What are the best podcast hosting platforms for beginners?

Dave Jackson:
You're thinking of starting a podcast and you're asking, well, what is the best podcast platform for beginners? Well, the answer may surprise you.

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Welcome to youo Podcast Consultant. Small Lessons with Big Value. With more than a decade of experience and millions of downloads, this hall of fame podcaster is a featured speaker, author, and mentor to thousands. Now he wants to work with you. He's your podcast consultant. Dave Jackson.

Dave Jackson:
There are some softwares that come with a undeniable learning curve. I'll give you an example. DaVinci Resolve is a free video editing tool, and once you learn it, no big deal. Another one is ECAMM Live. This is a live streaming platform. It's only available on Macs, and once you get it, you got it. But they're both way different or just have so many features that you feel a little overwhelmed and you're like, yes, exactly, Dave. So when it comes to hosting my podcast, who should I go with? Should it be Transistor? Should it be Buzzsprout? Should it be Captivate? Should it be Podbean? Should it be Libsyn? Should it be whoever? Did I say Captivate yet? And the answer is, I can't really answer that question without knowing you.

Dave Jackson:
My number one favorite one is Captivate, and here's why. Number one, if you want to start a second show later, it's free. It's pretty much it's $19 for as many podcasts and as many episodes as you want. And the only time your bill goes up is if you go over 30,000 downloads. So I have probably six shows on Captivate right now. So that's my favorite answer. But it depends on what you're trying to do. I use Captivate because I am promoting the school of podcasting.

Dave Jackson:
So you will hear me occasionally insert ads and such to promote that, because I make way more money promoting my own stuff. I'll give you an example. I have a book called Profit from youm Podcast. You can find it at, you guessed it, profitfromyourpodcast.com and if you buy that book, I believe I make $12 profit. Now, if I was using advertising from places like Libsyn, RSS.com, spotify, I would have to get 2,000 downloads. Actually, to be completely accurate, 2,400 downloads. If I'm making $5 per 1,000 downloads, and I just ask you, what's easier to get 2,400 downloads or to get one of your, let's say, 50 people that are listening to buy a book. And so it depends, are you trying to sell your own stuff, or is your goal advertising? And just realize that if the goal was advert advertising, yes, there are places that say you can make money from day one.

Dave Jackson:
And I just did some calculations on this. They're paying somewhere between $3 per 1,000 downloads and $5 per 1,000 downloads, which in my book is almost podcast welfare, or whatever they're calling it these days, Snap. And I've been on welfare, so I can say that. So it's hard to say what's the best for beginner. And here's the thing to keep in mind. Buzzsprout has a pretty clean interface. Captivate has a pretty clean interface. Now, Captivate has a lot of features, so there are more things to kind of look at.

Dave Jackson:
But the answer here may surprise you, and that is, I don't think it matters if that you're a beginner, and here's why. Because no matter who you pick, you're going to go through a learning curve. It doesn't matter if it's Captivate or Transistor or Buzzsprout or Libsyn or Blueberry or whoever. Jim's House of Hosting. There are a ton of those things. And it doesn't matter because you're like, wait, it doesn't matter? No, it doesn't matter in the fact that. That no matter who you pick, you're going to go through a learning curve. And I would say almost all of them have about the same learning curve.

Dave Jackson:
Now, Captivate has a lot of features, but really their interface is pretty easy. You just have to scroll down a little further sometimes because the list of features is a little longer. But none of them are, like, so confusing that my brain explodes. They're all pretty easy. And what you want to do is, when you sign up, go over to their help section. Hopefully they have some videos for you to watch. And this is where the school of podcasting comes in. I have videos for a lot of this stuff, or I can just walk you through it.

Dave Jackson:
But take a day and realize on that day, it's going to look like I'm not moving forward very much because I'm not recording anything. I'm. I'm not editing anything. No, but you are putting gas in your tank. That will make the ride much smoother because you've taken the time to learn the software. I've been teaching software for over probably 30 years at this point. It's crazy. And I'm just here to tell you, take a day to learn it and then move forward.

Dave Jackson:
Right now I'm learning a little more about SEO and I just spend an hour a day. It's on my calendar. I watch some videos, I take some notes and that kind of stops it from being overwhelming. Just a little bit here and a little bit there. And I know we all want to move faster than the speed of light, but it's enough for me to keep going. Same thing with email marketing. Email marketing is huge. And I just bought a course.

Dave Jackson:
I've got it lined up. I'm putting it on my calendar bit by bit. Now, if I really wanted to move fast, I would just take some day on the weekend and block it off on my calendar and blow through about four hours worth of tutorials. And many times you don't need to spend that much time to learn a media host. There's not much to it. Let me give you an example. Have you ever attached a photo to an email? Yeah, we've all done that. Well, then you can upload an MP3 file to a media host.

Dave Jackson:
If you've ever used Microsoft Word to type anything, then you can type up show notes. It's almost the exact same interface. I'm not saying there's no learning curve. I'm saying it's not as hard as you think. So which one is the best? I always say almost all of these have some sort of refund policy or free trial. I would recommend Captivate. They have the most features, so you're going to go there and the worst case scenario is you have some features you don't use. I don't use their calendar feature.

Dave Jackson:
I use Tidy Cow for that. But they have something built in in case you don't have one. So you may not use all of them, but at least you're not going, oh, I should have gone with that company because they have a feature that I do want to use, but realize it's going to be a little nerve wracking. There's going to be some anxiety and that's fine. You are anxious because you're learning something new. And when you learn something new, you're growing. If you need help with that, if you'd like me to walk you through this, it's super simple. You know where to find me.

Dave Jackson:
Schoolofpodcasting.com use the coupon code Listener. That's L, I, S, T, E and er when you sign up for either a monthly, quarterly or yearly subscription. I'm Dave Jackson. I help podcasters. It's what I do and I can't wait to see what we're going to do together? Because I want to be your podcast consultant.