In this episode I talk about why you should have your own domain name for podcasting.

Welcome to Podcast Answers, the show where I help people start and grow their podcast,

answering any podcast questions along the way.

If you have a question, please reach out and get in touch with me, podcastanswers.com slash

contact, and I would love to help you answer any questions that you have about podcasting.

Last episode, we talked about seasons, why you should have them, should you have them,

should you not have them. If you've not listened to that, go to podcastanswers.com slash seasons,

and you will, the episode we were talking about, you'll see that and be able to listen to why I

think you should or should not have seasons. But without further ado, this episode, we're going

to be talking about havingyourown.com. In the words of the great Todd from Blueberry,

getyourown.com. Todd seems to be always on gettingyourown.com, and I agree with Todd.

I am going to be somebody who always thinks that havingyourown.com is a good thing. So

what are some reasons to haveyourown.com? So you have a home place where people can find you.

So if you live in an RV, no one knows where you're at. They may have an address for you right now,

but what if you move tomorrow? They're not going to know where to reach you.

So what are they going to do when you move? Same thing with podcasting. You can tell people

that you are atpodcastname.podcasthost.com for your show notes and stuff, and even, you know,

I'm on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast from. But what happens when you

move podcasthost? Thatpodcastname.podcasthost.com is not going to lead to your show notes anymore.

Or worse yet, what happens if you get kicked off of Spotify or Apple Podcasts? It does happen,

and people may not know this, but Apple Podcasts is the directory that a lot of other apps use

to pull podcasts from. So if you get kicked out of Apple, then you're out of a lot of apps.

When they search for you in a lot of different apps, they're not going to find you. If they

knowyourown.com, they can always come to that and find you. So even if you get kicked off of

Apple Podcasts, they can know to go topodcastname.com and find you there because you will always be

there and you will always, you know, your stuff will always be there. The other nice thing is you

don't always need to say, come find us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your

podcast at in your podcast. You can just say, go topodcastname.com and all the places you find

audio or link there. So if you have anything new, you can list it right there. It's not going to

change your audio. You don't have to go back in and tell somebody that you're now on the hottest

new app or whatever. You can always just say, go topodcastname.com and find all of our audio there.

If you have your own website, you can also do things like have really easy names to remember

your episodes by. Like for instance, I said this last one was podcastanswers.com slash seasons.

That's a really easy way to, if you're listening to me right now, you can go, oh, I want to listen

to that. It's really easy to remember slash seasons and you can get to the show notes post

for that episode, which has a link to the audio in it, as well as having, being able to

just easily see other things that I may put there that are not in the RSS feed. If you

have your own website, you can do other things too, like welcome messages and more. It's like

you could have on your homepage of podcastname.com, you could have a video welcoming people to your

show. People connect with video. People love seeing people on video. They may connect with them

via audio and being right in their ears, but when they see them, they feel like they really,

really, really know the person. They've seen what it looks like, what the person looks like.

They've seen what it exactly means to have what the post looks like. You can also have

memorable short links too, like for instance, podcastanswers.com slash captivate will take you

to my very favorite podcast host or podcastanswers.com slash Ecamm will take you to my favorite

software for streaming video, which I'm doing right now. I believe heavily in doing video

and audio at the same time, so that way you have it. Both of those are short links and

they're affiliate links of mine, which I will make a commission for if any of you buy from Ecamm

or Captivate, but the nice thing about having your own website is that it's memorable. You don't need

to say go to bit.ly slash whatever or some other random link to get to the, you know, if you're

having a short link or whatever, or other websites can take people off of their websites.

You can do that right from your own website and you're driving people back to your brand.

You're not driving them to something that's not yours like bit.ly or, you know, even going back

to the Apple Podcasts thing, you're not telling them go to Apple Podcasts to find me. You're

saying come to podcastanswers.com to find the podcast, to find all of the information you're

ever going to need for the podcast. And again, you can do those memorable short links, which are

easy to remember because you already know if I've already drilling into you and into your head,

podcastanswers.com, podcastanswers.com, podcastanswers.com, you're going to know

that when I'm talking about something like Ecamm, you can go to podcastanswers.com slash Ecamm

and get there. So how do you get your own dot com or dot org or dot whatever your domain name?

You can go to any domain register. I like GoDaddy just because I've been using them forever,

but you can go to any register or domain register, trar, and get your domain there. It'll cost you

somewhere between $15 and $20 a year. That's just for the name. That's not for any website space.

That's not for anything like that. It's just for the domain name. Now, once you have that,

though, you can do and use it however you want. And there's lots of different ways to use that.

And so I'm going to talk you through a little bit of those ways to use your domain because really,

you can do anything you want with it. You can... Many podcast hosts, and this is maybe the easiest

thing to do, many podcast hosts allow you to map their podcast name dot podcast host dot com,

which would be your show notes and your show page to a custom domain. Now, each may...

Each people do it a little bit different. They may charge you for this. They may not,

but each one will have their own instructions on how to go into your registrar, so in my case,

GoDaddy, and point it to their server and allow you to change that so that you can get

podcastname.com. And it takes you essentially to podcastname.podcasthost.com. I'm saying a lot

of dots and dot coms in here, but follow me here. So it's nice because it looks... You don't know

when you go to that, that it's actually going to some other website. You don't know that it's

not something you're hosting. It doesn't really matter because they're just going to see the

podcastname.com. Even though you are using their website, if you decide to move hosts,

then all you have to do is point your domain to a new host. And the address that the listeners

come to is going to be the same. So for instance, if I were to change... If I were doing that and

I was using my podcast host to host my website or my show notes, and I'm with Captivate now,

but if I were using them and I had podcastanswers.com pointing to their web page, their show page,

all I could use... If I decided to go somewhere else, I could. I could really easily change

somewhere else and not affect anybody else. You wouldn't know the difference. It may look

different, but the place that you're going to go is always the same. It's always going to be

podcastname.com, podcastanswers.com, whatever. If your podcast host does not allow you to

custom match your domain name to their site, you can always redirect their domain, your domain,

your domain to their given site. So if you visit podcastname.com in the URL bar, you'll be redirected

to podcastname.podcasthost.com. Make sure that you do a 302 or a 307 redirect, though. There are

many types of redirects, and the 302 and 307 are what are called temporary redirects. You will

want to do this because if you choose a permanent redirect, your browser will remember the location

that you're forwarded to, and it will no longer hit the server to check if the URL redirect is the

same. So let's say you move hosts and you change your redirect to the new host. If you use a permanent

redirect, then your browser will automatically go to the old host and not check if there's the new

one, but with a 302 or 307, every time someone hits it, they're going to go out to that where it's

forwarded from and check and see if it's still valid. And the last way to do it is actually

have your own web hosting. This is going to be the most flexible, but it is going to cost you a

little bit more for the hosting. With your own web hosts, you can put other files for download.

You can offer more things. Your website is truly yours. It's truly your digital space,

and you can do with it what you want. So you can go to any web host and do that. Now, you're

going to need a different web host from a MP3 host for your podcast because most web hosts aren't

going to want to serve MP3 files from their website and they'll kick you off. So you will need a

podcast host still, but the nice thing about having your own website is it is truly yours. You can

make it look the way that you want because if you go with the podcast hosts site, most of them are

pretty great, but they're going to look the same. They're going to look mostly the same. You can't

do a whole lot of configuring on them. So if you have your own website with your own.com, you truly

own that digital space, and you can really do anything you want with it. So in closing, if all

of this is too much for you and you want help doing it, I am available for, I am available for

contact. I can do one-on-one consulting. Just contact me at podcastanswers.com

slash contact, and I would love to work with you, help you start and grow your podcast, help

create a, help create a look for you and a website for you and help you even map your own domain.

Also, make sure that you subscribe to our website, our YouTube channel, sorry, not our website,

our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash at podcastanswers. We not only post our weekly

podcast video there, but we are also doing other training videos and tip videos and things like