How to get Audio-Only Podcasts on YouTube (Descript Bootcamp)
YouTube has officially rolled out its Podcasts area, which means you NEED to get your podcast on YouTube. Today, I’m going to show you how YouTube got one of my episodes 80% more views then how to create a simple video for your audio-only podcast using Descript.
As a quick aside, this is especially good if you have a mini podcast!
In This Video
Why your podcast needs to be on YouTube
YouTube Podcast best practices
My Descript Video Podcast Setup
Creating your own podcast video
Customizing Descript Waveforms
Exporting your video
Your Video Podcast Strategy
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Joe Casabona is a podcast and automation coach who helps coaches, course creators, and authors grow their podcasts into authority-building lead generators. He does that through expert-tested systems that come with 10 years experience podcasting, 15 years teaching, and over 20 years working the web.
Say goodbye to saying, “…or wherever you get your podcasts.” A new website by Nathan Gathright called Episodes.fm makes it very easy to share a landing page with a comprehensive list of podcast listening platforms:
I launched Podlink in 2018 to make sharing links to the podcasts you love easier. I sold it at the end of 2020, and Spotify laid me off in 2023, but I still wanted to iterate on that mission.
Today, I’m excited to announce an early preview of Episodes.fm.
Starting out, the website will support 30 platforms, and allow you to link both to the podcast, and individual episodes:
The original Podlink supported 8 apps; Episodes.fm is starting with 30 and will add more soon. If you’d like your podcast app included, submit a pull request to this repo.
All you have to do is visit Episodes.fm, and search for your show. It’s quite impressive.
Batman’s utility belt. The Doctor’s Screwdriver from Doctor Who. Tommy Pickles’ toy Screwdriver1. These things could get our heroes out of whatever pinch they found themselves in.
They were a tool for any occasion. And that’s what Descript is for Podcasters2.
Part of Podcast Advent is showing you some tools to help you with your podcast workflows, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t start with Descript, because of its versatility.
If you’re recording a solo podcast especially, it’s an all-in-one tool.
You can record audio and video directly do it.
You can edit that audio/video by deleting text.
You can improve the audio, add effects, and more.
And you can publish directly to a number of podcast hosting, and video platforms.
Plus, its AI tools (like Find Good Clips) are getting really good. And if you are recording interviews, their recent purchase of Squadcast means that you can do seamless remote recording, and import that interview into Descript.
Even though I have an editor, the workflow of record, import to Descript, and use it to find good clips has been a life saver. It allows me to give better notes to my editor, and now that I’m recording video, create sharable clips on social too.
If you haven’t tried out everything Descript has to offer, I highly recommend it. It’s a game changer for podcasters.
Which, incidentally, was heavily influenced by Doctor Who. ↩
None of the posts this Podcast Advent are sponsored. I want to present truly helpful tools for podcasters. That said, you’ll find an affiliate link here and there. ↩
When I came up with the idea for Podcast Workflows — nearly a year ago at CEX 2023 — one of the aspects of the site was to have a “Tools” page — something that could showcase the tools used in the deep dives I was doing.
But I didn’t want to rush it. I wanted to focus on the content and see where the site went.
Well, in November, I made the decision to move from weekly breakdowns to more regularly published content around all aspects of podcast workflows, processes, and systems.
That kicked off (unofficially) with Podcast Advent, and in January I started publishing more regularly. I also had my VA move all relevant content from both Casabona.org and Podcast Liftoff to Podcast Workflows.
One thing that’s as sure as the sunrise during the Christmas season is that kids and adults alike will look at the gifts under their tree and wonder what’s inside. They’ll stare at the box, hoping to will the answer without opening it.
Before the gifts are open, they can be anything1. It’s left up to our imagination.
Podcast stats can feel a lot like that sometimes. That’s why today’s helpful podcaster tool is Voxalyze. I like to call it the Google Analytics of Podcasting.
Here’s why.
Visibility Stats
First, Voxalyze makes it very easy to see your visibility in Apple Podcasts and Spotify:
They’ll give you rank, and score, and what percentage of all podcasts you rank in. You can see here I’m down over a few weeks — that tells me I need to look at what I was doing back in mid-October, and see what adjustments I can make.
Deeper Analytics
On top of visibility, it will also give you an objective look at your episode stats — and include, to the best of their estimation, downloads vs. unique listeners:
This tells me two things:
I know exactly when Apple’s iOS 17 downloads changes took place.
That change appears to be achieving the supposed goal, as downloads are much, much closer to unique listens.
They also give you some great stats on audio players — broken down by apps, and web players. Here’s my top audio players:
This graph is what made me realize it was be prudent to offer How I Built It PRO through Apple Podcast Subscriptions.
There’s also geographic stats, and download events — I can see where and when episode downloads are happening — which is pretty neat:
At this point, I know what you’re thinking: “But Joe…my podcast hosting platform also has pretty much all of this.”
And you’re right — but they don’t have this killer feature.
Keyword Research
On top of great analytics, Voxalyze has a killer feature to help you with discovery: keyword research.
On a per show basis, they’ll give you the keywords that could help you rank better and get discovered. They’ll give you search volume and how easy it is to rank for that word.
Using this data, you can figure out what episodes and topics to cover on the show.
They also do this on a per episode basis on the higher-tier plans.
If you’re looking to get serious with your podcast in 2024, Voxalyze can be a valuable asset for you to help you gain, and keep, new listeners.
I’ve been saying for a long time that if you have a podcast, you need a clear call to action (CTA), and it should be to join your mailing list.
But what I often don’t talk about is literally everything else. Where do you get a newsletter? How much should it cost? What do you send once people start signing up?
So I thought there was no better time than Podcast Advent to dive deeper into the topic of building your newsletter — specifically with ConvertKit — so that you can start building, and leveraging, your email list in 2024.
This is Part 1: Getting Started. Part 2 will be sending emails and automating. Part 3 will be growing your list and making money.
Why Have a Mailing List?
Let’s address the elephant in the room first: if you have a podcast and perhaps a social media presence, why do you even need a mailing list? The answer for most creators and small business owners is simple:
A mailing list is the only place where you truly own the access to your audience. If Facebook, X, TikTok, or Medium disappeared today, you’d immediately lose access to the people you were able to reach so easily a mere 24 hours ago.
For podcasters, it’s even more important than that. You don’t really have access to an audience at all. Sure, people subscribe or come across your show and listen — but there’s no platform to send them messages outside of their podcast app.
Further, they can’t interact with you at all. There’s no liking or commenting on individual episodes. And if someone rates your podcast on Apple Podcasts, you don’t get further access to them.
Podcasting without a mailing list can feel like a one-way street. But what you have a mailing list, you have direct access to people and you’re not just relegated to their podcast app.
Mailing List Options
Now, there are lots of options for creating a mailing list — ConvertKit isn’t the only game in town.
There’s Mailchimp, which has been around forever.
There’s the relative newcomer that’s gained a ton of popularity, Beehiiv.
There’s also ActiveCampaign, Brevo (formerly Sendinblue)1, AWeber, MailerLite, and a bunch of other ones.
Outside of that, there are publishing platforms that double as mailing list services — most notably Substack, which also has its own ability to host a podcast.
I started on Mailchimp, but moved when I outgrew everything they had to offer. And honestly, if I were starting today, I’d give Beehiiv a closer look…but as you’ll see in Part 3, there are some features that put ConvertKit in its own class of Email Service Provider (ESP).
It really depends on what you’re looking to do. There are pros and cons to each, but here’s why I’ve stuck with ConvertKit.
Why I Recommend ConvertKit
ConvertKit is free for your first 1,000 subscribers — and honestly it gets pretty pricy after that. But there’s good reason for it. They have infrastructure in place to allow you to connect with your audience in ways other ESPs don’t.
You can tag and segment your list based on interest (or favorite episode), and send just those specific segments emails.
You also get rich automations to make sure your new subscribers feel welcomed as soon as they subscribe.
Their growth and monetizations tools are fantastic. They offer the Creator Network — which is a similar feature to Substack’s recommendations — and they allow you to sell digital products right from the platform2.
Finally, they know the industry and share their knowledge. Their podcast, Deliverability Defined, is a gold mine of information to help you keep a clear, healthy email list.
And of-course, you own your list. If you want to export it and go somewhere else, you can!
Provide your email address, create a password, and agree to ConvertKit’s terms and conditions.
Set Up Your Account
Select “I’m just starting out” and choose the free plan for up to 1,000 subscribers.
Specify that you are a podcaster when prompted to select your creator type.
Create the Opt-In
We’re going to create a landing page — that way you don’t need a place to embed the form, just in case you don’t have a website for you podcast.
Create a Landing Page
Click on “Landing Pages & Forms” under the “Grow” section.
Choose “Create New” and select “Landing Page.”
Select a template that best suits your podcast.
Customize the Landing Page
Edit the general styles, font, and background to match your podcast’s branding.
Replace the default artwork and add text or a testimonial to encourage sign-ups.
Set the color scheme and customize the call-to-action button.
Create a thank you page and customize the redirect settings.
Publish Your Landing Page
Save your settings and publish the landing page.
In the video I cover some other options worth checking out too…things like how you might want to set up a custom domain, what to do you do have a WordPress site, etc.
How to Connect Your RSS feed (📹)
Something you’re probably wondering is what you should send to your subscribers. I’ll cover that more in Part 2 of this series, but for now, you could automatically email them when a new episode is out. This video shows you how to do that:
You’re Ready!
All right — you’re all set to start building your mailing list. Now, it’s time to start promoting it on your podcast.
Keep a look out for Part 2, where we’ll go through your first set of emails (the welcome sequence), and some basic automations.
Disclosure: both Brevo AND ConvertKit have sponsored my podcast, How I Built It. ↩
I’ll touch on some drawbacks to their service in Part 3, but it’s still better, comparatively speaking, than other similar services. ↩
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