Do you want to launch a successful and profitable podcast show?
Well, that’s a great idea.
Podcasts are one of the best emerging content formats. People have started engaging with them more often these days.
About 50% of homes are podcast fans, and that is a total of 60 million homes.
Blog posts and YouTube videos are still great formats of acquiring information and getting entertained. But podcasts give more portability. You can listen while working, exercising, cooking, etc.
Developing a podcast channel is not as easy as it sounds though. You have to take care of a lot of technical tasks to have a sustainable podcast show.
That’s when we need tools like Podbean.
Podbean is a podcast hosting platform, and it makes the podcast creation, publication, and monetization effortless.
Just like Blogger and WordPress is to blogging, so is Podbean to podcasting.
Let’s understand in-depth what makes it the best podcast hosting platform.
Why Should You Use Podbean?
- It is user-friendly.
Podbean is made for all types of users.
Whether you are a newbie or a professional podcast host, you can utilize the features of Podbean and grow your audience.
The features are on point, and layout makes it extremely user-friendly for people to upload their podcast episodes quickly.
You don’t need to learn how to use the tool. With just a few clicks, you can upload and publish your podcast episodes.
Podbean’s hosting is made of Amazon Web Service (AWS) and Podbean’s own CDN network, which are robust and scalable.
- It can build a website and add a custom domain.
A website is one of the essential digital properties that individuals or agencies should have in 2020.
Whether you have a vast product catalog or having few articles to share as your portfolio, a website gives you authority and increased brand awareness.
Podbean understands the necessity of a website and therefore gives reliable website builders to its customers.
Even if you don’t know the syntax of HTML, CSS, PHP, or JavaScript, don’t worry. Podbean has got you covered.
It will take care of all the heavy lifting of programming the back end of your website while you just have to add web page elements using the website builder.
You can either build the website of your podcast show on Podbean from scratch or use high-converting themes provided on the tool.
Plus, when you create a website using Podbean, you will get a dedicated URL like yourchannelname.podbean.com.
Podbean gives you full authority to gain full control of your channel by connecting a custom domain.
Yes, your podcast channel will have a unique domain of itself.
So it will be a stand-alone website cum podcast channel.
- Podbean gives unlimited bandwidth and hosting.
This is a crucial advantage that separates Podbean from the other alternatives in the market.
Bandwidth is the power of a server to transmit data at a particular amount of time. Massive bandwidth can transfer more data.
That means, if there are several thousand or millions of listeners listening to a podcast episode, good bandwidth can sustain them.
Since we are talking about podcasts here, a slight lag in the stream can destroy the user experience for listeners and affect the reputation of the channel.
Podbean gives you unlimited bandwidth and hosting with all its paid packages.
So you get unlimited storage capacity and upload endless episodes on your podcast channel.
Even with the free plan, you get the bandwidth of 100GB/monthly and storage of 5 hours. That is more than enough if your audience is small.
- Podbean is SEO-friendly.
Online platforms are incomplete without search engines, Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
You are just one Google search away to know, read, and watch something new.
The process of ranking in search engine result pages is known as search engine optimization.
SEO redirects highly interested people to the right website.
That means you keep getting the ideal audience for free. And that makes it a robust inbound marketing activity.
Podbean is an SEO-friendly tool. So you can make your podcast shows and episodes searchable through search engines.
- You can schedule your episodes with Podbean.
You will never miss the right time to publish new podcast episodes, thanks to the scheduling feature of Podbean.
As a blogger or a business owner, you will already have too much on your plate.
Just remembering time and date to publish your podcast manually can be a daunting task.
You also could not afford to miss a chance to publish your episodes.
Podbean gives you the best time to publish your episode to get maximum engagement.
Therefore, you can schedule your episodes, and they will be shared automatically on your channel on Podbean.
- Podbean has iOS and Android apps.
Podbean gives you maximum portability by giving reliable iOS and Android applications.
You can utilize these applications to share, listen, download, and stream your podcast episodes from your smartphones.
Listeners can also download their favorite podcast episodes and listen to them offline.
Podbean rolls out custom notifications to its app users whenever a new episode comes out. This way, your listeners will be notified every time you release a new episode.
For your podcast channel, this support of applications will add another segment of listeners.
Since you can also target smartphone users, your overall audience will grow thanks to Podbean.
- Podbean distributes podcasts dynamically.
You can get your podcast on well-known platforms like Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, etc. by publishing them on Podbean.
Now you no longer have to upload your podcast over and over again on all these leading platforms, and you also get new listeners from these mediums.
By using Podbean Alexa Skill, your episodes on Podbean will be available on Alexa devices as well.
This way, you get coverage of all the leading platforms to grow your podcast channel.
And you can also cover social media publishing.
Thanks to Podbean, you no longer have to worry about creating dedicated and unique social media posts for new podcast episodes. Because once you connect your social media accounts with the Podbean account, your podcast episodes will be automatically shared on social media platforms.
This feature will again save you a lot of time.
Plus, your podbean account works with Mailchimp. So you can collect emails and reach your listeners whenever you release a new episode.
Podbean gives embeddable players to utilize your content on other sources on the web.
With the support of embedded players, you can share podcasts in articles, author contributions, or on a website.
Embeddable players make the user experience smoother. Users can listen to the podcast by staying on the same web page.
Just like you embed a YouTube video on a website, you can also embed Podbean podcasts on the site and third-party resources.
- Get reliable and actionable insights with Podbean.
In this age, we are driven by data. You have to have numbers to get insights and trends to ensure your brand stays relevant and ahead in the niche.
You get the idea of how your audience is interacting with your content.
It will help you identify whether they like your content or not and inspire you to make necessary changes in your publishing activity to get positive results.
With Podbean, you get detailed analysis and reporting features to understand about your listeners.
You will get a comprehensive dashboard where you can know the top demographics and locations of the listeners.
You will also know which devices and operating systems users use to stream your episodes.
- Podbean has promising monetization techniques.
Everyone wants to earn money. Plus, if you can earn by doing the things you love, then it is the best.
Having said that, new-age podcast publishers often find monetization challenges.
Podbean allows you to earn money from your podcast with its various monetization techniques.
You can list your podcast channel for Podbean Advertising and promote products and services through your episodes.
You can utilize PodAds SaaS and have straightforward and dynamic advertisement management.
You also get to choose which ads you want to showcase on your podcast to maximize the revenue.
Another monetization technique is Podbean Premium. If your podcast is popular, you can charge users per episode or subscription basis.
This way, you can monetize your channel, and Podean will manage all the payment, technical, and support tasks for you.
You can also go with Patron and find support for your podcast channels.
As part of Patron, your supporters will donate a fixed amount of money on a weekly or monthly basis.
You can also create virtual tickets for live streaming your podcast episodes. Here, you will get virtual gifts from the listeners, and these gifts can then be converted to dollars.
Conclusion
Podbean gives you different packages, including a free one, where you can get 5 hours of total storage and 100GB/month of bandwidth.
The free package does not provide you with any monetization services.
All the plans have iPhone and Android applications and embeddable players to utilize your content effectively.
The basic package starts at $9/month when billed annually or $14 monthly, where you get unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth.
If you are thinking of using other podcast hosting sites like SoundCloud, Stitcher, Podcast Addict, or Overcast, then I’d recommend you Podbean any day.
At this price point, you are not getting mobile apps, embeddable players, unlimited bandwidth, and a comprehensive list of monetization ways.
To me, Podbean is the complete podcast hosting at the moment.
I’d love to know your views on this, so please share your thoughts in the comments section below.
