!!Con West 2020 - Michelle Brenner: How To Host A Podcast For 25 Cents A Month!

Alright. So I host this podcast called From the Source. Where I interview people working in tech, and I focus on underrepresented voices, and to answer the question of what a tech job really is like, both the good, the bad, and the boring. So when I wanted to do this project, I didn’t want to spend a lot of money. So that’s how I came up with this idea. So let’s talk about why you should host a podcast. First of all, no one can stop you. It’s not like book publishing or TV or movies, where there’s just a level of professionalism and then the amateur stuff. Your podcast will be in the same catalog at Serial.

01:04 - You might have less advertising for people to find it, but it’s in the same place. Learning new skills. So learning how to interview people, learning how to edit audio – these are all things that I hadn’t done before. And they enhance other things in my life. Learning how to interview helped me interact better with people. I mean, it helps you make new friends to be interested in other people. For some reason, people still think you’re cool when you host a podcast.

01:34 - I tell people I host a podcast and they’re like wow, really? That’s so neat?! I’m like yeah, I’m awesome. I got to reach a whole new community. As much as I love all of you in the tech community, it’s really nice to see what other people are up to. So I’m in the Lady Pod Squad. It’s super fun. They’re all over the world. The last thing is to make money, which is a total trick. You will make zero dollars! (laughter) Unless you are already an influencer or have infinite free time. Or you’re best friends with someone at Caspar Mattresses. You won’t make any money.

02:17 - But the whole point of this is not to make money, but kind of enhance your brand. Things like that. One of the things that’s really great for me is if I go to a stranger and say… Hey, you’re really interesting. Can I talk to you for an hour? They just kind of run away. But if I say: Hey, can I interview you for my podcast? And ask you things about your life? They’re like… Oh my God! Me?! And then it’s super fun. So what we’re gonna do today is talk about hosting. So when you use managed hosting, and there’s a ton of different options, you either pay out a monthly fee, like $10 to $15, or like any SaaS product, they’re using your data. So they’re selling to your customers, just figuring things out… They need a way to make money. So when you’re self-hosting, you’re in charge of all of that. So let’s make a podcast right now. That’s what we’re gonna do. Okay. So what I use is Amazon S3 and I’m gonna create a new bucket.

03:25 - So if you’re not familiar with S3, it’s basically like Dropbox or Google Drive. It’s just a way to store files and folders. And if you haven’t made an account before, one big thing you should know – and I should have put this first – is create a budget. So when you sign up, the first thing you do actually is create 2FA. Use your two factor authentication, and create a budget so you don’t play around with Amazon and get a $75 bill by accident. That definitely didn’t happen to me. So now my budget is set at $2.50. I’m very pricey now. My bill is at $0.52. Which I grant is more than $0.

25, but I’ve been using S3 as storage since I ran out of 04:11 - space on Google Drive. So those are two things you should do at the beginning. And there are tutorials for those as well if you haven’t used it before. Okay. So let’s go to S3. So S3… I wasn’t sure how great it would be for me to show everyone all my S3 buckets, but please don’t do anything to me, I guess?! I really didn’t think this through. So let’s create a new podcast. So this is my Twitter handle. So you can all find me and I can be popular. I’m in the US West.

04:50 - I’m just basically making a new directory for the podcast. And it’s really big. So I’m hoping… I’ll actually run this wizard. So… I’m looking for making sure I can make this public. I think it’s in the next one. Basically ignoring everything is what I want. So people get in a lot of trouble from the public S3 bucket, so they’ve made it pretty clear… It automatically defaults to not public. Which is great. Except I want everything here to be public.

05:21 - So if anyone gets in trouble for a public S3 bucket, after you’ve seen this, you can just make fun of them, because it’s actually much harder to make it public. Where is it? I’m just gonna make it a little smaller so I can see. There it is. Yeah. Like, how do people do this? By accident. So my new bucket… I’m gonna create one more for logs. I’m just gonna use the same name… If I can spell my own name correctly… Okay. Don’t need all that. Don’t need any of that. And this one will not be public. This is all your log data. So you just let it go. So I’ve already made a mistake. Which is the fun of live demos. And I’m gonna just start over on my one bucket, because I should have made the log bucket first. Because the podcast bucket needs somewhere to put its logs. And it didn’t exist at that time. So I couldn’t put it there. So I’m gonna real quick delete… Okay. So those should be in here somewhere. Logging. Ah, there it is. I missed it. So this is important.

07:30 - Because when you’re not using managed hosting, there’s no one to collect all your data for you. But when you’re using S3, it logs in who downloaded your podcast. Not, like, their name, but they used an iPhone and they used this app. And I don’t have time to get into it today, but in my blog, I’ll show you how to use that data and parse it and things like that. So I’ll make it public again. Okay. So I need to create two folders in here. One is gonna be audio file. Save. I’m just kidding. I need to create three folders in here. Okay. So there’s three things I created. Three folders. So one of them is gonna hold your mp3s. The other one is gonna hold your images. So when you load a podcast, the little square you see at the bottom…

08:45 - And then the ones you see on each episode, we can put them all in one folder. And then the RSS is kind of the most important. So that’s basically telling everyone where your podcast is. Telling them where the image and the audio is. So I’m gonna – first I’m gonna upload the image and the audio. This is the wrong folder. Don’t look. I was, like, I’ll just have a folder ready with everything in it. I didn’t. Okay. So in this audio bucket, here’s an mp3. This isn’t the right screen. I have to actually hit upload. It looks like you could, but you can’t do that. And this should go pretty fast. I think this also asks you whether it should be public. Yes. Everyone needs to listen to my podcasts. Just let it be the default storage… And that’s done. And then just an image. Just use my face, so you don’t forget me. Moving the image in. Same deal. Make sure it’s public. And I’m gonna show you the RSS file. So this is an XML. And it’s pretty straightforward, in that everything is what you think it is. So, like, title of the podcast. Description. Things like that. And I’m running out of time, so… I’m not gonna add more to this. But you can – I’ve linked to this in the blog post, and you can download it, but it’s basically just saying: Here’s the podcast and then there’s an item for each episode.

10:49 - And you can tell I forget to completely edit it, because you can see my original podcast name. Still in there. We’re almost done. Actually… So I would upload this. One thing to note – I’m gonna edit it – you should put the right locations of things. So this is the image. So if I went back… I really need this. So I just need this. I just need the object URL. And then for the audio… You don’t just need the URL. You need… The size and also the length that also goes in the RSS. I don’t have time to finish all that, so we’re just gonna go to the one that I’ve already made, and you can try it out. So you can just see what it looks like on your phone.

12:12 - So if you have a podcast app, and you try to go to that URL, you should get a podcast. I tried it and this one works. Not the one that I just didn’t finish. So… I think I’m completely out of time. So thank you very much! Thank you for letting me go over. (applause) .