I had to kill off the forums for how2podcast.com because of the upgrade problems. The process was way to much of a pain, and I have a ton of other things I have to fix (mainly the backup plugin) and I also want to start publishing the articles I have in limbo.
I’m also looking for people who what to publish articles, All I can offer you right now is some link juice back to your website or biz. You can email me @ feedback@how2podcast.com
Thanks, Ben

A lot of podcasters are obsessed with stats, including my self. Just knowing you have listeners is a fulfilling experience that one never gets ove, that is for the first 6 months. I launched a network of shows at Qetuo.me and wanted to know how well my first shows where doing.

Over time, as I have done before, I’ll stop looking at those stats, knowing that people are listening to what I have to say or do.
It isnt that bad to take a peek once an a blue moon to see if there was one show that people listened to more than another, or to see something is wrong with a feed or something you did or didnt do in your show or blog.

In the old days we used to have a plugin track the stats, but over time the developer stopped updating it.
Some would use Feedburner, but to tell you the truth, it never tracked the downloads in a correct way.
Now a days we have reliable services that offer great cloud stats software, so you can track your shows and listeners.

Podtrac – Podtrac is one that I’m just getting into, so I cant say much as of yet, but looking it over the stats, aha well they are just plain jane. If your looking for something like this Podtrac is for you. I also didnt like the submitting proses they wanted a lot of info, just for stats.
Blubrry and TechPodcasts (Only for Technology Podcasters) – I have to say Raw Voice the parent company that owns both sites are the best when it comes to stats. They offer a out of this world free service allows you to view what device, program, country, etc for each podcast. and the $5 premium stats are even better.
libsyn – For now libsyn is third in stats reason being is you have to sign up for there hosting plans in order to take advantage of there stats. but if it was just stats it would be second over blubrry.

[Image Credit kevinzhengli From flicker]

I’ve been setting up my new podcast network Qetuo.me, for the last month or so and I wanted to make the audio links playable for the iPhone and iPad. The site its self doesn’t have a problem as far as design, but the biggest problem is Adobes Flash. My current player isnt supported by Apple on its products(due to it being in flash), so what should I do to combat this problem? Use HTML5?
Most podcasters nowadays use wordpress to create the blog and rss feed… Great but you also need something to tell iTunes what to do with the feed, insteps Blubrrys PowerPress plugin. But the plugin doesn’t support html5 as of this writing, but I do hear that they are going to supporting it soon. For now we need a plugin called Degradable HTML5 audio and video plugin (DH5) it can also be found on the WP plugin directory. What DH5 does is asks the browser what program it is and delivers an Flash version if the browsers doesn’t support HTML5.
To figure out how to do all this nonsense, In the WP admin disable the Flash player being used by Powerpress.


Next within your blog post of an episode still add what ever Powerpress requires, but include this tag to the html code, [audio src="File URL/path"] What will happen is a player will be placed where ever you pasted the code, so choose wisely.

If you liked this blog post, please leave a comment below or tell a friend

Alot of people have asked me how to do I get my listeners/audience back to my site?
Getting people to come back to a site, can be one of the hardiest things to do, what I like to do is drive my listeners back to the Web site so they can see Ads and affiliate links and maybe click on one. As broke podcasters we need to make money to pay for hosting or new equipment. Some people may not have that reason for driving traffic in this form but some want feedback in the form of comments, or like to look at stats. What ever the reason I decided to list ways you the podcaster, can drive traffic to your site and get them to come back.

Polls
Polls are a good way to get you announce to go to the site and come back. What I do on one of my podcasts is have polls once a month, and give announce the results and have them come back to vote on a new topic that may interest them. Highly effective.

Blog
Blogging and telling your audience a short snipit about the blog post also drives them to come back to the site to read about what you where talking about.

Summary
You may ask what do you mean? Well in WordPress you are able to have excerpts of the post with in the RSS feed called “Summary”(Found Under the Settings > Reading Menu), about 20% of podcast listens use a normal RSS reader, and having excerpts of the show notes suming the full post, forces a listener to click on the “Read more” button and bring them back to the site for the full show notes.

Extensive show notes
Extensive helps not only the listener but new listeners. Google and other search engines index your site daily and having extensive show notes makes your site more likely to get more traffic.
Copy and paste emails you receive, quote web pages you talk about on your show, and dictating your own words are all good ways to get traffic.

ID3 tags
No matter what program you use, your ID3 tags should always include your URL within the title, comment, and lyrics sections.

Images
This one I even missed when thinking of ways to get the listener to your Web site! Include the URL of your Web site with in the image! Let me ask you a question what is the one thing you look at when your listening to a podcast on a iPhone, ipod or mp3 player? The Album Art! So why not add some text to your image that includes a Web site URL.
You can also watermark your images on your post so your listener knows where he/she got the image if it is saved to there computer.

Contests
Nothing says Hey GO HERE like a contest.
Have your listeners comment on the podcast post to win, its easy as that.

Offer
Offer your listeners something that they cant get from the podcast, a game, Image, application, etc.

Tell
One of the most powerful ways you could ever do to get your listener to go to your Web site is to ask them and beg them.

Anywhere
And lastly anywhere your listeners can click or see your Web site URL will drive traffic to your Site.

If you have any more ideas, Please leave a comment below.

When it comes to media hosting it all depends on your needs, Some podcasters host their media on web hosting servers to cut the cost to a minimum, others use free hosting, and then you have the people who have money to pay for hosting.
The average podcast brings in between 300-500 downloads per episode the first year. At around 36MB for an hour show, a bandwidth bill could add up to be huge.

Adam Carolla, earlier this year (2009) launched a podcast that brought in over 1 million downloads the first week, making it the number the number one iTunes podcast in the US and Canada. But had racked up a bandwidth bill so high he was forced to start advertising to pay for the bandwidth bills.
Now I’m not saying your going to be the next Adam Carolla, but you just might some day.
When looking for hosting you want to compare and ask. Alot of people have gotten ripped from hosting company’s that clam they have the best hosting and then fall off the face of the earth a week later, leaving the publisher scrambling to find a new host.
The list below are media hosting company’s that have been in the podcast space for some time and has been proven to provide support for new media. I also exclude providers that don’t offer a monthly upload limit and make you delete your old shows after you hit your storage limit, this is a down side to podcasts who provide non time sensitive content that could be downloaded at any time.

Audio Archive from Archive.org – Free
Archive.org is known for its web crawler that archives your web page, and now have moved into the audio space.
Audio Archive contains over two hundred thousand free digital recordings ranging from alternative news programming, to Grateful Dead concerts, to Old Time Radio shows, to book and poetry readings, to original music uploaded by our users, as well as podcasts.
The downside to Audio Archive is if you have a 128Kbps mp3 file Audio Archive will compress it down to 64Kbps, but it is free.

Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) – Pay for what you use
Amazon S3 hasnt been around for that long as the other ones in the rest of this list, but Amazon has pushed into this space with a bang, Bring you very low priced hosting at speeds that other hosting providers cant provide. Features are slime, but include the fastest Internet connection available, upload anything, pay fractions of a penny for storage, data upload, and data downloaded, and just pay for what you use.
This would be really good for the beginner podcaster because you would pay a lot less then other hosting solutions, but as your show grows bigger the bill will get bigger, and going to another hosting would be a much better choice.

Blubrry – $12-$60
I have to say one thing about Blubrry, they arnt going anywhere. The company reports are allows in the black and always growing with its products and services.
Blubrry’s Hosting services offer; Feature Rich Blogging Platform, Podcast Release Scheduler (schedule episodes into the future), RSS 2.0 Feed (iTunes compatible), Web Based Media Uploader with Upload Progress Bar, Rich Text Blog/Podcast post editor, Full Blog API (Supports WordPress 2.5+), Post to Twitter, Ping Weblogs (e.g. Google Blog Search, Technorati), Media Artwork Management, ID3 Tagging (writes information such as episode title to media files), Media File Naming (Portable Media Player Optimized), Blog Post Image Management, and Podcast Statistics Premium ($5/Month Value).
Blubrry also has its Powerpress plugin that makes publishing your podcast even easier.

CacheFly – $15-$299
CacheFly delivers more than 25 Terabytes per week for each of the most popular podcasts, Shows from Leo Laporte and Rev3 host their show with this company.
Features for CacheFly includes; 100% uptime guaranteed, Delivery on our Global CDN, Real-time reporting, Comprehensive access controls, 24/7 customer service, SCP, SFTP & rsync uploads, Protected links (md5 shared secret), and Access to raw logs (CLF).

Liberated Syndication (Libsyn) – $5-$60
Libsyn might just be the most populer media hostings services around, Lybsyn now owned by Wizzard Media, is hosting what might be over 10,000 podcasters.
Features for Libsyn includes; Storage space that grows with you, Unmetered bandwidth, No lock-ins, Your own RSS feed iTunes compatible, Customizable Webpage / Blog, Web and FTP Uploading, Stats Feature, Storage space calculator so you know what you need, Publisher’s Toolkit, Dynamic Ad Insertion, and Upgrade your active service level at any time with out service charges.

Mevio (Formerly known as Podshow) – Free
MEVIO is a large broadband entertainment company that focuses on personality driven programming. They have a solid audience base of 5-7 million uniques a month and are listed as a top 15 multimedia entertainment site, consistently ranking at or above the traffic levels of Hulu, Veoh, Heavy, Ripe Digital Entertainment, Spike.com, FunnyorDie, VBS.TV, Joost, and Revver.com according to comScore. Mevio is also listed as a top ten site for music and rank above Pandora, Rhapsody, Last.fm, Sony BMG, Live Nation, Warner Music, Napster, and Disney Music.
Mevio offers the opportunity to join MEVIO’s exclusive advertising and promotional campaigns to earn revenue, FREE hosting of your Video and Audio media files, non-exclusive and no commitment, Opportunity to be promoted on MEVIO’s 4 Networks: MEVIO Tech, MEVIO Women, MEVIO Men and MEVIO Music, FREE, unlimited blog hosting if you choose to host a WordPress blog on MEVIO, Access to exclusive publishing tools, and Access to publishing and promotional training.

If you use of one of these media services or know of a good one you would like to recommend , Please leave a comment below

And then there was one.
It all started with Podpress, what was a great plugin that a lot of podcasters had used including my self, back in the day. The development this plugin has been halted since Dec of 2007 and from rumors around the Internet, development has stopped. Now FAST FORWARD to this month (Dec 2009) the Podcasting plugin has now dropped development of the plugin. And according to the blog post, the Podcasting Plugin does not support the latest WordPress install 2.9.
Its a shame that developers within the WordPress community, do not want to to fight for podcasters within this space. Most creators of these plugins don’t get payed for what they do and some rely on donations from people to get payed, and then the users expect them to fix bugs and add things on a whim.

Blubrry’s Powerpress plugin is now the ONLY WordPress plugin for podcasters to use. Even though I think Powerpress is a great tool, and I dont think Blubrry is going anywhere soon, I am fearful of what might just happen to Podcasts, if we loose support for the only solution to get iTunes, Zune or other feed readers to recognize our feeds.

Are you worried?
Should we be?
Let me know what you think, Please leave a comment below.

About a month ago I published a new podcast for one of my shows, At the time I thought nothing of it, until I checked the stats of the podcast. Now mind you this podcast has a small but growing audience, But when one episode grows to over 300% of what it was in under a week, a small plane began to fly a red flag over head. 95% of the traffic for the podcast is from iTunes and I began searching the store to see if I got on the new and notable or on a featured list. Well I was on none… not that I could find.
After sleeping on the thought, I woke up the next day and began to find out what really made my podcast jump in listener-ship.
I desired to Post a new episode for a test. One hour of posting the show I had over 20 downloads, not the norm for this show, so what was making it jump?
I looked at the server logs and it was showing that the file was only downloaded 2 times both from friend feed…
Why? Well I went into my sever logs and there was 404 errors UP the WAZOO. (404 errors mean that the file was not found)
So why? I had checked the post and the file played, checked the feed on the server side, it played. and then feed burner… 404 error… ok thats odd!
What Feed Burner does for podcasters is makes podcasting on other blog software a little easier, If your using blogger, drupal, or typepad, it retags your RSS feed into an something that iTunes or other podcast readers can read (it also makes the RSS feed look all pretty)
Feed burner also has a feature that you can track your downloads, although it doesn’t work that well it does give you a jist of what they are. and that was the problem.. the tracker.
I scrambled to have iTunes get a new feed from my server, which takes some time.
Now heed this warning IF you use feedburner you get NO user end support. none at all… why? because it is FREE, google who owns the software cant support all the users who do use it.
If you do use it, only use feedburner for a rss redirect and dont put your faith in some thing that could make you loose your listeners.