How to Start a Podcasting in 2026

Back in September of 2018 was the last time I did an episode about how to launch a podcast. And not a lot has changed since then. It's make good episodes. And of course, episodes are made up of content and the delivery.But since then, there's been a lot of talk about video. So this episode is for the absolute beginner.So if that's not you, I'm just letting you know right now we are going to have chapters so you can skip from topic to topic, but you may not get a ton from this if you're already up and running. And I'll have these clearly linked, so if you want to just jump to the video section. But that's what we're talking about today.Hey, you've been thinking about it for years. You want to start a podcast. Well, I'm going to give you step by step what to do and what you need to think about so you don't burn out.Hit it, ladies. The school of Podcasting with Dave Jackson. Podcasting since 2005, I am your award winning hall of fame podcast coach, Dave Jackson.Thanking you so much for tuning in. If you're new to the show, this is why I help you plan, launch and grow your podcast.The website is schoolofpodcasting.com and today we are talking about how to launch your podcast. So the first thing, there are two big ones and we're going to cover the first one. Why? Why are you starting a podcast?And if your answer is, I don't know, sounds fun, that's probably not going to be enough because it's not easy. It's simple, but it's not easy.So these might be things like I want to be seen as an expert or I want to get to talk to people I normally wouldn't get to talk to. Or maybe you want to grow your influence, or maybe you want to sell more products, or maybe you're just trying to get the message out.There are other reasons, but you need to know your why. Why, Dave? Do I need to know my why? And the answer is, if you don't get your why, you quit.Unless you said, well, I want to sign up for something that's kind of frustrating and a little bit hard and takes up a lot of time because I've got a lot of free time on my hands and I'm trying to kill it. That would be a great reason to start a podcast. I'm trying to kill a lot of time. I have way too much free time. But that's number one.Which brings us to Number two, which is, who is this for? And if you go, everybody. Well, yeah, that's not a good answer.And an example might be, well, it's going to be for, you know, females who have lost their partners, you know, widows. Well, that's great.But there's still a big difference between, you know, Cheryl, who lost her husband in a car accident at the age of 46, and Mildred, who, who lost Harold at the age of 104. Right? Because you're like, hey, ladies, in this episode, we're going to talk about getting back out there.That may not work for Mildred, but who is it? And this actually makes it easier for you, because think of a podcast like a dinner. The more you know, the better the meal.Because if, you know there are vegans coming, well, then we can skip the meatloaf. And then if there's this and that. And also it makes it easier to market because you don't have to go everywhere. My people hang out here.So why am I doing this? Who is it for? Number three is, how are you going to podcast? Is this solo? Are you going to have a co host? Is it going to be interviews?Because you need to know that. Because when we get to picking the gear, that's going to be based a lot on, how are you going to podcast?The nice thing about solo shows, no scheduling conflicts. The good news of doing a co host is you have somebody to share the work. And I always say this.If you have a co host, you have to have to have the uncomfortable meeting where you say, okay, who owns the show? If money comes in, who makes what, who's going to do what? Get it as clear as possible. Who does what?So that later when you go, wait, I thought you were going to do the social media. I'm not doing the social media. So how will you podcast? Where will you podcast?And so for me, if I had to do this again, I actually moved back into the house I grew up in. And I have a neighbor who mows his lawn about every 10 minutes.And with this in mind, I should have picked the bedroom on the other side of the house. That might have helped because there are times when his lawnmower makes it into the recording. So you have children in the house.Like, try to get as far away from them. If you're going to be doing video, you have to think about the lighting. If you are, you know, you always want to consider the audio.So number four, where are you going to podcast? And if you're going to be podcasting on the move, because you travel a lot.Well, you got to get that down because that's going to help in our planning. Picking a name and this is one. Please, please go to Google when you come up. I've got the perfect name.Go search for it and make sure that another 10 podcasts don't have the name.Thinking outside the box, make sure it's easy to say, make sure it doesn't spell any funny words, and also go up to people and go, hey, I'm doing a show called Blank. What do you think it's about? And when their answer matches your content, you've got a good name. I'll have a link. This is new.Both podpage, where I'm the head of podcasting there, and Buzzsprout have name generators where you can go in, you type in what your show's about and it will give you some examples. And actually the Buzzsprout one actually checks to see if it's in use. Now, not that I wouldn't trust that, but I would still go into Google.I would go into Apple Podcast to make sure that somebody's not using that name.And if they are adding and the show is dead, meaning they haven't had an episode out in a long while, you might want to reach out to that podcast to see, hey, can I take over the name of your show and continue on? Because it would be better than starting with zero listeners.Now, granted, if it's been gone for four years, maybe not a lot of people are waiting for a new episode, but it might be something you want to do rather than add yet another podcast with the same name to Apple Podcasts. And now we get to buy something. That's right. It's hardware time. And so we're going to start off talking about audio.And so back in the day, I would recommend the ATR 2100 microphone, but they don't make it anymore. So I Recommend the Samson Q2U. It's under $100. It works both with some sort of interface like a Rodecaster or, you know, a Zoom Podtrak P4 next.But it also works as a USB. So if you're flying solo, you can buy that microphone for, let's say, $80. You plug it into your computer and you are good to go.Now, if you want to go a little higher, I'm talking into a Rode podmic usb. I love this microphone. Why? Because I like the way my voice sounds. There is no one size fits all.There's a Shure MV7 plus that is also all the Mics I like to buy are xlr, which means it can plug into some sort of interface and USB. That way you get that flexibility. So the Shure MV7, the Rode Podmic USB is. These are under. The Rode is under $200.The Shure might be just a little bit above. And then if you want to, you can go into things like the Shure SM7B and the Electro Voice RE20. And now you're looking at $400 for a microphone.And, and I'm just here to tell you there's not a huge difference between a $400 microphone and a $200 microphone. Usually the big difference is between a headset for $29 and something like the Samson Q2U. But find a microphone that you like your voice on.And so keep that in mind. And don't forget, if you are doing a show with a co host and you're in the same room, everybody gets a microphone. None of the sharing microphones.It's going to sound horrible. Everybody gets their own microphone. Look, if you're going bowling, you got to wear shoes.If you're going to do a podcast, you got to have a microphone. So that's the audio version of this. All right, so this is me talking into the Highland Lark M2S combo wireless system. Okay, that's wrong.Number one, I botched the name of the mic. And number two, I was using the built in microphone on my phone sitting on my desk. So that's a great example.When I talk about room noise, that's what I talk about. Here's the actual Hollyland Lark M2 microphone pinned to my sweater. All right, so this is me using the Hollyland.It's a wireless lavalier called the Lark M2s. And right now it is clip two, my sweater right beneath my chin. And it's not bad sounding, but I do see a lot of people do this.I'm going to go ahead and swipe this off my sweater. There we go. And now I'm holding it about, I don't know, three inches from my mouth. So now maybe my S's and T's are a little clearer.But the thing is, no matter if you're using a lavalier, which I always kind of find odd because you're like, oh, I don't want the microphone in the shot. But what are you known for? Oh, I'm a podcaster, but you don't want the microphone in the shot.It's kind of like Eddie Van Halen posing in a shot that he's like Yeah, I don't want the guitar. But anyway, Shotgun microphones and lavalier microphones will never sound as good out of the box as a dynamic microphone.Three fingers from your mouth. Now, that doesn't mean they can't sound good. It's. It just means you're like, hey, I don't want a microphone in the shot. Great.You've now added post production processing to your audio. So now I'm gonna take more of this audio and use a plugin called Droom, from Accentize and from Waves, the Schoeps Omnichannel.Unless you wanna spend thousands of dollars on a shotgun microphone. But I've owned a couple of those. Cause again, I'm like, oh, no, I'm gonna look professional. I'm not gonna have a camera in the shot.And the microphone I'm holding right now is about the size of my thumbnail. But this is an option. It's about $114. It's two microphones, and this is the easiest way to get going.Rode has a lavalier micro series that's about $100. But I like the sound of these when I first heard them. And I could easily plug it into my phone and have other person on another.So if you're recording interviews in person and you want to do a video, this is kind of the Samson Q2U version of this. It's around 100 bucks. You plug them in, you use your phone, and then it's a matter of, okay, getting the video off your phone.And we'll get into software a little later, but this is that. And I'm also going to now switch over to my Rode podmic usb.Okay, let's go back to the original way this sounded and turn all the effects, because right now this has no effects. It's just me holding it up around my mouth. And I want to have you hear, what does the road sound like without any plugins, without any effects?And so you might be saying, dave, this doesn't sound a whole lot different. I would say, well, remember, I'm holding that little lavalier microphone, not on my sweater.I had to hold it up in front of my face to kind of be less bassy. So I would have to do something to bring out the treble in that. But you also might be saying, dave, I don't hear a whole lot of difference.And I would go, yeah. I mean, obviously where I was talking into my phone's speaker. That was awful.And I thought the lavalier was a little muddy when it was tied to my sweater. But in the end if you go, there's really not that much difference. Yeah.So what's the difference between a road micro lav in the Hyl Land and the shore? And like there's a little bit, but. But you're going to be post producing this probably anyway with the audio and so you can kind of tweak it anyway.All right. And this is me back to normal on the rode podmic using some effects built into the rodecaster duo.So what I mean by that is you take your video with your audio, you split out and this is edited. Everything's done.You just need to fix the audio, you strip out the audio and you do your effects to make it a little more whatever, add a little more icing to that cake. And then you put the audio back into the video and you mute the audio that's on the video. So you have one track that's audio and video.You mute the audio on that and then you bring over the audio that you just tweaked. And in theory it should line up. It should line up perfectly. But you can see where by adding video. Here we go.We have to figure out am I going to have a microphone in the shot or not? I am a microphone in the shot guy. I just, I'm. It's Sunday.As I record this, I just walked through, Tom Brady is doing a play call of a football game or a USA football game from my friends across the pond. And he's a broadcaster. And lo and behold, he's sitting there with a headset on.And I didn't go, oh heavens to Megatron, he has a microphone in the picture. I'm so confused. No, I was like, oh yeah, he's a broadcaster, he probably has a microphone on. So now you be you, right?But for me I'm like, eh, I don't know if it's worth the hassle. I'll just keep the microphone in the shot, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So now let's get into cameras.The camera I use is called the Elgato Facecam Pro. I believe that model now has been discontinued and they have the Elgato 4K. It goes for about $199.And believe it or not, that's a good thing because it used to be about $300. So cameras have come down in price. Now if you're like, eh, you have a camera, it's on your phone and there is a great product.I hate to say this because it's for Mac people only, but you will find the more you get into the creative space, Mac just blows PC away. But there's a tool called Camo. I'll have links to this out in the show. Notes.They do have an affiliate program, so you can buy this, help support the show. And it doesn't cost you an extra dime, but it turns your phone into kind of a webcam. And you can make some really cool effects with that.And it's $49 a month, or you can buy a lifetime deal for $99. Now, if you're like, oh, Mac. Only they have another cool program called Streamlight.And what it does is it takes your monitor and turns it into a light, which I was like, wait, what? And as I look at it, it's for your Windows display. And I'm like, okay, I don't see a Mac version of this yet.Now, if you get something like the Elgato, it comes with software to let you kind of tweak things. So if you have an Elgato camera, you don't need Camo because it already comes with software.Now, if you're like, I want to go pro, you can go with a DSLR camera and the one I recommend for that. And this is where things start to get really expensive. I have a Sony. It's a ZV E10.And the fun thing about that one is I can change lenses on that and just the camera is. And it comes with a lens. $800. Holy moly.And then if you want to buy other lenses, I've seen lenses go from anywhere from, you know, $400 to just insane. Like, what, for a lens, for a piece of glass? It's crazy.And now when you start saying, I want to do a three camera shoot, and you have three $800 cameras, it can get really expensive really quick. So this is where you might want to start with your phone and camo and see if you like it.And now you'll notice that I said, I own a ZV E10, but I use the Elgato one. You. Yep. And here's the thing, and this sounds so stupid, but it is kind of like when you have a hangnail.If I want to use my Sony ZV E10 $800 camera for a webcam, I have to get out of my chair. Oh, holy cow. Are you kidding me? Yeah, I have to get out of my chair.And if I remember right, I turn the camera on, I unplug the cable, I go through the menus and say, I want to do live streaming. Then I plug the cable in and then I do the hokey pokey and I turn myself around and then I can use it.And I've had people say, well, if I had a continuous power supply to that, I could just leave it on. And I am considering that. But I just love the fact that when I want to use my Elgato, I go to a piece of software and go turn the camera on.So keep that in mind. There are always these little things that kind of prop up, but that's I do plan on, because there is a difference.I can tell when I've shot something on the Sony versus the Elgato, there's just a little more icing on that cake. And so I just need to, I don't know, get out of the chair. But that leads us to lighting. And you might think lighting is the most important thing.And I'll tell you in a minute what the most important thing is. And guess what? It's not lighting. Obviously, if you live in some place where the sun never sets, you could just do this in front of a window.But can I get away with one light? You can, but the typical basic video setup is three lights.And if you picture yourself in the middle, you have one light at 10 o', clock, one light at 2 o', clock, and then one that is somehow lighting up the background to help separate you from the background. We'll get to backgrounds in a second, but there's a great package from a company called GVM.I know a few people that have used GVM lights and they seem to like them. And it's $349. And so one shot, you're done. Now, if we compare that to the Elgato key light. Now, a key light is just. That's what they call it.It's a special name. It's a light that's kind of typically softer and it points at you.It's not like you have a big light bulb in front of you, but just one key light is $140. And so Elgato is a little bit like Apple, where you kind of pay the Apple tax. Because Elgato has a really cool device called a stream deck.I got one sitting right in front of me and it's got a bunch of buttons on it. And I can basically go in if I buy a bunch of Elgato stuff and say, ooh, turn the light up. Oh, turn it off.Oh, make it change to make me look like I'm tan. Do this, do that. And it's kind of fun. And you Go, ooh, looky. I can press a button and let there be light.However, it's based on software, which means every now and then you're like, hey, this isn't updating. Why isn't this button doing the thing? And I have found that it's slightly annoying.And I forget the first lights I bought, but they had a remote control. And there have been many a time that I'm like, going, you know, I kind of miss the days where I just go, I want to turn on the lights.And I would just grab my remote and go, boop. So keep that in mind. Again, Elgato makes great stuff, but software is going to be software.And so when I look for lights, couple of things, I look for, number one, I want it to be able to be powered by ac. Yes. Some of them let you use batteries. I guess if you had to, you could go both.I. I just know me, I hate the fact that every time I want to do anything, I got to charge the batteries first. I'd rather just plug it in the wall.And also, if it's just plugged in the wall, then you could use that woman from Amazon to probably turn on your studio. So keep that in mind. Another brand that's always cheap, but I actually bought something just because I wanted to see, well, how cheap is this stuff?Is a company called Knee Were, and they have a package for lights. Now, it's only two for $179. And so that would be okay to start.And then what you could do to get the third is just probably type in here, I'm going to do this live, newer key light. And where the other one, the Elgato, was $180. The newer key light is, as I look at this, 80 bucks.So again, that's the difference between that and remember, these are things you buy once, and you kind of want one with a stand, et cetera, et cetera. But you can obsess over your lighting.And I'm going to tell you now that when you say, no, no, I want to do video, there is something that you cannot escape, and that is you're going to spend lots an amazing amount of time obsessing over your background. You just can't get away from it. And there will come a time when you have to go, you know what? I need to eat. I need to sleep. I'm done with this.And just be okay with it, because on one hand, if there's nothing there, it looks kind of plain. And then you go, oh, maybe I'll Put a bookcase. And then you're like, oh. And then you start worrying that people are looking at what you read.And then, well, maybe I should put this figure. And maybe I just. Maybe I could. And maybe I should just get a green screen. Don't get a green screen. And then I want to do.There just comes a time when you're like, that's it. I got to get back to making content. Because you will obsess.Everyone obsesses over their background, and that's not helping your audience, because if your background is more, like, fascinating and engaging than your actual content, you got a whole different problem. But you can see there where, depending on where you're starting and where you're ending, you can spend a lot of money on video.Now, if you're just dipping your toe in the water, it's not that different. If you think about it. We said if you're just doing audio and it's a solo show, you could start with an $80 microphone and you're done.If you go, no, I want to do video, it's $80 for the microphone. But now, again, the microphone's going to be in the shot. And then I could do $49 for a year of camo and $80 for one key light.If I wanted to do it that way, that wouldn't be that bad. But if you're like, no, no, Dave, you said to have three lights. Okay, now we're back to $341.And then maybe camo with your phone, but you're like, no, no, I'm going to upgrade to the Elgato camera. Okay, that's $200. Instead of, you know, free or whatever, the one, you know, your phone. Or again, you could go up to something like an 800 DSLR.So just realize that most people that I know of, at least that do video and their studio looks amazing, did not start that way. They worked their way up. And I know what you might be thinking, wow, Dave didn't even point out that YouTube's not a podcast.No, I say that all the time. And Dave didn't point out that Audio outperforms video 15 to 1. Yeah, I say that all the time, too.So I'm just going to skip that for this and just remind people that if you don't want to do video, you do not have to do video. Not every book needs to be a movie.And if you know somebody and you feel comfortable, comfortable enough, asking them if they have YouTube and audio, ask them which one has the better completion rate, because in my travels, the best completion rate I had on my YouTube channel for the exact same content that I had as audio was 39%. And the worst completion percentage was 79 on my audio. I'm just saying, more opportunity to list. See, I'm doing that thing again. Okay, moving on.Which leads us to software. This is easy if you're on the audio side. Audacity powers a ton of podcasts. And. And it's free.I know people that make a living editing podcast, and they use Audacity. I use Hindenburg. It's somewhere between 12 and $15 a month. I love it because it's made for audio, it's made for storytelling.Where Audacity, occasionally you have to step over the stuff to make your guitar distorted, and I just don't need that. And in the future, I want to look at Adobe podcasting. I'm hearing a lot about that. And I need to revisit Alitu.That's an online tool that I hear great things about. But right now, I typically stick with Audacity and Hindenburg. What about video Dave? And here's the thing that's really surprising.In now 2026, there are two main companies that I know of, and that is Descript and Riverside. And I hear people complain about them all the time. Descript I didn't use for about three weeks. I logged back in.I didn't even understand what I was looking at. They changed their interface almost on an hourly basis. I have tried no less than three times to make a course about Descript.And by the time I get to like, lesson number four, lesson number one is outdated. It drives me bananas. Riverside started off as a remote recording tool, and.And since then, they've added this, they've added that, they've added recently, they added on hosting. I do not recommend them as a host unless you just need very basic stuff. But here's the thing.Both of them are meant to record remotely, and neither one of them does it on a super consistent basis. Now what happens is people go, this is the best thing. I wish it did this one thing.The engineers add the one thing, and they also add a bunch of bugs. And then as everybody complains about it, they fix the bugs. And then we're back to, this is the best thing ever. I just wish it did this one thing.And it repeats over and over and over and over. Now that's online stuff. That's because it's a recording tool and an editing tool.And in the case of Riverside and hosting, and we will Wash your car and do your laundry. I mean, they just keep adding more and more stuff to it. I use ECAMM Live to live stream. I could use it to record.It does work with the really cool buttons on a stream deck. But the problem is it's only Mac only there is. If you just want live streaming, EV MUX is one on.If you're on a PC that looks a little bit like that, there's streamyard. But if you're looking for I want to record and edit video. Right now it's Riverside. It is Descript.Now, because of my background in the corporate world where I did a lot of teaching, I've been using Camtasia for decades, like all the way back. So I use Camtasia to edit my videos. But recently I switched to an online video hosting editing tool called tela.If you're familiar with loom, it's kind of like Loom on steroids. And so any of the latest videos on my YouTube channel, that's. Or if you see my stuff on the podpage channel, that's all Tela.And I absolutely love it. And they are this close to having just the features I need to where I could actually cancel my Camtasia.Because camtasia is about 300 bucks a year and they always do the like, oh, you can renew and it's cheaper, but it's still not cheap. And it does a lot of stuff and it's cool. But Tela is amazing.And the thing I love about Tela is for the school of podcasting, I can embed a video and then later if I edit that video, it automatically updates in the course as well. So if you're somebody who's doing content creation, you might want to check out tela.But that's not one of those where I can highlight the text and edit the text and it changes that.Like descript does a lot of cool stuff, as does Riverside, where you highlight the text and it will take out this paragraph and it takes it out of the video. You can export as audio and video. So it does lots of stuff.I just know everybody seems to have occasionally problems with it, where all of a sudden your audio is out of sync with your mouth, so you look like a bad Godzilla movie. Or sometimes people have a hard time connecting. And for me, I've used Squadcast for years.I use it for the future of podcasting with myself and Daniel J. Lewis. We don't use the video part and I've never had an issue. It's when people use video, then it causes more issues because it requires more resources.It's a much, much larger file.And so if somebody said, hey, I want to do remote recording for interviews and have separate tracks, I would say, buy a Mac and get ecamm, because I use it every Saturday. And the only problem I have is not a problem really with ecamm. It's the whole Elgato stream deck tying into ecamm.And I don't really think that's an ecamm problem. I know the people over at ECAMM Live. I went to one of their kind of retreats, I guess you could call it.They're really cool people over there, Katie and Doc and the whole crew. And so that's. But that, again, is not an editor that's only giving you the audio. So one of the things I want to learn in 2026 is DaVinci Resolve.It is the Audacity for video. Audacity is a free audio editor.And DaVinci resolve, from what I hear, is an amazing video editor that, like, is better than some programs that you pay for. And it's free. That's the good news. The bad news is it's got a monster of a learning curve. And so I know Daniel, I forget his name.D something really cool guy has a lot of YouTube videos on DaVinci Resolve. So that's one of the things for me that I want to learn, because more and more people who want to get into video are getting into video.And so they're like, well, what do I use?Well, if I could easily walk you through DaVinci Resolve, that would be one to go to, because then you could record an ECAMM or streamyard or whatever, get your separate tracks and then throw them into DaVinci resolve and finish up from there. Now, it's not going to do the transcription. Delete that. But here's a novel idea. Do a little planning. So you have to do less editing.One last thing about video. What about Zoom, Dave? Can't I just use Zoom? You can. Zoom's job is not to deliver pristine video or pristine audio. They're a meeting program.And so they're going to compress your audio quite a bit, and they are going to compress your video so that things don't lock up and mess up. Is it listenable? Yeah. Is it watchable? Yeah. Can I get separate tracks? Yeah. And so it's good enough. And the other thing it does do, it works.So I know a lot of people that just finally got fed up with these remote recording Tools that occasionally aid another interview, and they're just using Zoom. So it is something to consider. Most editors and people go, yeah, that's not a real. That's kind of a toy.But if it works for you, it's, you know, no learning curve. Something to think about. Next up, if you want to have intro music, this is another one that's kind of new.Normally I say go over to tune reel, link to this again out in the show notes. And when it says buy a subscription, you don't need that. Go in, find the track you want, and then buy a single song license.It's somewhere around $10. That would be option number one. And option number two is a company called I believe it's Sonos, or Sonos. It is AI Music.At the end of the show, you will hear my thing about Go tell someone. That's AI, Which I find offensive as a musician, but as a person who likes money, I paid 10 bucks for that. So those are two ways.Don't get carried away, because you don't need a whole song for your opening. In fact, you might have it. No lyrics at all. I have one. I do a show called Feeding My Faith, and the lyrics were Feeding my Faith. That was it.And I said, play some smooth jazz and then have a single female sing the lyrics. Feeding my faith. And she did. And the thing I love about Sonos is you can also download the tracks individually.So if you want to mute the singer in some places and not in others, you can do that. So those are two ways to get music for your podcast. Now, do you need music for your podcast? No, but think about your favorite TV show.They have some sort of sonic, you know, logo, whether it's the dun dun from whatever it is, where they, you know, csi, Poughkeepsie or something like that. The Friends, Cheers, you know, Seinfeld. It's kind of a thing. I grew up listening to Johnny Carson, so I have opening music.It kind of helps set the mood. It is a branding thing, so it's something to think about.But also, I've seen people that didn't launch their podcast because they couldn't find the absolute perfect song. Don't go that way. And now that you have a finished MP3 file, you need a media host. There are many that are great.My two favorite, my ultimate favorite is Captivate, because they have a different business model where if you are paying $20 at Libsyn for this show and $20 for that show and $20, you could basically move to Captivate. Pay $20 for as many shows as you want. Your bill only goes up if you go over 30,000 downloads for the month.My second favorite is Buzzsprout, which has a very similar feature set, but you have to pay for each show. The people at buzzsprout are great. The people at Captivate are great. I also love Blueberry.I have lots of friends at Libsyn, but I really, I think for me at this point, RSS.com would be a better choice than Libsyn. So they're all good. And I did a whole episode on choosing a media host.So I'm going to put a link to that because in the end they all say things like, we'll help you get submitted to Apple and Spotify. Well, yeah, that's not a feature. Everybody does that. So media hosts for me, Captivator, buzzsprout, and again, the other ones I mentioned are fine.Those are my top two favorites. If you're doing video, put it on YouTube. And everybody always goes, oh, you say that because you work there. I've been promoting PodPage since 2020.I didn't start working there until 2024. It is the best solution for a podcast website. It's so easy because you've got your feed now from your media host.You just put it into podpage and within literally 10, maybe 20 minutes, your website is done. And from that point forward, you just publish an episode and it automatically updates. It's truly amazing.Check it out@tripodpage.com you want people to share your show. You need. This is not a want, this is a need. You need a website. You need a domain. Because otherwise you're like, yeah, check out my show. It's at.This is my podcast. Are you kidding me? Yes, I'm not kidding you. Dot com. It's ridiculous. It's less than $20 a year. Get a domain, point it at your website.Even if you don't have a website, have a domain just so you can point people to where you want to go. Get a domain. My favorite host for that is namecheap, because as the name says, it's cheap and they give you a free SSL certificate.And if you don't like them, check out coolerwebsites.com, which is just my GoDaddy reseller. To get your show into Apple, you need some artwork.And so you can go over and use my Buddy over at PodcastBranding Co and have him professionally design you. He does great stuff. He did the school of podcasting. He's done a ton of My stuff. Or if you want to do your own, there is canva.Just keep in mind, when you go see a movie, notice that there's no picture of a camera on the movie poster. You don't have to put a picture of a microphone on your podcast artwork.Make the name of your show Ginormous and create it in a way that people kind of have an idea of what the show is about based on your artwork. If you go out to schoolofpodcasting.com 1017, that's today's episode.I'll have links to a tool you can use at transistor or where you upload your artwork, and it will show you kind of a preview of what it will look like in Apple. And that's where you'll find out, oh, I should have made the name a whole lot bigger.And also, you don't have to put your name on the artwork because you should put your name as the author so it'll already be in the app. You don't need to put your name on the artwork. And now that you're putting things on your media host, you're going to need show notes.Well, what are show notes? It's a description of your episode. Enough of a description to help people answer the question, should I listen to this?And then it's imperative that you put links to anything you mention. So, like today, my show notes are going to be forever for me to get these done because I've been talking about linking out to all this stuff.So that's the bare bones minimum. The more you add, it may help you get found.Now, right now, as far as I know, the only thing Apple is searching is the name of the show, the title, and the author field. And I know they're transcribing the episode.So just know that if you keyword stuff your description, it may not help you get found, but that may be changing. So for me, I just write my whole show notes, much like it's on my website. So I think you have 4,000 characters. That's a little much.But in the end, I don't know that you're going to offend somebody by having too long a show note. So the more the merrier. Just don't forget the links. You need to have at least one episode published. A lot of people publish, there's three.That's fine. The more you give them, the more they can kind of chew on. But you only need one.And before you submit your show, you want to go tocastfeed validator.com again.Links@schoolofpodcasting.com 1017 and make sure it's valid because that way when you submit it to Apple, they don't choke on it and go, hey, what's this? You just want it, right? So that when you submit it, it goes to all the different apps.And then you want to submit your show after, of course, you've gotten feedback. I've mentioned that a couple times. Do not skip that. Don't skip getting feedback. And it's hard.It's hard to work on something so long and give it to somebody and they go, yeah, but otherwise, if you don't get feedback, it's one of those things where you're trying to market and you're trying to grow your audience. And the reason your audience isn't growing is because it's so you need to know that up front. Does that make sense? Makes sense to me.It's just hard to work so hard on your art. It's my art, man. And then give it to somebody and they go, eh.Now keep in mind, that person may not be your target audience, but once you get some feedback that says, this is great, where can I find more? It's time to submit it to Apple and Spotify. And this is something that's changed. It is kind of six one way, half a dozen the other.The old way was you would set up an Apple account, which you probably have, and you would submit your RSS feed to Apple. And because you submitted it, they know it's you and it's in your account, your account.And then you could do the same thing at Spotify and then everybody else. A lot of times you could just go into your media host and go submit it everywhere else. And they would do that.Now Apple and Spotify are on the submitted everywhere else. So you can go in and with a couple clicks, just submit your show everywhere. However, in Apple and Spotify you have additional stats that you can see.And the biggest one and the most important one is how far people listen. That's really, to me, that is the stat of all stats, because you can learn a lot from that.So to get that information, your show has to be under your account.And so if you let whoever submit your show for you realize you don't have that information because it's under the media host account, not in a mean, you know, scary way, but you don't have that. So what you have to do then after you let your media host submit it is go to Apple and go, hey, hey, hey. That show right there, that's mine.I want it under my Apple account. So, number one, you got to have an Apple account.And then number two, they will send you some gibberish to put probably in, like, your copyright field, because the only person that could do that is the owner. So you're proving that you're the owner. You save it. You go back to Apple and go, hey, I did the hokey pokey and turn myself around.They go, great, because that's what it's all about. And they put your show under your account and now you can see all those extra stats. It's the same thing for Spotify.And so for me, call me crazy, I'd rather submit it to Apple and Spotify myself so I don't have to go through that. Yes, it's a extra step. I have to go to their websites to do it. But that's me. To me, it sticks one way or the other.Either you submit it or later you have to go back and move it to your account.The one thing you do not want to do, and a lot of people are doing this, is they will submit it themselves and then resubmit it through their media host. And now you've got two versions of your show, both looking at the exact same feed.And so all that does is hurt you in terms of climbing up the charts because you might have 50 people that follow this show and 50 people that follow this version of your show instead of one version where you have 100 followers. So don't submit your show more than once. Pick one way. Either let your media host submit it and then claim it later, or you just submit it personally.Before we wrap up, we started off with the what? And the whole. There's some more very important questions that we need to answer. We're going to get to those right after this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.One of the questions you need to answer is, how are you going to measure your success? And so many people go, well, duh, downloads. And there are many ways to measure success, and downloads is definitely one of them.Growing your email list is one of them. Growing your network is. Is another one. There are all sorts of ways. It all depends on your why. Why am I doing this? Well, I want to grow my email list.Well, are you? Yes. Okay, your show's a success. But if you're like, oh, I just want to get the message out into the world, and there's nothing wrong with that.And there are people that do that. If you laid your go, yeah, but I'm not making any money. Well, you didn't say you wanted to make money. You said you wanted to change the world.Well, I'd like to make some money. Well, that's two different things. So if you want to make money with your show, you gotta state that upfront so you can put some things in place.For me, I measured the success of this show by how many people sign up at the school of Podcasting.Because in January right now, and it started the last week of December, my numbers are going up because everybody's going, this is the year I'm starting a podcast. And then in February, my numbers will go down, much like gym memberships in America, but my membership will go up. It's already going up.And so I judge my success on memberships, not downloads. And so keep that in mind, because sometimes your downloads go all over the place.And when you look at, well, if I do this, will it help me achieve my why? Because when you don't achieve your why, you burn out.Another thing I want to point out that you kind of don't need to worry about anymore are These things called ID3 tags, sometimes called meta tags. And this was information that was saved inside your MP3 file. So I use Hindenburg. It still does this. It makes metadata.But to the best of my knowledge, there's only one podcast app that still reads this, and that is Overcast, which is a popular app. It's in the top five, but the only thing it looks at is your image. And so, first of all, Marco, at Overcast, how about updating that, would you?But realize almost every other app is pulling the information from your feed. And so for everybody who's been doing that the last 10 years, it just went, wait, what? Yeah, you don't really need to do that anymore.The number of podcast apps that are using that is almost zero. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I could make this episode five hours long. Last tip. Don't buy a blue Yeti.And if you did buy a blue Yeti, it's not the end of the world. Just I'll put a link in the show notes schoolofpodcasting.com 1017. You just have to learn how to use it properly.Now, today's list was kind of exhaustive, and I've told you what to do. In some cases, I've told you where to do it.I will have links in the show notes for this stuff, but the one thing I haven't really told you to do is how to do it. And that's where the school of podcasting comes in. Because, number one, every show is Different.It's hard to do a show like this because when we're talking about equipment, it really depends on, are you solo, is it a co host, are you doing remote interviews? Everything is different for every show. And so that's why I can't say, here's how you do it.There are some things, but in the end it's always good to have someone go, wait, tell me what you're trying to do.And let's get you to that point quicker because you might be following things that somebody said that you go, oh, well, that would make sense if you had a co host, or that would make sense if you were doing this. But in your case it doesn't make sense. So that's why there's not so much how to do this.It's not like, oh, I just want you to sign up for the school of podcasting. Although I would be lying if I didn't say, yeah, that's part of it. But the other reason is it's not one size fits all.And keep that in mind when you see people that like, oh, I grew my show by doing this, that and that, realize that worked for their audience.And their audience may be, you know, 28 year old guys that are in the military and Your group is 56 year old women talking about housewives just because it worked for them, it may not work for your group. Every podcast is different and that's kind of what makes it frustrating.We try to look at what other people are doing and copy their success and then it doesn't work. It really comes down. And this is where I said at the beginning of the show, podcasting is simple, but it's not easy.It's finding out what does your audience really want and then giving it to them in an educational or entertaining fashion, or better, both, I always say. We talked about it in the last episode. A good podcast makes you laugh, cry, think, groan, educate, or entertain.It saves you time, it saves you money, and it makes you feel something. And if you can get like three or four of those going, you're on the right path to making something so good.My buzz phrase is remarkable that they are telling their friends, you've got to hear this show. This woman is amazing. This man is saying things. I can't believe it. And that's the goal. We don't want to just be a good podcast.We want to be someone's favorite. Well, I don't know if he. I call him a friend, but Jay Ocuzzo, that's kind of his thing. You want to be someone's favorite. And I was like, that's true.We want to be remarkable. Meaning it's so good, people must make remarks about it.And if you need help with that, my website, schoolofpodcasting.com, use the coupon code listnr when you sign up to save on either a monthly, quarterly or yearly subscription. And don't forget, that comes with a 30 day money back guarantee.Because, look, you've probably been thinking about starting this podcast for a while and you're like, I'm still not sure if this is it. You got 30 days, not 7, not 14. 30 days to figure out is podcasting for you. And I would love to see what we could do together. I'm Dave Jackson.I help podcasters. Been doing it going on 21 years now, and I can't wait to see what we're going to do together. So until next week, take care. God bless.Class is dismissed. Hey, I just realized I said I would tell you what's the most important thing in video and never answered that question. It's not lighting.It's not the camera, it's the audio. If they have to strain to hear you, they will not watch your video.