Alrighty then, I've just had my weekly injection of Ozempic, and I'm feeling a little saucy. It's Thursday, and that means we're going to talk about podcasting today. Hmm. Oh, and just so you know, I'm not doing the Ozempic thing for the weight loss, although that's a really nice added benefit.
Hi everyone, Michael Kroos here. This is The Daily Grateful, and on Thursdays we talk about podcasts, but I should throw this in with the Ozempic. I was tested a couple months ago, and my A1C was, by the way, I've lived a pretty healthy life. My blood pressure's good, everything is good, my heart is good, I've done very, very well.
And very few bumps along the way, a pretty big bump in 2013, but got through that, and I was on like zero medication. And then all of a sudden, you know, they did this A1C thing, and the A1C thing came back at 11.2. And that scared me, because I don't want to mess with that. So I went to my doctor, and my doctor put me on this, and it went from 11.2 down to 8.1, and I go in for more blood work, I think June 1st, and then they'll check it again.
So this has been a godsend to me. And the other thing is, I'm just not hungry, and I can walk right by cookies and not be the least bit interested in them. And I look at that as more of a benefit for my diabetes situation than just the weight loss. But the weight loss is a good thing.
All right, enough about that. I got asked to cover this subject this week, and that is hosting companies for your podcast. When you start a podcast, you have to put it someplace. You have to stick it someplace where people can find it.
And those are podcast hosting companies. And there's a bunch of them out there. I mean, just tons. I've got my favorites.
And there's paid options. There's free options. And I'm going to start with one of the free options that virtually no one knows about. And that is archive.org.
Now, I recommend archive.org if you're doing one of these one-up podcasts where you're doing a documentary, a podcast documentary about a certain subject, and you want it to be out there forever. And you don't want to have to think about it. And you want it to outlive you. You can get this thing stuck on archive.org, and it'll be there forever.
And there are some people who have done some of these documentary-type podcasts where they talk about the experiences of World War. I saw one for the experiences of World War II from a pilot of a certain plane. I forget what it was. But this thing was like four hours long.
I didn't listen to it. But it was there. And if you're interested in it, it's there. And if you have something like that that you want to do, I wouldn't stick it on a commercial podcasting host.
I would stick it on archive.org, and it'll be there forever. You can just stick information out there. I've got a subject that I'm working on. In the back of my mind, I'm working on it.
But it was all about an underground newspaper that existed in Tampa in the 60s. And I would love to do a history of that, but I don't want to put it on a commercial podcasting site. So if I do this, and if I can wind up and find the people who would be the guests for it, then that might be fun. And I would have to, at that stage of the game, put it on archive.org.
So it's just there. So somebody could look this up if they knew the name of the paper, which I'm not going to mention, and they found it on archive.org. Now, let's get regular podcasting. Again, if you have a regular podcast, here's what you want to consider when you're looking for hosting companies for your podcast.
Bandwidth and storage limits, you want to make sure that your podcast can grow without restrictions. So you want that in a podcast host. You want to make sure that you can just stick things there and they're going to stay there as long as you're paying a bill. Look for hosting platforms that offer, I meant to say, really good analytics.
Really, really, really good analytics. And by the way, good analytics, you can find it in a lot of places besides your podcasting host. But if you want to really grow your podcast and you're looking to target a certain audience, you want those analytics, and those are good. Really, it's very, very important to you.
Here's the other thing. You want to just check out on some of these things and make sure that their downtime is basically nonexistent. And there's a lot of them out there that that's not a problem with. But there's a couple, and there's some big names that find themselves down.
They're not available on the Internet for an hour at a time or two hours. That is not a good thing. You want consistency. Okay.
The other thing you want to look for in a situation like this is, can you move? Say you're hooked into a podcast hosting system and you don't love them anymore. And can you take your RSS feed and go? And do they make it easy for you?
I'm going to tell you right now that most of them are really cool about that. They say, okay, we love you. We hate to see you leave, but here's your RSS feed, and they'll help you. And your new hosting company will also help.
But, you know, it's important that you read reviews and check on pricing. Sometimes these prices are just outrageously high for what you get. I know you're probably going to wonder what I'm using for hosting right now. What I'm using for hosting right now is subject to change, as a matter of fact.
I'm a little disappointed that it hasn't changed already. Right now, I'm on Spotify for podcasters, which is free. And by the way, they're very good. I'm happy with them.
They don't have the best analytics. And where I want to go, I've got two of them in mind, and I have to pay for both of them. So I'm looking at two of them, and should I even tell you the names? Podbean would be one, simply because I met the guy that owns it at a convention, and he just really seems to want to go the extra mile.
Just really, really, really wants to go the extra mile. So he's one that I'm considering. The other one I'm considering, I had met a few years ago, and they were very helpful and very nice. And when I was at that convention in January this year, all the people that I dealt with before were not there.
These were all new people there, and they were shy about answering questions, and I was feeling a little vague, and I still like them. And I love their analytics. I'm not going to mention their name because I'm questioning them. I'll mention their name when I'm not questioning.
I will do that. So just something to think about. And it's not terribly difficult to find a good host. You just have to, again, look for the reviews and talk to people that are podcasters that you know.
And say, hey, who are you using? And are you happy? Are you happy, happy, happy? There's a bunch of them out there that I know people that use them, and they're happy, happy, happy.
I know a woman who has a very successful podcast, and she started off on the one that I'm on. And now her podcast is so big, the one I'm on couldn't handle. So she's on another one, and she's paying a lot of money beyond this, but she's getting a million people a month. So something to consider.
Oh, tomorrow is Friday. What's happening then? We'll let you know. Take care.
Take care. Take care. Take care. Take care.