For anyone who has spent a good amount of time creating things with their computer, podcasting won't be unfamiliar. You'll want to make sure that your hardware setup is appropriate for your needs, and that you've found a hosting service that offers the features that you need to grow your show.

What do I need to do?

You have some experience; here are the things that you should be thinking about to take your show beyond simple audio recording and editing:

• Find a microphone and stand to record the best possible audio with.
• Choose editing software that will meet your needs.
• Monetize your show with premium content.
• Look for features that will help your show to grow.
• Expand your web presence.

Your recording setup

You'll first want to make sure that you have a microphone that's doing your content justice. The first and highest-rated (though pricey) option is the Shure MV7.

If you're looking for something a bit less expensive, consider the ATR2100-x.

Choose the right editing software

If you have software that suits your needs, don't let these suggestions imply that you should change! However, higher-end software can simplify your workflow and give you greater control over the production value of your audio.

If you have guests who call in, rather than simply recording their call audio, ask them to record on their own computer and upload the audio file as well. This will give you clean audio to work from that's often better quality than the in-call audio. Services like Cleanfeed and Zencastr let you do this entirely in the cloud.‍

• ‍Logic Pro for macOS is a great choice that many professionals rely on. A license costs $199.
• Hindenburg Journalist is available for both Windows and macOS. It has great built-in tools for helping to make your audio sound great without needing expertise. Licenses start at $95.
• Adobe Audition is available as part of Adobe Creative Cloud subscriptions. It has powerful audio editing features built-in, with high-end features. It is available with a $20.99 monthly subscription.

Monetizing your show

Pinecast lets you monetize your podcast using a dedicated tip jar. You can simply allow your listeners to leave tips and subscribe, but there is a greater opportunity to build your income with premium content. Marking episodes as private makes them available only to paid subscribers. Consider the following approaches:

• Regularly post extra episodes outside of your normal schedule
• Post extended versions of your episodes, or additional content that got cut from the un-paid episode
• Post bloopers, extra content, and other material that didn't make it into your main episodes
• Post special one-off content, like events or holiday episodes
• Post uncut or unedited versions of interviews

With the Pinecast Growth add-on, which is an extra $10/mo (or $110/year), you have access to additional options to help monetize your show further.

• Set a minimum subscription amount needed to access premium content (any recurring tip jar subscription has access to premium content by default).
• Set dates for each episode to become private.
• Configure your show to automatically make each episode private after it has been published for a certain amount of time.

Premium podcast hosting features

Beyond the features that you receive with your Pinecast Starter subscription, consider these add-on features which can help you grow faster and have better control or insight over your podcasts.

Pro Analytics

This add-on unlocks additional insights about your show. There's no need to backfill, so immediately after you upgrade you'll be able to look at historical Pro Analytics data.

• See listener locations at the country and city level
• Rank your episodes by listens over a custom time period
• Visualize your show's growth and the relative growth of individual episodes to help gauge your promotion efforts

See the analytics documentation for full details.

Growth

In addition to the tip jar features mentioned above, the Growth add-on provides the following features:

• Allow your listeners to leave comments on your show and individual episodes. Set prompts for comments on episodes. Set moderation rules to avoid unwanted messages.
• Make a podcast (feed and website) password-protected.
• Monitor your Apple Podcasts and Podchaser listings for reviews. We'll check all Apple regions, giving you the broadest view of your show's success.
• Customize your podcast website with a favicon.

Crew

The Crew add-on is made for podcasters who don't work alone. Allow your co-creators to add episodes and administer individual podcasts or groups of podcasts. You can collect multiple shows together into a single unified network dashboard, complete with combined analytics.

You'll also have access to notifications, which allow you to receive alerts for events on your podcast via email, Slack, Discord, or via a HTTP webhook.

Hi-Fi

This add-on allows you to upload files up to 256MB. If you're looking to upload very high-quality audio files (e.g., 192kbps or higher), you'll likely want this add-on. Additionally, this add-on will update your RSS feed every five minutes instead of every 15 minutes, allowing your episodes to go live faster.

Grow your presence on the web

Pinecast's podcast websites allow you a great deal of flexibility when customizing their look and feel, but sometimes you want to do something unique. In cases where you want to have greater control, check out our WordPress plugin. This plugin will create WordPress posts for each of your episodes, optionally putting them into a category and syncing episode artwork.

With WordPress, you can customize the theme, add features and scripts, and make the site more on-brand. Because our plugin accepts many feeds, you can, for instance, build a network website that organizes episodes how you'd like. This is truly the most flexible option for hosting your podcast website, and our plugin gives you complete control over how episodes are presented.

Documentation is available on our support website.