TMD 006 : Getting Started With Podcasting and “Bribery in Transnistria” with Alex Sol

LT: So, Alex, thank you so much for coming onto the show today and co-hosting this episode with me. We’re obviously talking about how someone can get started with podcasting. I know you’ve written a really detailed guide on your website and a lot of people have seen a lot of benefits from your guide. I’ve personally gone through – actually, I did use your guide a little bit, and I also used Pat Flynn’s guide as well. So I thought it’d be great for both of us to come on and talk about podcasting, because it’s new to me at the time of recording this episode. See, I told you before I’m going to mess my words up. So obviously before – sorry. At the time of recording this episode, I haven’t actually launched my podcast yet so I’m really sort of, like, in the beginning stages, whereas you’ve had your podcast out for around about a year and a half now. And I remember when you launched yours, so thank you so much for coming onto the show, Alex.

AS: Sure, man. Thanks for inviting me.

LT: More than welcome. Now, obviously people don’t know this but we actually do have a bit of a history; we’ve known each other for a little while now. We met – I don’t even know how long ago it was now, but we met inside of another membership community that taught people how to do affiliate marketing, didn’t we?

AS: Yeah, yeah. Totally.

LT: Yeah. And so we haven’t really spoken too much over the last year and we sort of, like, went different ways. I, like, found some other people that I’ve been learning stuff from, and I know you’ve pretty much stuck within that community, haven’t you? Or have you sort of ventured out a little bit?

AS: Yeah. Well, kind of both. The thing is that I’ve been there for – well, I’ve been in the whole online marketing space for about nine years now, and that community that you’re talking about, it’s kind of in and out; you know, sometimes I’m more active, sometimes less when I venture into different things. But I have been trying to be more active pretty much anywhere, any community that I join, because that’s kind of the point - - -

LT: Yeah.

AS: - - - of being a part of that community is trying to be active, trying to help others, and seek help when you need it.

LT: Yeah, definitely. So I did give you a little bit of an intro in the intro of the show, but would you like to introduce yourself to everybody; let them know sort of, like, what you’re doing online at the moment; sort of, like, how you got to where you are; and maybe, like, a little bit of, like, a brief travel history as well.

AS: Yeah, sure. Well, the thing is that I started, as I mentioned, nine years ago in 2007. Late 2007 I had an office job back at the time, which I really did not like, and it’s not just that office job; it’s the fact that I had to be somewhere from, let’s say, 9 o’clock until 5, five days a week, six days a week, whatever. I didn’t like that lifestyle in a way, and I thought that there must be another way to earn a living without, you know, working for a man, as they say, or working an office job, working at a typical job; there you go.

So I started looking for ways to make money not necessarily online but, like, on the side. And the very first thing that I came across – and I think it was the same for many people – is selling stuff on eBay. So I would sell a few things here and there, like, personal items that I didn’t use any more. Then my co-worker started that and they asked me to sell their stuff for a commission, which, you know, they didn’t know how to list them, they didn’t – anyway. So that was, like, the beginning beginning. And this is how I started coming across the notion of making money online and, you know, online marketing, affiliate marketing.

And, once again, this is not a unique story because many, many, many of us go through the same thing; when you start buying into a whole bunch of crap and promises that you’re going to become rich overnight, you just have to buy this product for $97 or $7 or whatever the price point is, right. And I bought through quite a few products, and many of them were just scams. And the way that – they either talked about some very outdated strategy that simply didn’t work or they would give you a part of something and not a whole thing and then if you wanted to know more you had to pay for another upgrade and buy another more expensive product and so on and so on and so on.

But eventually I came across this notion, this strategy called affiliate marketing, which I guess many of your listeners might have an idea what it is. And for those who don’t, affiliate marketing is basically – when you’re an affiliate marketer, you’re a middleman between a seller and a buyer. So you’re promoting products; you aren’t actually selling them. You don’t have a warehouse; all you do is promote a product and you receive a commission per sale. And when I heard of that concept, I was, like, well, this is something (inaudible) this is something I see myself doing and this is something that I see has a lot of potential, and this is also when I started trying affiliate marketing in very, very late 2007, very early 2008. And that’s mainly what I’ve been doing over the years. I’ve done quite a few different things and I could mention them if you want, but mostly most of my income has been coming from affiliate marketing over the years.

LT: That’s cool. Yeah. So affiliate marketing was sort of, like, how I dove into the online world. Well, the first time I got started online was about – 2009 is when I first sort of, like, started, like, building my own websites and, like, trying to make money. But I think 2005 was when I bought my very first sort of, like, package, and by the time I actually started using it, yeah, it was all outdated. I don’t know whether or not it, like, would’ve done a lot for me if I, like, started incorporating the stuff that I learnt back in 2005. Looking, like, back on sort of, like, how the internet sort of, like, turned out, it probably wouldn’t have turned out too well. So either way, I probably would’ve had to, like, change directions completely anyway. So it didn’t really matter too much that I didn’t start straight away. But, yeah, affiliate marketing was my first, like, way I sort of, like, dipped my toes into this online space, and then I eventually found, like, personal training, started doing that online, and eventually ended up to where I am now. So, yeah, I think a lot of people that get started online for the first time, they look at affiliate marketing, just because that is slightly easier because, you know, you don’t have to go and create products yourself.

AS: Yeah.

LT: You’re just, like, selling somebody else’s stuff and getting a commission for it.

AS: Exactly, yeah.

LT: Yeah. Cool. Well, like I said earlier on, like, I wanted you to come on to help talk about podcasting with me because I know you’ve got quite a bit of experience in this now. And like I said, like, you’ve created a guide. So I think it’d be quite cool if we just talk about how someone can start a podcast from, like, talking about all the equipment; how to record it; how to sort of, like, prepare it all to go online; and then sort of, like, how to get it found inside of, like, these podcast directories. Does that sound cool?

AS: Sure, sure. Totally.

LT: Awesome. Let’s just dive right in, then. So the very first thing that I would like to talk about is sort of, like, podcasting equipment. And you don’t really need a lot to get started with podcasting, do you?

AS: Yeah. Well, no, you don’t need a lot. What I’ve heard a lot of people mentioning that you could actually start with your phone. I’m not sure that’s a great idea, but the fact is you could actually start a podcast just using a smartphone that you already own. So, yeah, you don’t need a lot to begin with.

LT: Yeah. I mean, you can just go buy a USB microphone off of, like, Amazon. Do you still use the Blue Yeti?

AS: Actually, no, I don’t. I’ve been using it for over a year and just recently, maybe three, four months ago, I switched to a completely different setup from what I mention in the guide that you talked about. So I’m using a completely different equipment at this point, but I did use Blue Yeti for a long time and it’s by far still one of my favourite microphones. I still have it; it’s right in front of me right now as we’re talking, sitting on my desk, unplugged. But it’s a great microphone. At this point, for me, if I want to record somewhere else, right, because I don’t need to pack up my mixer and a whole bunch of wires, just grab my laptop, Blue Yeti, set it up anywhere. I’ve done episodes recorded in coffee shops. So it’s a great piece of equipment for usually $100 or less, as well.

LT: Yeah. I mean, I’ve got the Audio Technica ATR2100 which is – it’s a very cheap microphone; I think it’s around about the $100 mark as well, maybe 120. But this is a USB microphone and XLR microphone, so you can plug it into a mixer if you wanted. But this is such a small microphone that, yeah, you just easily can travel around with it and still get very decent audio. I mean, the audio that’s coming through now is plugged in via USB. So people that turn around and say USB microphones don’t give you good sound quality, well, that’s not true. Compared to, like, on your phone, this is a lot better. But compared to, like, three, four hundred dollar microphones that require these big mixers and all that, yeah, it’s not going to be as good as those. But for something that just plugs into your USB and you can travel around with it nice and easily, this is a very good microphone. So I’d definitely say this and, like, the Blue Yeti are definitely sort of, like, top up there for decent USB microphones.

AS: Yeah. I’m actually – I’m using a T2005 USB right now, but it is plugged through XLR to my mixer. But then the mixer is plugged to the computer through different wires. So the point here is – well, my opinion is that it doesn’t really matter, even if you have a $1000 microphone. But if we’re doing a setup just like ours right now that we’re talking through Skype, the sound is going to end up being exactly the same because the sound and the signal has to go through the computer and it gets distorted, it loses a bit of a quality, it loses the crisp of it. So it doesn’t really matter in the end.

LT: No. Yeah. Just grab yourself a USB microphone and you’ll be good to go. Like you said, it doesn’t have to be perfect.

AS: Yeah. Exactly.

LT: But it will be better than trying to record through your phone, and that’s what’s more important.

AS: It has to be good enough. I think there is a limit to a minimum of the quality a podcast should be, because if your podcast just sounds really bad from the get-go just because your sound quality – I mean, it’s not studio sound quality. You don’t need to start with that. But if it just sounds like you’re recording, you know, in a bathtub or something, then people are just not going to listen from the first episode. It’s the very minimum you have to do, as you said it at the beginning; I said it. You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars, but you have to have a really, really minimum at least half a decent microphone so your sound is okay and people are not going to turn off your episode after the first 20 seconds.

LT: Yep. Very important. And the only other thing that you really need is sort of, like, a recording software, which if you – well, for me, I use Garage Band which comes with all Macbooks and all Apple products.

AS: Yeah.

LT: So you don’t even need to go out and buy software. It is literally me, my microphone – I did, however, pay for this Skype – the call recorder that we’re recording this conversation on, which was – I think it was, like, $30 for a one-time fee. So with my microphone and the call recorder, $130, I can now record podcast episodes and interview people. If I wasn’t interviewing people or having co-hosts on on the show, I wouldn’t even need the call recorder; I can record directly into Garage Band.

AS: Yeah, yeah. Totally. Yeah. Audacity is a great alternative for people who use PCs, or even for Mac as well, if you want, there is a version of Audacity. It’s a great piece of software and it’s completely free to use. It’s open source, so great, great software.

LT: Awesome. Yeah. So they’re the two things that you need, equipment-wise, for your podcast.

AS: Yeah.

LT: Now, next. Your next section on your guide is about recording your podcast. Do you want to introduce that a little bit?

AS: Well, recording is – yeah. Once again, it’s what you just mentioned. Different people use different setups. If I was going through just a podcast by myself without any special remote guests going through Skype or whatever, I would record directly into Audacity, or Garage Band if I was using Mac, simply because it’s a good software and there’s no middleman, you know. It’s, like, the fastest and closest to the file that you could get. So there’s the least of, you know, quality loss or whatever you may call it. Otherwise, as you just mentioned, you’re using Ecamm. I was using Pamela for Skype. It’s the same thing, but once again for Windows instead of Mac, instead of Apple, because I’m using Windows.

So, yeah, for recording I used to use Pamela for Skype. I don’t use it anymore, because unfortunately it is a software and it has screwed me quite a few times quite badly with very, very important guests and I lost some great episodes and I lost a chance to interview that person again. So I don’t trust software anymore, especially for Windows. I know that Apple computers are a lot more solid usually, and they crash a lot less, if they crash at all. So, yeah. So my suggestion would be if you are just starting, get a software to record your episodes. Unfortunately you don’t have much choice between software to record your Skype calls, so it’s either Ecamm, either Pamela for Skype; maybe there’s a few others, but they’re even less known and they have less support, they have less quality. But you’ll need one of these pieces of software if you want to record interviews remotely using Skype or any other kind of service. Or if you are not using a remote recording, if you’re doing it by yourself in front of your computer, just use Garage Band if it came with it or Audacity. Once again, great software.

LT: Awesome. Yeah. Yeah, I haven’t really got a lot to say regarding, like, recording your podcast. I think you covered it pretty well. Like you said, you know, if you are doing, like, the interview style sort of things, you definitely need something to record it like we’ve mentioned. If not, you could just record straight into the software. And it’s not a software that you need to go out and purchase either, you know; it’s stuff that comes with your program or – I think Audacity is free, isn’t it, or is that something to pay for?

AS: Yeah.

LT: Yeah. Cool.

AS: No, no. It’s completely free, yeah.

LT: Cool. Yeah. So Mac or PC, you know, there’s free software that you can use to record your episode. Now, when it comes to editing, how is sort of, like, Audacity when it comes to that?

AS: Audacity – I’m trying to remember how it compares to Garage Band, because I used Garage Band back in the day when I wasn’t doing a podcast and it was something I didn’t really like because it’s a lot more visual in a way for me. I don’t know. I didn’t get a good feel of it because I didn’t get a lot of time to work with it, but Audacity is – yeah, it’s pretty simple. Basically, you have your tracks and the recording usually would be one track or you could split it into two tracks. Well, let’s say it’s one track, the interview you are doing right now, right. Two people on one track. Then you could – a second track you could use music; as a third you could use – you could put in your intro or outro; whatever you want. And then you just drag and drop, you play with the volume levels, and that’s – it’s very, very simple to use, actually; very simple.

LT: Yeah. I used Pat Flynn’s guide to sort of, like, laying out my Garage Band sort of, like, master template because I have, like, an intro music, then my – so these are all separate tracks. I have my intro music; then I have, like, the intro talk, which is me recording over the music; then I have a transitional bit of music to go from my intro to the part with the co-host; then I have an outro music that starts towards the end of the co-hosted section, and it continues to play through the outro; then I have my outro talk; and that’s it. So I’ve got each of those laid out in Garage Band and, like you said, you can play around with the levels with each track individually. So, you know, if there’s one of the tracks spiking really high, which you’ll see – like, a lot of these programs come with, like, an audiometer and you can see it’s all either in the green; when it goes into the yellow and red, that’s when you need to start, like, being careful and sort of, like, adjust the levels. Or if it’s, like, low in the green, you need to boost the levels a little bit.

But I will link in the show notes to your guide obviously, Alex, but I’ll also link to the part of Pat Flynn’s guide where he talks about laying out, like, Garage Band, if that is what you want to use, and we’ll go through sort of, like, how you can sort of, like, lay it out and how to edit easily. Because, for me, I found Garage Band was not difficult; it was different to, like, edit with, because I’m used to using ScreenFlow to edit videos. I haven’t, like, gone through and used Garage Band to edit anything ever before.

AS: Yeah.

LT: So, like, for me, I had to google how to sort of, like, split tracks and, like, cut tracks so I can, like, delete parts of it. But once I learnt that, then that was, like, the only editing that I ever did.

AS: Yeah.

LT: Well, the only editing I do inside of Garage Band is just, like, cutting off maybe a little bit of talking that happens at the beginning or, like, the little bit of talking that might happen at the end, and any sort of, like, blank spaces in the middle. Apart from that, the levels on Garage Band is very easy to use. But later on in this conversation I’ll talk about a different tool that I use that adjusts levels for me by itself, and I don’t really touch the levels unless it’s really spiking and there’s, like, a big difference between, like, say, my audio track and, say, your audio track, Alex, because I separate the two audio tracks just in case.

AS: Yeah.

LT: But, yeah, it’s super easy to use a program – like, obviously it’s going to take a little bit of getting used to if you’ve never used it before, but editing your podcast is pretty easy. You just need to decide on how much editing you want to do in your podcast. You could be like me and leave sort of, like, all these conversations raw and unedited or you can go through and edit out any little mistakes that were made, or if you had to re-record a section you can delete the bad section. Any gaps, any long pauses; you can remove all that, you know. It’s entirely up to you how you want to be editing your show. But once you’ve got your sort of software, it’s very easy to do.

AS: Yeah, yeah. Totally. And, you know, to be honest with you, my very first few episodes I spent, I think, days editing each and single one because I tried to remove every little pause, every “um”, every tumble, every little problem. And then when I heard it, it was so polished it sounded fake and just not interesting to me. And I know some people do that and this is how they prefer their podcast to be, completely perfect; I don’t like it. I edit, like, less and less and less with time and I’ve came up with the way of recording my podcast these days that I think I will not do any editing at all, including music and everything; I will have all that incorporated while I’m recording so I wouldn’t have to - - -

LT: Wow.

AS: Yeah. And we could talk about it later one-on-one because it’s getting a bit too complicated. And that’s another thing I wanted to mention once again to the listeners of this podcast, that we’re talking about some things and I think we might be overlooking the fact that it sounds really complicated and it’s, like, what are these guys talking about. But if you folks are thinking of starting a podcast, just jump into this. It might sound complicated, but it’s really easy; all of this is really easy. And whenever you have a question, like, once again what you mentioned, splitting a track in Garage Band, I had the same exactly issues with Audacity. It’s super simple to do, but when you don’t know how it’s done just google it; how to split a track in Audacity. Boom. First result, there’s a video where there’s a text and it’s super easy to understand. So don’t get freaked out by some of the words we might be using or examples; it’s super easy in the end. You just have to do it once or you have to look to others doing it and that’s it. It’s easy.

LT: Yeah, you do make a good point actually. I think – like, I’ve been wanting to do a podcast for a long time, like I said to you before we hit record, but I’ve sort of, like, been putting it off for a good year now at least. And that was the reason why I didn’t get started as well, because I thought it’s going to be super difficult to do, it’s going to be super complex, super technical, when actually the only technical part that I’ve found so far is just learning how to split tracks or how to cut tracks inside of Garage Band; everything else has been super simple.

AS: Yeah.

LT: You know, like you said, you know, you just google something or go on YouTube and, like, say how to whatever; I actually did that – that’s how I found out how to cut tracks in Garage Band, just googled how to cut tracks in Garage Band. Two minute video showed me how to do it; away I was again. So it’s super easy to do after you’ve sort of, like, done one. And I think the bit that sort of, like, confuses people the most which is a section that we’re going to be talking about when it comes to sort of, like, finalising your episode and sort of, like, the ID3 tags and all that sort of stuff. That was something that really threw me through a loop first. But, yeah, once you’ve done one or two, it’s super simple. So, yeah, I think that’s all I really wanted to say about editing your podcast. Is there anything you wanted to add?

AS: Yeah. No, that’s pretty much it.

LT: Sweet. So the next step is obviously to export your episode, which, again, you can let people know how it’s done in Audacity. But in Garage Band, you just go to export to disc and it saves it as a – I’m pretty sure it saves it as an MP3 file as standard; if not, there’s, like, a dropdown box and you can select what file type you want it to be. Just click export to disc and then it will just take all of your tracks that you’ve created inside of Garage Band and create one single file for you. And then you’re ready pretty much – almost ready at least – to upload that to your server.

AS: Yeah.

LT: So is that different in Audacity?

AS: You know, the language is a bit different but it’s the same idea, the same feeling. You go into – once you have your file all edited with your intros, with, you know, everything you want, you go to file and you click on – I think it’s called actually export file or export sound or something like that, but there’s only one export. So you click on export and then you get a – you actually get a choice. You could set a default one, either WAV format or MP3, whichever format you want. And for the very first time when you’re exporting, you have to play with settings a little bit because you have to choose the quality of your file. And I usually go to 44 – it’s 44100 hertz. So 44100 hertz. I have no idea why that’s the proper format, but that’s the one that’s – and, you know, I’ve done, like, a lot of research before starting my podcast and everywhere I looked that’s what everyone said, that this is the file format you have to choose. There’s, like, 32000, 44000, 88000 and so on. This is the quality of your end file, and 44000 seems to be a really perfect quality versus size of your file. It’s, you know, high quality; the size is not big enough so it’s easier and faster to download and to upload as well.

So that’s the one you choose, and sometimes I don’t – I mean, I export in WAV; sometimes I export in MP3, depending, once again, what I want to do with it as well. And the only reason I would export in WAV instead of MP3 is because I want to, as you mentioned also, play with audio levels. And I use a software called – how is it called? I’m blanking right now. Levelator. Levelator is a free software. It’s not supported anymore, but you could still find it everywhere online. It’s basically – you open the Levelator, you drag your WAV file into it, and it automatically adjusts all the levels, so the volume levels, to kind of the same way, the same level, so there’s no peaks in your episode. And then the file that it creates, I import it back into Audacity and I export it right away as an MP3 file because MP3 file takes a lot less space. Wow. Once again, it sounds really complicated but it’s really easy.

So basically the end file is in MP3 format, 44100 hertz. That’s pretty much it. You could go with higher levels, higher quality if you want, but the thing is, once again, that – first of all, a lot of online players, a lot of online programs that use your file, they will compress it down to – I think it’s called 128 kbps. So in the end, even if you put extra effort to make a higher quality file, it’s going to end up being compressed and it’s going to end up being what I just suggested doing. And, once again, I want to repeat what I said at the beginning of this explanation: these settings that I just mentioned, you don’t have to play with them all the time; you just set them up once for the very first time when you export your file. You set them once and then they’re going to stay there automatically, so you don’t have to worry about that.

LT: No. Yeah, I mean, the process that I go through is a little bit different. With Garage Band, when you go to export it, it selects best settings for you and I just select that; I don’t bother editing anything else. I do that. It’ll export it as an MP3 format for me, and then I upload it to a site called Auphonic.

AS: Yeah.

LT: Yeah, I think that’s how it spelled.

AS: Yeah.

LT: I’ll put a link to it in the show notes for this episode. But all I do is upload it to there, and I can mess with the ID3 tags, which we’ll talk about in a second, but I don’t bother doing that; I just upload that straight up to there and then click process, and what that does is it levels out all of, like, the peaks and then it will, like, increase the levels on all the quiet parts. It will get rid of background noise. It does so much. And once, like, the episode has finished processing, it will show you – you would have, like, two play buttons and it will show you the levels of the before episode and the after so you can see sort of, like, where it’s gone and adjusted the levels in. So you can compare the quality that you uploaded to the quality that they’ve now processed and given back to you, in MP3 format. So you don’t need to upload it to anywhere else to convert it to anything; it’s all done through MP3.

AS: Okay. Cool.

LT: It’s not a free tool; there is a small charge for it, but you can process up to two hours of audio every month for free, which is – you know, if you do one episode a week of, like, a 20-minute show, that’s perfect; you won’t need to pay to use that program.

AS: Yeah. Totally.

LT: So I’ve found that super easy to use, super quick. And then once that’s done you’re ready to start doing the ID3 tags, which is the next section in your guide and that’s, yeah, finalising your episode which is obviously levelling the audio, which we’ve just talked about, but the ID3 tags. And what the ID3 tags are is sort of, like, all the markers that, like, iTunes use and all the other podcast directories use to sort of, like, identify your show. So they know sort of, like, who’s the person that created it; what’s the name of the show; you can attach your artwork to it; all that sort of stuff. So when it’s found by iTunes, Stitcher, Soundcloud, whoever it is you decide to upload it to, you know, all the details will be, like, taken from the file and, like, put in to where it needs to go.

AS: Yeah. Yeah. I think a great example would be also for people is when you download a song or when you buy a song from iTunes, or anywhere really, and you put it in your iPod – if people still use iPods. Some people are – or if you play it on your computer, if you play it on a USB key in your car stereo, wherever you play that file, usually you’re going to see the name of the song, the name of the artist, the name of the album, the year it came out. Sometimes you’re going to see the artwork that came with the album; sometimes you won’t. So this is the ID3 tags. If you just record a sound on your computer and play it on your iPod or in your car stereo or wherever, you won’t see anything; you’ll just see file number 27 that’s MP3. That’s the only info you’re going to see. So the ID tagging is exactly for that reason. So wherever it plays, whichever platform you use to play it, online or offline, you know, in your car or on your iPod or on your computer, you will see all this vital information or interesting information, basically. So this is the ID3 tagging and, yeah, it’s super important to do for your episodes.

LT: Yeah. And the easiest way to do that as well is to load your file – this is how I do it at least, anyway, and it’s the way sort of, like, Pat goes through his in his guide – is you just upload it to iTunes and then you just right-click on it and click get info.

AS: Yeah.

LT: And then you’ll see – you just basically need to fill in all of those, like, text areas. And you only need, I think it’s, like, two or three different fields to fill in and you just, like, copy and paste it into, like, certain other fields. So if you go and watch Pat Flynn’s tutorial on ID3 tagging, you know, it takes two minutes to realise, you know, what needs to be copied and pasted where and then for future episodes you can just – what I’ve done is I’ve, like, gone and created a playlist. So I drag all of my episodes into a playlist and I can just flick back and forth between an episode that I’ve already done the ID3 tags for, just copy and paste those into the new episode that I’ve just uploaded. So it literally takes 30 seconds to do ID3 tags after you’ve done the very first episode.

AS: Yeah. That’s exactly what I do. And to be honest with you, I spent quite a bit of time trying to find a different way to do it not using iTunes, simply because I don’t normally use iTunes generally. But all the other software that I’ve found to do this kind of task, to do ID3 tagging, it was paid software for whatever reason, especially for Windows. They would ask you to buy the software in order to change that information on your file, and I thought, you know what, I’ll just download iTunes because apparently you can do that completely free. And that’s what I’ve been using since then, so, yeah. I would highly suggest using iTunes for ID3 tagging.

LT: Yeah. It is so quick and easy. And, again, this was all, like, the thing that sort of, like, put me off getting started podcasting and, you know, what kept me away from doing it for almost a year was because of this ID3 tagging that sounded so complicated and hard to do. But, no, once I’d done the first one, it takes literally 30 seconds.

AS: Yeah. Exactly.

LT: It is literally copy and pasting, and then right at the very bottom I think it’s, like, comments or whatever; the very bottom box is, like, the biggest box. You just basically put, like, a one or two sentence description of what the episode is. That takes the longest part of doing ID3 tags for me.

AS: Exactly, yes. That’s true.

LT: You’re just writing that one, two sentences out, and that’s it.

AS: That’s true. And you know, man, one thing that you have to be careful with, I’m going to say to you right now, because we’re going into 2017 soon and so imagine for me for the past year I’ve been typing the year in the ID3 tag, the year 2016. Now that’s going to mess me up for the first two months for 2017 because I know I’ll be typing 2016.

LT: Yeah, that’s something I’m going to have to watch out for too, actually. Thanks for pointing that one out.

AS: Totally.

LT: Cool. So that’s sort of, like, you’re finalising your episode. And, guys, I know sort of, like, we’ve gone through this, like, very quickly and we’re just going over the broad strokes just because we’re trying to condense this down to, like, a 30, 35 minute conversation. I will link in the show notes, too, Alex’s guide where he goes through this in so much more detail, and also link to Pat Flynn’s guide as well. So between both of those, you should easily be able to set a podcast up. So don’t feel like it’s overwhelming and that there’s too much to do or that it’s too technical that you can’t do it; it is super simple once you dive in and just do it. So like I said, I’ll link to both of the guides into the show notes because we are literally going through the broad strokes of this right now.

AS: Yeah.

LT: So moving onto the next stage which is the three bits that you’ve got next are what I haven’t done yet, and that’s uploading your podcast episode and creating a RSS feed. Can you just quickly describe or quickly go through sort of, like, what that is?

AS: Yeah, sure. And I think I’ll go two different ways here, because I don’t do what I used to do for RSS feed. I’ll explain why as well. Anyway, so RSS feed – okay. Let’s start from the very beginning. There’s a bit of a confusion; a lot of people think that podcasts are uploaded directly to either iTunes or Stitcher or TuneIn or Google, wherever, and that’s totally not true. The podcast episodes are uploaded to a sound host, to a hosting account just like a website account. There are special hosts that specialise in podcasts, in audio files. And this is where you will be uploading your episodes.

From then, you either have that provider create an RSS feed or you can create a RSS feed manually, which, once again, sounds super scary but there is a plugin that makes it a breeze and it’s just, you know, a few minutes of setup. So that’s really easy to do. And once you have that RSS feed, which is basically a URL – this is the address of all of your episodes, and this is what you submit to iTunes and TuneIn and every other podcast directory out there. You submit the link to your RSS feed. And let’s say iTunes; they will automatically be able to update the list of your episodes with your new episodes whenever it comes out, without you having to go to, you know, let’s say, iTunes and uploading every single episode manually in there and then going to another service like TuneIn and uploading your episodes there. You just use that RSS feed; it’s, like, a centralised library of all your episodes.

You submit that once to different platforms and they take care of everything else. They populate the iTunes listing, let’s say, with all the information that we just talked about earlier with Luke, let’s say, with title of your episode, with the artist, with the year it came out, number of your episodes, with the artwork, or whatever it is; it all automatically and magically appears within iTunes and within all the other platforms. So, yeah, RSS feed is something that sounds really scary; it’s not scary. I used to have a plugin and a whole bunch of different things to create my RSS feed, and the reason for it was that I was told and I understood that your RSS feed – if you let your hosting to create your RSS feed, they control your RSS feed. And if you ever leave them, they’ll just delete your feed and you’re going to lose pretty much all of your episodes within those platforms. So that was kind of scary, and this is true for a lot of podcast hosting that offer free services.

However, I had quite a few issues with my RSS feed that I created myself using a plugin, and the issue started coming in that once I reached, like, 40 or 50 episodes because it’s starting to be too much for that plugin apparently. I didn’t know that at the beginning. And I had my podcast host contact me and ask me why don’t I use their feed, and I told them straight up, “Look, I’m scared. I don’t want to become a hostage of your service. What if I ever decide to leave you as a hosting, you’ll just take that RSS away from me and that’s it.” So what they did in writing, they promised that they don’t do that; they told me, “If you ever leave, we promise to keep your feed alive. What we’ll do, we’ll just do a redirect to your feed and we’ll give you that redirect, and it’s permeant and it’s going to stay there forever. So all your old episodes don’t get lost, they don’t disappear from iTunes. And it just more stable generally.”

So at this point – I know I kind of talked about a lot of things, but at this point I don’t have to worry about the RSS feed; I just upload my episodes to my hosting provider and they take care of the rest. They update the feed and, yeah, that’s pretty much it. So if you go that second route, the newer route that I’m using, it’s even simpler; you don’t even have to worry about creating that RSS feed. So, yeah.

LT: So, like, the audio hosting that you talk about – obviously the company that I’m looking at using – and I know it’s the one that you talk about using in your guide and it’s the same as the one in Pat Flynn’s one as well – is Libsyn. Is that the one that you still use?

AS: That’s the one I’m using, yes.

LT: Okay. So Libsyn are the ones. So you upload your finished file once it’s all ID3 tagged and all that sort of stuff, you just upload that to Libsyn and Libsyn give you your RSS feed.

AS: Yes. And, see, once again, Libsyn doesn’t have to give me anything anymore; I just had to set it up once.

LT: Yeah.

AS: And the feed never changes. So now I don’t have to look at the feed or do I anything; I just upload my episode and that’s it. There is more to it. Because I’m using their feed, I get access to different things, like – I’ll give you an example – YouTube. So what Libsyn does is as soon as I upload my episode to Libsyn, it’s an audio file, right.

LT: Yep.

AS: They take it and they automatically convert it into a video and they upload it automatically to my YouTube account using the same exactly ID3 tags that I specified when I was just exporting my file.

LT: Wow.

AS: So they automatically upload it to YouTube, and that’s not a limit because they could automatically upload it or share it on Google Play Music, iHeart Radio, Blogger, Twitter, Wordpress, Soundcloud, Tumblr, LinkedIn, whatever; like, so many other platforms. And they do all of that automatically once you upload your episode. Of course you have to set all of them up, right, because if you want them to upload to your YouTube account, you have to link your YouTube account to Libsyn and so on. But that alone was kind of a seller for me, because I would – usually what I do with my podcast episodes, I also upload them to YouTube. But I would take that episode, the sound, I would attach an image, I would have to put it through a video processing software in order to make it into a video file in order to then upload it on YouTube. And that’s, you know, another 20, 30 minutes of my time wasted; now I don’t have to worry about any of that because Libsyn does it for me. So, yeah, I know that sounds like a sales pitch for Libsyn but I seriously appreciate these guys and their service. And I think for the money that it costs, it’s really worth it.

LT: Yeah. I mean, it’s the company that I hear everybody using as well. So, you know, they must be doing something well if, like, a lot of the really popular podcasters that have, like, hundreds of episodes use them, you know. So there must be a good reason. But I just want to quickly bring up something that you mentioned, because it is sort of, like, the last point in your guide, and that’s submitting your show to iTunes.

AS: Yeah.

LT: So once you’ve, like, got that RSS feed, obviously you go into iTunes and you – I can’t remember the thing that you click on now, but it’s submit a new show or something like that.

AS: Submit a podcast, yeah.

LT: Submit a podcast; that’s it. So you obviously go through all of that and, like, put your RSS feed that Libsyn gave you and submit that to iTunes. Are you saying that Libsyn does it for everybody else or do you need to go and, like, register a new podcast on Soundcloud and register a new podcast on Stitcher, Google Play, and all that?

AS: Okay. So how it works is that – yes, no. I’m not sure if we’re on the same page here. But, yes, you will have to submit your RSS feed initially.

LT: Yep.

AS: For the very first time you have to submit that manually to each platform. So let’s say you go to Stitcher and you submit a new show and you submit your RSS feed and, you know, you might add some information because many of them ask you to add your link, your email address, and so on. But you do that only once.

LT: Yep.

AS: So you submit that RSS feed only once and then it automatically updates every time you upload a new episode to your hosting, which is, in this case, Libsyn or any other hosting basically works the same way. So it’s not just Libsyn. As long as you have an RSS feed, which you need, so you will have it anyway, it will update automatically but you will have to submit it manually for the very first time, yes.

LT: Cool. So you just manually submit to all these directories to say, “Look, I’ve got a new show. This is where you’ll find all the new episodes when they’re posted.”

AS: Exactly.

LT: And then Libsyn will update each of those directories automatically.

AS: Exactly, yes.

LT: Perfect. Makes total sense.

AS: There you go.

LT: Awesome. So, Alex, thanks for, like, coming onto the show and, you know, going through your guide. Obviously I will link to that in the show notes. If there’s anything that we went through that, you know, people might not have understood or, like, we went over too quickly that didn’t make enough sense, you know, I will link to that in the show notes so, you know, people can see the exact steps that you took to sort of, like, get started with your podcast. And then I’ll also link to Pat’s one as well, because I think that is another really good guide out there too.

AS: Yeah.

LT: So between yours and Pat’s, you know, I think people will easily be able to get started with a podcast.

AS: Yeah, yeah. I have to admit that I used parts of Pat’s guide when I was setting up my podcast at first because a few things weren’t clear. And another thing I’d like to mention here before we move away from this, I’d like to share a tip that I think is a really, really good tip for people starting a podcast.

LT: Yeah. Please, man.

AS: Something that I wish I would have done. Anyways, so I think it’s really, really – I don’t think so; I know it. It’s really important to have at least a few episodes recorded before you launch your podcast officially; I would say at least three to five episodes, right, because what happens – iTunes is the biggest podcasting platform. We mentioned, what, TuneIn, Stitcher, Google; there’s so many of them, but iTunes is the biggest one. And when you have a podcast, you’ll probably have, like, 70 to 80 per cent of people listening to your podcast coming through iTunes. And there’s a really cool that iTunes have; it’s called new and noteworthy. This is a section where a lot of people go to discover new podcasts, and this is a section of iTunes where you’re looking through your computer; it’s, like, above the fold, usually, on top of your iTunes account. You’ll see popular new and noteworthy shows.

Now, there isn’t really a way to get in there as in, you know, certain steps you should follow or apply to be in new and noteworthy. iTunes decides by itself who is worthy of being noteworthy, right. And how it works really, they don’t really say it but we’ve seen that work for many, many different podcasts. What happens is they see how much buzz a podcast generates, so basically how many listens you get, especially when it’s brand new. So if you get many listens, if you get some people writing reviews, rating your show, it’s going to bump you up. And within a few days usually of launching, you have a high chance of ending up on new and noteworthy.

Now, when you’re new and noteworthy, more and more people are going to click on your show because they see it pop up, it’s a brand new show, let’s check it out, what is it. So the more people listen to it, the higher you get in the rankings; the higher you’re in the rankings, the more people listen to it. It’s a vicious circle, right. The problem is that you only get six or eight weeks within that new and noteworthy; I don’t remember how long. I think it’s about - - -

LT: It’s eight weeks.

AS: Eight weeks; there you go. And I was kind of lucky to spend the whole eight weeks in there, and it gave me a really good boost. But for everyone else, what this means, that when you have only one episode and let’s say you have 20 of your friends listen to that one episode, right, so iTunes looks at it and they’re like pretty cool, this guy has got a brand new podcast and he got 20 listens. But if you have five episodes and the 20 people, they like your content and they’re like, you know what, let me listen to his episodes as well. iTunes doesn’t see the difference between one episode and five. All they see is that you didn’t get 20 downloads; you get 100 downloads, which is a lot more impressive, right. So that would be the biggest tip. When you launch, try to have at least a few episodes; three to five would be great. If you could have a bit more, even better. But try to have several episodes, not just one like I did.

And from the day 1, start asking people to let you know what they think of your show by leaving a rating and a review within the actual iTunes because the more reviews and ratings you get, regardless good or bad, but if people are actually talking about you, you will get bumped up in the new and noteworthy, and this will definitely bring a lot more listeners, especially at the beginning, and of course it’s a chance of getting subscribers. People are loyal listeners; they will be waiting your episode every single day or every single week, whichever your schedule is. So, yeah, that would be my biggest tip. There you go.

LT: Awesome one, man. Yeah. That’s true. Because obviously I haven’t launched my podcast just yet at the time of recording, but I’m planning on launching with four episodes and then I’m going to be publishing three episodes a week during those eight weeks, like you said, just to make the most of being in new and noteworthy and, you know, having a load of episodes for people to check out to boost those rankings inside of the new and noteworthy to try and hit the top so more and more people find you.

AS: Yeah.

LT: And, you know, just to go back to sort of, like, you were talking about, like, download numbers. I’ve heard that it only takes between 10 and 100 downloads to actually get into new and noteworthy. So like you said, you know, if you have four episodes and you got 20 friends that are downloading them, that’s 80 downloads made in the eyes of iTunes.

AS: Exactly.

LT: And you’ve got a lot better chance of getting into new and noteworthy. So that’s an awesome tip, Alex. Thank you so much. But before you go, Alex, we do have one thing to do and that is the rapid-fire question session.

AS: Yeah.

LT: Are you ready for this?

AS: How long do I have to answer a question?

LT: I want the first thing that comes into your head. A lot of these are just, like, one or two word answers.

AS: All right. Awesome. Let’s do it, man.

LT: Cool. So question number one: what is your favourite country that you’ve been to so far?

AS: Germany, but I’ll be more precise; it has to be Berlin as the city. That’s one of my favourite places in the world.

LT: Awesome. What is the last YouTube video or movie that you’ve watched?

AS: I just watched a movie called – I forgot what it’s called – The Minimalists something-something. Actually I watched that on Netflix and I was really – I didn’t like it.

LT: So that’s a movie you wouldn’t recommend, then.

AS: Yep. I wouldn’t recommend.

LT: Cool. Question three: what is the weirdest thing you’ve eaten?

AS: The weirdest thing I’ve eaten, it has to be those bugs that people eat in Thailand. Yeah.

LT: Yeah, the grasshoppers.

AS: Yeah. Something like that, yeah.

LT: What is your favourite drinking game?

AS: I don’t like drinking games.

LT: You don’t?

AS: No, I don’t.

LT: Well, I’m going to say beer pong. I’m going to say your favourite is beer pong because I think that’s the worst drinking game ever.

AS: I think this one the least, actually, so.

LT: Okay. Cool. So your least favourite drinking game, beer pong. Cool.

AS: There you go.

LT: If you could meet one person, dead or alive, who would it be?

AS: First answer will be Kurt Cobain.

LT: Awesome. Name one book you would recommend everybody should read.

AS: One book, Obstacle Is The Way.

LT: What is your go-to song when you need to get into the mood to get shit done?

AS: Apollo Road by Dash Berlin.

LT: What is your favourite swearword that you’ve learnt in another language?

AS: “Calice”. That’s in French.

LT: And what does that mean?

AS: I can translate it. You could say, like, “shit” or “fuck” or something. It’s pretty basic, just like, “oh crap”. There you go.

LT: Sweet. What is your favourite podcast, apart from this one?

AS: It has to be Smart Passive Income by Pat Flynn.

LT: Awesome. And can you give me your best travel story in under five minutes.

AS: Under five minutes, yeah, sure. I have one.

LT: Try your best.

AS: So, yeah. So that was in 2010 I was spending a lot of time in Europe and I ended up spending a lot of time in Ukraine and I had a car that wasn’t bought in Ukraine, right. So they have this rule that a car that’s imported in the country temporarily has to be exported every two months or so. So I had to take out that car. I had to, I mean, drive out of Ukraine and I drove to – I decided to go to Bucharest, Romania, to visit some friends. And as I was driving there I had to drive through Moldova, and I got to the border of Ukraine and Moldova, it says something like Republic of Moldova, whatever. Doesn’t matter, I’m on my way. And as I’m driving in, I see this, like, four or five kids, maybe 18 year olds, surrounding me with Kalashnikovs, with AK-47s, pointing at me.

LT: Oh wow.

AS: And they’re like, “What are you doing here?” And, you know, I was really shocked and I really couldn’t figure out what’s going on. I’m like, “I’m just driving. I’m not doing anything bad. I’m not, like, breaking the law. I’m not trying to cross the border illegally. This is, like, a legal, proper border crossing.” So I start telling that I’m going to Romania and they ask some questions and they’re telling me where to go. And I guess they see my confusion; they’re like, “Do you realise that you’re driving through Transnistria?” And I was like, “Okay, wait. What? Back up a bit.”

So for people who don’t know, Transnistria is a part of Moldova that kind of broke away from them in ’92 or ’93, some of those years, when basically the whole USSR was falling apart or actually fell apart. And there was a little strip of land of Moldova between the border of Moldova and Ukraine that decided to become independent. So they got some guns, they got armed, and they try to fight the government and they try to become independent. However, up until this day, this place is not recognised as a country by UN or by anyone else really; nobody sees them as a country. The same thing is happening in Crimea right now; the same thing happened with Kosovo in the Balkans. So it’s this kind of story, right, that it’s a country but not really a country.

And so what happens when you drive through that place, there is not single GPS that will tell you to not go there because it’s not, you know, it’s dangerous or it’s a border crossing of some sort. Google Maps doesn’t know that or, I mean, they don’t admit it. Nobody does. So you don’t think you’re driving through a country that’s not really a country. And there’s, like, an armed conflict still going on 20 years later. Anyway, so I’m getting up to this booth where I’m supposed to show my driver’s licence and stuff. And this is when the fun really begins because every single officer that works in this border crossing, all they want is a bribe. So they start telling me that, “That zero looks like an O,” and I tell them, “Well, it could be an O because O and zero look exactly the same on a driver’s licence.” And they’re telling me, “Yeah, but, you know, we could consider that as a felony because your driver’s licence might be fake because of that letter.” Basically what they’re saying, okay, the guy said, “Okay, give me, like, I don’t know, $5 or something and I’ll let you through.” So that happens.

Then they take me to this little booth where I have to fill out some papers, and it takes about 30 minutes to fill out the papers. And I fill it out; I write that I’m just in transit; I’m driving through the country; I have no business there; I don’t want to see anybody; I just want to drive through it and get to Romania. So I fill out the papers, I bring it back to the first booth, and they’re telling me, “Okay, yeah. Everything is great except this paper is not valid because you wrote ‘transit’ and we don’t have a word ‘transit’ for cars. You have to write that you’re importing a car.” I’m like, “But I’m not.” Anyway, this discussion goes on. So they make me redo the paper; I redo the paper; I write importing the car; I go back to the front booth and he’s like, “Well, since you’re importing the car, you have to pay an import fee on that car.” Which is ridiculously low; it’s, like, $5 or something, once again, or $10, right. So I pay that finally. I pay that to the guy. He’s like, “Okay. You’re free to go.”

So I drive up to the gate and it’s about 8 pm, it’s starting to get dark, and the guy at the gate is telling me, “Yeah, it’s already 8 o’clock. We just closed the gate. You have to go back to Ukraine and try tomorrow again.” And I told him, “No, man. There is no way I’m going through that again.” So he’s like, “Well, you could just give me $5 and I’ll let you through.” I’m like, “All right.” So I give him the money, he lets me through, and I drive for – you know, the timeline is a bit blurry right now because it was six years ago, but I drive something like 10 minutes, maybe 20 minutes maximum, and I reach a sign that says, “You are now leaving the Republic of Transnistria.” So all that for, like, a 20-minute drive, not even, and when I’m at the exit, once again, barbed wire, there’s a whole bunch of tanks and whole other equipment hidden in the bushes, and a lot of really young guys with automatic weapons.

But at this point, like, nobody’s pointing them at me, you know. They pulled me over and they were just asking me questions about my car and, like, how come the car is plated with Canadian licence plates but I’m driving from Ukraine into, like, Romania, like, what the hell is that whole story. But the guys were really cool and they were asking me all these questions; they just were curious and really nice. But the whole fact of crossing this armed country in a conflict that doesn’t exist official in any maps was pretty terrifying back then and something I guess I’ll – you know, I’m laughing at now. It’s a fun story to tell, but, yeah, that was one of the craziest travel stories I could share.

LT: Paying three bribes to drive 10, 20 minutes through a country just to end up at the next one to get, well, pretty much interrogated yet again.

AS: Exactly.

LT: That’s an awesome story, man. Thanks for sharing it.

AS: No problem, man.

LT: Cool. So, Alex, again, thank you so much for coming onto the show today and sharing your knowledge on building a podcast. I will link to all of the things that we mentioned in the show notes, including your guide. But where can people find you online if they wanted to reach out to you?

AS: The easiest way to reach out to me is through the extrapaycheckblog.com. This is where my main blog is, my podcast, my email address is in there as well if somebody wants to drop me an email, anything. So, yeah, that’s the best place to find me.

LT: Awesome. And I will also link to your podcast into the show notes as well. So once again, Alex, thanks so much for coming on and hopefully we will talk again soon.

AS: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. It was a lot of fun.

LT: You’re more than welcome, man. Take care.

AS: You too.

LT: Bye.

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