Brad from the Gay Mystery Podcastasks, "Do I need a custom website for my podcast?"
TL;DR Podcast websites have three main benefits. First, building a custom website frees you from the restrictions that the website your podcast host provides for you probably has. You can literally make it whatever you need it to be.
Second, having a website will help you build your online brand or online business. You can use your podcast as free marketing to promote your products and turn your listeners into customers.
Third, websites work on any internet-connected device. If you're going to confidently share a link that you know will work no matter what kind of phone, tablet, or computer someone is using, a link to your website is the one.
That being said, most podcasters don't need a custom podcast website. If you just need a place for people to listen to your episodes and read your show notes, the website from your podcast host is just fine.
4x Questions To Ask When Designing Your Podcast Website:
What do you need your website to do?
What is your budget?
Are you going to hire someone to build your website?
In today's episode, we're going to talk about whether or not you need a website for your podcast. Welcome to Podcasting Q&A, where we discuss best tips to launch, grow and monetize your podcast. This week's question comes from Brad.
Brad :
Hi, this is Brad with the game mystery podcast. My question is, do I need my own website? Or does it depend on what the subject of my podcast is? Thank you.
Sarah :
So thanks for your question. Brad, we actually get this question quite a lot, right? Like, what are the benefits of even having a podcast website? Do you even need one? And if you do, how do you even go about building one Luckily for you, we have got you covered because we're going to answer all those questions in today's episode. So first, let's talk about the benefits of having a podcast website. So one of the benefits is actually be able to customize the look and feel of it. So you may have A really great podcast host. But sometimes there there are limits in terms of what you can do to customize it. Another really great benefit to having a podcast website is it going to help you grow your brand, or your platform, especially if you have a side hustle or online business that you're trying to get podcast listeners to see. So let's say you have an Etsy business, or a business where you're making custom jewelry, and your podcast is all about making custom jewelry. So you want to lead those listeners to your website so they can see all of the amazing products that you offer. And hopefully they'll buy some. Now for me, I have a personal podcast as well. It's all about finance topics. And so for me as a content marketing writer, I want my listeners to come to my website and see all the great content that I'm creating. And hopefully that will turn into leads and clients for my content marketing business. The third benefit is that when you have a website, it will work for everyone but you just send them to that one Link, and they can listen on any device, whether it's their smartphone or on their laptop. So let's talk about whether you actually need a custom podcast website. Now for most podcasters. The answer is actually no. Because if your podcast has an RSS feed with a podcast host like Buzzsprout chances are, you already have a podcast website with Buzzsprout website, you get a homepage with links to obviously all of your episodes that your listeners can listen to. You can also direct them to different podcast directories like Apple podcast, Stitcher and Spotify if they want to go listen and subscribe there and you can also use your own domain name so you can look and feel like your own podcast website. If you're just looking for a place for people to listen to your episodes. Chances are you don't need to spend that money to build your own custom website.
If you decide you want a custom podcast website, here are some tips and some guidelines on what you can do on figure how to build one. So the first thing you want to think about is what do you want that website to do? Are you trying to get people to sign up for your email list? Do you want a contact form so clients can contact you for work? What is it that you want to do? Right? Maybe you have products that you want people to go to things like that. So think about the goal of that website that a podcast hosting website cannot do for you and you want to think about the budget. Are you going to bootstrap it or are you can hire someone. And if you don't have the money, it's okay to create one yourself for now until you have a bigger budget or you're earning some money from the podcast that you can pay a pro to do it. Now there's tons of options on how to build your own. There's Squarespace which supposedly is a bit more user friendly, you can kind of drag and drop things. There's also Wix which is also pretty user friendly if you're not tech savvy, and there's also WordPress, which is one of the most customizable and popular ways to build your website, and there's lots of free templates and free tutorials, we'll link to some of the show notes and how to start building your own podcast website. Now if you're using WordPress makes sure that you're going to use Buzzsprout WordPress plugin. So you can embed your episodes right on your web page so that listeners can listen right there. So all of this to say, if you're just interested in focusing on building your listeners and your community, and it's perfectly okay for you to just have them have somewhere to listen to your episodes than the one that your podcast hosting company has is probably okay. But if you're looking to take it a step further, you want to build your brand, your platform, you have some products you want to sell, then by all means, go and look at the options on how to build your custom podcast website. So thanks for sending us your question, Brad. Now if you have a question you would like us to answer on future episodes, please go to speak pipe.com slash Buzzsprout or click on the link in the description below and then record your audio file for us podcasting q&a is available in both video and audio format. If you like watching video, please go to our YouTube channel and hit the subscribe button so you'll get notifications on the latest episodes. Now if you're audio junkie like I am, please search for podcasting q&a wherever you listen to podcasts, leave us a review on pod chaser so that we know what we can do to make these episodes even better. And that's it for today. Thanks for listening and as always keep podcasting