Setting up a Podcast Using a Blogger (Blogspot) Blog

Adapted from my original article How to Podcast Using Blogger.

A lot of people use Wordpress to podcast, but I've actually found Blogger to be the superior platform.  The blogspot takes a bit more work to setup, but it simplifies everything a ton.  This tutorial isn't going to waste any time - assuming you've already signed up for a free blog, we're going to get right to minimizing the role of a web hosting service and using Blogger for all the rest.

Step 1. The one thing Blogger isn't going to do for you is host your files, so you need to get some web hosting service. If you poke around the podcast community a bit, you'll notice that LibSyn is the most common web hosting service.  A podcasting web hosting service is just a marketing gimmick though - a regular web hosting service will do just fine.  I use GoDaddy for most of my projects.  Just make sure you have enough server space and bandwidth.

Step 2. When you want to post a podcast, you have to upload the file to your web hosting service first.  You don't need to do any kind of elaborate management - that's what the blog is for.  Simply tag, name, and upload the mp3 or aac podcast file to your web hosting service.

Step 3. Log into blogger and go to the Settings tab.  Scroll down to where it says "Show Link fields".  Change that to "Yes". This will allow you to link files from your web hosting service to each blog post.  Click "Save Settings" to move on.

Step 4. If you've got a Feedburner account that you use to podcast, you should do that before you start posting - otherwise go to the next step.  Feedburner will provide trackable stats so you know how many people subscribe to your show.  It's good for a lot of other reasons too, but let's not waste any time on that.  Once you've set up a free account over there and have your Feedburner URL, go back to Blogger and click "Settings". Go over to "Site Feed" and paste your URL into the "Post Feed Redirect URL".  Hit Save settings.

Step 5. To publish a podcast episode, go to the "Posting" tab.  Here you can enter the title of the show in the "Title" field and any show notes or links in the body.  Make sure you leave the "Link" field at the top empty! To attach your podcast file from your web hosting service click "Show enclosure links" at the top. Enter the URL of the podcast file stored on your web hosting service.  Hit "Publish" to post the entry and you're done!

Additional Tips:

See my Article on "How to Increase the 50 Item Limit in Your Blogger Blogspot RSS Feed" to do just that. It'll help with setting up Feedburner for the first time as well.