subscribers only see the current podcast. So you should consider this issue.
Bandwidth consumption can be very large. So you should host podcasts on a reliable server to control bandwidth. Most cheap hosting services are inefficient.
There are many sites on the internet where you can find free music to use (as long as you’re not looking to monetize podcasts), such as the Free Music Archive, and the Creative Commons stuff.
Interesting podcast topics including sports, movies, school, friends and video games! (Here are the basic ideas)

Things you need

Microphone
Recording software
Manage and Store Podcasts
Computer and mixer (if using multiple inputs)
Webcam/recorder (if creating podcast footage)

Steps