Podcast Service Roundup

[NOTE : I should make it clear that Geekology does not accept any advertising or sponsors. This means that any positive review on Geekology is because the writer has tried and liked the product. In other words, if we recommend something it’s because we actually like it, not because we have been paid to say we like it.]

Podcasts are slowly becoming almost as popular as blogs. Unfortunately, if you wish to start your own podcast, it can be an expensive business and there are many minefields out there.

For example, many ‘free’ services come with pitifully small filesize and bandwidth limitations. You can be limited to 15 minutes per show, or suddenly find your podcast unavailable once a smallish number of people have downloaded it.

Then if you want to add more bandwidth or storage space for your podcast, you suddenly find it becoming very expensive very quickly.

Basically, the more popular you become, the more expensive it becomes to run your podcast. Of course, you can work out sponsorship and advertising deals to pay for your bandwidth, but if you’re a small podcaster, your options are limited. You end up in the middle area…your podcast is too popular to run for free, but not popular enough to attract sponsors.

So, with this group in mind, I have a couple of recommendations:

Talkshoe.com

Talkshoe is an excellent service. Not only does it provide everything you need to record and broadcast your podcast, it also allows you to livecast your podcast, allowing your listeners to call in and appear live on your show.

The website comes with video tutorials on how the whole service works, and it’s surprisingly simple. You schedule a show (type in when the show will start, it’s title and a short description of what it’s about), and then at the scheduled time, you pull up the client software and away you go.

The host has full control over who gets to talk and who doesn’t, and listeners simply click a button on their screen which flags to the host that they’re wanting to talk.

Then, not only can your audience listen live and participate (like a like call in radio show), the whole podcast is also recorded and made available to anyone who wishes to listen to it.

The only downside to talkshoe is that you’re required to actually ‘call in’ to run your podcast, that is, actually call into the service with your phone, or use a voip service such as skype (as long as you have skype-out credit).

The downside is you have to pay for the call, but the upside is that the call-in number is not a premium number. If you have free nights and weekends, or free long distance (or free local if you happen to be in the 724 area code), it still works out as free.

You’re also given the option to make the recording of your podcast private.

The only other downside is that being required to call the service, many people tend to record or broadcast using their phone, rather than with a high-quality microphone, meaning the actual audio quality suffers.

That being said, what we have here is a free service that allows people to host and broadcast live shows for free.

Mypodcast.com

Mypodcast is rare as it allows the user unlimited storage space and bandwidth for free. It doesn’t matter if your podcast is listened to by 5 people or 500,000, it never costs you a cent.

The downside is, of course, advertising. However, mypodcast manages to do this is a very easy and fair way.

First of all, you’re given control of where you place the ads within your podcast, and are only required to place one ad spot per 20 minutes of show. Luckily, these tend to be quite short (For example, when you release your first podcast, your first ad will simply be “This podcast is brought to you by mypodcast.com”). Secondly, you can choose which ads to actually place. For example, you know the ads will be at least targeted to your audience, and therefore less intrusive and less annoying to your listeners.

In other words, if your podcast is an hour long, you only need to place three ads. In other words, you’re asked to sacrifice less than 5 minutes in an hour long podcast to advertising. Not bad considering you’re getting your storage and bandwidth for free.

Secondly, you are actually paid for your advertising. Obviously, just starting out, it’s unlikely anyone will pay you anything. Rates for advertising are set on a ‘per 1000 dowloads’ basis, but you are allowed to set this rate yourself. So, if the unthinkable happens and you find yourself getting tens of thousands of downloads per episode, you could start to make some real money.

It’s also incredibly easy to set up. If you’ve ever run a blog, you’ll get it instantly. You just download a piece of software (that allows you to record your podcast and place your advertising spots), put in your login information and click “publish”. Also, while this software is very basic (you’re faced with simple ‘play’ ‘stop’ and ‘record’ controls, as well as the controls to place your ad spots), you can also open audio files and import them into this software.

In other words, you can record your podcast with your favorite software, edit it to your heart’s content, then simply drop it into the mypodcast recorder, drop in your ads and away you go.