Launch of Podcastage.com
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It has been years in the works, but finally I have launched www.podcastage.com
There are multiple reasons why I launched this website.
I constantly yell at people on my podcast that it’s essential that you own a hub for your content. That way if you are ever banned from a service, or if a service ever goes away, there is still a place that people can find you. I already had BandrewScott.com, and GeeksRising.com, but that wasn’t for posting my review content. Podcastage.com, is my hub where I can post all my audio related stuff.
One of the biggest problems I have with my YouTube channel is that if I make a mistake in a video, there’s no way to easily update it. I would have to delete the video with the minor error, and reupload a new video which erases all the views/engagement, and may be treated differently by the YouTube Algorithm, or I’d have to include an update in the description (which few people look at) or as a pinned comment. None of these options are really ideal. Now there’s a website that people will easily be able to find, and I’ll be able to include updates on the site for the reviews, include updated audio samples, etc.
As my audience on YouTube has grown, I’ve felt more of an obligation not to include small and extremely focussed devices. This is because I don’t want to flood my subscribers feed with stuff they’re likely not interested in because I think that’s somewhat disrespectful. I’m not saying don’t ever put out a video that is not EXACTLY what your audience wants. I’m simply saying that releasing 15 videos per year about small adapters that only 10 people are looking for would be a bit excessive. Therefore, the website is a perfect solution to that. I am able to write up short reviews for these smaller / specialized devices and provide that information, without flooding people’s subscription feed.
Lastly is the most “businessy” reason. Search Engine Optimization (kind of). I would sometimes search for topics related to audio to see how my videos / reviews compared to others in terms of conclusions. When doing this, I saw a LOT of websites ranking at the top that had really bad information. My videos sometimes did rank near the top, but for the folks who don’t want a video, they were sometimes getting very bad recommendations and information. I am hoping by launching the website, I can combat this, and stop people from getting recommended the Blue Yeti for 4 person podcasts.
There are even more reasons why, but I won’t bore you with those. The journey to launching this was not easy, mainly because of money. I tried to buy podcastage.com when the previous owner’s registration lapsed, but before it was publicly available, it was sucked up by a domain-squatting-service, and they were asking a LOT of money. About every 10 months I would send them an e-mail with an offer that was 1/4 of the price, and they would never accept. Finally, after a friend of mine had a bad run-in with someone stealing their brand name’s domain and not willing to negotiate the transfer, I decided to bite the bullet and buy the domain.
Secondly, there was no automated way that I could find to import all my videos, back date them, add the correct category, see if I had posted a write up in the past to copy that write up over, and update the affiliate links, so I had to manually import over 300 videos and back date them back to 2015.
This is a long post, but I wanted to share the backstory of launching the website and why I did it, to potentially motivate you to get your own hub that YOU own online.