Make Your First Podcast: Hosting

Podcast Hosting. Even just the phrase sends a chill down my spine.

After you record your podcast you need to upload it to a server where folks can access it over the internet. But where? There are so many choices.

If you have a hosting package with a place like Squarespace or Bluehost you could simply upload the file to your hosting package and make it public. Doing this is—and I really want to stress this—NOT a good idea.

If your podcast catches on right away (say it's plugged on a couple of popular blogs), or if you have one especially popular episode, your website will be hammered and—if your luck is anything like mine—it will crash. If that happens, at minimum, you've given a lot of people, a bad experience. On top of that, depending on your hosting package, you might have to pay extra for the excess traffic.

I don't podcast, but I've read quite a few articles and watched more YouTube videos on the subject than I care to admit. The overwhelming consensus seems to be that it will involve you in the least headache in the long run if, from the beginning, you host your website and your podcast separately. And, as podcasts soar in popularity there are more and more hosting choices.

So, let's look at a couple of hosting solutions you might want to consider:

1. Libsyn (Liberated Syndication)

Libsyn is the original podcasting solution and is widely trusted.

"In October 2004, detailed how-to podcast articles had begun to appear online, and a month later, Liberated Syndication (Libsyn) launched the first Podcast Service Provider, offering storage, bandwidth, and RSS creation tools. "Podcasting" was first defined in Wikipedia. In November 2004, podcasting networks started to appear on the scene with podcasters affiliating with one another," (History of Podcasting)

An introductory package starts at $5 a month. To see all Libsyn's hosting packages, click here.

Many podcasters use Libsyn. I'll talk about the pros and cons of using Libsyn in a moment. First let's look at ...

2. Amazon Web Services: S3

With Amazon S3, you pay for only what you use. But what does this mean? Let's look at some figures:

Let's say that an average podcast is about 50 megabytes. Let's say (we've got to be optimistic, right?) you have 50 podcast episodes stored on Amazon S3 and that you publish four podcasts a month. How many downloads could you expect? Here's what the folks over at School of Podcasting have to say:

"According to Rob Walch VP of Podcaster Relations at libsyn.com (the largest podcast media hosting company) in September of 2013 a podcast episode that has been live approximately 30 days averages 141 downloads. If you have over 3400 downloads you are in the top 10%. If you have over 9000 downloads you are in the top 5%. Lastly, if you have over 50,000 downloads per episode (again after having it live for 30 days) you are in the top 1% (this would be the Marc Maron, Adam Corrola, Jay Mohr, etc)," How Many Podcasts Do Podcasters Average?

So let's say that you have 150 downloads a month. Now let's calculate the cost:

First, let's use the Amazon Web Services Calculator to figure out how much Amazon would charge you for simply storing your podcasts through S3.

Storage: 50 mb per file * 50 podcasts = 2,500 mbs = 2.5 gigabytes = about 5 cents.

So ... that's not an issue! Now let's look at how much Amazon would charge us for bandwidth:

150 downloads per month * 50 megabytes per file = 7,500 megabytes = 7.5 gigabytes -> Costs about 60 cents.

That's for one file, but (in our example) you have 50. Now, I would imagine that new files would get the most downloads, but let's just say that ALL 50 files on your account get 150 downloads per month. So that makes it 7.5 gigs * 50 which comes to 375 gigs which would kick up your bill to $32.40! But, for giggles, let's say that all your podcast episodes got 3400 downloads in a month (in this case your podcast would be in the top 10% of podcasts). In this case your bill would soar to $1,808!

Which is one reason why folks with popular podcasts seek out hosting solutions like Libsyn. Libsyn charges you according to how much you upload, not according to how much bandwidth your podcast uses. If all you want to do is upload four 50 mb podcasts a month then you'd be fine with their $15 a month plan. $15 versus $1,808! That's quite the difference.

My Opinion: The Best Choice For A Beginner

I think that if you are already hosting your website through Amazon Web Services it makes sense to start off using S3. Unless you already have a large following, in the beginning you are NOT going to come anywhere near to getting 150 downloads a month. And, even if you do, that's going to cost you all of 60 cents! As you start to upload more podcasts and things begin to get pricier, you would probably want to switch to another solution.

If, however, you don't host your blog on Amazon and you don't mind paying $5 a month, signing up with a host such as Libsyn is a no-brainer. Libsyn is trusted and, while many folks with popular podcasts use other hosting solutions, I think it's probably the best choice for the beginner podcaster (by the way, I don't have any sort of affiliate relationship with Libsyn).

Steer Clear of Free Hosting Solutions

One thing folks should be wary of are free hosting solutions. If you upload your podcasts to one of these and the service goes out of business, your files will disappear. Also, they may insert their advertising into your podcast. I think it's important to have total control over your intellectual property.

(You may think it's odd me saying this about free hosting because I have my blog on Blogger. That's fair. A couple of things. First, I'm in the process of transferring my blog onto my own blogging platform. Second, the process has been so incredibly painful that I feel I must try and warn readers not to make the same mistakes I have!)

Links:

Here are some links I've found to tutorials about podcasting in general, but they do also talk about hosting and the pros and cons of various hosting solutions:

How to Start a Podcast - A Step-By-Step Podcasting Tutorial (YouTube series. Excellent.)
The Definitive Guide to Setting Up and Marketing a Podcast to Help Grow Your Blog
Learn How To Podcast
How to Start a Podcast: Pat’s Complete Step-By-Step Podcasting Tutorial

Tags, Traits And Tells (Podcast)

Okay folks, I've taken the plunge and put together a podcast!



Please keep in mind this is my FIRST podcast. One's first time doing anything is not going to be anywhere close to polished so please keep that in mind. Also, although I'm getting a proper mic on the weekend, today I made due with the built-in mic on my iPad.

As you can see, I've embedded the sound file at the top of this post. If it doesn't show up for you, please let me know.

For those of you who would much rather read than listen, I've included a written transcript here of what I talked about.

Jim Butcher On Story Craft

Jim Butcher, in his Story Craft blog post writes that stories are about characters attempting to attain goals. The problems, the setbacks, a character encounters makes him or her struggle and creates tension.

But, ultimately, whether we'll be interested in a particular story depends on whether we find the character's interesting.

So, what makes a character interesting?

What makes a character interesting?

I imagine different writers would answer this in different ways. My goal as a story teller is to tell an entertaining story so I seek out the advice of authors who have created stories which have entertained me. Authors like Jim Butcher.

Mr. Butcher has a list of characteristics that make a character interesting--and I want to talk about them all one day soon--but for now the one that interests me is "verisimilitude", verisimilitude being "the quality of appearing to be true or real". A character that has verisimilitude will "have the appearance of being real". In other words, they will act and react believably in whatever world you've set up.

What makes a character act believably?

I think consistency is a big part of believability. (It can be that a character consistently seems to behave randomly). A part of consistency is just something simple like don't give a character blond hair in one scene and red hair in another, at least without some sort of explanation.

There are two parts to creating believable characters:

a) Being clear about what your character is like, their traits, quirks and mannerisms.

If this isn't clear then it will be impossible to predict their behavior.

b) Assigning different characteristics to each character.

These characteristics should be markedly different so that it's easy to tell characters apart. Also, if, say, "grey eyes" are being used as a tag for one character then try to avoid using that as a tag for another character.

Tags, Traits and Tells

Tags, traits and tells are concepts writers can use to help create interesting, unique, characters.

The first time I came across the concept of tags and traits was courtesy of Jim Butcher so he's the one I quote from, below, although writers such as Dwight V. Swain have talked about the concept as well.

Tags

Tags are physical characteristics that define individual characters and differentiate them from the rest.

Here's what Jim Butcher wrote about them in his LiveJournal blog:

TAGS are words you hang upon your character when you describe them. When you're putting things together, for each character, pick a word or two or three to use in describing them. Then, every so often, hit on one of those words in reference to them, and avoid using them elsewhere when possible. By doing this, you'll be creating a psychological link between those words and that strong entry image of your character.

For example; Thomas Raith's tag words are pale, beautiful, dark hair, grey eyes. I use them when I introduce him for the first time in each book, and then whenever he shows up on stage again, I remind the reader of who he is by using one or more of those words. (Characters)

An example of a tag is blond hair, a peg leg, or stunning beauty. Tags are physical characteristics that can help differentiate one character from another. Since tags differentiate one character from another they need to be unique to each character.

Traits

There are a couple of different ways of thinking about traits. Jim Butcher views traits as "decorations hung onto the character for the reader's benefit."

For instance, Harry Dresden's black duster, his staff, his blasting rod and his pentacle amulet are traits. Bob's traits are the skull, how his eyes light up, his intelligence, and so on.

That's one way of thinking of traits. Here's another:

Traits as dispositions

A trait is a disposition. Examples: Being ambitious, or anxious, or bossy.

On this view--and this is how I look at it--there are tags, traits and tells, a tell being how a trait/disposition is manifested.

For instance, if a character is anxious she might bite her lower lip, jump at small sounds and gnaw her fingernails.

I call how traits manifest--nail biting and the like--tells because a tell means "to make known; reveal." It reveals a character's traits/dispositions.

To sum up, we have tags--physical characteristics like blond hair and freckles that don't have anything to do with the character's psychological makeup. Then we have character traits which are internal dispositions (e.g., anxiety) and tells (e.g., nail biting) which are how a character's traits manifest.

The importance of being different

Tags, traits and tells should be unique to a character since one reason for coming up with these markers is to quickly differentiate one character from another.

For instance, let's say we have a character, Pam. Pam has blond hair, a voluptous figure and loves mathematics. Although she fits the stereotype of the blond bombshell she is smarter than just about everyone else.

Pam's tags:
- blond
- voluptuous

Pam's traits:
- brilliant
- outgoing

Pam's tells:
- Can do math problems in her head quicker than a calculator.
- A favorite lecturer at the university.
- Chairs a number of committies.

When a character is introduced also introduce their tags, traits and tells. Repeat each two or three times to fix them in the readers mind.

For instance, the way technology malfunctions around Jim Butcher's character Harry Dresden is a manifestation of the trait of being a wizard/magic user. The blue beetle, Harry's low tech car, is perfect for Harry because of this trait even though the car is falling apart.Harry's icebox--he doesn't have an electric fridge--is, again, a concession to his shorting out anyting technological within arms reach.

You see how tells can help not only define a character but can suggest plot elements.

Other articles you might like:

- Podcasting
- Good Writing: Using The Senses
- Dwight V Swain On How To Write A Novel

Photo credit: "Untitled" by thejbird under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.