PUBLISH, SCHEDULE AND PROMOTE
Now you’re talking. Let’s find some listeners
There are plenty
of podcast distributors that you can upload your episodes to. Apple helpfully links to them here – podcasters.apple.com/ partner-search. These will distribute your episodes to key podcast platforms (also known as podcast hosts); many will also create text transcripts, enable you to schedule new episodes and add advertising. Some, such as Buzzsprout (buzzsprout. com), offer helpful guides on everything from uploading to designing cover art.
Most third-party podcast platforms charge money, albeit not too much. The aforementioned Buzzsprout is free for up to two hours of audio per month, rising to $12/month (about £10) for three hours and double that for six.
Many podcasters give the main podcast for free, then offer extra content via a paid subscription
One of the benefits of using a third-party such as Buzzsprout, or using Spotify’s podcasting platform (creators.spotify.com), is that they can generate an RSS feed for your podcast. An RSS feed is a little text file that you need to have if you want your podcast listed on the key podcasting services and directories. For example, if you upload your episodes to Spotify, you can get them added to Apple by generating an RSS feed in Spotify for Creators and then entering that in Apple Podcasts Connect; the next time you upload an episode to Spotify, it’ll also appear on Apple Podcasts. You can’t do it the other way round, though: Apple doesn’t host podcasts. It just links to them.