Tag Archives: Podcast

AppStorm’s Guide to Creating a Podcast Using GarageBand

Apr 26, 2010 by Matt | Posted in Software & Scripts No Comments

Mac AppStorm has had, for quite some time, a great tutorial on how to record podcasts with Apple’s GarageBand software. Providing you have a decent microphone, GarageBand should make it fairly easy to record and edit a high-quality podcast.

The iTunes Podcast directory is a tempting offer. Without much effort, you can get your voice out to thousands of people. Of course, if your podcast doesn’t reek of quality (both in terms of content and presentation) no one will pay attention. The content part only you can figure out, but if its quality you want, GarageBand provides an easy solution.

I’m going to show you how to create a technically sound, professional quality podcast that you can share either using an iWeb site, or through any other iTunes compatible RSS feed.

Once you’ve recorded your podcast, you could upload it to Amazon S3 and use a WordPress plugin like PodPress to create an RSS feed that you can submit to iTunes.

Creating a Podcast Using GarageBand [Mac AppStorm]

Amazon S3: A Cheap Podcast Host?

Apr 12, 2010 by Matt | Posted in Hosting 5 Comments

Podcasts are fun to create, but they can be expensive to host. Typically they’re larger than 10 megabytes, and when you have a thousand plus people downloading each of your weekly episodes, your bandwidth bill can get pretty large. (They can also eat up a lot of your server’s disk space.)

Many podcasters, rather than pay for ever-increasing amounts of bandwidth, use podcast syndication services like Libsyn to host their shows. Libsyn charges $12/month for unmetered bandwidth, and a monthly upload quota of 250MB. (There are a few other pricing tiers they offer, but the “libsyn250″ is probably the one most weekly hour-length podcasts will require.)

There’s another option, though.

Amazon S3 is a neat service that allows you to “pay as you go,” and host your files on Amazon’s speedy cloud servers. They charge $0.15 per gigabyte in bandwidth, as well as a monthly $0.15/GB storage fee.

I’ve been using Amazon S3 for off-site storage of my server backups for awhile, and it recently occurred to me that would be a great place to host podcast files.

If your subscribers were to download 20GB worth of podcast files in a month, for example, you would pay a mere $3. (You would technically have to pay a little more for the storage of the files, but it probably wouldn’t even be another dollar.)

If you coupled it with Amazon’s CloudFront service, a CDN that pulls from your S3 account, you could help speed up your subscribers’ downloads. (A CDN, in case you were wondering, is a service that mirrors your files across servers in different geographic locations, to ensure that your users are downloading from a nearby server.) It costs the same $0.15/per gigabyte, minus the silly “thousandth of a cent” HTTP request charges.

I wonder how many podcasters are using Amazon Web Services. It seems like a fairly affordable, and certainly reliable, option.

Online Advertising For Newbies (SXSW Podcast)

Jun 3, 2008 by Matt | Posted in Monetization No Comments

Want to learn a little more about how to effectively monetize online content? Be sure to listen to the Online Advertising For Newbies podcast from South by Southwest. It was recorded by a panel of people who know what they’re talking about, such as blogger Darren Rowse, DoubleClick manager Heath Row, blogger Wendy Piersall, and AdBrite VP of Sales Jim Benton.

The podcast covers a reasonably wide range of methods to monetize a website, and good practices for doing so. It’s definitely worth listening to if you’re slightly above “ad newbie” status, and are trying to find something better than pushing AdSense blocks in people’s faces.

(As a side note, I wonder if this should really be called a podcast. Technically it isn’t, since it’s a single audio file, instead of a series of episodes delivered via RSS. But how many people really care?)

Coming Soon: The Webmaster-Source Podcast

Oct 19, 2007 by Matt | Posted in General 9 Comments

EDIT: The contest has ended. Results.

I’ve been searching around various podcast directories (including the “official” on in iTunes). I’ve noticed a lack of Blogging/Webmaster podcasts, and I’ve decided to start one here on Webmaster-Source.

I’m getting close to recording a pilot episode, though there are a few things I need first.

  1. A name for the podcast.
  2. A blogger willing to give an interview through Skype (or talk about some blogging-related subject).

I haven’t come up with many ideas for the podcast’s name yet, and if you have any ideas please post them here.

As for the other point on the list, I haven’t had too much luck there. I’m looking for a blogger who’s had a bit of success in his or her area, and is willing to talk about their blog, and share some advice. If no one’s interested being interviewed, then I’d be willing to accept someone who wants to talk about a random blogging-related topic instead.

So, here’s the deal: Whoever thinks-up the best name for the Webmaster-Source podcast will get a 486×60 banner for their site placed on the Webmaster-Source homepage for 30 days (subject to approval).

Also, if you want to be in the pilot episode for the podcast, please let me know.

Contact: Leave a comment, or email me at matt {at} webmaster-source [dot] com.

EDIT #1: Some updates on the naming contest.