How to start a podcast for beginners for free!
Hello, I’m Neil and I’m a beginner too!
I launched the Great British YouTubers Podcast and that's a video podcast right here on YouTube.
But now I’ve hit the stage where I want to turn that into an audio podcast and I’m
going to do that from scratch, in real time, right here!
It's a tutorial where I make all the mistakes along the way, so you can just follow my journey.
It's going to be quite a long video, I think I’m going to put timecodes in the description
so you can jump forward.
To create my podcast I’m going to use this site here: Anchor.fm
They are a podcast host, so it's a bit like YouTube in that it puts all the things you
need in one place.
It is possible to create a podcast without using a podcast host - I did it but I really
don't recommend it!
It is really difficult, so that's why I’m using Anchor for this.
At the end of this video you and me will have a podcast out of this, trust me!
The first thing you need to do is - up at the top of the screen here, you can see “sign
up” and “log in”.
Now obviously we're going to sign up, so if I click on this, Anchor fm only wants three
things: they want a full name, an email address, and for you to create a password.
This is the first obstacle.
I would not recommend using your personal email address.
The way that podcasts seem to work is that you need to have a very public email address
attached to your podcast series, and I don't think that I’m quite ready to have a personal
email address put out on the internet attached to this podcast... and I don't think you do
too.
The only way to stay safe, I think, is to create an email address that does not have
all of your personal information on... so I’m going to do that now.
If you go to google.com and click on “sign in”, there's an option at the bottom which
is “create account” - and it gives you two options - and nobody knows which one to
go for!
“For myself” or “To manage my business”.
I just want it for a podcast, you know it's not really a business, but I’m gonna go
for “To manage my business” and there's some details to fill in...
Your first name... and I would suggest you would want to put something that looks good
publicly, so let's call it “my super awesome podcast” and then “create a password”,
and then hit “Next”.
Now we can go back to Anchor and put those details in and then you put in your new email
address... and then think up a password... prove you're not a robot... and then hit “sign
up”.
This is exciting!
There's a warning “Before you can publish any episodes you'll need to verify your email
address with Anchor”, so that's a good job I set that up.
And when you click on the verification code in the email, you get email verified and then
you have to log in again and now we are into the dashboard.
The main dashboard, and they lay it out really nicely.
This is what it looks like in 2020 and 2021, so let's follow the nice trail that they've
laid out for us.
“Make your first episode” If you click on “let's do it”, it opens
up the “making a podcast” episode dashboard and you have four really big buttons to press.
The first is “record” so we could record a podcast right now within the Anchor website.
You can add “voice messages” from listeners... and there's a library where you can reuse
your previously uploaded audio.
I’m not sure we're going to need any of that for now because I’ve already made the
audio file.
I just need to get it up as a podcast series, so the next option is “set up your podcast”.
Choose a name and cover art for your podcast, and it says that you can change this later...
So Anchor.fm says before we can distribute your podcast to additional listening platforms
you need to fill in a few things.
Now I don't know whether to put it as capitals or not, what do you think?
Leave a comment below!
So I’m going to call it Great British YouTubers podcast.
“Podcast description” - now I’ve got one of these written already and I’ll just
pull that over from my YouTube podcast series.
“I’m Neil Mossey, a development producer with a mission to learn from vloggers creators
and YouTubers from around the world”.
Then Anchor fm asks you to choose a podcast category.
I’ll scroll down these ones so you can see what's on offer, but I think I’m going to
go for “education” and “how to”, because we're getting lots of advice from the guests...
And the language under English, they have all these different variations of English,
like Canada, Ireland, Australia and United Kingdom...
But I just think it's safer to just call it English.
“Continue”.
We have three options from Anchor.fm: search for a photo, upload an image and “choose
one for me”.
If you go to “search for a photo”, Anchor offer these generic pictures.
I’m not going to choose one of those for now.
“Upload an image”: this is where you can upload some cover art that you've already
made, and then the third option is “choose one for me”.
I couldn't do it.
I couldn't make a picture like this.
They're great, they look like my laptop screen is scratched.
I’ll just put that in for now.
Oh so it was a background!
Which means you can choose a font.
I like a big fat font so I’m going for “source sans pro black” and you can change the colour
of the text.
That looks good.
You can align it left, centre or right.
I’m going to make some cover art of my own, I just haven't done it yet so I’m going
to go with this for now.
So that has updated my podcast settings page - so we've got “about your podcast”, there's
a title that you can change at any time... a “podcast description” where you have
600 characters... and some podcast cover art.
“Is your content clean or explicit?”
Mine is soapy clean family fun.
There's a custom URL which has 25 characters.
I’m gonna call mine “gbytpodcast” - Great British YouTubers Podcast.
“Profile color”: you can choose a colour for your profile, and here are all the social
connections - so I’m going to put my YouTube channel...
Neil Mossey.
So let's go back up and hit save.
That's looking quite nice isn't it, and there's an option here to “view public site”.
If I click on that, this is how the Great British YouTubers Podcast looks.
And look, down here there's a link to the YouTube channel so if I click on that... oh
that's not so good!
So it doesn't seem to connect to personalized urls because I’ve had to use my special
channel code, which is a surprise but that's okay.
It works, that's the main thing.
The next thing we need to do is to add an episode to the series.
Upload the very first episode.
There is one very big button at the top of the screen, “new episode” - and the button
opens up this dashboard we saw earlier.
There are four options there, and on the right hand side... this is a column where your episode
is assembled, and it says here “click to upload or drag files here”
And all we need to do is to drag this audio file into the column on the right hand side
there in the dashboard, so now it's uploading this audio file into this “create your episode”.
While that's uploading, you can create a whole podcast show just from within this browser.
You've got all these options here like record, upload like music beds, and you just drag
them into this column on the right hand side.
I prefer to make my episodes myself and I just needed a podcast host to just have somewhere
to put those audio files.
There you can see the episode is 100% uploaded.
There's a nice musical notation icon waiting for me and three dots.
Just click the three dots, so you can-- oh wow, you can edit the audio, and I can download
the audio file or I can remove this audio file from my episode.
Let's click on “edit audio”, see what that does?
Wow look, it's turned my audio file into something completely editable.
[PODCAST AUDIO]: “Are there things, Gordon Laing, that other YouTubers do...”
My audio files are good to go as episodes, but if I needed to make any changes and to
cut anything out, I can do that with the audio editor.
So I have my audio file in the “episode builder”.
That's all I need for the episode, so I click on the “save episode” button.
What do you want to call this episode?
I’ve got this.
I hit paste.
I’ve got a description already written as well.
I’m pasting it over and it's removed all of the carriage returns, so I’ve got to
put those back in.
If you are any good at html, you could-- which is the code people use for writing websites...
You can “switch to html” up here, and this shows you all of the code for the layout.
Interestingly, it has kept all of the code from my pasting over from YouTube.
This is exactly how I want the episode description to look, and I have two options now.
I can either save this episode as a draft, and if I hit “publish now” I can actually
set a time...
I can schedule a time for this podcast episode to be released.
I can upload new episode art.
I can add a season number and an episode number.
I can also tell Anchor.fm if this episode is a full episode, or a trailer, or a bonus
episode, and also you can click on the explicit language warning.
So season number one, episode number one, and for episode art I’m not going to use
the series art.
I do have a thumbnail for this.
It's not great, but it is something to put on for now.
Shall I do it?
Shall I hit publish?
Boom, and it's brought up this extra window.
“Finish setting up your podcast.
Before we can distribute your podcast to additional listening platforms, you need to fill in a
few things.”
Hit continue.
Ready to distribute your podcast?
So I’m gonna hit cross for no.
Update cover art.
I’m going to upload an image.
There's the image and I can crop this now, so that's great.
I can also zoom in to fill it.
“Continue” and you're offered the option to add text to this.
I don't need to apply text we'll turn that off.
There we go, so now I can hit save and I’ll go back to the dashboard.
I hit the edit button and it says finish setting up your podcast, so I’m going to hit “continue”
and “Ready to distribute your podcast?”
Yes, distribute my podcast.
If I go into settings and click on “distribution” this is the RSS feed which every podcast has.
This is the precious link which tells the internet that this is your podcast series,
and at the moment it says “available on listening platforms”, Anchor and Spotify.
Anchor will distribute it everywhere, so apple podcasts, google podcasts, and all the other
places where podcasts appear.
Maybe I could cut to myself in the future to show that my podcast has been distributed
automatically to everywhere!
Did this help?
Have you managed to get your podcast onto Anchor like a beginner like me?
Say hi in the comments below.
Give me a thumbs up if you've reached this point of the video and if you're feeling awesome
the “subscribe” button would be much appreciated.
I’m going to be doing lots more of this, so thanks for coming on my journey and here
is what YouTube thinks you should be watching next!