Considering building a website to host your podcast? If you have already started your podcasting journey, you would already know that podcasting is so much more than just speaking into a mic all day. And you might have also thought about whether building and maintaining a full-fledged website for your podcast is worth your time and effort or not. So let’s decode what you can expect and gain from building a podcast website!
Advantages of Having a Website for Your Podcast
When you create a website for your podcasts, you indeed have some exciting benefits. Let’s get into each one of them.
Archive Old Episodes
While starting out, you may have created breathtaking content since day one! However, your audience may have grown and changed with time. Just like trends change, you need to keep your content updated to the latest trends and information relevant to your niche.
Sure, your previous contents were a great hit. But, you definitely need to take the levels higher as new listeners join you on the journey.
When you create a website for your podcasts, you can easily archive some of your older non-relevant episodes, which will clear the path to finding the content that interests your audience now!
Even better if your tone, style, and format of podcasting have changed over the years. Your new listeners will get to hear only the current type of podcasts you publish consistently. This will ensure that they are adapted to the style of podcasting that you are currently working with!
Engage More Fully With Your Audience
If you have a podcast, you would already have an email list of your potential listeners. However, you need to have a consistent flow of new email addresses and contact details in your pipeline.
Having a website for your podcast does the job for you! If you publish your podcast only to Spotify or iTunes, you may not get your listeners’ critical info, which will help in your overall podcast marketing.
Your website gives you all the info of your listeners via different strategies, which can prove to be really fruitful to expand your reach and market your podcasts in the best way! You can use that info and update them about the subsequent releases and the latest news about your podcasts!
Additionally, the comments, surveys, etc., on your website can help you gain feedback about your podcasts right from your listeners. This can help in improving your podcast and adapting to their needs and demands. When you consider the feedback and implement them on your podcast, your audience will feel connected, valued, and loyal to your podcast!
Repurpose Podcasts
Did you know that your audience can consume your podcast episode in many other forms of content? Yes. You can find numerous podcasters transforming their podcast content into different other formats such as ebooks, youtube videos, and whatnot.
This will instantly help you reach a broader audience base while making your content easily accessible in different formats to your audience.
Your podcasts are not just limited to iTunes or Stitcher. They can get the same in the form of textual or video formats!
Make It Easy For Your Listeners
Not every listener has access to iTunes. With this, you can significantly lose out on a lot of potential listeners. Creating a website for your podcast will ensure that your podcasts are readily accessible on your website too!
In addition to that, your listeners can also share your podcasts with their friends, and social media handles right from your website, which will again increase your overall visibility.
Take Advantage Of Seo
When your audience searches for content relevant to your podcast on Google, they will only find results in textual format since your audible content on iTunes will not be searched. This decreases your overall visibility and chances of gaining more listeners.
When you create a website for your podcast, with the right SEO steps, your website will be at the top of the search results, even above your competitors! If you’re not savvy enough to create your own website and optimize it, be sure to team up with a top Webflow agency that can take care of everything for you.
Along with this, when you add show notes of your podcast episodes to your website, you will have an added advantage here of getting even higher in the SERP ranking!
Promote Products
Suppose you are a marketing geek and talk about marketing in your podcasts! If you also have a course or membership program that teaches individuals or assists them with their marketing, no place is better than your podcast website to promote your courses or products!
Again, when you have a podcast website, they can also share your products or courses with their friends and family. This will help you market and promote your products like never before!
Disadvantages of Having a Website For Your Podcasts
Now that we have discussed all the advantages of having a podcast website let’s check out the potential pitfalls as well.
Limited Space On Your Web Host
Your podcast files can get really huge depending on the length or media of your audio files. Even if your web host claims to offer you unlimited storage or bandwidth, it is still not the best option! This can take a toll on the quality of your podcasts.
In case you run out of storage, you may need to delete some files to make space for the new ones, which is indeed a massive hassle again!
Uploading To Your Web Host Can Cause Your Site To Crash
Sure, you will attract more visitors to your podcast website and end up having more loyal listeners. But, the higher the traffic you push to your podcast website, the more chances it has to crash at some point. There is always a limit to the number of people that can be on a website simultaneously.
If it exceeds, the site will crash, and you will eventually have to deal with the entire setup process again!
Using Dropbox Or Google Drive For Hosting
You might now consider using Google Drive or Dropbox to combat the issue of space. Well, in case you do, your podcast link to iTunes can get banned, which can again hamper a significant chunk of your loyal listeners on iTunes.
Hosting Your Podcast On Your Own Website Can Get You Banned
When a listener subscribes to your podcast, they receive the content of your podcast into their preferred platform or device automatically via any RSS reader. Now, if your podcasts are exponentially growing, there is a possibility that your media files will be downloaded hundreds or even thousands of times a day.
If you host the media files from your podcast, there could be chances that your website host may ban your website altogether due to the enormous data transfer, and you can end up losing all your preserved content over the years in just a few seconds!
Transferring That Much Data Can Be Very Expensive
Despite the fact that there are high chances of getting banned due to the huge amount of transfers, you can also be charged a huge bill for all the hefty transfers that happened on your podcast website!
Sponsorship And Accurate Download Statistics
Sure, you do get to see the metrics of the growth of your podcast and the info of your new listeners while they tune into your podcast from your podcast website, but the results may not always be accurate!
What if a single person uses four different IP addresses in a day? Or more than two people use the same IP addresses at once?
The IP address is attached to a specific location and not the user. In such cases, you may not get the right download statistics, thereby also giving you irrelevant information about your listeners.
Using a Podcast-hosting Platform
After judging the pros and cons of having a podcast website, we can clearly understand that the risks associated with having a podcast website may cause either a lot of dollars or a lot of subscribers!
Either way, both are highly important. Hence, the safest way to go about this is to use a podcast hosting platform such as Buzzsprout, Podbean, etc.
Advantages of Using a Podcast-hosting Platform
Before you decide whether you should invest in a podcast hosting platform or not, let’s know the advantages you can get with this and later the disadvantages!
Free Unlimited Podcast Hosting And Offers Flexibility
You can get multiple free podcast hosting platforms out there that offer you free plans. However, not all of it is free. You might need to pay a minimal amount for the hosting, which is undoubtedly not the worst deal when you are on a budget and still want to blend in with the podcast community!
It also offers you more flexibility since with the low incurring costs, if you are not satisfied with your podcast host, you can easily switch to a new one with no extra hassle! Hence, you can test out the platform during the initial days and find the right fit for your podcasts gradually without any hindrances!
Features And Improvements
While you pay for podcast hosting, you get access to many tools and benefits which can help in making your podcast journey even better! Some of the tools include IAB-compliant analytics, analytics of your listeners, customized websites, and many more!
Increased Traffic Generation
With a podcast hosting platform, you also have chances of gaining a tremendous amount of traffic by making your podcasts readily available on multiple platforms for your listeners without the risks of getting banned due to a high downloading count!
Easy To Create
Believe it or not. Creating an account on a podcast hosting platform is one of the easiest jobs you would do in your podcasting journey!
You can easily create a podcasting account with just a few clicks, and your listeners can tune into your website in no time!
Affordability
Most of the plans in the best podcast hosting platforms are very affordable, which makes them a great investment and gives you a high ROI!
The prices of using a podcast hosting platform can range from $5 per month to $50 per month or even more as per your requirements! You can always explore the list of available options and choose the most suitable hosting plan for your podcasts!
Disadvantages of Using a Podcast-hosting Platform
As we said, everything has its own set of pros and cons. Similarly, let’s check out the potential cons of using a podcast hosting platform!
You Might Run into Issues With the Owner
There has been recent news over the internet that many podcast hosting platforms have stated in their terms and conditions about their rights to the content uploaded on their platform. These rights include the ability to take or share the content with other third-party platforms.
However, due to the backlash in recent times, the terms and conditions of many platforms have changed. It is certainly safer to go through all the terms and conditions before signing up for a podcast hosting platform to save yourself from such trouble!
Lots of Options
This is typically an advantage for podcasters. Nonetheless, if you get hoarded with so many options to choose from, you may have a tough time narrowing them down and choosing only the ones relevant to your podcast!
Wrapping Up
We’ve listed why every podcaster would need a website, now the decision in yours to make!
