by: AskPat 559 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 559 of AskPat.
All right, here's today's question from Daniel.
Daniel: Hi Pat, I just watched your YouTube tutorial on starting a podcast. Thank you so much for it. I just have a quick question. I went through your steps of setting up with Libsyn and everything, but I recently discovered Soundcloud and was thinking about possibly switching over. I wanted to know if I upload my podcast to Soundcloud and submit my direct download link from Soundcloud to Powerpress, if that's going to change anything in my feed. Do I need to do anything else? Do I need to go to iTunes or anything, or can I just change the media file in Powerpress? Thank you so much for all you do. I hope to hear from you.
Pat Flynn: Hey, Daniel. What's up? Thank you so much for the question today. Soundcloud has been something that a lot of people have asked me about, and I have not ever really answered because I've always been unsure. A lot of people have been asking me if it's the new platform that podcasters should go to. It's a beautiful platform. However, I was always reluctant because I knew it was sort of a music-first application. I mean, that's what people use Soundcloud for, and they kind of went into the podcasting space. But here's the thing that troubles me most about SoundCloud that has happened recently that actually has me and my team looking for other options for AskPat. ‘Cause AskPat is actually hosted on Soundcloud, it's worked out great so far, but here's what worries me: I'm seeing these news articles come out and people have been sharing these with me, and that's how I know, here's one: “Soundcloud has lost over $70 million in two years, board cites material uncertainties.” Here's one: “Soundcloud, a favorite with podcasters and musical entrepreneurs, still struggles with profitability.” That was less than a week ago—actually, that came out today, the day that I record this, so February 25th. Then there's also this other one: “Is Soundcloud music streaming service in financial trouble?” So that's a little worrisome, right? You don't want to put your podcast on a place where they're going through financial troubles. They might have to cut back, support might be lower as a result, and just they might die out. I mean, all that work to switch over, which actually isn't going to be that much work when it really comes down to it, but still, you don't want to get on a company that doesn't look like they're profitable and gonna last a long time.
So we're gonna see what happens with Soundcloud, I wish them all the best. I hope they stick around, because they're a great service, but my team and I are looking at other options, and I know…we're on Libsyn for Smart Passive Income, so that's where I'd recommend that you stay on if you're on that already. You want to ask yourself, “Well, what's the benefit of going on Soundcloud?” Yes, they have the social sharing capabilities in Facebook and Twitter, which is handy, but quite honestly, it hasn't provided a lot of ROI in terms of all the work to get that all done and put up. Also, they have the tagging, which is really smart, and I think that's something that I'm gonna miss if Soundcloud goes away, the tagging element. You can tag episodes with certain keywords, and then Smart Podcast player actually goes into Soundcloud and pulls those tags out. And you could, if you go to smartpodcastplayer.com, you could see how it works and you can see the tags, and you can actually filter with those tags different episodes. If you want all the episodes about podcasting, for example, it would be very easy to do that.
The service that we're looking at now is called Buzzsprout: Buzzsprout.com. This is a company that's been around for a while. Done some research on them—I actually met their team. They're really, really awesome people, and they've had a couple booths at Podcast Movement and lately at the Traffic and Conversion Summit, and I was happy to go in there and put my name in as somebody who would be up to have people win a drawing to do an interview with me in their booth. It's a great setup, and I learned a lot about what their company does and their podcasting host. They make it super easy, and the way they got started is they were actually doing podcasts for churches at first. Churches didn't have time or the knowledge to get all into the technical stuff, so they made it really easy for them. So I'm really looking forward to potentially working with them, I mean Mindy and my team and I, and their team over at Buzzsprout, we're still in conversation and trying to figure out how to switch over and if it's worth it and all that stuff. It's very promising, so I recommend you all check that out, Buzzsprout.com, for a potential podcast host.
But, Libsyn's been great. It's been serving the Smart Passive Income blog for a long time, and I'm gonna probably continue working with Libsyn on Smart Passive Income at least for a while. But we'll see how Buzzsprout works out. And also, there's Podbean.com, which I use for video hosting for my video podcasts for SPI TV. And that's worked out really well too, and they also host audio files. There's a lot of options out there, but I would be very wary about moving onto Soundcloud with all the recent news that has been coming out.
So that's what I just wanted to share with you, Daniel. Again, ask yourself why you want to make the move and what's broken with Libsyn, if anything. Thank you for the question. I appreciate it. We're going to send an AskPat T-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. Thank you very much. And I also want to give a quick shoutout to everybody out there who has asked a question. If you have a question that you'd like here on the show, just head on over to AskPat, you can ask right there on that page and you might be selected for me to answer your question and also win a T-shirt. Not necessarily win a T-shirt, you just get it; we send it to you no matter where you're at, no charge to you. It's fun, we've done over 500 shirts, and it's awesome. Send a picture, if you wear one one day.
And finally, as always, here's a quote to finish off the day, and this quote is from the Dalai Lama: “Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions.” True that. Cheers. Take care, and I'll see you the next episode of AskPat. Bye