Podcasting can be profitable

I'm sure a lot of you reading this have no idea where to even get started, but let me assure you that I was right where you are a few short months ago. What surprised me is that it's not that hard!

I'm not talking about raking in piles of cash, but if establishing yourself as an expert and having an audience that ocassionally listens to your recommendations sounds like a position you would like to be in, then start your own Podcast.

Keep it simple and you can do it.

For equipment, all I use is my PC and a Logitec USB headset I bought on Ebay for $30

Download the free sound editor Audacity and play with it a while to get comfortable making your own recordings. Do a Google search for their home page. There are some free tutorials to get you started.

You will want some music to open and close your shows, but make sure it's Pod Safe music and you have the rights to use it. I paid for mine, but it was very affordable at SoundDogs.com Another Google search will turn up some free music and sound effects, but watch the copyrights that they are allowed on commercial programs.

I have an Audacity Project I created and saved to use as a template each week to make it easy. I load it up, go to Edit > Preferences and on the Audio I/O tab, I check Play other tracks while recording new one. Then I mute the trailer music by clicking the mute button on it's track until I finish recording the new episode.

Click the big red record button and it will play the music so you can time your entrance. Remember you can stop recording and start a new track where that one left off if you get tounge tied like I do once in a while. You can even cut and paste tracks to join them together.

Then use the Time Shift Tool (left and right pointing arrows) to slide the tracks and position them. Click the Rewind control and play it back until you get it right.

The last thing is to unmute the trailer music and position it at the end of your episode recording.

Now if you downloaded the Lame encoder from Audacity, you click File, Export as MP3 and load your finished product to your server. Again, I pay a huge $3 a month to let SwitchPod absorb some of the headaches for me and make it easy. They also take care of a lot of the promotion details like creating an RSS feed automatically.

If you want more listeners, start a Blog to catalogue your episodes and list your Podcast in a few directories. That's about it!

It's a lot harder to write down the details than it is to learn as you do it, so jump on in. If you want to listen to an example, do a Google search for 'Bring Your Buddy Podcast' and listen to my project. As you play a few of the episodes, I think you'll easily see how you can include a recommendation or two.

Above all, have fun!

I know I sure do.

Warren Contreras
(503)357-8397