This can be a huge hurtle for college kids that are looking to jump into an industry. Podcasting is a great springboard to build a resume and show a future employer that you don’t just wait at home for the call backs, but work the industry to better yourself and others. Although podcasting is relatively inexpensive and almost anyone can sit down and figure it out, very few will attempt to do it and that can make you different. Those that have found themselves recently unemployed can share their experiences and lessons in their career with those around them.

Does giving information away for free allow others to absorb the information and take away potential jobs from you? Potentially, but when they go up against you in an interview who is better suited? The one that learned it from a podcaster or the host of the show? Think about it. You’re helping them, but you were the one that went out of your way to build a show from scratch to present to the masses.

There are thousands upon thousands of podcasts on the Internet, many which are bad and a few that excel at what they attempt to deliver. You don’t have to be a rockstar, web celebrity or genius to find yourself a niche in a market. The goal isn’t to build the next podcasting empire, it’s to show employers and yourself that you won’t take being jobless sitting down. What sounds better to an employer, the individual that has been job hunting for months and just can’t find anything or an individual who hunts for jobs while creating their own “radio show” about the industry.

Your podcast might be on recent news and events in the industry or perhaps an education show where you spread your current knowledge to others. You don’t have to have a PhD or a masters of business to define a space for yourself; podcasters are individuals that have found a passion for a topic and want to bring that passion to others.

Think of podcasting as a gateway to a career in the field you’ve worked or wish to work. You can use it as a bridge to gap the sea of humanity and sameness to one of individual drive and motivation. Employers want career driven people that show strength and desire to learn new topics and to share their knowledge with a strong team of people. Podcasters grow to have key qualities needed for such a job: public speaking, presentation skills, motivation, planning, up-to-date knowledge and the ability to complete a project without micromanagement.

A podcaster plans shows in advance, releases on scheduled intervals and provides content that is needed or desired by others while constantly watching trends, fielding questions and learning along the way. That sounds like the template to a quality employee, doesn’t it?

You don’t need a large budget to start your first podcast, especially if you’re doing it alone or with a few local folks. Getting yourself a microphone and, optionally a mixer, is a great way to start to build a high quality audio show. With a budget of under $200 and a mildly powerful PC/Mac you can setup a show. You may opt to find a free service to host the audio content or host it on a small pay service like Libsyn.

The world needs more podcasters to talk about political science, software development, web design, art, photography, childrens programming and so many other great fields of study. A school teacher looking to find a job can start up a show to entertain younger children or teach them topics to advance their learning in school. The options for podcast topics are endless.

So, what are you doing in your free time? Perhaps you should focus a bit more on being outstanding.

You hear about sites that take off and get thousands of users overnight, before they know it the owners are getting millions of unique users hitting their site and the world is their oyster. Okay, now let’s talk about everyone else, the 99% of the population of bloggers, podcasters and video producers. Unless you own a successful brand or property with thousands of dedicated fans, you’re starting at ground zero like myself.

Prepare yourself for many nights and weekends working on your personal brand and website. Making money on advertising occurs when you can show advertisers “impressions” on your properties and your new property may be receiving under twenty visitors a day even if you’re pushing one to three daily pieces of content; it’s a slow process. Video bloggers are worse off because all their awesome content is unsearchable–it’s not textual. They’ve got to work hard, craft great headline articles and start supporting blogs and articles to support their effort to bring in organic searches. It’s possible but it takes time.

I’ve found very few working shortcuts to getting seen as a video podcaster and audio podcaster. There are no fast ways to be number-one in a search engine or ranking on the top podcasts in a podcast directory aside from paid advertising or getting a web celebrity to pimp your show. You can setup twitter accounts, facebook fan pages and accounts on all the trendy social network systems on the Internet and that won’t make your show popular until you understand how to use the tools most effectively. You can buy consulting for a hefty fee or do what I did: follow a few other brands that are doing it successfully and mimic their behavior, that’s not a shortcut, that’s an educational experience.

Spend less time looking for the shortest route to success and spend more time pumping out quality content, watching others performing social networking techniques and being an all-around normal guy or gal with the drive and passion for success. Let people know about what you’re doing and why you’re confident it’s a successful venture.

Trust In Yourself

When producing audio and video content, there is only one person you can trust to get the job done: yourself.

When most of your salary is being paid in blood, sweat and tears you’re going to find very few people want to work with you in the effort. Unless you can find co-hosts, guest audio speakers or a video crew of dedicated passionate individuals, you’re going to be doing most of your work alone. Creating a great audio show is only as good as the participants in the show. You may have the best idea in the world along with a great chemistry with your fellow podcasters but if they decided to leave, lose interest or “no show” for a few episodes, where does that leave yours how and your audience? Are they going to work those same nights and weekends to promote the production you’ve all been working so hard on?

I’ve found the most reliable thing to do is build a list of friends that are comfortable on camera (or on a mic) and get as many to show up to the shows as possible. Don’t trust any one individual to have the same drive and interests as yourself but, as a whole, you’ve got enough folks to always make the show. Having a pool of individuals to call upon (much like they do on This Week in Tech), then you can always have a successful broadcast.

Lessons of the day: Only trust yourself to get the job done and plan on working your ass off to get there. Don’t hire SEO experts, social media professionals and all that crap; learn the techniques yourself using articles and free editorials on the Net. Teach yourself how to be successful, don’t expect others to do it for you.

Screw the get rich quick method, I think you’ll be more valuable making some friendly contacts in the industry of your choice. Recently, I watched a video on how you can make money on twitter in a “fully automated” fashion selling who knows what to who knows who for whatever cost — really? There is no passion or challenge, it’s all about finding something exploitable and selling it to anyone your automated bots can find.

I’m not really jealous of the technique that “anyone can do” (so could I, right?) but I am blown away by those that will try the techniques. Most will fail and come out of the experience unchanged and lighter in pocket. The only person getting rich quick is the one taking your money to sell you the techniques that they say they’ve learned. Here is an idea, find an industry you’re passionate about and see if you can find a way to make your own techniques and money making systems.

Here is my modest little technique that seems to work okay: establish relationships with people in your industry. You’re no doubt smaller than most of them so you’re going to have to be ready to give some of your services away for free in order to show them you’re serious. In my video podcasting studio, I’ll record an episode of Common Man Cocktails with a product that I’ve been given (if it works as advertised) and give them free exposure to my viewers.

Why wouldn’t I take the aggressive route and ask them to pay me for the exposure? Because I’d like them to see the results of what I can do, show off my techniques and give them a taste for how successful their product can be in my own brand. No doubt I’ll ask them to sponsor an episode in the future, but what trust have I built if I started by asking for money up front? What trust have I built with my viewers if they find out I’m only pitching an item because they paid me to do so?

As the little guy, you’re going to have to admit to yourself that you’re a nobody with no influence outside of your own audience. You’re building your audience and your brand but you’re going to want others to help you along the way; those friends you establish will come back to reward you later.

Perhaps you show off a product on your audio/video show and send it off to the makers of the product. They may give you a nod and a big ol’ “thank you” or they might enjoy the work you did and spread your video to their friends in the industry along with their own customers. That free exposure you gave them can come back to you ten fold with new viewership and exposure.

Who knows, a few months later that new friendly brand may ask to work together no future partnerships. What’s the risk? Nothing but a bit of work on your side, for free, in hopes of establishing stronger relationships. Give it a try.

A few folks have been disgruntled at the effort of promoting yourself on every social media site and getting very little result. For instance, I’ll post my videos on digg.com and receive six hits for a specific show, only two to four “diggs” from those six leads. Then people will say, “well, it’s not worth my time to only get six hits for posting my shows on digg.”

It is worth your time.

People get too hung up watching internet celebrities pimp their shows on one site and get 10,000 hits from the exposure. Everyone else has to fight one person at a time, this is how you grow. If you’re not willing to put in the 2-minutes of effort to post your show on digg or other social media sites to get one or two referrals than you’re going to struggle with success. You might as well quit now.

One new user may find your content interesting. Why else did they click the link to go there? If you get no referrals than you have no chance to obtain an audience but if you get one, just one, you now have a chance to build a fan. Six users gives you six times the luck in building a fan. A single fan can tell their friends about the show, send the link to a buddy or sit down and listen/watch your content in the office with co-workers or at home with family and share the experience together.

It all starts with one person in your audience. After you get a few dedicated folks you’ll know if your content is something people are willing to return to view. If they are, it’s only a matter of time before you’re audience grows from one to one-hundred and beyond.

No matter what the effort, every single encounter is a chance to establish a relationship with a new fan.

I’ve received a few e-mails lately asking about how I handle some of my shows release schedules. In short, how often should a podcaster or video podcaster create a new episode? Every situation may be different but there are some obvious trends I’ve seen over the last few years.

Although a release schedule really depends on your shows content and purpose, the best possible scenario would be short episodes on a daily basis. This turns out to be a lot of work if you’re working alone or in a small group. This is most challenging if your content is time sensitive, such as daily news, industry news or the like. Large firms have benefited from daily shows like CNET Buzz Out Loud. Others, such as Wine Library TV grew from a retail store into a daily show by pushing out great content for 18+ months before making it big.

A daily show between five and ten minutes seems to be the sweet spot for video shows (and 20-minutes or so for audio shows.) Viewers will be able to watch your show during lunch, breakfast or sneak one in during work hours when the boss is not looking. You’ll find it’s fast to edit and produce a show that’s small and tight because there are few chances for major errors or interruptions and the post production is quick with very little render time required. Audio episodes requires less attentiveness so longer shows will be more acceptable.

A short video show will lend itself well in terms of disk storage, quick downloads and easy to post content on sites like Blip.tv. The downfall? You’ll have limited time to squeeze in all your content per episode. If your information isn’t time sensitive you can sit down and record five episodes in under 30 minutes of real time! You can edit each show individually (which could take an hour or so depending on how much post production you’re doing) and launch each one at the start of your day.

You may opt for a weekly show because it fits your schedule better while still working in about 20-30 minutes of great content. Nothing says you have to meet a 20-minute marker, a 10-minute weekly show is fine too. The downfall to a short weekly show comes down to keeping your audience attentive over the long term. A short show might leave less of an impression and they could forget to visit your site each week. If you provide great syndication methods, such as iTunes, you can help remind your audience to tune in each week.

There may be opportunity for a video show that runs only once or twice a month if you’re looking to test the waters, have a rough schedule or your show guests are hard to coordinate. The major downfall being the slow growth of your audience because there is less content to consume. You’re statistics will increase greatly as you have more shows for people to go back and watch after they’ve discovered your content. We’ve got plenty of people new to our shows that go back and re-discover old episodes and that greatly pushes up our download count.

Look at the release schedule over a single year. If you run a show once a month you’re going to end up with 12-episodes at the end of the year. If you run a show twice a week you’ll have 104 episodes after the year is through and, of course, a daily show will have upwards of 250 episodes (if you take weekends off). More shows means more statistics and a better chance to grab new listeners because you’ve always got something new to promote.

Now, let’s talk about statistics. Granted, many video podcast producers will tell you “it’s not about the numbers, its about the content” but we’re human and we love to categorize, organize and know what the heck is going on. What we’ve noticed, with trends in Common Man Cocktails, is that each episodes viewership peaks the first two days after its launch. Then, viewership declines as everyone has seen the latest show while a few new viewers are slowly keeping your numbers going throughout the dead-space between launches.

When we launched the show once a week on Wednesday we’d have big numbers from Thursday to Saturday and then they would fade nearly to nothing by the following Tuesday night. Then, we started pushing out an episode on Wednesday and Saturday, our numbers would pop from Sunday through Tuesday night, just as we prepared to launch the next show. This allows our viewership to maintain a constant rise throughout the week as we gain more momentum and new viewers.

The end result, each new episode peaks the day of launch by another twenty views or so, incremental growth each episode shows progress and interest in the brand. So, wouldn’t it be in our best interest to do a new show everyday? Sure! Except for the small issue with having a few other jobs to do and producing video podcasts as a hobby as this is not quite the best time to bring a brand to investors.

If you’ve got time and dedication to cut a new show every day, the other technique I’ve seen used quite a bit is to run four short episodes a week and one medium length show during the middle of the week. The small shorts can be used to keep your audience attentive, progress your shows content throughout the week and give them a large dose mid-week as something to look forward to viewing.

While a few techniques may work for you, knowing the different possiblities to work towards gives you a nice goal to achieve. Many people are looking to get into video podcasting and hopefully this gives them something to think about in their preparation.

Just remember, the most important part of creating your podcast is the content. You can produce a show nobody wants to watch each day if you want, but that’s not really worth your time.

Women and podcasting are on the rise, but it seems to be slow compared to what you’ll find out there in the most popular podcasts. Of course, I’m discounting Oprah and all the TV shows being listed as top podcasts in iTunes, their audience is being siphoned from major networks and, let’s face it, half those podcasters probably don’t even know what a podcast is! Putting clips of your show on the internet and calling it a podcast isn’t exactly what I’m looking for in a podcast — neither are you no doubt.

Those podcasts getting a lot of advertising, that aren’t major networks, are most typically Tech Podcasts and Video Casts along with a bit of Gaming. You’ll also find some politics and international news along with a growing sector in language learning. Language Learning podcasts have my respect, when I first got into podcasting four years ago I only found two language learning podcasts; I settled on listening to podcasts in German to help learn the language via immersion. Today, there are dozens of great quality language podcasts, many are still men.

What we need, in the podcast industry, is a Diggnation style podcast of women.  Most of the shows still seem to be dominated by men but that should change in the future. If two guys sitting on a coach can draw a huge crowd, imagine what a great womens show would do for the women in the industry.

I believe this will all change when we realize a video podcast doesn’t have to have a women just as eye candy or voice candy in the audio medium. There are plenty of women with great ideas, huge motivation and deep passion for technologies, designs, arts, sciences, language and news broadcasting.

What about podcasts about knitting, sewing, cooking and all the other hobbies that are stereotypically women? There is huge opportunity in this area because the competition is so low, you don’t have to be a super star like Oprah or Ellen to be seen. Why struggle to be a Tech podcast when you can be top dog in something more niche? While your audience in a sewing podcast will be marginal compared to a technology related podcast, you’re the only show in town.

When it comes to advertising, you can battle for 1% of the advertising pie with a tech/gaming show or fight to own 30%+ in a less competitive podcast market. You may be able to pull in 1% of 500,000 people in a tech podcast, but 1% of that number is really small when you can pull 30% of a 250,000 pie if you change your topic.

How do we know exactly how many listeners are looking for a show about sewing or knitting? It doesn’t really matter. Starting an audio podcast and recording 20 episodes over six months will cost you very little in terms of testing the market. We’re not talking about the next hit NBC show with Neilson ratings and pressure, we’re just looking to see if there is interest in a show. If there isn’t, try something different, the loss is only your time and effort, but you’ll gain a ton of experience in podcasting messing around so it’s not a total loss. When you find the niche that has the audience you’ll be the next top show on iTunes.

Don’t discount women as listeners either. There are plenty of women looking for help with their hobbies as well, many stay-at-home moms can find 20-minutes of their day to watch a video show or an hour to listen to an audio show. Advertisers will agree as they’re stuck trying to fit all their advertising into the 18-34 male demographic. What about those trying to market to women? Where is their outlet for ads?

Provide the advertisers the outlet they need and are striving to find. You need proof? Go to Google and type: “scrapbooking” and do a search. See the sponsored ads on the sidebar? Click the “more sponsored links” button at the bottom of the ads and you’ll see 47 pages of advertisers bidding for your click. Do you think anyone is going to click on an advertising on page 47?

Now, let’s say you build a little scrapbooking podcast and have a few hundred downloads per episodes, or less. You’ll probably find those advertisers bidding on the 47th page of google adwords would love a nice low-cost advertisement in your show, or product placement, for less than Google charges. They’re bidding to gain some type of position on the first page of google’s sponsored links but they could be paying half the cost to have the focused attention of your listeners. Sounds appealing, no?

Go to iTunes and do a search for “scrapbooking” and click “see all” for the podcasts. There is one page and six entries for the entire subject. Search for “gaming” and look at all the podcasts and you’ll probably get bored after flipping past page sixteen. Do you want to compete against a page of podcasters or sixteen pages or more of gaming fanatics? But wait, there is more!

You’ll also notice plenty of the scrapbooking podcasts are defunct, having stopped posting episodes in May of 2008 or even 2007. The same can be said for many of the gaming podcasts, but they’re still in the directories and getting in the way of your performance and rise to the top. You’ll beat them, eventually, but it will be measured in years (trust me). A quality scrapbooking podcast with minimal advertising would probably be in the top ten in a matter of weeks.

What’s my point? Pretty simple.

• Women can host their own shows, they don’t have to do be the “eye candy,” they can think on their own.
• Woman’s interests are not competitive, yet, so now is the time to jump in and establish yourself as the primary source for material. If you’re number one now, you won’t have to fight for it later.
• Advertisers need a way to get at the female demographic, why don’t you provide them a street to peddle their wares?

I might be a guy, but I’m not an idiot. A female has a huge benefit over me in the realm of podcasting, they sound sexier than I do (naturally getting more attention) and they’ve got interests that are in demand with very few people providing a solution.

Creativity, Quality and Passion.

I’ve listened to many folks that would like to write articles for many of my blogs say, “I just don’t have the creativity to do it.” Yet these same people play video games, read books, have hobbies and otherwise use their brain through their daily lives. If you drop one of these individuals in a maze, you know they’ll get out. They’ve got creativity, they’re just lacking motivation to direct their creativity to pull off “the unexpected.”

I’m mostly “right brained” in my method of thinking, which seems to mean I’m: intuitive, random, subjective, and look at the wholes. Sure, I can draw, play instruments and spin stories but that doesn’t mean a “left brained’ person is a complete idiot when it comes to developing their own podcast concepts and ideas. As a matter of fact, they’ve got the grounded logic to really keep things on track. Does that mean they’re not creative?

If you’re into structured thinking, breaking down pieces of problems, objective, analytical and rational you’ve still got the instruments needed to spin up a great podcast. People that believe their not creative are just not focused. Rather than focus on why you can’t create something, focus on what you, yourself, would enjoy listening to in a podcast. What makes you tick? There are a few people in this world and the chances are good someone has the same ideas as you. The difference? They stand by saying “you know what would be a good idea?” while you do it. Too bad for them.

Creativity, Quality and Passion.

What bothers me more than a podcast that lacks any type of structure is a podcast lacking quality. I’m not talking about the quality of personalities or entertainment value of the podcast, I’m talking about quality of the production in terms of audio and visuals. You can create an hour long audio podcast about the history of the bread market and people will listen if your audio quality is soothing and clear.

Best ways to push quality in a podcast is to spend a little money on a good microphone. That might mean spending $50.00 to $150.00 to get the audio quality higher, but, if you’re going to be creating four-hundred episodes over the next few years, what’s $150.00 investment? You’ll probably spend more than that at the movie theater over the next four years… you ever notice how great the audio and visual quality is at the theater? That’s one major factor why people still go to the theater rather than watching at home.

If you’re podcasting with friends in the same room, get a good FireWire Mixing board like the Alesis Multimix. Watch your levels and try to get everyone around the same level, compensating for those with softer voices, females, etc. You can boost your low db levels to sound more “manly” (if you’re in-fact a man) and push a little “deep radio voice” on your listeners. In the end, podcasting is all about the illusion of professionalism, like those with 200,000+ downloaded big boys of podcasting.

Once you’ve laid down the recording, utilize Levelator to turn it into magic. This is a free tool that adjusts everyone’s levels to perfection and gets the lower levels higher and the higher levels lower while dampening some of the background ambiance. This works great if you’ve got a few folks talking over Skype because Skype’s channels are hard to perfect – so let the software do the work for you later.

Bandwidth is getting cheaper, faster and more prevalent, publish your audio podcasts in 96kbps and conserve space by forcing the audio to mono (please no more low kbps podcasts they sound muddy). A microphone is mono, why publish a talk show in stereo? Save space smartly while still giving a rich experience to the listener. You want them to think you’re in the same room with them talking. Nobody wants to listen to a muddy audio podcast which may have been recorded under water with a cork in your mouth.

You can have all the creativity and content in the world but if people want to kill you because it sounds so bad, then you’re doing it wrong.

Creativity, Quality and Passion.

I may be wrong, but I’m going to fight like I’m right. I can apologize later, but nobody is going to believe I know what I’m talking about if I don’t add some passion to the topic. John C. Dvorak is huge example of a man with passion that isn’t always correct. His personality is a turn-off to many but his passion makes you tune in to see what he’ll say next. He’s a man people love to hate but they listen with attentiveness because often his ideas are grounded, well studied and slanted a bit more towards reality.

Much of your audio and video presence revolves around passion. It is part of the grand illusion of entertainment because those with passion are often followed and talked about as great personalities. If you’re planning to produce a podcast, before getting too far, ask yourself if you have the passion to talk about the content in your show for four to five years. If you don’t think you’ll maintain your love for the topic in five years, you’re walking the long walk on a short pier.

Why worry about the future? What if you find yourself on the path of success but lose interest in the subject down the road, do you really want to let your fans down? Or, you will find yourself in a loveless podcast going through the routine just because you’ve got a lot of downloads? That’s a rhetorical question, of course you don’t.

This is the main reason I’ve never considered a World of Warcraft podcast. I just don’t feel I could eat, drink and breath WoW for the long haul so why waste my time along with all the listeners time?

Creativity, Quality and Passion.

The creativity to realize you don’t have to be a master painter to have a solid podcast, the quality to make listeners subscribe and the passion to keep them engaged. If you can pull off those three attributes you’ll have all a great independant podcast with a growing user base while having fun doing it.

Can you really ask for more? That’s a rhetorical question, of course you can: advertisment money.

Podcasters track their downloads, watch for trends and do all they can to promote their show. That might be using SEO style techniques to get brand awareness in google to social networking with friends and strangers. If you google the keywords: gaming podcast you’ll notice my property: gamingpodcast.net arrives near first if not right at the top (depends on the day). Was that a coincidence? No, not really. Now google drinking podcast and you’ll have similar results: my properties arrive first.

That was key number one: free advertising via google for people looking for podcasts related to gaming and drinking (not always going hand-in-hand of course). Two years went by with almost no user feedback in my gaming podcast, but each episode was going from ten downloads a week to twenty, and thirty and fifty then one hundred and so one… but who was listening? Silence.

I was #1 on my google search terms which brought an expanding audience but still very little in terms of feedback. The first major barrier is finding a topic that elicits a lot of feedback. The drinking podcast receives very little feedback and I’m not expecting it to grow too much in the next year. The show is more for entertainment value and learning but doesn’t ask a lot of questions. In 20+ episodes we received, probably, three e-mails about the show. Not a stunning reception.

But, the audience continues to grow, the RSS feed statistics rise and we get more downloads minutes after posting than ever before. For this podcast I have relied on my instincts as to which direction to take each episode – a drinking podcast doesn’t bring a lot of feedback but if the audience rises instead of falls I know I’m doing it right. If you’re driving in the dark and never hit a tree than you know you’re doing some pretty awesome driving.

The gaming podcast was a personal challenge, how do I grow an audience of interactive gamers. A few guidelines that have worked well for me:

Build a Blog

If you don’t have a website as a landing page for your podcast audience than you need to get one yesterday! WordPress is a great launching point because you can get a blog up and running in under an hour with a comment system and spam protection. This will be where you’ll post your show notes with open community comments.

Initially, you’ll want to post content on your blog to build up content on the site and get google to start chewing on it. If your podcast is about cats, you’ll want to blog about cats, post silly cat images, link to cat related websites and click the links to hit their site and bump their referral logs (so the author sees you). “Work the room” with people and their cat interests and let them know you’ve got a website and audio/video podcast. Post on your blog three times a day for at least three weeks to build up a bankroll of content.

I used this post method on everydaydrinkers.com and started receiving alcohol from PR people to review along with accessories. Heck, I even got a portable beer pong table because, with all my editorials, I became an expert in the drinking industry. Not too shabby as a method to start a landing site for my audio show, eh?

Setup Forums

Setup some forums, if you’re using wordpress I suggest Simple:Press from YellowFish. They will link to the user accounting system within WordPress so commentors that sign up on your blog can post forum topics immediately. Post forum topics, get your friends to post some topics and populate the forums. Don’t expect to build a 1,000 user audience overnight or even in the first few years. But, if you make it available someone may use it and you can use that as feedback for your show.

Contact Us and E-Mail

Don’t post your e-mail address on your blog if you don’t want a lot of spam – but you can setup a contact us form using WordPress and the Secure and Accessible Contact Form module. This will give your audience another way to contact you. If you’re creating a podcast you can use your e-mail in the audio since spammers aren’t that smart.

Promote Your Podcast

You can promote your podcast in a number of easy and affordable ways. After you’ve got three episodes you can submit it to iTunes. You can google “podcast directories” and create an account on all the directories then submit your RSS feed. I suggest tying your RSS feed to Feedburner so you can track statistics in one of the more industry standard methods. Each directory that accepts your podcast will also automatically link back to your website because it’s part of the standard iTunes complaint RSS feed (which Feedburner will standardize for you). That increases the chances google will rank you well.

You can also use a very low cost advertising method as I have done for my shows at ProjectWonderful. For a few cents a day you can splash your podcast banners on all types of sites that focus on the demographic you want to capture. That might be personal blogs, business, food and drinks, lifestyle, home gardening and many others. Don’t expect people to find you, find them first and do it on the cheap.

Ask Questions

There are a few ways to get your listeners to submit feedback. You can ask questions in the podcast that you think people may have an opinion on or you can discuss things that people just cannot afford to let pass, usually dealing with politics, international affairs or anything you’ve had past heated discussions about on a personal level. Some folks will go out of their way to demand feedback by just being over the top controversial, you’ll get hate mail but it is, in fact, feedback.

Do It

Do setup a website, do keep the content fresh, do post consistent episodes on a regular schedule and give your audience many outlets to respond to your podcast you’ll get some traction. We received roughly four comments on our Gaming Podcast until we setup gamingpodcast.net and built out a forum. and comment system

Many people are shy and don’t want to compose an e-mail to a stranger. Others are paranoid and don’t want their email being spread around. Some folks post on forums on a daily bases and find that the natural way to comment while others will blindly and anonymously post in response to a blog entry. Feedback comes in many forms and everyone seems to use their own technique. This is why we choose to include forum posts, blog responses and e-mails in our “feedback” section of our gaming podcast. Some users may not have submitted it thinking it would make the show, but we pick and choose to make sure gamers realize they too can talk back.

At first, you may have your own friends write in or simply make up questions from people that don’t even exist. Perhaps that “imaginary” writer has something controversial to say and it could elicit more feedback from real users. Once you start a trend others will feed into it and chat on a normal bases.

Lastly, you may notice that every podcast has its own set of responders. From Buzz Out Loud form CNET to The Daily Giz Wiz by Leo Laporte to GameSpots podcasts and language learning podcasts, there is a set of “regulars” that write in constantly and keep the show interesting. Everybody needs a few regulars, just like a bar or a restaurant — you’ll know them by name and they’ll add a new dynamic personality to the show.

Once you’ve got a few regulars consider your job done. Most of your audience is listening to an audio podcast because its a nice passive way to get through their day. They don’t need to write in to show their support because their downloads and impressions are left on the show through the shows yearly growth.

Have you ever called into an FM radio show? Probably not.

There are opportunities on the Internet which would utilize our own creative thinking. Everyone can build their own niche of the web to call their own. Then, after you think about it, you need to do it. I’ve met many individuals that want to do great things but so few are ready to put in the commitment. Worse, I think, deep down inside, they’re afraid to fail.

When you want to put yourself on the Internet you’re putting yourself in a situation to be laughed at, flamed and be tormented by unfortunate souls that don’t have any “do” power of their own. You could indeed fail, there are a lot of ideas that won’t work out for you. I’ve failed with many ideas that I thought were great but because I didn’t put in the proper research to validate my idea is as good as I thought it was. I learned.

Being afraid to fail is being afraid to learn.

Each project I start that doesn’t make it to a successful conclusion gives me more insight on the workings of a success. Not every internet superstar, CEO or industry mover and shaker had their first success with their initial try. The key is to try.

This means dedicating time to focusing on what motivates you — what you would love to do as a “real job.” For me, it’s podcasting and video shows. Not everyone has the courage to sit in front of a camera lens and be a dork for five to ten minutes. But, everyone has their own motivations and it requires you to put down the video games, drama series and focus on what you’d really love to do with your life.

If it turns out you can’t find a way to make money with your efforts now, turn it into a hobby and see where it takes you, you’ll never know if you don’t try. Develop a thick skin to those that want to criticize you and tell you why you’ll fail. Those same people that want you to fail are the same that have been failures their entire life and simply do not want to be alone wallowing in their own self doubt.

Be afraid. Then do it anyway.

This holiday Santa brought us the Audio-Technica AT897, a shotgun/boom microphone for a bit more money. This mic will cost $240 to $300 depending on how smart a shopper you may be but the price is highly worthwhile.

We attached the shotgun mic to a boom arm and a mic stand and float it just out of site of the camera for crystal clear quality. Now, you’ll notice more bass tones and clear detail right down to the fizz in your soda. For our drinking video show, Common Man Cocktails, we’re using it to record a stationary show with very little movement.

However, the show has enough movement that an animated speaker has to work hard on correct mic placement to avoid any rubbing sounds when you move. Our show, which runs approximately five minutes, becomes a major hassle when you spend three minutes on microphone placement and testing. We record two shows back-to-back which includes changing my shirt (so it looks like a different day) and we’ve got to re-wire before the next taping.

The free form boom shotgun mic means I can get up, move around and redress without being tied down by wires. When we forget something for the show I’ve got to unwire and reset it all and a wireless lapel for an indy recording is a bit steep in price, as the cost would easily exceed $200 just for the wireless setup.

The Audio-Technica uses phantom power and our Alesis Multimix 12 Firewire is ready and willing to supply such power. Instant setup, just position and go!

Hear the difference:

Episode with the SM11 lapel mic:

Episode with the Audio-Technica AT897:

Hopefully you too can hear and believe the differences!