Wedding Planner

So you want to host your own radio show?  Well, let’s dive into the realm of Podcasting.

How can I captivate and engage my audience? How can I build my list of listeners? What canI do to enhance my podcast’s presence on the web? Most importantly, you may ask, how canI monetize every segment in order to fund the time it takes to increase my show’s popularity? When starting out a podcast, these are few of the things you will probably want to know before running a successful show.

The first thing to understand is every podcast platform or website operates differently. When choosing a platform, consider the features of the website’s “basic” and “pro” accounts. How much storage space and bandwidth are they offering you to use? Believe it or not, this is a big deal, because it sets the stage for the amount of shows you will be allowed to keep on your show page at a time.

This can affect your sponsorship or the monetization of your segments. The more segments you add, the more you will have to delete from your list. If I can offer some advice, I would give the newest segments a month to show any kind of results.

The segments that accumulate the most in sponsorship should be kept as they are in higher demand than the others. Remember, podcasting is about the people who listen; not so much about the analytics.

As I have said, I did my research on three podcast show websites and have come to the conclusion that most of them don’t come with their own sponsorship model. This is where you need to get creative and use the power of your audience and other resources to create your own sponsorship.

The two podcast platforms I found, www.podbean.com and www.podomatic.com, are very basic. They are designed to teach the new online podcast show host how to stream his or her own segments, but they do not come with some kind of sponsorship model. How do you get creative here?

You might want to consider creating a blog that buzzes about your podcast show and incorporate ECPM advertisements on the side column of your blog or in each of your blog posts. ECPM simply means you can get paid any amount of money per 1,000 times someone reads your blog or each blog post. One of the most popular ways people implement ECPM advertisements on their blog is Google AdSense. The best thing about using AdSense on your blog is Google picksup the “meat” of your content and tailors the advertisements to appeal to your readers.

The more readers who see your blog, the more you will make per 1,000 clicks or times your blog is read. The way to create some basic traffic to the blog that supports your podcast is to simply mention your blog web address on your podcast at some point. You can even go the extra mile and create a small audio advertisement to play in the middle, beginning, or end of each segment.

Doing this will engage your audience even more. Promoting a monetized blog that is relevant to the content you create on your podcast is seen as “acceptable” to listeners, because the content is relevant. At this point, you will be linking up like content with like content. This generates traffic which captivates your audience and drives more attention to your content. Overall, keep it relevant, respect your listeners, and know that giving out your blog website address can only give them an abundance of free information. Who doesn’t want that?

Finally, the last podcast website I will be discussing is www.blogtalkradio.com. It gained most of its popularity in 2008 by incorporating a sponsorship model for “basic” and “pro” users. The sponsorship model used is based on Amazon affiliate accounts. Before taking advantage of this model, make sure to sign up for an Amazon affiliate account. Once you have created your new affiliate account, you will be able to add relevant products from Amazon to each podcast segment you stream.

For example: You decide to stream a podcast of 30 minutes about the newest DVD movies you picked up. Go into your dashboard and schedule your segment. At the bottom of the page that asks you for the title, description, and tags, you will have the option to search for the “ASIN” for the Amazon product(s) you wish to advertise on your show page.

The “ASIN” is the bar code of the product you’re searching for. If you don’t know it, type in the title of the DVD you want to market on your show page. The results should come up and may also give you the DVD in different languages. A DVD in any other language you can find will engage a more global market and this will add more people to your list of listeners. Again, you must respect your audience. It shows character and it will help your podcast show to become more successful.

Let me know your thoughts on the date of your first podcast show, I would love to stay connected!