“My boyfriend wants to start a podcast, what does he need?”
Creating a podcast is a great way to get your content out to the people who may be interested in what you have to say. To have a successful podcast you need great content, decent quality equipment to produce a great sounding podcast, and some marketing to let people know you exist and they should listen to what you have to say.
To get a good quality podcast off the ground you’re gonna need a few things:
Computer – which I’m sure you already have and you don’t really need anything to fancy just about any modern computer will do.
Microphone/Headset – Plantronic’s makes really good quality microphones/headsets for speaking and recording podcasts. I really like Plantronics 400 DSP model which costs about 80 bucks.
Editing Software – You may want to edit your podcast and for that you will need some audio editing software, Audacity is completely free open source program which will allow yo to do things like add background music, cut certain parts out, and lots more. If you’re using a Mac then Garageband can also do the job.
Website – You should a have a website to promote your podcast. This is where you should make posts on every podcasts you put out with some description on that specific podcast. Get a free website from WordPress or Blogger.
Podcast Hosting – You need a place to upload your podcast so listeners can easily download the files. When you’re just starting out why not try some free podcast hosting like Podbean or My Podcast. If you start to get lots of listeners you may want to upgrade to libsyn.com which is a inexpensive podcast hosting company that doesn’t charge by bandwidth but storage amount and they have plans as low as 5 bucks a month.
Talkshoe – which will allow you to take incoming live calls during your podcast. Talkshoe can also turn the audio into the proper podcast format which you can then post on your website for listeners to download.
Marketing – now let the world know about what you’re doing. Start building your community by visiting forums and chats rooms and start participating in communities related to your field.
I would not start out with a free service. That’s like starting out with a starter home. I guess if you have NO budget, you have no choice. We are seeing more and more free companies go out of business (shocking – you have to make money to stay in business – see podango.com ). Talkshoe (and blog talk radio) allow you to take live calls, but their audio quality is poor. If you want to record phone calls, use skype and powergramo.