Speaker 0: Does your podcast need WordPress anymore?
Thank you for joining me for The Audacity to Podcast.
I'm Daniel J. Lewis. I've been using WordPress since 20 o 3.
I think version 0.72 was my first.
But the world of website options for podcasters has changed
significantly since then.
If you'd like to follow along with the notes for this episode,
they are a simple tap or swipe away, look at the chapters, or go
to the audacitytopodcast.com/needwordpress.
Now quick disclosure, some of the links in those notes and these
providers and options I mentioned in this episode, I do have
affiliate relationships with.
But I earn commissions only if you purchase through my links,
which I'd love for you to do.
But none of this content is sponsored, and I recommend things I
truly believe in regardless of earnings.
And some of the things I recommend, I don't earn anything from
those options.
So keep that in mind as I go forward with this, and you can get
those links in the notes for this episode.
Simple tap or swipe away or at the
audacitytopodcast.com/needwordpress.
And before we get to that, there's a fundamental thing I need to
remind you. Your podcast does need a website.
I've come to hate the phrases, find my podcast in Spotify, Apple
Podcast, fill in the blank with whatever podcast app, or the
phrase, wherever you get your podcasts.
My disdain for the latter deserves its own future episode and I
will get to it at some point.
The biggest problem with these phrases is that you're telling
people to basically search for your podcast.
And that puts you at the mercy of not only the frequently
changing search rankings, but it also especially depends on the
assumption that there are no other podcast with similar names or
that you're the top result now or in the future.
For example, I love this 1 because it's so meta.
There were 19 results as I prepared this episode.
19 results in Apple Podcasts for think outside the box.
Some of them were thinking outside the box.
Some of them reworded that or rearranged those words a little
bit. But still, 19 results for think outside the box.
And even though some of them were thinking outside the box versus
think outside the box, that's enough to confuse people thinking,
wait, is it think outside the box or thinking outside the box?
And those are 19 podcasts that are not thinking outside the box.
They're very much thinking inside the box.
And that's just right now.
So if you have to start telling people which search result to
choose, like you say, yeah, search for think outside the box, and
then pick the 1 with the red cover art.
Well, what if another podcast starts in the future with red cover
art?
But if you have to start getting that detailed in your call to
action, then you're already over complicating it.
The simplest thing is to point your potential audience to your
website and let your website link to the most popular platforms.
Even if your potential listeners want to follow your podcast in
less popular apps, they will probably search for your podcast by
name.
But if you've given them your domain, they can see your branding
there because I assume your branding is at least somewhat
consistent between your website and your podcast cover art as it
appears inside the podcast apps.
So they can very quickly see, oh, yeah. That's the right 1.
They don't have to try and figure it out tapping into different
podcast looking for which 1 is yours. They'll see right away.
Another way to look at this is a podcast without a website is a
homeless podcast because your website is the home on the Internet
for your podcast.
From your website, you can collect email addresses, you can
promote special events, sell products and services, solicit
feedback, and much more.
You can't effectively do that in podcast apps.
Some of that is downright impossible to do inside podcast apps
right now.
And for the foreseeable future, even with things that podcasting
2 is bringing, some of the stuff just isn't even on the radar for
that.
Regardless of what powers your website, the most important thing
is that you use your own domain for your website because that
allows you to make timeless calls to action no matter how you
change your technology.
If you ever have to change the domain in the future, make sure
you redirect your old domain with all of its paths to the new
domain.
So oldpodcast.com redirects to newpodcast.com, And
oldpodcast.com/follow redirects to newpodcast.com/follow.
That's called a wild card domain.
So you don't have to do a slash follow to / follow.
It's just anything that comes after the slash forward that,
whatever is there, also put that on the new domain.
So the main point here is please assume that the answer to the
question, does my podcast need a website? Is always yes.
That might be on an existing website.
That's a completely separate issue.
But your podcast does need a website.
It needs a home on the Internet.
So with that foundation laid, let's move on here.
Podcast hosting website providers have much better websites now
than they did before.
Captivate, Buzzsprout, Transistor, Blubrry, and other podcast
hosting providers do offer basic hosting for websites with your
podcast hosting, and that is for each podcast that you host with
them.
These websites are often simple, but can also still be attractive
and designed to make your podcast prominent and easily
listenable, sometimes even watchable, along with promoting ways
to follow your podcast on that website.
These sites also let you publish extra pages and blog posts on
your same website.
Some of the hosting providers even let you collect email
addresses for your email newsletter or to solicit feedback from
them or receive financial support from some method from your
audience.
The most important thing is for such a website to work with your
domain and be an actual website preferably with only your own
branding.
And what I mean by an actual website is that you're not simply a
web page on a directory of your podcast hosting provider.
That's what some of the lower quality podcast hosting providers
do.
They give you a web page on their domain with their prominent
branding.
Sometimes even if they allow you to map your own domain to their
website that they provide for you, visiting the page still looks
like you're visiting a page from them, not from you.
It needs to be branded primarily to your podcast branding.
That doesn't mean that the podcast hosting provider has their own
logo maybe in the footer or a name like this website is generated
by whatever hosting provider that is. That's okay.
But I'm saying at the top of the page, the most prominent
branding needs to be your own.
So if you need only a basic home for your podcast and your
podcast hosting provider offers a good 1, then go ahead and use
it as long as you use your own domain with it.
So now let's get to WordPress because WordPress gives ultimate
power with costs.
Once you get your own domain and web hosting, most of the
WordPress ecosystem doesn't cost any money.
You can get a great theme and countless useful plugins free on
wordpress.org and through the theme and plugin catalogs
accessible inside your WordPress site.
But to quote from the Spider Man comics, often spoken by uncle
Ben in the movies, with great power comes great responsibility.
Or to quote an often repeated line that I loved from the Once
Upon a Time TV series, all magic comes with a price.
Note that when I said you can get some of these things for free,
I didn't say that using WordPress is actually free. Sure.
You might not have to buy anything, but it will cost you.
It costs you time and knowledge to get things working well, and
then further time and knowledge to keep them working well.
For example, if you want a contact form from your website to
collect feedback from your audience, you have several free and
paid plugin options out there for WordPress, and they all require
some level of manual setup.
And if you want to monetize your site in any way, whether selling
products or memberships or taking donations or anything like
that, you'll be looking at many more steps and complications to
do that. Yes.
You can do it, but it takes more time and knowledge to be able to
do it.
You could even generate your podcast RSS feed completely from
your WordPress website with a plugin like PowerPress, which is
what I recommend.
If you're going to do that, use PowerPress to do it.
But I recommend that only when paired with Blubrry's podcast
hosting because that ties in seamlessly with PowerPress.
So you can manage everything about your podcast from PowerPress
and you're working around some of the stability and performance
issues of using WordPress to create your podcast RSS feed.
So only do that if you do it with Blubrry or you're prepared to
handle several geeky complications.
And that's the way I do it right now with several geeky
complications.
But then, what do you do when something goes wrong?
I've had multiple WordPress websites compromised before,
requiring me to invest valuable time to find the problem, patch
the vulnerabilities, and repair the damage.
So, yes, WordPress gives you great power with your website.
In fact, I feel confident saying you can do almost anything you
can imagine with a WordPress website, but that power will cost
you in other ways. So what else do you have as an option?
There are website builders out there that have gotten a lot
easier and better.
Whether you're looking at a page builder plugin for WordPress
like Elementor, Beaver Builder, Divi, or even the increasingly
powerful Gutenberg editor, or you're looking at third party
website providers like Wix, Squarespace, and such.
They've all gotten a lot easier to use and to make your website
look and function great.
And much to my delight, they're also finally getting better at
supporting the niche needs of podcasters.
I still don't recommend third party website providers to host
your podcast media in RSS feed, like Squarespace, Wix, and such.
Don't use them to actually create your podcast feed and publish
your podcast. Only for your website, not for the feed.
But if you get your RSS feed from your actual podcast hosting
provider, like Captivate, Buzzsprout, and such, all you need to
turn your website into a, quote, podcast website, unquote, is
audio players for each episode and subscribe or follow buttons
for popular podcast apps.
And then boom, you've got a podcast website.
That's really all it takes to turn a website into a podcast
website.
But maybe that's a little too complicated for you, or maybe that
has too many extra steps, or you just don't like the way some of
those other tools work. So Podpage and Beamly provide a new way.
In recent years, a hybrid option has emerged, and that is third
party website providers designed specifically for podcast
websites powered primarily from your already existing podcast RSS
feed. The 2 most popular options are Podpage and Beamly.
And Beamly was formerly known as Podcast Page.
So can you see why they rebranded?
That was a smart decision for them.
So it's now Podpage is 1 option. Beamly is the other option.
These not only both often give you great looking websites, but
their feature offerings are starting to rival what you could make
with your own custom WordPress website, but without the cost of
so much time and knowledge to do it on your own WordPress
website.
For example, both Podpage and Beamly let you sell different types
of memberships to your audience, allowing them to financially
support your podcast on an automatic recurring basis.
And you can define that membership however you want, and it can
offer whatever benefits you want within that ecosystem.
It could simply even be a way for only your audience to give to
your podcast on a recurring basis even if they get nothing
exclusive with that.
But that's built in there with both of those options.
And both Podpage and Beamly also allow you to sell some products
directly through your website.
Both providers let you add additional blog posts and pages on
your site, like an about page on your site even if that's not in
your RSS feed.
And they both offer a whole lot more on top of that.
Between the 2, I usually recommend Podpage more.
But you look at them, decide what's right for you.
In my opinion, even though I've recommended Podpage even before
this happened, I think it does help that my friend Dave Jackson
from School of Podcasting now works for Podpage.
And the reason he works for Podpage is because he recommended
Podpage so much before that.
And I am an affiliate for both of these providers, but that
doesn't change what I recommend here.
I think Podpage is the better of these 2 options, but you pick
what's right for you.
You might decide that Beamly is better for you as plenty of
people have.
But looking at all of these top level options that I shared with
you, which 1 is right for you?
Well, I don't usually recommend only 1 option for everyone
because there is no 1 size fits all for podcasters.
But I hope the guidance that I've already shared in this episode
will help in addition to this.
You could even consider this a workflow to helping you make this
decision. So we'll call it steps here.
Step 1, if you love WordPress and want total control, use
WordPress with PowerPress and Blubrry hosting, and then you're
done. Or move on to step 2.
If you don't love WordPress or you can't afford the time and
knowledge to run it, use the Podcast RSS feed from your Podcast
hosting provider, and then move on to step 3 or following.
Step 3 then is if you want a bare bones site you barely have to
think about, use your own domain with the basic website from your
podcast hosting provider. Or move on to step 4.
If you want more control and don't mind some extra steps for
every episode, use a third party website provider like Wix or
Squarespace.
Or if that's not good enough for you and it's not Podcasting
enough for you and I wouldn't blame you for that, and you want
more built in features, but without manually cross posting your
episodes like you would have to do with Wix or Squarespace, then
use Podpage or Beamly.
But no matter what, I've got 2 important tips for you before I
end this episode.
Important tip number 1, update your RSS feeds episode links.
If you choose any option other than publishing your podcast from
WordPress and that is with PowerPress and Blubrry or using your
podcast hosting provider's website, then you'll need to ensure
you copy the web page URL for each episode into the episode link
in your episode editor from your podcast hosting provider.
This will ensure your podcast episodes properly point to your
episode web pages for each episode instead of pointing to the
podcast hosting provider site that you're probably not using if
you've got a separate website.
And the way that you do this, for example, on Captivate is that
you paste the episode web page URL into the episode URL field
after you click to open the transcription and discovery section.
Or in Buzzsprout, paste it into the custom episode web page field
after you open the see more options section of the episode
editor.
And then important tip number 2, copy or redirect all old URLs.
If you've ever given a call to action with a specific URL on your
domain or where you want to keep any kind of search engine
optimization that you've built up and search engine ranking that
you've built up for individual pages, or you have certain domains
and URLs that you've spoken or used in multiple places whether in
your podcast or in print.
Like for example, the audacitypodcast.com/giveback.
It's that slash give back part that I'm talking about.
That's what I use for if you value the podcast, you can go there
to be able to give back to the podcast whatever you feel it's
worth to you.
If you've used that in your podcast, anywhere on the Internet, on
your website, on business cards, anything like that, any of those
URLs that have propagated anywhere into the world digitally or
physically, then make sure those will always work.
Whether you're changing things around on your current website or
you're switching to a completely different website option, like
moving from WordPress to Podpage or vice versa.
Make sure that those links still work so all your calls to action
will still work and be timeless and nothing will break then.
And the benefit there, especially if you ensure that all of your
episode web page URLs still work and redirect or still work the
same way with the same URLs on your new system that you're using
for your website is any kind of search ranking that those old web
pages had will carry over to the new page.
And speaking of search ranking, all of these options now, I think
they include great search engine optimization tools built in with
them, so you don't have to worry about that very much anymore
like you used to have to.
So these are some options for you to consider.
If you'd like to comment on this, share your own opinion, ask
further questions about that, or just get the notes in these
links that I've mentioned.
I'd love for you to use my affiliate links if you'd like to take
advantage of any of these options, then please look at the show
notes, a simple tap or swipe away inside your app, consider the
chapters, or go to the audacity to podcast.com/needwordpress.
And speaking of chapters, I would love for you to try
PodChapters. You can try it free over at podchapters.com.
No promo code necessary for you to try it free over there.
I have gotten such great feedback from the podcasters already
using it, saying things like, wow.
This is so much better than any other AI system that I've used
for suggesting the chapters for me.
Or others loving the ability for them to paste the outline that
they already have into PodChapters, and then it turns that
outline into chapters time stamped inside of it and being able to
easily add the images and so much more with that.
And did you hear that Apple Podcast is going to start supporting
podcasting 2 chapters?
So you could continue embedding the chapters in the m p 3 files
like you could before in Apple Podcast and other apps will
support that.
But also, you can start using the podcasting 2 chapters that
PodChapters can even host for you if your podcast hosting
provider doesn't already do that, and you can start doing that
easily with PodChapters.
Overcast is also going to start supporting the podcasting 2
chapters.
So I'm really excited about that, and I'd love for you to try
PodChapters free over at podchapters.com.
There's no deadline on that. No special promo code.
No fake limited offer or anything like that. No fake scarcity.
Just go to podchapters.com. Sign up. Try it.
Let me know how it works for you because I built this for myself
to solve so many problems and complications that I was running
into and the cost that it was for me to make my own chapters,
taking 30 minutes or more and 5 different apps for me to add
chapters to my own podcast.
Now it takes about 30 seconds for me to do.
So if your time is valuable, like, I feel like my time is
valuable, and I spent a couple of months to build this tool
because I wanted to reduce how much time I spent on chapters.
But if you feel your time is valuable and you want to take
advantage of these really cool engaging features in podcasts that
you can do in many podcast apps out there, both legacy chapters
and modern chapters, then go over to podchapters.com.
And now that I've given you some of the guts and taught you some
of the tools, it's time for you to go start and grow your own
podcast for passion and profit. I'm Daniel J.
Lewis from theaudacitytopodcast.com. Thanks for listening.