The Future of Plus Membership?
In this episode, I share that I’m about to make the biggest decision related to my career in podcasting and new media since I actually made the decision to leave my career in insurance after 11 years to pursue podcasting and new media full-time!
I believe that every podcaster, who would consider following in my footsteps of charging for their podcast content, should listen to episode 486 of Pursuing A Balanced Life. In that episode, I share every detail of what has been going through my mind as it relates to my premium membership model.
Is It Possible To Give TOO MUCH Away For Free?
I recently had the honor of having a 2nd guest spot on my good friend’s, Pat Flynn, Smart Passive Income podcast. You can listen to my first guest spot on episode 5 of his podcast. In this latest episode #13, Pat and I discuss the topic of whether or not giving away content for free is a bad idea. This was a timely subject for me as you can see with my discussion of the future of Plus Membership.
Feedburner says the size of my feed is too large!
Wayne called in and said that Feedburner is telling him that his feed is too large to process. FeedBurner will not accept feeds that are larger than 512K. By default, WordPress will limit the number of items that show up in your rss feed to 10 items. However, this can easily be changed to whatever number you like. Just know that the more you increase the number of posts in your feed, you also increase the size of that feed.
If you currently publish an existing FeedBurner feed, and the original source feed exceeds the 512K limit, FeedBurner will not update the ‘burned’ version of your feed until the original drops below the limit.
My recommendation would be to go into the WordPress Dashboard and click the “Reading Tab” and first try adjusting it where the feed only shows a Summary instead of the Full Text of the posts. Hit save changes, go to Feedburner’s Troubleshootize Tab and try “resyncing” the feed to see if this solves the problem. Note, if you have a caching plugin activated, you will need to refresh the cache of your rss feed first.
If this doesn’t work, then I would recommend reducing the number of your items that you allow to be posted into your rss feed. I know, I konw, you really want your audience to get all 5,000 of your podcast episodes with a single rss feed. Sorry, it’s just not going to happen.
You know what you could do? You could create create a new category called “podcast1-100” and have a different rss feed for people who want to get the first 100 episiodes via rss. You wouldn’t put this in iTunes. In fact, you don’t even need feedburner. You just create a page on your site that tells folks how they get get back archives by subscribing to this additional feed. More on that thought in this episode.
Podcasting while driving in the car?
Sam called in to ask about my thoughts on recording a podcast in the car, while driving. You’ll just have to listen to the episode to hear my thoughts on this one.
Amazon v/s Libsyn For Media Hosting:
Hector called in to tell us that he has his podcast episodes hosted on Amazon’s media hosting service and that his podcast has become quite popular. Now he’s suffering from the fact that his monthly bandwidth costs would be a forever unknown. He has decided to move over to libsyn so that he can rest a night knowing that he will always know what his monthly cost will be. But he has a problem. To learn what that problem is and my response to it, listen to this episode.
What if I don’t have an image large enough for 600×600 Artwork?
Karen called in response to my recommendation to consider updating podcast artwork to 600×600 pixels so that the higher resolution screens of the iPad and Apple TV devices will display the artwork in a way that is more pleasing to the eye. Her issue is that she often uses images of guests as her artwork and the original source file is not beg enough to make this possible. I share my thoughts on this in the episode.
A portable equipment setup that doesn’t require teardown and setup every time you want to podcast:
Drew called in. He’s a teenage podcaster. His mom does not allow him to keep his equipment setup next to the computer and he finds himself spending a great deal of time setting up his equipment each week. He wants to know if there is a way to make this setup a bit easier on him. I have some thoughts in the episode that I shared with Drew.
Five Week Podcasting Bootcamp Course Coming Up In March!
I’m going to be doing a five week podcast bootcamp training course during the entire month of March. Participants will receive new training content every day of the week, Mon-Fri, for five weeks which will cover every aspect of audio podcasting that you would need to produce the best show possible within your niche topic.
At the end of each week, there will be a conference call to make sure that everyone is on the same page and to allow participants to ask specific questions that may have come up as a result of that week’s training materials.
I share a bit more about this in the episode. The cost of the training will be 0. I will only be doing this if I get at least 20 participants in this program. However, my guess is that getting twenty participants will not be an issue at all. If you are interested, please email me at Cliff@Ravenscraft.org.
A Talk With Joe Talbot of Telos-Systems.com about the Telos Hx1:
In this episode, I include a seventeen minute talk that I had with Joe Talbot with Telo-Systems. I had the opportunity to review a Telos Hx1 digital phone hybrid. I share my thoughts on this digital hybrid compared to the JK Audio Broadcast Host that I’ve been using for the past several years.
Right Click Here To Download MP3 Version
PODCAST CONSULTING: I’m available for one on one podcast consulting and coaching. Whether you want someone to get everything set up for you or you just need a little help along the way, I’d love to work with you. I’m able to demonstrate using screen sharing technology during our call which makes it just like I was there sitting next to you at the computer. If you are interested, email me at Cliff@Ravenscraft.org or call me at 859-757-1399.
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