Part 8: Choosing the right podcast host: tips for selection and setup

Once the first episode is in the can, it’s time to find a home for your podcast, because unlike with YouTube, podcasts are not uploaded directly to Apple Podcast, Spotify etc. You need a feed. There are some outstanding podcast hosting services, like Podigee, that set up the podcast feed.

For a low monthly fee your podcast will be listed on all the usual platforms, and you’ll get a web player for your website, analyses on your listeners and most-heard episodes, etc.

But one thing at a time.

Why do I need a podcast feed at all?

What is a podcast feed

Some (beginner) podcasters record audio and include it in blog articles. That’s nice, because you can reach people with these audios, but only if they have a screen. And you can’t reach them through the popular podcast platforms of the world.

If you want to get audios to your target group without them needing a screen, you have to have a feed. A feed is basically a container in which all the relevant data on the podcast, the episodes, descriptions etc. are coded and contained. You can add further episodes to the feed, or change the descriptions.

To be listed on podcast platforms like Spotify, Apple Podcast etc., the container needs to be posted to the platforms. You do that with the feed link you get from your podcast hoster. People can subscribe to the feed, and will be informed of new episodes and can download them if they want. So to turn an audio on a computer into a subscribable podcast, you need a feed. And that’s what a podcast hoster does for you.

Can you host a podcast yourself?

The short answer is yes. But we don’t recommend it. It’s time-consuming, takes a lot of expertise, and you don’t get any analysis data.

You can also set up your own RSS feed. There are basically two options:

Via a WordPress plugin. There are numerous plugins for WordPress that generate a valid feed that works on all platforms. However, these plugins can sometimes conflict. You have no doubt run into that, when a page slows down or one plugin influences another. You want to avoid this negative effect.

Hosting on your own server with your own RSS feed. This is also doable. An RSS feed is nothing but a little HTML, so it’s very, very logical. But this type of feed doesn’t have the analytics you need for success measurement.

A podcast feed via a hoster like Podigee really is easier, faster, and more effictiveprecise. But why?

Powerful analytics

aturally you also want to know how many downloads your podcast has gotten and how it’s doing. In order to measure that, good podcast hosters use the IAB 2.0 standard as a basis for data capture.

One of the criteria for clean measurement, for example, is that a download or stream only counts if at least 60 seconds of the episode were streamed or downloaded.

Of course you also want to know which platforms these streams and downloads come from, and what episodes perform better than others. That gives you statistics you can use to measure the success of the entire podcast.

And downloads aren’t the only thing. There is also monetization of your podcast.

Podcast Monetization

The podcast monetization trend continues unabated. Listeners accept advertising, and dynamic ads also make it more interesting for podcasters.

At Podigee we also have a dynamic ad server, and the ad planner gives you easy campaign management with which you can not only insert current ads in all desired episodes (at every point in the podcast with pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll), but also define from when to when the advertising should run.

That makes it easy to monetize your podcast, which brings us to the next point.