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Transcript

Spotify Finally Fixed Your Show Notes + Buzzsprout's Custom Brand Mentions · Buzzcast

• 0:00
  Kevin: Done. You're gonna punch us out, Travis. I'm gonna do it.
• 0:03
  Travis: Well, that wraps it up for today. Krystal, thank you so much for joining us and elevating all of us and making this podcast that much better.
• 0:11
  Krystal: Thank you so much for having me. Oh, sorry.
• 0:14
  Travis: That's and take two days to That's right. Krystal you don't know this but we record this out true like multiple times every single episode. I usually try and like versus getting on the wall and see what noodle stick and then dial it back a little bit and then go for it again. Alvin is loving all of my metaphors and alliterations I can see it on his face,
• 0:33
  Alban: dialing back the amount of spaghetti through.
• 0:40
  Travis: Sir for today's episode of Buzzcast we have a very special guest co host joining us Krystal, welcome back to the show.
• 0:47
  Krystal: Thank you for having me, this is fine like this is all kinds of new software's have come about since we did this last. So I'm excited to talk about those into just kind of talk about podcasting with y'all like what I love to do. So thank you for having me.
• 1:05
  Travis: Absolutely. Yes. So we are, as Krystal alluded to using some new software album, why don't you give the rundown on riverside.fm and just your initial impression of it.
• 1:17
  Alban: So we're recording this episode in Riverside, FM, Riverside. It's kind of like a Zen caster, a squad cast, kind of a setup, helping you get the best recording quality for your podcast. I talked to the founder a couple days ago. And they've got a couple of features that actually were pretty interesting. The main one being you know, we're pretty like similar to squad cast, we're recording all the audio files locally, and then combining them later, which is really cool. But they're also now doing that with video, which is like their first big feature that they record the video locally. And so you can get really high quality video and that that's starting to feel like more of a thing. because more people are uploading podcasts to YouTube, and then they've got Collin features and they've got the ability to stream this whole thing to, you know, the usual suspects, the YouTubes Facebook's Twitter,
• 2:15
  Travis: Periscope, whatever trust you know, wherever you want to stream. Yeah.
• 2:18
  Alban: Yeah, I mean, pitchers could have that and I would not know.
• 2:22
  Krystal: Well, so are you limited on how many people you can have on at one time?
• 2:27
  Alban: Well, it's definitely not limited. be less below four, because we have four people in here right now. I think the limit is eight. Okay. That's a pretty good number. If you've got more than eight people on your show is probably unruly, at that point.
• 2:42
  Travis: That's pretty cool.
• 2:42
  Travis: Yeah,
• 2:43
  Alban: yeah. kick some of those people off and let them do their own podcast.
• 2:48
  Travis: I think the thing that's really cool about Riverside is kind of like Adam was alluding to it takes a lot of features and benefits that you would typically have to string together a couple standalone pieces of software to make it happen. And so the convenience factor of potentially having all those features in one place, you know, the upside is great. It's certainly a younger company than some of the more established players like the zooms and casters, but from our limited experience, I think it's definitely got a lot of upside and can be a great option.
• 3:19
  Alban: Yeah, so that's why we're recording here today. And, you know, we'll kind of give you a play by play as we run into things. But one of the cool things that I don't know if anyone does this one yet either is, is like that live Colin link, you can actually drop a link out into the world. And if you know somebody wants to watch the show, they can also leave a comment and their comment could be so good that you say accepted to call in instantly they're in kinda like a call and radio show. You know, you get to see them through their webcam, they get to talk, and then they can like, leave the call.
• 3:56
  Travis: You can hang up on them when you're done.
• 3:58
  Alban: That's the killer feature. Leaving the call. But uh, you know, it's cool that they're able, you're able to kind of accept calls so I could see a lot of shows that would start using that. I think back in the day there were some software that did that. But um, I don't know if they ever really caught on but this is kind of cool that somebody else is doing it.
• 4:15
  Kevin: Yeah, Krystal, do you interview a lot of people? I mean, you're you interview people for your show all the time. What do you What's your go to?
• 4:22
  Krystal: So I've been using squad cast since I was using zoom for a very long time and then when COVID hit or it was right around the time back in early March, that everything was just starting to shut down and people were staying at home. And zoom was just hit with so many people that I don't think that they could keep up with everything that was going on and I actually lost one of it was an incredible interview that I lost because it wasn't recording for whatever reason, it never got backed up. So from there, I was like okay, I need to look for another option. So I switched to squad cast, and I've been with them since I Guess APR, and they've been great. It's been really awesome. But since it is my podcast, and I make the rules I take summers off because I have three kids. They're all at home, you know, and this is what I always plan for every summer anyway, but I don't do a lot of interviews. Alvin, I guess the only exception but I did an interview with Alvin other than that I'm like, you know, I just I I don't do it because I I prefer to do solo episodes because I can control the schedule a lot easier. So yeah,
• 5:33
  Kevin: it looks like I mean, just looking at the plans for Riverside versus squad cast. It looks like Riverside is kind of going for a higher tier or have a few more features in there.
• 5:41
  Kevin: pricings a little bit higher, and squad cast to me my, my off on this. Let me look on their site quick. Yeah, they can only be four people. So it looks like if you have more than four people, or if you want to be able to go live or if you need to record the video, then Riverside is a great option, but you're gonna it's a pretty big jump in price like squad cast is$20 a month, and Riverside starts at $19 a month for all the same features squad cast has, then they give you the ability to add on those extra things, but in the jump up pretty quickly to $39 a month or$49 a month, or you can hit their yearly plans, which is a massive discount on their yearly plans, but you're making a big commitment. But you can go from like the $39 a month plan to $29 a month if you pay for the full year.
• 6:23
  Krystal: The other feature that I use a lot is stream yard. I've been doing a lot of when I do an interview and this is what I actually did with Albin is we streamed our conversation into a private Facebook group that I have, and that's where we were having the conversation and then they recently updated from they'll keep your files on hand like in the cloud for seven days and now they upgraded to where the hold on to your files for 15 days. And then you can download just the audio or just the video. And that's been really helpful because I do a lot of live broadcasts so I have a few different software. I think that something like Riverside like if it was to incorporate all of them where you can go live, you can record things and it's really good quality then man, it'd be worth it to not have to pay for so many different different tools.
• 7:14
  Kevin: So this market the space for, I don't even know what you call it, but like live, video chatting, recording high quality audio and potentially video calling features for podcasters like this whole space is quickly getting very competitive. I think squad cast was kind of the first one to say we're doing this specifically for podcasters or podcasters. First and there's other people that can use it as well. Yeah, and then stream yard is doing it and I think stream yard kind of position themselves it's more like the more like a restream like a go live platform to YouTube and Facebook, but like a go live option for podcasters roundtable discussions and maybe video podcasts more specifically, and now you got Riverside and like restream restream started off as Hey, we just have a bunch of video bloggers. But now they're coming in with their all in one solution as well. So you don't need separate software like ECAM live or something to go to restream you can just use their browser solution. But this whole space is getting super competitive. The hard thing, of course, is that they all have their own little unique features that may or may not appeal to you. And then depending on that, the prices are kind of high, which I understand this is a hard problem to solve. There's a lot of tech and a lot of bandwidth that's consumed and doing stuff like this. But I'm hoping the competition drives down the prices but it seems like everyone seems pretty happy in this, you know, 20 to $50 price range, so it's great tech, but it's not cheap.
• 8:42
  Alban: Yeah, you've also got a whole adjacent world of like the video game streamers. I feel like I keep looking for equipment online for like normal streaming, you know, for our stuff. And then I realized like all the a lot of stuff has been bought up by People are starting like video game streaming stuff.
• 9:02
  Alban: So that's like kind of the twitch world but all it also is just like the same types of lights, same types of webcams and all that stuff.
• 9:09
  Travis: Yeah, I've been exploring using our YouTube cameras or Canon m 50 s for doing lives and ran into a couple hiccups with that. Mostly Coronavirus related, but also not so like I was trying to download this utility driver so I could plug the camera directly into the computer only to find out that canons entire website got hacked and it's being held for ransom. So you can't download anything from their website it just sends you to a 404 maintenance page. So it's like okay, well I'll just get you know a capture card I'll get the elegant oh god oh cam link.
• 9:39
  Travis: It's well recommended. You just plug it in that way. sold out everywhere. So I'm on like multiple wait lists to see like when it's going to come back in stock. Kevin is flashing his atom Mini Pro Hey Tim Blaine row. This
• 9:55
  Kevin: is what you need to get man.
• 9:57
  Travis: let you use it that looks very it looks like there are Lots of buttons on that.
• 9:59
  Travis: Yeah, cuz you know what the cam like looks like it's a little USB stick, right? It's got HDMI on one side USB on the other side, right?
• 10:07
  Kevin: Well, it's pretty much just that. So what I'm referencing is an 810 minipro by Blackmagic. And instead of just plugging in one camera and capturing it, you can plug in up to four cameras and capture them and then these big buttons down here just let you switch between cameras because if Travis is going to livestream we obviously need to see him from every angle, right?
• 10:25
  Travis: Yes, and position one so you could see my bald spot right behind the headphones and then have a side shot in slow motion and really capture
• 10:34
  Kevin: Yeah, the home studio in all its glory. So we should do that when we when we get back in the studio, we might need to do like a video gear review where if you want to take your podcast to YouTube, here's some gear to do it. All the way from the simple solution with the the stick that Travis was referencing all the way up to an 810 Mini Pro and everything in between.
• 10:51
  Travis: Yeah, you give me the credit card information, Kevin.
• 10:53
  Travis: I'll go get.
• 10:56
  Alban: Yeah, the problem is whenever we put out anything right now about equipment There's just this like worldwide podcast streaming video shortage. And I think it's partially like all these supply chains have been disrupted by Coronavirus. But then people also got nervous and didn't buy a bunch of stock for a little while. And then there's a lot more people trying to podcast a lot more people trying to stream and people are trying new things out. And while we're trying things out a lot more, Samsung q2, us are being purchased. And it's a little bit harder to get your hands on one right now.
• 11:32
  Travis: So we'll continue to try out different software for you guys as we hear about them as we see new players coming into the space. And you know, always reference our blog posts, our Podcasting, Q&A videos and podcast episodes. That's where we're really kind of bringing out the newest information as it comes out and let it letting you guys know the tools that we're using to promote and record our podcasts.
• 11:56
  Alban: So there's some good news for people who've already been able to get their hands on clip in and actually are podcasting.
• 12:02
  Alban: For a long time we've all been doing these cool html shownotes sidebars, right, you can kind of just, you know, mock them up really easily. And it was so frustrating for a long time because one and maybe I'll throw this up to Krystal, if you know, which was there's one directory that did not support HTML, and it just kind of broke everything for everyone. Do you know what it is?
• 12:24
  Krystal: Oh, yeah, Spotify, for sure. For sure. And it's not only not the HTML, because I've been getting a lot of questions about this in my community, because if you hold four different directories, so let's say you have Google, Apple, Spotify and Stitcher, all up next to each other, like on different devices, different phones, or you pull it up on your computer, some of them have spacing, and some of them don't.
• 12:51
  Krystal: It's like one big chunky paragraph and it looks like you created it to be all disorganized, but if you look in your host in Buzzsprout It has spaces in it there is HTML. And there's you know, you can even do bold and italics and Buzzsprout, which I think is awesome. But these other platforms don't all support that. So I like to hear is Spotify doing it now? Like, what's their deal?
• 13:16
  Alban: This is like the old days of the web when Microsoft had to be special and do like render web pages, totally different.
• 13:24
  Alban: And so you had to check everything and like, Internet Explorer six, and see how that looked compared to everything else. Because just certain things would be totally broken.
• 13:34
  Alban: The web has gotten better that everyone started going. we've all gotten on the same page. And we're starting to get there a bit more with the podcast formatting, because Spotify now supports HTML formatting in show notes.
• 13:47
  Travis: Yeah. So the benefit here is when you take the time to put together well formatted show notes, so that when your listeners go and look at them, they can actually find what they're looking for. And it looks like you care. Spotify will actually show all of that work that you put into it to your listeners on Spotify. So we get Spotify a hard time, but we will give them a pat on the back when they cross the threshold of a serviceable podcast listening app and tell them good job keep keep doing stuff like that.
• 14:18
  Kevin: Well, some of us will. I mean, yeah, it's good, right?
• 14:24
  Kevin: That they are respecting how creators are structuring their content and displaying that properly. It's kind of weird that they didn't do that from the beginning. I think the biggest benefit is that our support team now doesn't have to answer that question 37 times a day.
• 14:38
  Alban: And it is probably not much of an exaggeration. It was all the time. It's all the time is
• 14:45
  Kevin: a bummer. But I will use this opportunity to talk about the beauty of podcasts and written content versus video because we just invested a ton of time in shooting these feature videos for Buzzsprout.
• 14:54
  Kevin: And in one of those videos, I don't know if you guys know what I'm referencing, but we talk about shownotes So in that video right at the, like, there's this whole line of formatting your show notes, and it will show up correctly in all of these players, but not every player and we kind of like put a little x over Spotify. Well, now that video is out there, it's brand new, and it's like already outdated. So video is so tough because we can't just go replace that video on YouTube. And again, we can go on a tangent about platforms versus open podcast ecosystem, because if you make a mistake in a podcast episode, you can replace your audio. But you can't do that.
• 15:27
  Kevin: Because, you know, YouTube doesn't let you you have to play by their rules. So again, I'm happy Spotify is doing good things but I don't want a platform to dominate podcasting.
• 15:36
  Kevin: So think about I
• 15:40
  Travis: think he I think he said something like that once in a while.
• 15:43
  Kevin: Yeah, what is that? Isn't that funny how I can take anything positive about Spotify and put a negative spin on it?
• 15:48
  Kevin: I'm sorry, Spotify, I want to like you but alright, so all good. Spotify supports your formatting is good.
• 15:56
  Alban: Kevin, there's there's a possibility that we're the ones that did it. We pushed over the edge. They saw that video. Oh, yeah. And then they made
• 16:04
  Unknown: it happen. You got to roll it out. That's right. We're
• 16:06
  Alban: I'm not saying it's definitely because of us. But there's a very solid chance it was because of us because if you look at the timing, it seems a little suspect. Yeah. Throw it out there. Two weeks later, boom. It's out. It's done. Yeah.
• 16:19
  Kevin: Here's a CEO of Spotify.
• 16:19
  Kevin: Daniel Eck or something? I think he was one of our first subscribers. Yeah.
• 16:23
  Unknown: Yeah. He's a subscriber, I'm sure.
• 16:27
  Kevin: All right, what else is going on album?
• 16:29
  Alban: All right. Well, I'm the host now, baby. All right. The other big thing is our friends at descript launched a huge update. I don't know how big the descript team is, but man, are they flying and getting tons of cool stuff done. So we've all talked about like overdub and it's uh, you know, it's where you can actually just replace a word in your podcast, and it actually creates like a somebody sounds like your voice. It sounds like you're talking and it's really, really nice. And it's out of beta. And it's out there for the world. They had a ton of other stuff, which we can kind of talk through. But um, yeah, it's just cool to see the script, you know, innovating and a lot of ways.
• 17:11
  Kevin: Yeah, Krystal, do you use the script at all?
• 17:14
  Krystal: I don't, I was actually just thinking. So I've been in this, I did the extended trial of Hindenburg. And that's what I've been using for a long time.
• 17:22
  Krystal: And it's actually coming to an end very soon. And I took advantage of the otter discount that Buzzsprout have, because I've been using otter.ai, which, you know, y'all have talked about before. I've been using them for over a year before y'all ever like really started ramping up your transcripts and the ability to upload them into Buzzsprout. But to see the script and how they do it together, I'm like, Huh, I don't know because I'm I downloaded a trial, but I haven't been able to do it. So I'm actually going to be doing that in the next few weeks. And I'm going to do Decide which which 1am I going to choose? I don't know what gets, I'm just gonna it's gonna be a cliffhanger. I'm gonna have to let you know, I'll give you a date.
• 18:08
  Kevin: Yeah, I think both of those are really good options, you know, I probably steer somebody who's a little bit more experienced in podcasting towards the Hindenburg and otter option, because you absolutely get more control when you're doing both things independently.
• 18:21
  Kevin: But it's a little bit like kind of moving to like a pro level editing tool from something like GarageBand or something GarageBand might be a little bit simpler. So somebody who's just starting out, or the script might be a better option, because you get the transcript and the audio audio editing, all in one, you learn one tool, you know, but I would love to hear the results of you who's like somebody who knows how to use Hindenburg and is familiar with auditor and that workflow. Like if you give descriptive try, I would love for you to come back and and tell everybody how it went and what your thoughts are on it.
• 18:53
  Krystal: Yeah, absolutely.
• 18:53
  Krystal: Because the way that I use transcripts, I upload them into Buzzsprout but I think I like what you call show notes. I still call those those are the episode descriptions and my show notes live independently on my website. That's what I refer to as my show notes. So that's how you would see them. And I have an embedded individual player.
• 19:16
  Krystal: And then I have show notes underneath that, but it's not just me taking a transcript from otter and throwing it up on my website, I want it to be something that's valuable and useful to my listeners. So they actually want to go there, and they want to go check it out.
• 19:30
  Krystal: Because I know a lot of people are like, I listen to a podcast, I don't want to read a blog post or I don't want to go listen to this. But a lot of people want to go see the resources or I'll put images or videos, different things like that on my website.
• 19:43
  Krystal: So I like the idea of descript and how it is mostly text based and you can go through and just read it and you're like, Oh, you know, I need to cut out all these arms or I need to do Ctrl Ctrl F and let me find all the places where I said the wrong thing or said the wrong word. I like that. But at the same time, I haven't used it. So I don't really know how easy it is and how much it will translate into my workflow. And I'm pretty stubborn. I'm just gonna throw that out there. Like, once I find a workflow that works for me, I don't like to change things up. So we'll see. We'll see how it works.
• 20:18
  Alban: Yeah, that makes sense.
• 20:18
  Alban: Yeah, there's a few different types of people in the world.
• 20:20
  Alban: There's the people that get in the line at the grocery store, and they stick in that line no matter what. And then there's some people that like obsessively switch lines. And I think that because we're a little bit techie, we're kind of the line switchers where we're like, ooh, something new, What's over there? Let's go to that line. And you're like, I'm in this line. And I'm checking out and it's good that I don't have to like run and chase you guys back and forth, because we may not be making progress with all this switching.
• 20:47
  Krystal: I love that analogy.
• 20:47
  Krystal: That was a good one.
• 20:50
  Kevin: Now Krystal, do you take your auto transcript and like download the text file and upload it to your Buzzsprout episode within Buzzsprout?
• 20:58
  Krystal: Yes, and I actually I want To for anybody that's listening, because most of my episodes recently have been solo episodes. And if you use otter and it's just you, it's just gonna say like it has Krystal Proffitt and on the entire thing, and then it will merge everything and squish it all into one document per se, what I do is you can change up like you can put spacing in the paragraph, and instead of it just saying my name, I will actually go through and put this as the intro. And then if I have points that I'm making in each one, I will say, point 1.2 point three that way it actually breaks up into paragraphs, the text, but it's not just one because that drives me nuts. I mean, even if like I just can't have all of the text in one thing. I'm a very visual person.
• 21:50
  Krystal: So I like to see it broken up that way. So if anybody's listening and you've wondered how you could do it, if you're just doing a solo episode, I would recommend doing it that way. And then I actually export it and then I uploaded into Buzzsprout
• 22:03
  Kevin: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I've noticed that that order and a lot of transcription services will do the same thing when the speakers don't change very often or at all you end up getting one giant monologue which is really hard to read.
• 22:16
  Kevin: And especially if we think about providing these as a accessibility option, then they should be easy to read so just take a few extra minutes and go through and formatting them makes a big difference. So
• 22:28
  Alban: great tip yeah two other cool things that were in that descript you know, their new release they we one thing that I always do is drop a lot of arms you knows likes kind of all those kind of filler words. I know I and he had Travis is the one editing them out if you haven't heard of Travis is the one doing that work, you know.
• 22:47
  Alban: The script now has like the ability to like find them all and take them all out. And they're actually been kind of smart about it where If you say something like, you know the person that did this podcast, then it will try to figure out, okay, that's actually part of a sentence. But if you put in something like, Oh, it's a great podcast, you know, it'll take that one out. So it seems like it's pretty smart pulling out filler words. And they launched this like really pretty custom audio grams. Did you guys see this?
• 23:30
  Travis: Yes, where it's like they, they take the, the clip, and they have the transcription.
• 23:34
  Travis: And it's like highlighting the words as the audio is going. So that's something you can do in like headliner or WAV, which are like the higher end audiogram creators, but you essentially need to, like be a video editor to really use those effectively.
• 23:48
  Travis: Like, it's, it's a lot of work to make those look pretty. And so the fact that the script has that functionality, just as like an extra feature is really cool.
• 23:58
  Alban: Yeah, I mean, maybe that's the theme of This episode is a lot of these services are starting to say hey, is it really makes sense for you to use Buzzsprout and Hindenburg and otter, and headliner. And stream yard like it's they're starting to say like, hey, description is also going to be it's gonna be transcripts and editing. But then since you're already doing that, you could also create your audiogram here too, and then just publish right to Buzzsprout. And so it's like you're seeing a couple tools starting to, like, combine some of the functionality to give you this like more streamlined experience.
• 24:35
  Travis: Yes, that is accurate.
• 24:36
  Kevin: Yeah, I can pick up on that. There's this funny line in the product world between a feature and a product. Right.
• 24:43
  Kevin: And a lot of people try to walk that line. When, you know, when you're talking about like apps for mobile phones, it's a lot easier to take something that could just be a feature and kind of make it its own product because you expect things to kind of be small and very focused when you're working on it. A mobile phone, I think it's a tough market for, like services that just provide audiograms to generate enough revenue like justify a high enough price point to make it on their own. So I do think that things like audiograms might push this way. It meaning that they might become features of larger products. And ultimately, I don't know what's going on with with waiver headliner. But I just think paying an extra fee just for that functionality itself is tough business transcripts seem a little bit bigger, audio editing seems a little bit bigger. So I kind of think these things will kind of find their ways into those products. And that's, again, obviously I've got some skin in this game because we're a hosting company. We also create audiograms like we look at that more as a feature like a value add, not necessarily standalone product, but transcripts. We tried to do transcripts a bunch of different ways, put a lot of time and energy into it and transcripts is a big problem to solve. And so I think that will probably stay more standalone.
• 25:54
  Kevin: Now again, you have the script, who's built an editor around transcripts, but translate Being their main thing, right? Like, they want you to get a great transcript, edit that. And then they'll take care of the audio editing, they'll take care of the audiogram. So we'll see.
• 26:09
  Alban: When we talk to Kevin, I talked to some of the people at otter, and I feel like we were so complimented, because we're like, wow, this is working so well. Oh, you did this really well. And he was like, yeah, that was a hard problem. We were like, Oh, we tried to do some of this stuff. And it was way more than we expected. It was gonna be a B, it feels like a feature.
• 26:31
  Alban: And then when you start building it, you're like, Oh, this is like a whole nother product.
• 26:33
  Krystal: Well, and for anybody listening, I actually had a friend of mine, who she's a podcaster. She's been podcasting for about six months, maybe I know, it's been under a year and she was asking about transcripts, and she was like, it just stresses me out. Like just the thought of one more thing in the process that I have to do. It really stresses me out. And I told her I said, you know, unless you know for a fact that someone is actually using these to sit down and read the entire thing. You don't have to make sure that every single period is in the right spot and that everything is correct. The way that I use transcripts is I mostly rely on them to help the SEO for my podcast, you know, like to use those keywords that I really want to show up in Google or in other places for and then I think in the future, whenever I can hire someone full time to do all my transcripts, then I'll have them go back and make them beautiful, and there's no issues whatsoever, but I don't have the capability to do that right now. So if you're listening and you're like, I just I don't have time, I highly recommend you making time to really add transcripts to your podcast because it does give you that discoverability that can happen organically in the search engines and people can find your show that way. So those that's just my two cents
• 27:50
  Alban: and the difference between no transcript and a uttered AI transcript is massive is a huge improvement. Of course. It would be perfect. If a person went over improved every single bit of it. We all agree that would be the optimal experience. But if you are a new podcast and you're getting 100 plays per episode, you know, you may not see the value of adding a another five things to your workflow and stressing yourself out, it might be a pretty good idea to say, Hey, I'm going to run this through otter, I'll upload it, and I'll get the benefit that I get there. I'll help if there are people who are hearing impaired that want to listen, read the transcript they can. And then once I know this is actually being used, then add the extra step of going okay, now I'm going to clean that up.
• 28:38
  Alban: But uh, it's pretty common that people like decide they're going to launch something and they add 15 things to their plate, and it becomes overwhelming to create custom audio grants and create transcripts and upload the episodes and do all this editing. Eventually, you just quit because you realize like, I don't have 12 hours a week to create a podcasts because you've added all these pro level things into your workflow.
• 29:03
  Travis: Yep, start small and build a secret. That's the best way to do it. So you may have noticed that there's a new directory inside your Buzzsprout account, if you log in, go to the directories tab. It's not necessarily hiding, it's actually pretty prominent. We put a big sign around it, it says new directory. And, yeah, it's Amazon.
• 29:24
  Kevin: Yeah. That was that.
• 29:24
  Kevin: We're back and forth on whether we're gonna say or not, because we're only supposed to tell our customers. So if you're listening this and you're not a customer, please skip forward about 10 minutes or so. So for our Buzzsprout customers, there's a new directory, it's Amazon. Amazon is bringing podcasts into amazon music and audible. They haven't given any details about how or when that's going to happen. But they're taking submissions. Now. They want everyone who's who every podcast that's listed in there.
• 29:54
  Kevin: They want it to be voluntary.
• 29:54
  Kevin: They don't just want to go out and find a bunch of podcasts and put you in there without your permission. So you can click through That link, read everything that we know about Amazon, and then submit your podcast to the Amazon directory.
• 30:04
  Kevin: And again, we're getting a lot of questions like, when is this launching? When will it go live?
• 30:10
  Kevin: How do I know how I'm accepted?
• 30:10
  Kevin: They're not doing any of that right now. They're not telling us anything. So it's totally fine. It could be next week, it could be next year, we have no idea. Just go ahead and submit get yourself in line. And then as we get more information, we'll push that out to you.
• 30:23
  Krystal: Yeah. And my question is like, What do y'all think about this? Because I mean, I've heard you all talk on Buzzcast.
• 30:29
  Krystal: So much about, you know, you don't want to have just one mega player just kind of taking over the whole space. I mean, Amazon is a pretty big player. And then we have Google, who is also throwing some money around and trying to get Google podcasts.
• 30:44
  Krystal: It's its own thing and really, just trying to make people be able to discover podcasts a lot easier. So what do you what are your thoughts about this? I'm just curious. Like, what what does audible have to do with it?
• 30:53
  Krystal: How is that gonna are the people gonna sell their podcast? What else lots about it.
• 31:00
  Alban: Well, the first one like I want as many of these companies to be involved in podcasting as possible, I think podcasting is a unique art form and allows different types of conversations to happen. And so I think it's a wonderful thing and I'd like for it to be as widespread as possible. And I feel more somebody asked me this exact same question when Sirius XM started, you know, doing some more stuff like they will be doing some podcasts themselves.
• 31:24
  Alban: And I said, I really liked it.
• 31:27
  Alban: Because the fear for a long time was that Apple would decide we're going to own this and kind of start closing some of the doors and they never did that Apple always kept it this open ecosystem. And we definitely see Spotify saying, Hey, we want to own podcasting when everything here we want to so bad will pay Joe Rogan hundreds of millions of dollars. And now that we've got Amazon, we've got Google and you got Apple, and Sirius XM.
• 31:55
  Alban: The more big names in the game, the less of a chance there is the smaller edify will totally win. Now they still can. So I'm always encouraged when somebody else wants to be involved because that will strengthen the open nature of podcasting.
• 32:14
  Kevin: You're done with that thought or just taking a long pause. That's it. That was my that was my thoughts really good thought. It was very thorough.
• 32:19
  Kevin: It was everything that I was going to say. But I don't have anything weird to say or concerns to throw out about Amazon. I think I very much agree with Alvin that the more opportunities we have as podcasters to get our show in front of larger audiences, the better typically, we don't know really anything yet, except they've declared an intent.
• 32:40
  Kevin: Right? They're going to bring podcasts into amazon music and audible in some form. And I will say this Amazon was really intentional in their, in their agreement. If you when you go to submit your podcast, you'll see their terms of service you have to agree to as a podcaster to push your show in and they were very intentional to point out that they will not be re hosting your show that they will stream it off of, they'll download it or restream it off of the platform of your choice. And that says a lot to me in terms of that they're interested in trying to understand how podcasters and podcasting is working today. And then and fit in and, and work with podcasters are not going to come in and try to change things. It's one of I don't want to go another Spotify rant. But it's another thing that Spotify did differently.
• 33:29
  Kevin: And Spotify has a lot of fans.
• 33:29
  Kevin: And so I think they, you know, to their music fans, that wasn't a big deal. But for podcasters, that was a big deal. It made everything from how we track stats to audio quality and audio formats and everything just a little bit more difficult. And so it was it's nice that Amazon is coming in and saying, Hey, we want to get a good understanding of podcasters and then we want to be a good citizen as we're entering it. So I appreciated that they're taking that position and trying to enter from that way and so that may not be That's really great.
• 34:04
  Travis: So in the last episode of Buzzcast, we talked about the new monetization tab in your Buzzsprout account. So we had these features, we had some of these features already existing but just in different places, and wanted to bring them all into a central location. And rather the new features that we rolled out with the sponsors sub navigation tab, and the affiliate marketplace was the ability to add your own custom brands. And we made some some fun ones. Alvin, did you get any affiliate click throughs on your your hungryroot affiliate link.
• 34:37
  Alban: Let me go Look, I don't know if I got any. Maybe Marie my wife knows more. I honestly don't think that Krystal you could back me up on this. I don't know if I gave a very compelling ad for hungry as I was like noticing Kevin's faces I've telling it I'm like, Okay, this is pretty similar to every other one of these subscribers.
• 34:58
  Alban: boxes. Oh,
• 35:01
  Krystal: yeah, I know it was I was cracking up the whole time because I was like, okay, is it just beats and it was really funny. I love the description.
• 35:08
  Krystal: But I just love that this is an option now like I, I sent a message to y'all. And I was like, Oh my gosh, can I please talk about this? Because while I think that sponsors is a cool thing to, you know, have listed under monetization in the world of podcasting of the people that I interact with on a regular basis, they're mostly entrepreneurs, and they're not going after tons of downloads, to have a sponsor. They're really looking for those affiliate links and are partnering with affiliate companies and programs. And that's where I got so excited. I was listening to that episode and I stopped what I was doing, I paused it and I was like, Wait, where is this? I have to go see what they're talking about. Yeah, I mean, I could just tell me what direction you want to go in because I have so many things to say about this.
• 36:06
  Alban: So how are you using it?
• 36:06
  Alban: What links are you putting in there? And are you seeing more people click through that you're using I can confirm now. I'm not seeing anything in my hungryroot profile. So I don't think I sold anything. But um, yeah, how have you, how's it worked for you?
• 36:20
  Krystal: So I just did it. This would have been probably Monday or Tuesday, I really uploaded a bunch of different a different affiliates. So if you're in your Buzzsprout account, you go to monetization, then you go to affiliate marketplace and then all the way down at the bottom.
• 36:36
  Krystal: I love that you already have the pre loaded ones. So if if someone is just starting, there are pre vetted awesome companies that you can work with, and you can become an affiliate for already there. You don't have to do anything extra which I think that this was a great feature for y'all to have. So people can kind of baby step into affiliate marketing if they've never done Before, but I do already have a lot of affiliate profiles and different links that I could share with my audience that I have been doing in the custom HTML in the episode description or on my show notes. So what I did is down at the bottom where it says custom brands, I uploaded my different affiliate programs, there's one that I have that is actually one of my mentors program, I uploaded a whole bunch of her resources that are all affiliate links for me. But what I love so much about this and what a lot of people don't know is when they get started with affiliate marketing is y'all put the disclaimer there. A lot of people don't know that like y'all, you can get into so much trouble if you are not disclosing that you can make money off of some off of an affiliate link. So I tell this to my community all the time.
• 37:49
  Krystal: Make sure you have that but y'all took that step and you just ran with it. So what I did is and we can actually talk about I have stream yard Have ConvertKit This is my email service provider. So those were the first ones that I uploaded in there. And what I did as far as the picture goes, is I just went to those websites and I downloaded their logo. So if you wanted to, I don't, I don't mess around logos I'm very like risk averse. I don't I don't like to play around. Well, I don't like to break the law. Okay, that scares me a little bit. I don't want to get any cease and desist letters. So I don't change anything on like, a logo like you could put like take it the logo and put it into Canva on like a tablet or something if you're a graphic designer, have fun, do all those fun things. I didn't do that. I downloaded the logo, uploaded that as my picture. And then I just wrote in a very short description of what it is why I love it. So I'll read you the one for stream yard it just says stream yard live streaming studio. I use it to broadcast live across multiple platforms like Facebook, live and YouTube.
• 38:59
  Krystal: Simultaneously, that's all it says. So if I were to go into an episode, where I mentioned stream yard, I will go in and add that as an affiliate link.
• 39:09
  Krystal: And what's cool is if you're saying, Yeah, but I don't talk about these things, if you don't have a podcast related to business, then you can use your Buzzsprout affiliate link in every single episode. And who knows you guys like if you're making, you know, 25 bucks here and there, and you're like, that adds up. That absolutely adds up over time. So if you're trying to monetize and I've been talking about monetization a lot more with podcasts because so many people are scared that they have to have thousands of downloads and millions of listeners before they can monetize their show. And I'm like, That's not true. Like affiliate marketing is a great place to start. And I'm just grateful because you all have made it so much easier to be able to do it in a way that that feels right. Like it all feels very legit to have the disclaimer on there. You know, you have the picture, you have everything. And it all looks great. So I'm a huge fan.
• 40:05
  Kevin: Yeah, I'm just looking at your your podcast site on Buzzsprout. Right now where we're displaying those graphics, so I can see the graphics that you uploaded. They look great.
• 40:12
  Kevin: And I'm looking at the episode called a conversation with my mentor, Amy Porterfield. And so we show that little graphic on the right side with whatever you wrote for the the headline and the subhead. And it looks great.
• 40:22
  Kevin: And if you can click on it, you can click right through to that site. And it looks like he did another one under podcast monetization. How I developed my first idea, and that's the ultimate course creation starter kit. Is that is that Amy Porterfield thing also? Is that your own? Yes, that's me as well. Yes, it is. And so have you thought about like, because you do some of your own, you have your own courses, you have your own materials that you put out, like you could use this for that too. Like it doesn't necessarily have to be an affiliate like you could be your own affiliate. Right?
• 40:53
  Krystal: For sure. 100% and I think that it's, I think it just goes back to you know how you want strategically which for me, you know, my audience is mostly entrepreneurs, it's business podcast. I don't have a lot of hobby podcasters in my audience so if you're listening to this and you're like this doesn't apply to me well I want you to think bigger than I'm not a business podcast I want you to think about how can I do this to have this pay for my hosting every month or if you've been wanting to try magic mastering or some other cool features that you just haven't been able to afford every month then this is how you could do that you could use your Buzzsprout affiliate and share that with people in every single episode and then after a while if you see it's not you know, it's not doing anything but but here's the thing is I'm like I was about to say you don't have to do any more. But guys, it's one click of a button after you upload it and it's in there. When you're in an episode. All you have to do is go to the brand mention click the brand you want to work with and boom it's there. So like I just, I it's just so simple like and tardy talked about processes in streaming.
• 41:58
  Krystal: mind me being stubborn and the fact that all I have to do is go over and click a button now if I mentioned ConvertKit, or stream yard, or I could put my own course in there or my membership and just mention it, and it just makes it that much easier. So I mean, I think it's a no brainer.
• 42:16
  Kevin: Yeah. And we tried to build it so that you can experiment a lot, right? Like you can load up a bunch of different affiliate programs or your own things that you want to talk about, you know, from episode to episode. And then if you notice some are working better than others, like, what was it Alvin hungryroot did not perform super well. Hunger did not perform for us last week. So this week, we might try something totally different, like good food box. There are sites, one of them is called Advanced link, a va n te Li n ke Li n ki sorry, kellyn ke Li n k.com slash programs. We'll put the link in the show notes. But if you go there, they have hundreds of different companies and you can hit the little filter and drop down, just say I'm a business or I'm looking for books or I'm looking for self help, or I'm looking for whatever, they've got tons of categories, you can find all these affiliate programs you can find some that you're familiar with. So you're not just giving an ad, you're giving a testimonial. You're like, Oh, I know that company, I use that product actually like it, I think my audience would like it.
• 43:16
  Kevin: Give affiliate marketing a shot, like, there's a great opportunity. You're you have this really unique relationship with your listeners, whether it's 10 people or 10,000 people, and that is that they're coming to listen to your content. So they have a connection with you.
• 43:29
  Kevin: There's probably some sort of trust relationship there. And I'm not saying that you should leverage it, but it's a it's something it's like a side benefit, right? Like I love listening to the show every week. And I have this relationship with this person, but it seems a little bit one sided, it's a way for you to kind of get back to them. So they say I want to know more about you. I want to know the products you use. I want to know the secret to your success or what's worked for you and what hasn't. And so whether that be a new pillow that you really love and you're getting the best night's sleep ever, or a course that you took that changed your life and anything in between.
• 43:56
  Kevin: It's a way for you to give back to your audience and then when they take advantage of that They say thank you, then you get a little kickback on the commission. Affiliate Marketing is beautiful and wonderful. And so we're really excited about it. And I'm, I think Krystal for coming on and sharing your experience with it. But I really think it can help podcasters cover the costs of doing something that they love. I don't want to set expectations that this is gonna be a new full time job for you, you're gonna become a millionaire overnight.
• 44:19
  Kevin: But if you can cover the cost of something of doing something that you love, and it's fun, and you can get a new microphone or cover the price of your hosting or anything in between. That's what we want to try to do. And so I hope it works for people.
• 44:32
  Kevin: Well, that
• 44:32
  Travis: wraps it up for today.
• 44:32
  Travis: Krystal, thank you so much for joining us.
• 44:36
  Krystal: Thank you all so much for having me. This was a lot of fun. And I'm just, I mean, just having conversations like this about how Buzzsprout is keeping up with trends of what your customers really want. I mean, because I have questions like this. I mean, I teach podcasting, this is what I do.
• 44:52
  Krystal: So I see all these people asking questions all the time about how can I make this better and how can I do this and I feel like y'all are a few steps ahead of There are questions every time because I get questions about monetization every single day and I get questions about how can I get people that listen to my show connected with me on, you know, Instagram or Facebook and vice versa. So I think that y'all are doing a fantastic job and really keeping up with what people want and being able to deliver that to them in a way where it's not confusing and overwhelming. And it's a very user friendly experience. At least that's how it's been on my end. So I appreciate y'all and y'all are doing awesome things.
• 45:31
  Krystal: So keep it up.
• 45:35
  Travis: Thank you, we will take that to heart. And we will allow that to push us forward into breaking new frontiers and doing awesome things to podcasting. If you are not yet a member of our Facebook group. That is the number one way to interact with us to interact with other podcasters get your questions answered, get the support that you need to reach your goals.
• 45:55
  Travis: But that is it for this episode and we'll catch you in the next one.
• 46:05
  Travis: Hey, this is editor Travis from the future after we recorded this episode, and if after listening to this episode, you were curious, do we like riverside.fm? Do we think it's a great solution? Well, typically we record double unders for our podcasts as a safety net to make sure that you know if something crazy happens, we still have a backup file that we can use for these episodes. After we finished the episode, Alvin's software crashed, he was recording in QuickTime, and it crashed on him. And so all of albums audio is actually from riverside.fm. And so it turned out really great. I couldn't even really tell that his audio was not a double Ender. And so if you're curious about Riverside, FM, curious if it could work for you with all those extra features, I think it's a really great solution and definitely worth checking out, at least on a free trial to see if it'll help you with your podcast.