Heyo! If you’re interested in getting a viable podcast up and going as quickly as possible like I did with Practice (but way better), then you may find some of these tips useful.

The agile process.

What is Agile? Wait, what? Haven’t you been listening to Practice? 😕

Okay, good point – I may not have defined it very well. 🙃

Atlassian provides an excellent guide about the agile process. This is how they define “agile“:

Agile is an iterative approach to project management and software development that helps teams deliver value to their customers faster and with fewer headaches. Instead of betting everything on a “big bang” launch, an agile team delivers work in small, but consumable, increments. Requirements, plans, and results are evaluated continuously so teams have a natural mechanism for responding to change quickly.

Agile podcasting.

So, in terms of agile podcasting, the definition may be transposed to:

Agile podcasting is an iterative approach to podcast production that helps podcasters deliver value to their audience faster and with fewer headaches. Instead of betting everything on a “big bang” launch, an agile podcaster produces work in small, but consumable increments. Requirements, plans, and results are evaluated continuously so podcasters have a natural mechanism for responding to change quickly.

This may need some work, as I simply switched out some words from Atlassian’s definition, but it should give you the general idea of the methodology.

⚠️ Please note that this a very informal take on agile development and my initial take on agile podcasting. As I deliberate and iterate more upon this process, my transposition of the agile methodology here may become more formal (or not).

Minimum viable product (MVP).

As we’ve alluded to many times on Practice, a minimum viable product is basically the result of spending the least amount of time and effort to develop a functional product that you can release to your audience and generate feedback from.

The bare minimum you need to start your own podcast.

First things first. Do you have everything you need to get started? The bare minimum that you need is:

• A computer.
• An internet connection.

Yeah, that’s pretty much it! You already have everything you need. There are free podcast hosting options out there, so you don’t even have to pay for anything extra. (I have not used any of the free hosts, however, so I cannot provide any advice for them.)

Sure, depending on your computer’s microphone, the recording quality may not be the best, and free hosting may prove to be a hassle. Nonetheless, if you want to get started right this minute, you probably have everything you need to start your own podcast.

The bare minimum I needed to start my own podcast.

My setup to get Practice started up was slightly more elaborate than the bare minimum. Of course, if you listen to Practice, this should come as no surprise.

Besides a computer and internet connection, these are the services I used for the first episodes:

• Squadcast for recording.
• Castos for hosting.
• Descript for transcribing and mixing.
• WordPress for content management.

Publishing your podcast.

I started with my bare minimum to get up and running with Practice on the same day that I conceived the whole idea of creating my own podcast. While it took me a while to get the first few episodes published, I could’ve published them in a more timely manner had I known about these logistics.

Podcast directory submission.

In order for your podcast to be found in podcast players like Apple Podcasts and Spotify, you must submit your podcast feed to their directories. Otherwise, your listeners must input the URL for your podcast feed in order to pull it up in their podcast player of choice.

Most podcast players pull data from Apple Podcasts, so if you want your podcast to be found in as many podcast players as possible, submitting to Apple Podcasts is essential. Spotify has quickly become a huge player in the podcast space, so submitting your podcast there is also important.

There are many other directories, but in the spirit of the agile process and minimum viability, I would consider submitting your podcast to Apple and Spotify first.

From there, I’ve found the content being produced by our podcast hosting provider, Castos, to be very helpful. After submitting Practice to Apple and Spotify, I worked through their Complete List Of Where To Publish Your Podcast.