Puppies and Podcasts: The Weird Connection You Didn’t Know You Needed

Today, I'm answering a question from Facebook, and I'm just gonna call this episode, you know, podcasting and Puppies.

It'll make sense in a second.

Welcome to your 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 with you.

He's your podcast consultant, Dave Jackson.

So I saw this question on Facebook.

I put out my first podcast.

Congrats.

A lot of people never make it.

You did.

And I shared it on Facebook and somebody asked me, what's the URL for my podcast?

Now, if you're new to the Internet, URL just means website.

What's your website address?

And I didn't have the answer.

Google says it sounds like they may want to give you an Apple or Spotify address.

That, that's not good because not everybody uses Spotify and not everybody uses Apple.

Send them to your website.

Go get those links to Apple and Spotify and put them on your website.

So you can say, go to, like, this one.

Go to podcastconsultant.com follow, and you can follow in many of the top apps that I have there.

See how it reinforces your brand and it makes it easy to find.

She said, that's the only two platforms I'm on.

Okay, that's.

That's.

There are many other ones.

Now, granted, you've got about 80, 70 to 90% of the, you know, listeners out there use those two apps.

It's very popular.

But I would.

I would be everywhere.

If it's another 8%, I'll take 8%.

So she says, how do I share my podcast without the Buzzsprout link?

Well, everybody said, oh, just use pod link.

And my answer to that is no.

Number one, pod link is free, which means in about, I don't know, less than three years, it's going to go out of business, because free is not a good business model, or they're gonna get purchased.

And then people will go, well, we can't just do this for free.

Case in point.

Answer.

The public, great website was free for many, many, many, many years.

Very, very popular.

And when something is very, very popular, you can sell it because it has value.

And the owners of answer, the public sold it.

The guy that bought it is like, yep, you can use it for free for a couple times a day, but if you really want to use it all the time, you got to pay for it.

So the better thing to do.

And this is where I have My podcast checklist, in this case, this person is out of order.

They have launched and they don't have a domain that's part of it.

In fact, I have gone in and come up with a name of my show.

So I usually come up with a few.

And the way I test a name is, hey, I'm doing a show called Blank.

What do you think it's about?

And when their answer matches what my content is, I feel that's a good name.

Then I will go and see if the domain is available.

And if you have multiple names and you can't choose one, and you see, oh, well, this domain's available and that one is also available.

Buy them both.

Now.

Domains are $20 a year, not a month a year.

And what this does is I know at least seven people who have, you know, they're in the middle of launching their podcast.

They'll check to see if the domain is available, and they'll go, great, I see the domains available.

I'll buy it later when the podcast is closer to being launched.

Then they'll go back in, I don't know, three weeks and.

And the domain won't be available.

So I know I one time bought, I think it was three different podcast domains, right, for the show, because I wasn't sure which name I was going to go with, but I knew it could have been any of these three.

And then once I picked the name, I went into those domains and made sure they didn't renew.

So, yes, I blew, you know, $40 on domains I didn't use.

But I also didn't go, oh, I've already got the artwork made.

I've already got this done.

I've already got this done.

And now the domain is not available.

And I have to use some weird, you know, this dash, this try dash and dash spell.

You get the idea?

So have a domain before you launch because it's like a puppy.

Now you, Dave, like what?

Yeah, your podcast is like a puppy.

So cute.

You want everybody to come see it.

You're like, oh, come see the new puppy.

He or she is amazing.

Is the best dog I've ever had.

Check it out.

So everybody comes over to you and goes, where's your puppy?

Then you go, I don't know, like it was here a minute ago.

Puppy, nothing, right?

Your domain name, your URL, your website address, is a leash that you can put on the puppy.

So somebody says, hey, where's the puppy?

You go, here's the leash.

It's right there on the end of the leash.

Oh, look at that puppy.

So cute.

Right?

And then you could also take that domain.

It's like a leash.

And when you're not ready yet, buy that domain, point it at a email signup form, be the first to, you know, help me shape the show.

You can be part of the focus group, sign up here and get the latest on this show coming out in blah, blah, blah.

Right?

You could do that.

You can point a domain at anything in the real estate world.

When you live at 123 Main Street.

I've actually seen this.

You ever seen this where you're, they're driving along and somebody's house is on the back of a truck and they're just moving it?

Well, when you do that, it's not like the address goes with the house.

123 Main street is pointing at the dirt that the house sits on.

So 123 Main street never changes.

It's always that piece of dirt, that piece of land.

With the Internet, a domain name, your website address can point at anything.

And you want that, you want that control.

And so many people were saying, oh, just use pod link.

And I'm like, no, it takes maybe five minutes to get the link to your show on Apple and Spotify and Pocket Casts and Overcast and Iheart and all these other places that people listen to shows on.

And then you get to do this.

I'll do it right now.

Hey, if you wanna follow the show and get the episodes the minute they're ready, just go to podcastconsultant.com follow.

All right, I reinforced my brand, podcastconsultant.com and I gave you an easy to remember link follow.

What do you use that for when you want to follow the show?

This way you are not relying on some third party service that's either going to go out of business or charge you for it in the future.

You're also reinforcing your brand and you've given your audience something easy to remember and more importantly, easy, easy to share.

So when somebody says, man, I heard this great podcast today, yada, yada, yada, and their friend goes, really?

Where's it at?

They can go, oh, you can follow the show.

Just go to podcastconsultant.com follow.

So the original question was, how do I share this without using my buzzsprout link?

The answer isn't, hey, because the thought there is, well, I want to sound professional or whatever.

Maybe it's too long to remember.

The answer is buy a domain and either point it at your Buzzsprout website or use something like PodPage or make your own website however you need it, with a page that has all the follow links on it.

That's it.

Where do you buy a domain you can use Namecheap, Cooler websites, they all kind of do the same thing.

Those are my two favorites.

So don't launch without that domain.

And if you need that checklist, Simply go to schoolofpodcasting.com checklist.

I'll put a link to that out in the show notes.

And again, not the end of the world.

It just gets messy.

And because when you first start your podcast, you're telling everybody you know and they're going, I don't see it.

Where's the puppy?

Or in this case, where's your podcast?

Again, I can't find it.

Because you're brand new, you're not going to rank in Google yet.

Tell them to go to your website where you have follow button waiting along with every episode that acts like a blog post and that will get you traffic in Google and be easy to find.

If you need help with this, go out to schoolofpodcasting.com start use the coupon code listener and that will save you on either a monthly, quarterly or yearly subscription.

And that comes with a 30 day money back guarantee.

I'm Dave Jackson.

I help podcasters.

It's what I do and I've been doing it for 20 years.

And I can't wait to see what we're going to do together because I want to be your podcast consultant.