AP 0108: I Want to Start Two Separate Podcasts. Do I Need Two Separate Webpages for Them?

AskPat 108 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 108 of AskPat. I'm super stoked you're here. If you're just getting started with podcasting, I recommend going to PodcastingTutorial.com.

This is actually a completely free tutorial that I completed myself. It will actually redirect you to a link at SmartPassiveIncome.com, a complete tutorial with six videos. Completely free. No emails required or anything. It's all right there for you. Again, you can check it out at PodcastingTutorial.com. It's helped hundreds of people get their podcasts up and running on iTunes. A lot of those people are now in the top rankings in many of the categories in iTunes. Again if you're just getting started, PodcastingTutorial.com.

Now speaking of podcasting, let's have a listen to today's question from Paul.

Paul: Hey Pat, I'd like to start two separate podcasts, and I'm curious if I need to have two different website pages where those are posted in order for all the feeds that I've learned about from your podcast training to work? Or if I can put them all on the same page and all of those internal tags will help the libraries of podcasts figure all that out?

Pat Flynn: Paul, thank you so much for the question, and first of all, I'd just like to say congratulations to you for committing to do a podcast. Podcasting has changed my business and my life, and I know it's done that for many other people as well. And not only are you starting one podcast, but you're going to to start two.

Now there's a lot of things I want to say about this. First of all, it's a lot of work to put one together, and I think it might be best to start with one, get comfortable with it. And hopefully this is something you've already thought of and you're not just going to start from scratch two at the exact same time. I think it's obvious that you should start with one, maybe the one that excites you the most or you feel might be the most benefit to your target audience. And then use that experience behind the microphone and use that experience having interviews with people to make your second podcast that you launch even now.

Now I'm not going to stay you should only stick with one podcast and only one, and you should just do that and not even worry about distracting yourself with other ones. I would be a hypocrite if I said that, because AskPat is my third podcast. So I have the Smart Passive Income podcast, I have the FoodTruckr School podcast, and I have this podcast as well.

Now I will say, it is a lot of work to put the second and third ones together in addition to what I was already doing for the first one. So the first one, Smart Passive Income podcast, is a show that is published once a week, and it still took a lot of my time. And I wouldn't be able to get the other two done if I didn't have people helping out or I didn't have systems in place to make it completely streamlined and give me enough time during the week to put that show together or these shows together. Especially AskPat.

Without Mindy, my amazing assistant, and without the systems we've created . . . and when we first started working together, Mindy and I, we talked a lot and communicated about what would make this super fast and streamlined for the both of us. So it took a lot up front to make it now easy for both of us. So I'm at a point now, on my end as the person answering these questions, as all I have to do is answer these questions. And I just send them to Mindy over Dropbox. She takes care of everything. So it's nice. I can do two shows, but if I didn't have Mindy, I don't think I would be able to.

So first, just try the first one, the one that seems to excite you the most, and see what it's like. See if you can indeed put one additional podcast on top of that. And the reason I'm pounding this into the ground is because I see a lot of people, not just podcasters, but people who start blogs or video channels on YouTube, they try to do too many things at once. And because of that, none of the things they create can be the best that they can be. So they don't get the success that I know they can get because they're spreading themselves too thin.

Now with that being said, there are a lot of people who have multiple podcasts, myself included. Another person is Cliff Ravenscraft from PodcastAnswerMan.com. He has like a dozen podcasts. I don't think he's recording a dozen currently, but I know he's done several different shows. He does multiple shows a week and he's done over 3,000 episodes total. Again, he has his systems in place and the experience to do that, but he didn't start with twelve podcasts. He started with one, and that was one about the show Lost, which I was a big fan of.

Now his shows, for example, are all on the same website. So you don't need separate websites to host separate podcasts. Smart Passive Income and AskPat.com are both housed on the same website, SmartPassiveIncome.com. Now my other one, Food Truckr School, that is not relevant to my particular audience here so that is hosted on a separate website. And I think that's really what you want to do. If you're going to have two separate podcasts on two separate websites, it makes sense that they're for two separate audiences.

If you are creating multiple shows for the same target audience, then it might make sense to put them on the same page, so you might start to think of it as a network. You have a network of podcasts that are specific for a particular target audience. So do you need two separate webpages for them? No, you don't need them technically, which I think was your primary question or concern here. You don't need two separate webpages. You just need two separate feeds, because it is those feeds which you then submit to iTunes which becomes a show. Then you want another feed that you then submit to iTunes and all the other directories like Stitcher or whatever the case may be, that then become another show. Each with their own different artwork, for the podcast artwork or the cover, each with their own separate title, and description.

In that way as well you're going to get more leverage in the New and Noteworthy section on iTunes and perhaps even if they're in different categories. Although if they're for the same niche, you might want to keep them within the same category or at least in the same primary category. For example, there's the Business category, and then there's the Investing category underneath that, and the Marketing and Management one, and so on and so forth. Careers. Those are sort of sub-categories. But for primary category, they can be in the same one. And then you'd be able to leverage two different lists.

I did that for a while actually. I had both Smart Passive Income and AskPat in the Marketing and Management section under the primary Business category. And then I just tested it for a little bit. I switched. You can actually switch your categories by going into your feed and just selecting a different category. You don't have to re-upload your feed or anything like that because it's iTunes and other directories that read the feed, and that's where they get the information from. So if you change that feed, it changes it everywhere else. I changed it to Careers, and for a while I was ranking on the top ten in Marketing and Management and I was also ranking in the top ten in Careers.

So again, if you're promoting or publishing two different podcasts, you might want to consider having them in two different spaces as well, or two different sub-categories if they're for the same particular audience. Of course, you want it all to make sense. You don't want to be in the travel niche if you're not in the travel niche because that's not the target audience at all.

So to finish up here, Paul, I don't know technically how you are running your podcast feeds. If you're following the tutorials at PodcastingTutorial.com, you'd be using the Powerpress plugin. And then actually you can create different feeds for different shows within that plugin. So you can technically do that, so you would be able to create multiple podcasts and just make sure the feeds are different for each and every show that you create.

You can have as many shows as you want. There'd just be different category feeds, is what you're looking for. So you're creating different categories. So for instance, you might have category podcast one, category podcast two, whatever the names of those podcasts are. For me, since I'm actually doing tests, I have my feed coming from the podcast category because that's one of my shows. And actually the other one is coming from Soundcloud, so it's not even using the Powerpress plugin because I'm testing the Soundcloud platform.

So, Paul, I hope that answers your question. I put a little more in there in terms of starting two separate podcasts, because I really wanted to make sure that you knew that going into it, you really have to focus on one first, master it, and then your second one is going to become much easier. And you'll also know the systems in place that either you or an assistant you hire can put in place to make those shows happen and just make it be a lot easier for you. Seriously, the second show is way easier if you pay attention to the systems, and you just do the first one first. Because if you do both at the same time, it's going to be a struggle. Almost like a compounded struggle between the two of them, and then you're going to get nothing done.

So one at a time. Best of luck to you. Yes, you can create multiple feeds on just one different website. Category feeds using the Powerpress plugin, or you can use completely different hosts as well to get those different feeds directly from the hosts. So anyway, thank you so much Paul. I appreciate your question. An AskPat t-shirt will be headed your way. For those of you listening, if you have a question you'd like potentially featured on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com. If you're just starting out in podcasting, I highly recommend going to my own tutorial, completely free, no emails required. Go to PodcastingTutorial.com. Hundreds of people have used it, and I know you can too.

And lastly, here is a quote from Gary Vaynerchuk from one of my favorite books as of late, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. And this quote is, “Stop thinking about your social media content as content. Think about it rather as micro-content. Tiny, unique nuggets of information.” Cheers, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat.