Category: Online Commerce

Automattic, Online Commerce, WordPress

How to start your own podcast on WordPress.com

This is a story of how I started a podcast, in 3 hours (apart from waiting for iTunes verification), with a total cost of $5/month. And that included my own domain name! I share detailed instructions on launching a brand new podcast on WordPress, and later promoting it on iTunes and Spotify.

Why would you want to start a podcast?

Podcasting has been hailed “the new blogging”. According to Edison Research, 51% of Americans have ever listened to a podcast and the medium use has grown 122% since 2014. Listening to a conversation creates a deeper connection and for some, it is more entertaining than the written word.

Together, with a group of Polish bloggers, we were dreaming about a foray into podcasting. We created Placebo Podcast in hopes of meeting interesting people and frankly – having fun.

The title reads “Your dose of absolutely nothing. Confirmed clinical efficacy”

What are the benefits of podcasting?

  • You can connect with your audience on a much deeper level thanks to your voice and the unscripted nature of the conversation,
  • It is a fantastic excuse to reach out and meet interesting people,
  • Interviewing people can help you practice listening skills

How does it all work?

You may have listened to a podcast on iTunes, Spotify or another app. But did you know that the content you are enjoying does not originate there?

The beating heart of every podcast is it’s RSS feed. It is a particular format of new blog content that other services – like iTunes or Spotify can consume and display in the appropriate apps, Alexa devices and various services.

To start a podcast, you need a blog. Then you submit it’s RSS feed to podcast services – like iTunes or Spotify.

Enter WordPress.com

What is the easiest way to start a blog? With WordPress.com you can be finished in 10 minutes. You don’t have to worry about hosting, hackers, FTP, GIT, NSA, and other scary 3-letter acronyms. The service has been around for more than 10 years and you don’t have to watch out for ground shifting under your feet. You own your domain and can take it to any competitor.

WordPress.com has built-in podcasting tools, and you can read about how to embark on an audio journey here. You can set up the site for free, but to upload audio files, you need to upgrade to “Personal” plan ( currently $5/month ).

Full transparency: I work for the parent company (Automattic) on an unrelated product line. I was motivated to check out how our podcasting offering works.

These instructions will also work if you have your own installation of WordPress, on your own host. Once you set up a site, and connect a domain – the following tutorial should be similar.

What do you need to start?

  1. Settle upon a memorable and distinctive name,
  2. Record at least three episodes, so when you are published on iTunes, your listeners will have a better taste of your style,
  3. Edit them with intro and outro so that your listeners can recognize your work. Also, if they listen to a standalone episode, it’s good to explain to them what your whole podcast is about and ask them to subscribe,
  4. Make sure iTunes and Spotify present a fetching cover art so that it is easily recognizable on the list of podcasts,
  5. Make sure your episodes have a place to live, where you can connect with your listeners, posts notes, etc – that is your site!,
  6. You have to submit your podcast to iTunes podcasts, Spotify and Google Play. Majority of podcast listeners use one of these services, so you have to meet them where they are,
  7. Promote, promote, promote,
  8. Keep recording!

The name

The name of your podcast will help your listeners find you in their favourite podcasting app. Making it memorable was our main goal and trying to be somewhat humorous was the second. We came up with “Placebo – podcast with a confirmed clinical efficacy”.

Cover art

People will consume your amazing podcast through an app. You have only a few places to stand out:

  • Cover art
  • Summary
  • Title

Cover art should be simple and easy to recognize. Since my podcast is named Placebo, some kind of satirical medical vibe would be best. One of my co-podcasters had a Shutterstock account, where we found a nice graphic. After a few tweaks, tada!

Cover art should have 1400×1400 px, so remember to find big enough image

The summary

Itunes limits the summary to 250 characters, so you have to distill the description of your intended content. We wanted to give listeners a taste and encourage them to give us a listen.

We also made sure to link to our site, where they can learn more.

Podcasting Settings on WordPress.com are located here.

How do you record? Do you have fancy gear?

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

I have some good news and some bad news for you. Good news:

You don’t need fancy gear!

Bad news:

You have no excuse to keep browsing podcasting gear.

You should get to work right away. Here is what we do:

My podcasting friends live in different cities, so we decided to record our podcast in a distributed fashion.

We are using zoom.us, a teleconferencing software similar to Skype. Because our meetings have 3 participants, we are limited to 40 minutes if we want to keep using the free version. We embraced this limitation – 40 minutes of listening to me can drive anybody mad.

The audio will travel through the magic portals of the Internet to the meeting hosts’ computer, where it will be recorded. After wrapping up, we have a recording to publish. If you decide to go this route, I have a few tips for you:

  • Buy some decent (not fancy) microphone. I am using Sennheiser SC-160. Just don’t use the earbuds you got with your phone
  • Jump on a quick call before you start recording to make sure the audio is ok
  • Turn off video if you want to save transfer for better sound. Video tends to steal from audio quality
  • Remember to press record! You don’t want to have the most exciting conversation in the history of conversations only to find out you never captured it. Or maybe you do – in which case podcasting may not be a good fit.

After you finish your zoom call, you will have a file `audio_only.m4a`.

Here is how you can edit using most basic tools

Photo by Adam Sherez on Unsplash

What is the best tool? The one you already have. My Mac came with GarageBand preinstalled, so I decided to stick with it. There is now a plethora of fancy podcast-editing setups, but this is just a fun session with friends, not money-making business recording.

Podcast editing in Garage Band

  1. Get your audio logo. This will be the piece of music that will evoke memories of your other episodes and make sure listeners recognize you. I purchased a one for $10, but there are sites with free music you can download,
  2. Fire off Garageband, with a new “Voice” project,
  3. Record your intro. We decided that intro should give a taste what is in the episode and entice the listeners to give it a try,
  4. Record your outro. After the episode, we want to convince the listeners to try other episodes or check out more on our sites. We recorded outro once and reuse it on all episodes.
  5. Now you can overlay your audio logo with your intro and outro.
    1. Drag audio logo file to Garageband
    2. To create nice transitions and regulate audio levels, Select Mix->Automate and select “Volume” from the menu that just appeared under your audio track.
    3. Now clicking on your audio track will create a graph that will help you create fade in and out
  6. Drop your recording file, adjust the volume
  7. Export the audio file
  8. To make sure iTunes presents your image next to the episode as well, you have to edit what is called ID3 tags. The easiest way to do this is iTunes. Select your file, click “information”

After you edit the information in iTunes, upload your cover art and click OK, your episode will appear in iTunes Podcast library. You can find this file in your Home Directory / Music / iTunes / Podcasts

Uploading to WordPress

On WordPress.com, each episode of your podcast will be a separate WordPress post. You will have a unique link to share with your audience, a way for them to listen to your episode without the app and the place to share notes and links to the episode.

To start a new podcast episode:

  1. Write a post with the notes
  2. Upload your audio file as an „Audio” block
  3. Add the post to the „Podcast” category.

This guide on WordPress.com support has more details.

Making sure everything is proper

Maybe it is my scout upbringing ( “be prepared” ), but I like to double-check things. I recommend submitting your podcast feed to a service like https://podba.se/validate/ .

The online validator will do a few checks and reassure you that you are ready to submit your podcast to iTunes or Spotify.

Time to go live

Photo by SpaceX on Unsplash

Let’s recap:

  1. You have your domain and a site for your podcast,
  2. You recorded a few episodes, gave them intro and an outro,
  3. Uploaded them and published on your site,
  4. Checked your podcast feed and everything is working

Now it’s time to publish your podcast to the world!

As I mentioned, majority of people consume podcasts through an app. Be it iTunes podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, etc. Fortunately, they all work by checking your RSS feed. After you submit it to those services, your podcasting magic will work seamlessly!

Spotify

  1. Go to Podcasters Spotify
  2. Submit your RSS feed
  3. Wait about 2-3 days for your podcast to show up

iTunes

  1. Go to Podcasts Connect

After your podcast is reviewed and approved in the libraries, remember to publish those links on your site. That way you will be able to promote your beautiful WordPress.com domain and when somebody visits your site, they will be able to choose their preferred podcast consuming technology. We put these buttons right up at the top:

You can download these buttons here:

Promote, promote, promote!

As you can see, publishing a podcast is not hard. That means a lot of people can do it – and indeed, they do. The number of podcasts is exploding, and that is a good thing – more and more quality content (like yours) will be created.

But it also means more competition.

You will have to promote your podcast on Social Media or meet with other podcasters to appear on their shows. I do plan on doing that myself, and I will share my findings.

Keep recording

Now that you have everything set up, whenever you publish a new post with the audio file, it will automatically be picked up by iTunes and Spotify.

Your listeners will marvel at your brilliance, and advertisers will fly bags of money directly into your mansion so you can fill up your Jacuzzi with $100 bills.

Or, you end up like me, with about ten people listening to you 🙂

Good luck!

Online Commerce

Overprotecting your creation hurts you the most

How can I ensure my customer won’t share the video they purchased? Can I protect the PDF I sell to be shared only once? How can I lock my daughter in a high tower, so that no worldly harm befalls her?

The tension between sharing our creations and being paid was always tricky. But the digital world adds another layer of complexity – your creations can be copied and distributed also after the purchase, keeping you out of the loop of future profits.

A natural instinct is to seek the answer in the technology that permitted sharing in the first place – can I protect the content I sold, so that only the customer has access to it?

Yes, but you shouldn’t. Over-protecting your content focuses on extraction over providing value. Here are 10 reasons why (Digital Rights Management)[1] DRMs are a bad idea:

1 – It is just impossible to prevent sharing

Trying to effectively protect content against sharing is like fighting against skilled guerilla units in the digital jungle. Sure, you can deploy your defenses, but they will always find a sneaky way around them while you drain your resources.

  • You will use streaming service to gate-keep your videos, They can use a project similar to `youtube-dl` to download any video file.
  • You will block downloading images on the page, they can just take a screenshot.
  • You can password protect a PDF, they can use a „virtual printer” to generate a new, open one.

If you give a customer any way to access the content, that way can also be used to copy that content and/or record it.

This is a fundamental feature of the Internet. Content is meant to be easily reproducible and shared. The only way to win is to make it easier and more compelling to pay.

2 – You are treating your customer like a thief

Imagine if visiting your friend was like going through airport security. Did you bring any liquids? What’s that in your backpack? Oh no, your belongings are 300 grams too heavy, better pay for extra luggage!

Jumping through DRM hoops is sending a clear message to all your customers:

We don’t trust you. You have to go through this process because we think you may steal something. We’re watching you.

This message gets sent whenever a person who decided to pay you opens their purchase. It’s your biggest fans’ first experience with your product.

3 – People who steal are not your customers

Do you have a portrait of your ideal customer?

Is it a teenager sitting in a warez bulletin board all day and polishing his torrent workflow? If not – why are you focusing on them?

People who download loads of content are not used to paying for it. When they won’t be able to find a free copy of your content – they will steal from your competitor or resign before they open their wallets.

And if you don’t know who your ideal customer is – maybe you should focus on that.

4 – But they may become them

Sure Artur – but what about when somebody buys something and then gives away to all their friends?

  1. What do you think about sharing books? Borrowing a blender? Some sharing is healthy and natural.
  2. It actually benefits you.

Bootleg content is a customer acquisition mechanism.

The most successful Internet entrepreneurs build sophisticated sales funnels. For example, they would have many interactions with the customer before they buy:

  1. A visitor interested in your field finds your article online.
  2. After the second article, they sign up for your email list.
  3. You provide consistent value and build up trust.
  4. After a few months, you release a product and the follower becomes a customer.
  5. Profit.

Even if they try to “convert” their friends to trust you too, the friend lacks the relationship you have built. They didn’t receive your emails and they didn’t laugh at your corny jokes.

Demonstrating the full value of intellectual property requires giving it away. Once the friend sees the value you provide, they will either:

  1. Be blown away by the quality.
  2. Decide it’s not for them and they will never be your customer.

Both of these outcomes are ideal for you and save you considerable time in the signup funnel and marketing.

This is what trial period and discounts aim to accomplish, but they have side-effects. When you repeatedly discount, customers start treating the lower price as the ‘real’ one, and value the product less because ‘it must not be worth the full price’. Keeping a blind eye to questionable behavior gives you a way out. You can demonstrate how valuable your product is, without discounts that lead to price erosion.

People who “sneak onboard” often become customers themselves – and even the most loyal ones! The converted always are.

5 – You are making it hard to enjoy your content.

Open standards empower creators to build new tools or use the content in unpredictable ways. Things are better connected. These are the core assumptions under which the Internet was built. You will not be able to predict all the weird, fantastic, and inspiring ways your content will be accessed.

  • I may read your PDF on an iPad, iPhone, Android tablet, Kindle, or printed out,
  • I frequently save workout or yoga videos to watch while being offline in the garden or on the road,
  • I like to read the text in my Pocket or Kindle apps.

Any sort of „protection” breaks my ways of consuming your content and often makes it useless for me. Sometimes enough to give up on something I have paid for (and that is the reason I stopped doing yoga, your honor).

6 – You are blocking people with disabilities from accessing it at all.

I can manage the inconvenience with some grumbling – however, not everybody has that luxury. Tools that people with disabilities rely on are by nature incompatible with any sort of content protection schemes. Content protection’s entire purpose is restricting access to the narrow subset of users and use cases.

Mind you, that you yourself will join those “people with disabilities”. You will get older, lose a little clarity in your vision, and suddenly the new sexy apps developed by 20-year olds in their glass palaces will become confusing and unusable.

Helping my grandparents navigate the changing digital landscape is a sad and sobering experience. Any additional hoop that you make them jump through may render your content inaccessible.

7 – You are turning your creation into a commodity

The best online businesses rely on fostering the relationship between you and your customers. You share some free content, they are more receptive to trust you with their hard-earned money. It’s a dance of mutual respect and the first sale is only a part. If they like what you are doing, they will return for more, or even support you financially.

DRM software turns this delicate relationship into buying a sack of coal under the watchful gaze of security. Not even a fistful too much! You are being watched.

You are signaling to your customer that this is a purely monetary transaction. They are not entitled to even sharing your work with a friend, because they would be violating rules ?. Oh, the rules.

8 – Are you really losing anything?

If you are selling digital products, what is your marginal cost? How much do you pay to create another copy of your PDF, video, software?

When your content is being shared, it is not stealing. You don’t lose your income whenever somebody downloads a copy. As I mentioned – people who are likely to download illegal copies of your work are either never going to be your customers, or they will because they had a peek.

9 – What is your true motivation for blocking the content?

What is the core motivation for trying to protect your piece? Is it some misplaced sense of justice or is it legitimately best for your customer?

If that content truly makes you proud and you believe it would help them – what is the best outcome if the customer does not want to pay? Is this motivation coming from a place of fear?

  • Fear of your work being „not good enough” to pay for?
  • Fear of the offer not being compelling enough?
  • Fear of not having enough paying customers to make it all worthwhile?

Fear is not a good place to create amazing content people are going to love. This mindset will drag you down and prevent you from soaring into creative skies.

10 – What do you choose to believe about people?

Do you really want to believe that people are only waiting for an opportunity to steal? Or do you want to trust them to appreciate the value you provide?

What can you do instead

  1. Focus on the relationship with the customer. I have written a little more about it in Your product is either hospitality or a commodity.
    I believe that all kinds of digital goods will be commoditized sooner or later. The only “moat” you can build is the customers’ trust.
  2. Put the energy you would spend on DRM into innovation and creating new products. Once your old one gets shared, you should be already releasing a new one.
    Subscriptions are an effective form of protection here – instead of sharing your content once, you drip the value to the customer – and they see the benefits of paying you.
  3. Sell more. Get more paying customers – after all, it’s about how many customers choose to pay you, not how many choose not to.
  4. Raise prices. Focus on the customer who is not driven to pay less, but the one who is driven to get more value. Paradoxically, more expensive products get downloaded less.

Now go, create, and sell.