Free iPhone App For Your Podcast

Today I have a few ways you can try to monetize your podcast. One (which costs you nothing) is to have Wizzard Media create an iphone app for your podcast. They sell it for $1.99 and you get a portion of the price. They take the rest (as they should they built the app, handle the credit card payment, submit it to iTunes, etc). I have not promoted that I have an iphone app, and people are already sending comments through the app. If you would like an app made for your podcast check out http://www.wizzardsoftware.com/proapp/

Publish Your Blog/Podcast on Kindle

I (With a lot of help from my lsiteners) recently got a Kindle (ebook reader from Amazon). One of the things Kindle can do is subscribe to blogs (it has built in wi-fi). I haven’t quite firgure out how to do this, but I do see where you can take yoru podcast/blog and list it in the Kindle store ($1.99) and you get a portion of the price (30% with amazon keeping 70% becuase they are, well, amazon). Here are the details about publishing for the kindle.

Listener’s Standard of “Poor Audio Quality”

Bob listens to podcasts in headphones. He mentioned that the Teacher Podcast has a tone of background noise. I found this surprising as Dr. Kathy King produces this pdocast (and while I’ve never mer her, she runs in the same circles as I have). When I went to listen to the podcast I didn’t think it was that bad, but I can see if you were listneing in a quiet room through headphones you could pick up on many subtlties. These include:

I can hear the co-host breathing.
Lots of “room noise” (probably using a condensor mic and being more than 6 inches away from the mic).
A definite difference in tone from the begining to another “Segment” (maybe recorded at a different time – you should make notes so your equipment is always set up exactly the same).

Here is what Bob had to say:

”

For example I keep trying to listing to the Teachers’ Podcast (http://teacherspodcast.org/) but the background noise is so distracting, especially when wearing headphones, that I have to push the stop button. In one episode, while wearing headphones, the background noise was so noticeable, I thought it was something happening in my office.

I can understand in some situations, background noise is hard to control such as an instructor capturing a lecture or a desired part of the podcast with a dog backing in the background to give a more homely feel. It’s the distracting sounds the send me to the stop button.

I don’t podcast myself at this time as most of my effort is supporting faculty in lecture capture and coursecasting, trying to direct them to produce the best sounding recording possible. I’m a firm believer in a good quality recording of a lecture or presentation provides a positive learning experience for the student.”

Today I go through some numbers to give you an informed idea if you want to use “donations” as your primary form of having the podcast pay for itself. Last month I urged listeners to help me celbrate my 45th birthday and chip in on a Kindle from Amazon.com I used a service at chipin.com to show the progress. I was shooting for $300 and I got $170 Please note I am not complaining. I love the Kindle and becuase of my listeners I could afford one. I’m just a stat freak and took notes during the whole thing.

Here are some stats:

I promoted this on many of my podcasts including Building a Better Dave, Weekly Web Tools, Logical Weight Loss, and the Musicians Cooler and in February I had around 9,505 downloads. 53% of that was the Logical Weight Loss podcast. The School of Podcasting represented 26%. 14% was from the Musicians Cooler. Weekly Web Tools accounted for 523 downloads, and building a better Dave had 128 listeners for the one episode I put out.

Who looked at the site to possibly donate?

Logical Weight Loss represented 81% of the clicks
School of Podcasting sent 9%
Twitter represented 8% of the clicks
Building a Better Dave represented 2% of the clicks

When you look at all the downloads and divide it by the number of people who actually donated it turns out to be .24% (not 2.4 that’s .24). So if you had 1000 people, and you wanted them to donate $1, you would end up with $240.  Does donations represent audience connection? Would love your feedback on that. It’s not fair in some ways. Times are tough, and there are much better things to donate to (Haiti, New Orleans, etc).

Playing in Traffic Part II

I tried to start a podcast with tie in from magazines to feed me content. In the end they didn’t jump in. I started the Jillian Michaels Podcast becuase she is very famous. She used to have a radio program that people were looking for, and I am filling that gap. I am still passionate about that topic (health, Jillian Michaels), and the other thing I like about Jillian is she has many products (all available with an affiliate program).

There is more than one way to record a phone call without expensive equipment or a skype out account. Today I explain that if your cell phone has a headphone (ear buds) jack. You can purchase a cord that goes from 1/8″ jack to 1/4″ jack and plug it into your mixer. This also gives you the ability to add some bass, treble, and adjust the volume control of the person.

So how can you record a phone call for your podcast? Well if you have a phone with a headphone/headset jacks (and most phones do today, even if its not an iphone or a droid, etc). In this case I purchased a 1/8″ stereo y Cable to RCA (which in theory could go into the TAPE IN jack of the mixer). But I purchased a RCA to 1/4″ adapter so I can plug in into the mixer so I can adjust the tone, pan, etc  in addition to the volume.

FREE PODCASTING WEBINAR
WHEN: Tuesday February 23rd  at 9:30 PM EST
HOW?: Sign up at www.schoolofpodcasting.com/webinars and you will receive directions to a website where we can all discuss via chat window and live talking (via microphone, and potentially phone), and you can ask any questions you want. Last week we had fellow podcast consultant Ray “The produce picker” (http://thepodcastersstudio.com/)

SPECIAL THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO IS HELPING WITH THE FEBRUARY FUND RAISER

To help contribute go to www.schoolofpodcasting.com/birthday

Linda Pearson
David Nixon
Cathy Henderson
Shaun Collier
Carol Miller
CARRIE JACOBS
Robert Fishbune
Gregory adams
Nichole Stockdale
Amy Chastain
Marie Dimitriadis
Sallie Goetsch
Kathryn Plessing
Dwayne Martin
Querida Long
Mary Susan Leoniy

This is show 209 originating from www.schoolofpodcasting.com

The good news about Wordpress is it is free, and it is being developed on a constant basis. You get new features like the ability to search for plugins, upgrade automatically, etc. The bad news is sometimes they add new features that don’t agree with old plugins.

A plugin is like the air conditioning on a car. The car is basic. The air conditioning makes it better. However an air conditioning unit from a 2009 model car may not work with the 2010 version of the car. Likewise, some times the plugins don’t work when Wordpress is upgraded. So what do you do?

Well you will get an error that shows (yourwebsites/wp-content/plugins ……) has an (error) on line (line number) Unless you are a coder, you are out of luck. In the past you had to use an FTP program to get into the “Back stage” area of your blog/podcast to delete/add files. I use www.coreftp.com

Now (one of the new features in Wordpress) is the ability to delete a plugin from the Dashboard of wordpress. UNder appearance there is a “plugins” section. Find the plugin you are having an issue, deactivate it (if its activated) and then you can choose the “delete” option. It will ask you if you are sure, and when you confirm the deletion it is deleted. Now go back and check the “front” of your website and see if the front page comes back. If you have other bad plugins, they may now cause an error. If they do, delete them.

This is not a typical issue, but it does happen every now and then when the person who develops the plugin does not update it to work with the new version of Wordpress.

The worst case of this for me happened when I used semiologic (a theme creation tool) which later turned into a tool you had to “renew” (to the tune of $300) every year. When I quit using it, the plugins eventually become obsolete and caused issues.  If you are looking for a tool to create or customize a theme I recommend the Thesis Theme (although you need to be somewhat geeky) or artisteer.

This show was produced, recorded and published in 27 minutes.

As I have mentioned in the past, the easiest way to get a podcast up and running is to use Wordpress. This way when you update your website, you update your RSS feed, which updates your iTunes, etc.

I’m not sure if this has always been the case, but as I’ve set up a few new podcasts, I have noticed that the default setting under privacy is to have your website visible to the public, but BLOCKED by search engines. Obviously you want to set this so that search engines CAN find your website.

You can check these setting by going to Settings > Privacy in Wordpress. If you are looking for a web host where you can install Wordpress in about 7 mouse clicks, I suggest Host Gator

No Wave Out Recording on A Laptop

In the past Iv’e talked about the different styles of record and producing a podcast. One is to record the voices first and mix in the music later (which is how this podcast is produced). This gives you exact control over volumes, fade ins, fade outs. The bad news is there is a “compiling” step where you put it all together. For this podcast it takes about 5 minutes.  The other way is to record “live” where you mix in the sound effects, music, as you go. The bad news is if you mess up, or your volume settings are wrong, you either leave it, or in some cases go back and start from the beginning (in some cases you can go back and edit it out).  There is no compiling time, but you do have to make sure your volumes are set before hitting record.

Well I wanted to record podcasts on my lunch at my job using my laptop. Tim Dewey from the Sled Dog Podcast told me a while ago that manufacturers had been pressured into taking away the ability to record what is known as the “wave out mix.” In normal English, the Wave out mix is whatever you hear coming out of your speakers you can record. This is what podproducer.net uses (my favorite “live” recoding software). In a nutshell without the ability to record the wave out mix on a laptop, you can’t use Podproducer. The only option I have now is to send the output out of my headphones into a portable recorder like the Zoom H2, or H4 and use podproducer to play all the music, etc. Then I have to transfer the file from the recorder to the computer, tag it and upload it.  As the intent was to save time, this doesn’t really cut it. I just wanted to let you know that if you plan on using a laptop as your main recording device, you are probably going to have to use Audacity, mixcraft, Sony music studio music studio to assemble your podcast.

Help Dave celebrate his birthday at www.schoolofpodcasting.com/birthday

I was chatting on Catherine Kames www.myspace.com/goosenotchicken and she had given up on trying to create a podcast. Where did she get hung up? Creating the RSS feed. Catherine is getting hung up on the same part that most people get hung up on (so don’t feel bad). The good news is there is an easy solution.

Well the easiest way to create an RSS feed is to use Wordpress. It’s free, and if you order hosting on a service like Host Gator, you can have this free software installed in minutes (tutorials available at the school of podcasting). Once Wordpress is installed, if you have the skills to use a word processor as well as copy and paste – YOU can create a podcast.

Listener Email

Ustream.tv question

Michael at says, “I enjoyed your podcast. One of the few that I listened to all the way through.

I think that broadcasting through Ustream is the way to go. Just wanted to ask why you wanted to record the live show on something other than Ustream. They also have a record button so you wouldn’t have to run the other program. Maybe their record quality isn’t good enough, but since you didn’t mention recording or not recording using Ustream’s record feature I wasn’t sure.”

Here is a question from Mike:

Michael Britt here from The Psych Files podcast.  Just wanted to let you know that I love your School of Podcasting podcast and have for a long time.  I’ve been podcasting for almost 3 years and people sometimes
contact me and ask questions about podcasting.  Finally I decided to create a map that contains information and links to various books, software, equipment, etc., that I think interested folks will find helpful.  Just wanted to let you know that I have a link to your site from this map because I feel confident that you would be the go-to guy if
someone wanted to start or build their podcast.  Here’s the link:

http://www.thepsychfiles.com/how-to-blog-or-podcast/

You don’t have to put this link on your site (I’m not asking for a link back or anything).  I just wanted to let you know that I think you’re doing great work and I’m happy to send people your way.

Take care,

Michael

What Makes You Unsubscribe?
Maurice from the Netherlands (www.intralog.nl) states that with some podcasts, when you first find them they are great. However, years later the show just doesn’t “do it for you” like they did when you first found them.

Podcasting News
Podcast Pickle is closing (most of it) at the end of January. More information Are podcasting message boards a thing of the past? One way to make a “mini board” is to install the “subscribe to comments” plugin for wordpress and now people can be notified when a new comment is posted. For more information check out the plugin’s website

My Birthday is Next Week

I’m trying to raise money to buy a kindle (which I would use to read books and get more content for podcasts). Any funds will help.

Every time I hear “Talkshoe” or “Blog Talk Radio” I know the following show is going to have awful quality in terms of audio production. The last show I listened to was “book your self solid” and I couldn’t take the scratch static in the line, the constant buzzing, etc. So I decided to see what was the difference between a blog talk radio program and one of the shows I listen to.

Blog Talk Radio uses a bit rate of 11,025. Think of this is how long a person takes to look at a picture they have to do a report on. The longer the look, the more detail they will remember. The problem is, we aren’t talking about picture, we are talking about making a representation of  your voice. So with a low sample rate, it is “garbage in.”

The sample rate of blog talk radio is 11.025 Hz and 32 kbps. I’ve described 64 kbps as “AM radio sounding” and their rate is HALF that.

A bit rate is how you describe the painting to others. This is how much time you take to describe the painting. Obvious the more time you take the more details you can reveal. Well the picture again, is your voice, and if you’ve done a good job of recording at a proper sampling rate (44.1) you can stay at a high bit rate (Like 128 kbps which is near CD quality – great for music podcasts), opt for a more “FM quality” which is 96 kbps (which is what this show is produced at ), or if you have a long show (like www.noagendashow.com) and are mainly talk you can produce your show at 64 kbps (AM Radio). Blog talk radio produces their show at a bitrate of 32kbps.