1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:12,560 Welcome to Podcast Answers, the show where I help people start and grow their podcast, 2 00:00:12,560 --> 00:00:16,120 answering any podcast questions along the way. 3 00:00:16,120 --> 00:00:23,000 If you have a question, please reach out and get in touch with me, podcastanswers.com slash 4 00:00:23,000 --> 00:00:30,680 contact, and I would love to help you answer any questions that you have about podcasting. 5 00:00:30,680 --> 00:00:36,520 Last episode, we talked about seasons, why you should have them, should you have them, 6 00:00:36,520 --> 00:00:43,240 should you not have them. If you've not listened to that, go to podcastanswers.com slash seasons, 7 00:00:43,800 --> 00:00:50,680 and you will, the episode we were talking about, you'll see that and be able to listen to why I 8 00:00:50,680 --> 00:00:54,760 think you should or should not have seasons. But without further ado, this episode, we're going 9 00:00:54,760 --> 00:01:01,480 to be talking about havingyourown.com. In the words of the great Todd from Blueberry, 10 00:01:01,480 --> 00:01:06,520 getyourown.com. Todd seems to be always on gettingyourown.com, and I agree with Todd. 11 00:01:07,400 --> 00:01:15,720 I am going to be somebody who always thinks that havingyourown.com is a good thing. So 12 00:01:15,720 --> 00:01:22,440 what are some reasons to haveyourown.com? So you have a home place where people can find you. 13 00:01:22,440 --> 00:01:27,880 So if you live in an RV, no one knows where you're at. They may have an address for you right now, 14 00:01:28,440 --> 00:01:34,520 but what if you move tomorrow? They're not going to know where to reach you. 15 00:01:38,120 --> 00:01:44,040 So what are they going to do when you move? Same thing with podcasting. You can tell people 16 00:01:44,040 --> 00:01:51,480 that you are atpodcastname.podcasthost.com for your show notes and stuff, and even, you know, 17 00:01:51,480 --> 00:01:56,520 I'm on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast from. But what happens when you 18 00:01:56,520 --> 00:02:03,800 move podcasthost? Thatpodcastname.podcasthost.com is not going to lead to your show notes anymore. 19 00:02:04,680 --> 00:02:11,160 Or worse yet, what happens if you get kicked off of Spotify or Apple Podcasts? It does happen, 20 00:02:11,160 --> 00:02:18,120 and people may not know this, but Apple Podcasts is the directory that a lot of other apps use 21 00:02:18,120 --> 00:02:23,560 to pull podcasts from. So if you get kicked out of Apple, then you're out of a lot of apps. 22 00:02:23,560 --> 00:02:28,360 When they search for you in a lot of different apps, they're not going to find you. If they 23 00:02:28,360 --> 00:02:34,920 knowyourown.com, they can always come to that and find you. So even if you get kicked off of 24 00:02:34,920 --> 00:02:42,040 Apple Podcasts, they can know to go topodcastname.com and find you there because you will always be 25 00:02:42,040 --> 00:02:47,240 there and you will always, you know, your stuff will always be there. The other nice thing is you 26 00:02:47,240 --> 00:02:52,520 don't always need to say, come find us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your 27 00:02:52,520 --> 00:03:01,080 podcast at in your podcast. You can just say, go topodcastname.com and all the places you find 28 00:03:01,080 --> 00:03:08,280 audio or link there. So if you have anything new, you can list it right there. It's not going to 29 00:03:08,280 --> 00:03:12,760 change your audio. You don't have to go back in and tell somebody that you're now on the hottest 30 00:03:12,760 --> 00:03:19,720 new app or whatever. You can always just say, go topodcastname.com and find all of our audio there. 31 00:03:21,000 --> 00:03:29,720 If you have your own website, you can also do things like have really easy names to remember 32 00:03:29,720 --> 00:03:36,520 your episodes by. Like for instance, I said this last one was podcastanswers.com slash seasons. 33 00:03:36,520 --> 00:03:41,240 That's a really easy way to, if you're listening to me right now, you can go, oh, I want to listen 34 00:03:41,240 --> 00:03:45,960 to that. It's really easy to remember slash seasons and you can get to the show notes post 35 00:03:45,960 --> 00:03:55,400 for that episode, which has a link to the audio in it, as well as having, being able to 36 00:03:55,400 --> 00:04:03,640 just easily see other things that I may put there that are not in the RSS feed. If you 37 00:04:04,520 --> 00:04:09,400 have your own website, you can do other things too, like welcome messages and more. It's like 38 00:04:09,400 --> 00:04:18,360 you could have on your homepage of podcastname.com, you could have a video welcoming people to your 39 00:04:18,360 --> 00:04:26,040 show. People connect with video. People love seeing people on video. They may connect with them 40 00:04:26,920 --> 00:04:32,600 via audio and being right in their ears, but when they see them, they feel like they really, 41 00:04:32,600 --> 00:04:36,280 really, really know the person. They've seen what it looks like, what the person looks like. 42 00:04:37,160 --> 00:04:43,800 They've seen what it exactly means to have what the post looks like. You can also have 43 00:04:43,800 --> 00:04:50,680 memorable short links too, like for instance, podcastanswers.com slash captivate will take you 44 00:04:50,680 --> 00:05:00,680 to my very favorite podcast host or podcastanswers.com slash Ecamm will take you to my favorite 45 00:05:00,680 --> 00:05:06,600 software for streaming video, which I'm doing right now. I believe heavily in doing video 46 00:05:06,600 --> 00:05:13,080 and audio at the same time, so that way you have it. Both of those are short links and 47 00:05:13,080 --> 00:05:18,200 they're affiliate links of mine, which I will make a commission for if any of you buy from Ecamm 48 00:05:18,200 --> 00:05:23,160 or Captivate, but the nice thing about having your own website is that it's memorable. You don't need 49 00:05:23,160 --> 00:05:32,760 to say go to bit.ly slash whatever or some other random link to get to the, you know, if you're 50 00:05:32,760 --> 00:05:37,160 having a short link or whatever, or other websites can take people off of their websites. 51 00:05:37,160 --> 00:05:42,120 You can do that right from your own website and you're driving people back to your brand. 52 00:05:42,120 --> 00:05:47,720 You're not driving them to something that's not yours like bit.ly or, you know, even going back 53 00:05:47,720 --> 00:05:52,040 to the Apple Podcasts thing, you're not telling them go to Apple Podcasts to find me. You're 54 00:05:52,040 --> 00:05:59,320 saying come to podcastanswers.com to find the podcast, to find all of the information you're 55 00:05:59,320 --> 00:06:04,600 ever going to need for the podcast. And again, you can do those memorable short links, which are 56 00:06:04,600 --> 00:06:08,760 easy to remember because you already know if I've already drilling into you and into your head, 57 00:06:08,760 --> 00:06:13,320 podcastanswers.com, podcastanswers.com, podcastanswers.com, you're going to know 58 00:06:13,320 --> 00:06:17,960 that when I'm talking about something like Ecamm, you can go to podcastanswers.com slash Ecamm 59 00:06:17,960 --> 00:06:26,440 and get there. So how do you get your own dot com or dot org or dot whatever your domain name? 60 00:06:27,880 --> 00:06:33,480 You can go to any domain register. I like GoDaddy just because I've been using them forever, 61 00:06:33,480 --> 00:06:40,520 but you can go to any register or domain register, trar, and get your domain there. It'll cost you 62 00:06:40,520 --> 00:06:45,640 somewhere between $15 and $20 a year. That's just for the name. That's not for any website space. 63 00:06:45,640 --> 00:06:54,120 That's not for anything like that. It's just for the domain name. Now, once you have that, 64 00:06:54,120 --> 00:06:58,520 though, you can do and use it however you want. And there's lots of different ways to use that. 65 00:06:58,520 --> 00:07:03,880 And so I'm going to talk you through a little bit of those ways to use your domain because really, 66 00:07:03,880 --> 00:07:10,440 you can do anything you want with it. You can... Many podcast hosts, and this is maybe the easiest 67 00:07:10,440 --> 00:07:17,640 thing to do, many podcast hosts allow you to map their podcast name dot podcast host dot com, 68 00:07:18,440 --> 00:07:24,040 which would be your show notes and your show page to a custom domain. Now, each may... 69 00:07:24,040 --> 00:07:28,760 Each people do it a little bit different. They may charge you for this. They may not, 70 00:07:28,760 --> 00:07:33,800 but each one will have their own instructions on how to go into your registrar, so in my case, 71 00:07:33,800 --> 00:07:41,160 GoDaddy, and point it to their server and allow you to change that so that you can get 72 00:07:41,160 --> 00:07:47,240 podcastname.com. And it takes you essentially to podcastname.podcasthost.com. I'm saying a lot 73 00:07:47,240 --> 00:07:55,240 of dots and dot coms in here, but follow me here. So it's nice because it looks... You don't know 74 00:07:55,240 --> 00:08:00,840 when you go to that, that it's actually going to some other website. You don't know that it's 75 00:08:00,840 --> 00:08:03,640 not something you're hosting. It doesn't really matter because they're just going to see the 76 00:08:04,200 --> 00:08:11,960 podcastname.com. Even though you are using their website, if you decide to move hosts, 77 00:08:11,960 --> 00:08:17,800 then all you have to do is point your domain to a new host. And the address that the listeners 78 00:08:17,800 --> 00:08:22,840 come to is going to be the same. So for instance, if I were to change... If I were doing that and 79 00:08:22,840 --> 00:08:29,800 I was using my podcast host to host my website or my show notes, and I'm with Captivate now, 80 00:08:29,800 --> 00:08:36,520 but if I were using them and I had podcastanswers.com pointing to their web page, their show page, 81 00:08:36,520 --> 00:08:41,080 all I could use... If I decided to go somewhere else, I could. I could really easily change 82 00:08:41,080 --> 00:08:45,800 somewhere else and not affect anybody else. You wouldn't know the difference. It may look 83 00:08:45,800 --> 00:08:49,800 different, but the place that you're going to go is always the same. It's always going to be 84 00:08:49,800 --> 00:08:56,920 podcastname.com, podcastanswers.com, whatever. If your podcast host does not allow you to 85 00:08:56,920 --> 00:09:02,200 custom match your domain name to their site, you can always redirect their domain, your domain, 86 00:09:02,200 --> 00:09:09,800 your domain to their given site. So if you visit podcastname.com in the URL bar, you'll be redirected 87 00:09:09,800 --> 00:09:16,520 to podcastname.podcasthost.com. Make sure that you do a 302 or a 307 redirect, though. There are 88 00:09:16,520 --> 00:09:23,400 many types of redirects, and the 302 and 307 are what are called temporary redirects. You will 89 00:09:23,400 --> 00:09:27,720 want to do this because if you choose a permanent redirect, your browser will remember the location 90 00:09:27,720 --> 00:09:33,400 that you're forwarded to, and it will no longer hit the server to check if the URL redirect is the 91 00:09:33,400 --> 00:09:38,440 same. So let's say you move hosts and you change your redirect to the new host. If you use a permanent 92 00:09:38,440 --> 00:09:43,800 redirect, then your browser will automatically go to the old host and not check if there's the new 93 00:09:43,800 --> 00:09:49,640 one, but with a 302 or 307, every time someone hits it, they're going to go out to that where it's 94 00:09:49,640 --> 00:09:55,400 forwarded from and check and see if it's still valid. And the last way to do it is actually 95 00:09:55,400 --> 00:09:59,560 have your own web hosting. This is going to be the most flexible, but it is going to cost you a 96 00:09:59,560 --> 00:10:06,360 little bit more for the hosting. With your own web hosts, you can put other files for download. 97 00:10:06,360 --> 00:10:12,040 You can offer more things. Your website is truly yours. It's truly your digital space, 98 00:10:12,040 --> 00:10:16,520 and you can do with it what you want. So you can go to any web host and do that. Now, you're 99 00:10:16,520 --> 00:10:22,520 going to need a different web host from a MP3 host for your podcast because most web hosts aren't 100 00:10:22,520 --> 00:10:28,120 going to want to serve MP3 files from their website and they'll kick you off. So you will need a 101 00:10:28,120 --> 00:10:35,080 podcast host still, but the nice thing about having your own website is it is truly yours. You can 102 00:10:35,080 --> 00:10:40,120 make it look the way that you want because if you go with the podcast hosts site, most of them are 103 00:10:40,120 --> 00:10:42,760 pretty great, but they're going to look the same. They're going to look mostly the same. You can't 104 00:10:42,760 --> 00:10:49,080 do a whole lot of configuring on them. So if you have your own website with your own.com, you truly 105 00:10:49,080 --> 00:10:56,520 own that digital space, and you can really do anything you want with it. So in closing, if all 106 00:10:56,520 --> 00:11:03,800 of this is too much for you and you want help doing it, I am available for, I am available for 107 00:11:05,320 --> 00:11:09,960 contact. I can do one-on-one consulting. Just contact me at podcastanswers.com 108 00:11:10,440 --> 00:11:17,000 slash contact, and I would love to work with you, help you start and grow your podcast, help 109 00:11:17,000 --> 00:11:25,960 create a, help create a look for you and a website for you and help you even map your own domain. 110 00:11:26,760 --> 00:11:31,160 Also, make sure that you subscribe to our website, our YouTube channel, sorry, not our website, 111 00:11:31,160 --> 00:11:37,240 our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash at podcastanswers. We not only post our weekly 112 00:11:37,240 --> 00:11:41,800 podcast video there, but we are also doing other training videos and tip videos and things like 113 00:11:41,800 --> 00:11:49,080 that. So make sure that you hit that because it will allow you to always get the latest stuff.