“Should I keep my podcast files on my website?”

“How can I upload my podcast to iTunes?”

These are questions I get asked a lot in both the NLCast Forums and via email. I thought I’d write an article that I can direct people to later. This article assumes you’ve already got a nice little mp3 file complete with id3 tags, album art and all. If you need pointers on recording your show, read How I Podcast.

So you’ve gone and recorded yourself a podcast. Good for you! Really! Now you know how much work they are. But how do you get this mp3 online for folks to start downloading? How do you generate a feed? How can you get this sucker on iTunes? Well, this may not be THE way to do it. But this is how I did.

Hosting

The first step is to upload your file somewhere. I suggest LibSyn because they’re cheap and give you unlimited bandwidth. And that’s the trick with podcasts… it’s not the size of the file, it’s the amount of times that file is downloaded. LibSyn doesn’t limit the amount of times your file can be downloaded. They only limit the amount of data you can upload each month. For $5 a month you get 100MB of space. That’s enough for a weekly 30-minute mixed talk-music program. Before you think this is just sales pitch for LibSyn, it’s not. They are the best at what they do and I’ve been very happy. I think you will be too.

It’s important to separate your website hosting and media hosting. Again, it’s all about bandwidth. I’ve priced several ‘combo’ hosting plans that include both web and media, and they’re much more expensive than doing the separately. I host my site at GoDaddy for about $4 a month. Try to beat that anywhere.

If you need to keep your podcast free, I’d suggest MyPodcast.com. They give you unlimited uploads, unlimited bandwidth, a blog for your show notes and even software to record your podcast. I haven’t used them personally, but they seem to offer a lot for a free service. It’s free because they plug ads into your podcast. If that bothers you, pay a few bucks and go with LibSyn and GoDaddy.

Feed Generation

Once you’ve got your podcast uploaded, you’ve got to generate an RSS Feed. This feed is basically a list of all of the media available on your site. People will be able to ‘subscribe’ to your feed, (either directly with a reader or more commonly in iTunes) and will be automatically updated when new episodes of your show are available.

I use WordPress to run my website/blog. I use a WordPress plug-in called PodPress to generate my feed. Visit the PodPress site for more information and tutorials.

LibSyn will provide a small blog with every hosting plan that you can post your shows to. It automatically generates your feed for you.

Important: If you cannot afford your own domain (ie: yourpodcast.com); If you use any form of free hosting, either for your blog, feed or media hosting; do yourself a huge favor and run your feed through Feedburner! Feedburner is a great free service from Google that takes your existing feed and enhances it. It adds a lot of great features including stats. The real benefit of using Feedburner is that if you ever change your hosting plan, you’d normally your feed would change… and you lose all your subscribers. If you use Feedburner and change your hosting plan, you just change the feed that Feedburner is ‘burning’ but your Feedburner feed address never changes. Therefore you keep your subscribers. The very best thing is to ‘own’ your own feed (ie: yourpodcast.com/podcast.xml) but if you can’t, use Feedburner!

After you’ve generated your feed you need to make sure it’s valid (working). Go to Feedvalidator.org and enter your RSS Feed. If it gives you any errors, do your best to fix them. But as long as it says you have a valid feed, you’re ready to move into distributing your feed out to the masses.

Submitting to iTunes (and other places)

iTunes does not host your files, your feed or anything for that matter. They simply list your feed in their database for people to find. To submit your feed, launch iTunes and go to the Store. Click on Podcasts in the left menu. Halfway down the page find the Submit A Podcast button. Enter your RSS Feed and click continue. (Note: You will need an iTunes account to submit your feed.) Once you’re done iTunes should start listing your podcast within a week. They’ll email you and let you know.

There are literally dozens of other places to submit your feed and it wouldn’t hurt to use them all. Here’s a list of a few places I have submitted my feed to: podcastpickle.com, blubrry.com, podcastalley.com, odeo.com, digg.com.

General Feed Tips

Make sure you list your feed on your website/blog as well. It is the way most of your listeners will receive your podcast.

You don’t have to understand the feed for it is a strange creature. But protect the feed. Tread lightly on the feed. Own love feed. It is your lifeline. If you jack it up, you will lose subscribers.

If you have further questions, visit the Podcast How-To board in our forums.