With industry advertising revenue exceeding $1 billion today and approximately 62 million people listening to a podcast each week, now is the time to launch your WordPress podcast site.
Do you want to know what the perfect podcasting setup looks like? In this guide, we’ll show you how to start your own podcast with WordPress . You’ll learn how podcasts work, the best podcast gear, the WordPress podcast plugin you need, and more.
Regardless of your age or technical skill set, you can easily start your own podcast by following the step-by-step process outlined in this article.
What is podcasting and how does it work?
A podcast is an episodic series of audio files that users can subscribe for, to in order to download and listen to them.
To work your podcast, you need to have an audio file and an RSS feed that users can subscribe to in order to be updated and listen to new episodes as they come out.
WordPress comes with a built-in RSS feed system for blogs, many presenters choose to use WordPress as their podcast platform.
You can connect your podcast website with podcast apps like iTunes to make it easy for millions of users to listen and subscribe.
Now that you know what a podcast is and how it works, let’s look at how to find ideas for creating a successful podcast.
Finding a niche and topics for your podcast
Podcasts are quite popular and there are dozens of podcasts on many different topics. To stay in the game, you need to find your niche and carefully choose the topics you will cover on your podcast.
In addition, you need to know your audience and think about what is more interesting to them. This simple exercise will give you a clear idea of your podcast and what you want to say. Take notes.
Keeping your audience in mind will help you schedule your podcast episodes and grow subscribers by sticking to a well-planned content strategy.
What do you need to set up your podcast?
The first thing is a website or blog where people can learn more about you and your podcast.
The second thing is the equipment to record your podcast.
Finally, you need to have the right tools to publish your podcast on the Internet so that you get the maximum number of subscribers.
Plan your first few podcast episodes
You should plan your podcast episodes well before you sit down to record them.
- Episode Content
What will the topics be for your first few episodes? Plan your content, throw in a few bullet points, then dig into the details.
- Duration of episodes
Podcasts can be between 20 minutes and 2 hours. The length of your episodes depends on your content and audience. There are no hard and fast rules for what the ideal duration should be for a good podcast episode.
If you have good content, don’t cut it short just to fit the time you’ve set for your podcast. Conversely, don’t stuff the content too much just so you can fill the desired episode duration.
- Supporting media
You’ll also need to work on intro music, background music, or other sounds you might want to add to your podcast for a more dramatic effect.
Here are a few places you can find music for your podcast. Carefully review the license terms before using any song in your podcast.
- freemusicarchive.org
- YouTube
- freestockmusic.com
- 4. Storyboard and scripts
This is where you have to sit down and write the script. This helps you stay focused and makes you sound more professional and prepared.
After you’ve spent some time planning your episodes and given your content more thought, it’s time to record your first podcast.
- Record your first podcast
To record your podcast, you will need audio recording software. This software will help you to record and edit your audio files.
The best podcast recording software used by most podcasters is Audacity. It’s a free, cross-platform, open source software capable of recording professional, studio-quality podcasts.
- Publish your podcast to a WordPress site
Once you’ve created a few episodes and are happy with their quality, it’s time to publish your podcast to your pre-built WordPress site.
We’re here to help with both the build and design of your podcasting site.
Now is the time to monetize your podcast
It will take a lot of time and serious commitment to make your podcast a success one. To make all of this sustainable in the long run, you’ll need to find ways to monetize your podcast.
The following are some of the best ways to make money from podcasts
- Direct sponsorship. If you think a business would benefit from sponsoring your podcast, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
- Use affiliate marketing to recommend third-party products and services to your audience.
- Sell your own products and services by adding an online store to your website.
- Ask subscribers to support your podcast with donations. You can simply add a payment form on the website where your subscribers can make a donation.
- Make older episodes available to members only.
All of this is completely possible with WordPress.
We hope this article helped you get started podcasting with WordPress.
