The free and easy way to start a Podcast

Setting up a Podcast in 2019 can be fast, free, and painless. More importantly, the distribution and maintenance of the show can be (almost) fully automated. This post covers the steps I took to launch KeepInTouch.fm together with my co-host, Todd.

MVP – Minimum Viable Podcast

  • First we decided what our show is about. Keep in Touch covers topics from two main areas: Apple/Google tech platforms, and raising kids
  • To solve the hosting and publishing of the show we set up an account on Anchor.fm
  • Lastly, we recorded and published the show

That’s could’ve been the proverbial it, but since both Todd and I are tech people, we were not satisfied, yet. Why not? Because of the details…

Past the basics

We wanted the show to have a home that we could customise, personalise. We also wanted to be able to understand and interact with our audience. To achieve this we made did a few more things:

  • We put a little effort in the show artwork, we created chapters for the shows (chapter artwork and web links when appropriate), and we collected and published thorough show notes.
  • We recorded and edited the audio outside Anchor, and only published the mastered audio. It’s not perfect but it’s definitely less *rough*.
  • We bought a domain and we set up a website: KeepInTouch.fm.
  • We set up a Twitter account: @KeepInTouchFM.
  • We set up a vanity Google Alert for our show title and website.
  • Speaking of vanity, we created a Chartable.com account to keep an eye on how the show is doing in the charts (we were #7 in the Educational Technology category at one point!).
  • We transferred the ownership of the Apple Podcasts and Spotify feeds.
  • We set up the Stitcher and TuneIn feeds ourselves.
  • We integrated the podcast RSS feed with our new website: once we publish a show, a corresponding blog post gets created (almost) auto-magically.

Some of these enhancements will be the subject of future blog posts.

Things we learned

  • Apple Podcasts took about five days to process Anchor’s request to list our show.
  • Google Podcasts approved the show almost immediately but took about two weeks to actually make it available to listeners.
  • PocketCasts picked up the show immediately (most likely due to an integration between them an Anchor).
  • Anchor didn’t seem to get the show listed in TuneIn so we had to list add show manually.
  • Anchor doesn’t actually support all the podcasting networks.
  • Hosting the show’s website on GitHub pages was straightforward but did have some limitations. We forked Jekyll-Import to add support to the Jekyll RSS importer for Podcast RSS feeds, so we needed a home on GitHub. Hosting the website itself on GitHub made sense since Git enables a simple way to publish new episodes / blog posts.

Costs

  • Hosting and publishing the show: Free.
  • Hosting the website: Free.
  • Having a custom domain name: same cost as for any other type of website.
  • Podcast recording and editing tools: Free (not really, since we decided to use our own microphones and Digital Audio Workstation).
  • Time required to record, edit, and publish the show: 1 hour for the recording, 4 hours for editing (takes less and less each time), 30 minutes for packaging and publishing.

We are four episodes in, and we are having a lot of fun. I hope you will give our show a listen and let us know what you think. Keep in touch by subscribing on Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts.