How To Podcast |
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Hosting Your Podcast - part 2
Keep your overall purpose in mind. A hobbyist can use free resources, and never pay for more than a long distance call to create and host a podcast. But for business purposes, don't be cheap. Get the equipment, software, the domain name, and the hosting to do the job right! For hosting, you need to consider how often you will podcast, and how big your podcasting files will be. This will determine how much disk space you need on your server. Ideally, you should start out with at least a 1000 MB site, but note that as your podcast grows, you will need more space. Also note that the MP3 files that are your podcasts will be approximately one half to one megabyte in size per minute. This means that for a thirty minute podcast the final file size is going to be about fifteen to 30 MB in size. If there is more music, it will be closer to 1MB per minute. If there is all talk and no music, it will be closer to half a megabyte. Of course, this also depends on the bit rate that is used. Bit rate determines the overall quality of the compressed file. For a podcast that contains more music than anything else, you need to use 128kbps bit rate, which is CD quality. For a podcast that is mostly talking, without music, you can use a 64kbps bit rate, which produces FM Radio quality. If there is both music and talking on the podcast, you need a 96kbps bit rate, which is close to CD quality. Bandwidth is also an issue that you must address when selecting a hosting service. Bandwidth is essentially the amount of data, including audio that your web hosting service is going to allow each month. Bandwidth will be used whether your listeners are downloading your podcast to listen to it on another device, or if they are staying on your site to listen to it via your web based podcast player. To determine how much bandwidth you will need, get an average size of your podcasts (in megabytes) and multiply by the number of people that you expect to download each podcast that you produce. Take that number and multiply again by the number of podcasts that you will make available each month. For example, you plan to produce weekly, so you will have an average of four podcasts per month, each being about 1 hour long. You will have more talking on your podcast then music, so you can expect each podcast to be about 15MB in size. You figure that you can get approximately 500 listeners each month through your promotions. Here is the formula: Average size of file x number of listeners x number of podcasts per month 15 x 500 = 7500 x 4 = 30,000 -- 30 Gigabytes of data transfer per month As you can see, it can add up, and when you look at hosting prices, you may see that for many web hosting services, the cost of bandwidth can really add up as well. On the other hand, you will usually be charged a great deal more for going over your bandwidth each month, or worse, you could be shut down by your web host company! Get what you need to start with, in terms of disk space and bandwidth, and upgrade as necessary. Podcasting 101 | Listen to Podcasts | Record a Podcast | Publish a Podcast | Promoting a Podcast | Video Podcast | Podcast Tools | Podcast Resources 
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