Low Budget Podcasting Guide

Author: Mitch Keeler

Now as you can tell from the About Our BlogSTARS! Web page, I am no stranger to the art of podcasting. In fact, in February I will be celebrating my two year anniversary of creating them for the public. Now one question that I get sent my way a lot is how do I do it?

Well I am far from being a man with a lot of cash, so I have a few shortcuts and tips to share with you. I guess you could call this low budget podcasting 101.

Now the first thing you need is a microphone. This might be where you actually spend the most cash, so I will cover it first. When it comes to recording yourself, there are many ways you can do it. Some computers come with mics built into the system.

You could even pick up a cheap mic from your local computer store. I would suggest though going with a headset microphone. This way you cut out a lot of the background noise when you are recording – and you also have a way to listen closely (through the headphones) to your podcast to make sure there are no audio errors.

Next you need the software to record your podcast on. Now there are a lot of ways you can record yourself, you might even have a programs on your computer right now that would allow that. I would suggest picking up a freeware program called Audacity to do your recording on. It allows you to record, edit and mix audio tracks and then export them all into a .wav file.

Now what do you do with that .wav file after you are done recording? Well the way I have been turning my .wav files into .mp3 since day one is to plug it into iTunes and let that program do all the work. Just drag and drop it into your library inside of iTunes, right-click the file and select “Convert Selection to MP3″.

Now how should it be compressed? Well go to Edit, Preferences, and then click on the tab for Advanced. From there, click on the Import tab and make sure you are using the “MP3 Encoder”. Now for my podcast, I use 128 kbps because it gives the best mix of talk and music. If you wanted to cut down on the file size try using 64 kbps.

Now that you have your podcast in hand, you need a place to upload it – right? Well the final part of the picture is getting yourself a hosting account at Lunarpages and then putting some sort of content management system in place so you can automate your podcast publishing. WordPress does the job for me, but there are others out there to choose from.