Hey welcome back to The How To Podcast Series, it's Dave with you on The Daily Dave. It's a Dave thing. It's always a Dave thing. Well anyways, you're here, I'm here. I want to answer something that's been coming up in recent conversations with clients when we talk around podcast websites. No. There are lots of people out there that want to take your money. There's lots of people who want to point you in the wrong direction.
And there's a lot of noise around podcast websites. Do I need one? Yes or no? Where should I go? I heard about this great third party service that does it all for me if I pay them every month and yada yada on and on and go. There's a lot of press going on around podcast websites right now and I just want to bring a little bit of clarification for you so that you're not misdirected maybe into some of the things that you're not doing.
And it's something that doesn't really serve you in your podcast long term. And this is what I mean. You can go to GoDaddy which I have bought all of my websites through GoDaddy. And I've buy my domains for some of them that have been as little as $12 a year.
$12 a month everyone to have your own website. So like how to podcast.ca living the next chapter.com. Trim media solutions.ca podcast editing and support.com. I'll purchase through my GoDaddy account. And I own that address. So think about real estate. Okay, let's do the difference between owning a home and renting a home. There's a difference right owning a home. You get the equity. You put your money into the account.
You put your money into it and then as your property gets more valuable you benefit in the long term because you own it. Now if I rent a property and I pay money to the landlord. It doesn't matter. Like I don't get anything back from that rental agreement in that I don't get any equity or anything back to me as a renter in that space. So the landlord benefits and the renter has a place to live but you don't really own anything.
You're going to one day say to the landlord I'm done I'm moving and you pack up your truck and you move away. You don't get to take with you any of the things you've done. When I won my wife and I had a young family we rented a townhouse.
And we took care of that place as if it was ours. We loved it. It was a great three bedroom townhouse. Young family. So we did gardening. We fixed up the backyard. We did all these little things. And you know what we couldn't take with us? The garden. When we moved the garden stayed at the house for the next tenant who was renting they benefited from all our hard work. We got nothing out of it. You can't take the trees and the plants with you. That's weird.
So they all stayed there and the landlord benefited from us taking care of the place. Let's take the whole real estate thing analogy to our online presence. Okay. When you buy a domain. So how to podcast dot CA is my domain. I own that. There's only one out of podcast dot CA. There's other. How to podcast dot blah blah blah.
I'm not going to get you to the house. And I wouldn't go there because you're going to get some really weird things happening. But anyways, out of podcast dot CA I own that. So there's only one. Website that has my stuff. That's me. I own that. I am the the owner. Okay. I'm not renting that. I'm owning that. That's mine.
So I can then take that website address and I can point it anywhere I want. I can point it at Facebook. I can point it at YouTube. I can point out my LinkedIn. But whenever you type in that website address you go where I want you to go. Now what's happening in podcasting is there's people coming on into these rooms on Facebook or making podcast about podcasting.
And they're telling you to go to a third party resource, which could be your hosting site. So I have Buzzsprout, Captivate and Spotify for podcasters. All of those and others will give you a free generic basic podcast website that ties into your podcast.
It's kind of a part of what they do. Now they're not the best. I think out of all them, I like Captivate and Buzzsprout some more than others. There's some that are just terrible. They just look like a, you know, a somebody brand new in creating websites created it for you and it's good enough.
So I wouldn't I wouldn't encourage you to do that. So you could buy your domain and point to that your free site created for you by your podcast host. That's one option. You could also then like I said, point it to your Facebook, point it to your Facebook groups, point it to your Instagram, your ex, whatever Twitter, whatever calling it now.
You can point it to your YouTube, whatever you want, you can point it anywhere you want, just redirects it. And that could be a permanent redirect or just temporary. That's your choice. So you have the domain and you can send people wherever you want. I would encourage you to send them to your own website because you own that. Okay, you own the domain and you own the experience when I come to your website instead of being redirected to Facebook or YouTube or pod page or all these other places.
Those are third party external resources that you can point your, your URL, your dot com dot CA dot whatever.co, your redirecting people to that location. I would love to direct your website to your website as an owner of the space. Now you can redirect it. Like I said to these other places, but remember that you don't own it.
I can redirect my website to Facebook, but do I own Facebook? Yes or no? No. Do I own Instagram? Yes or no? No. Do I own YouTube? I would love to. But no, I don't. Do I own pod page? No, do I own my hosting sites page? No. I don't own any of those things. But what I do own is my how to podcast dot CA. So I built my website on Canva. Now you're like, well, Dave, you just said don't point it to something else. But I pay for Canva.
And Canva is what I use for everything else that I do in my podcast. So adding a website to that is great. I can also, I also have living the next chapter is hosted on GoDaddy, which is my domain site where I bought the domain. But I pay them every month or a yearly subscription to my website. So there's all these different things. But the main thing is I'm trying to encourage you with is in a world of noisy podcasts about podcasting.
There's a lot of hype right now about pod pod page. Now if you go back in my history of my show, I did play with pod page for a while. They had a free plan, which was awesome. Got you in the door. It gave you very limited resources, but enough to get you started. And I actually did episodes about pod page and how much I loved it.
And then they went paid only and they get rid of all the free plans, which most places do. And I kind of just went somewhere else from there. I went to pod link. And then I also went to episodes.fm because it gave me a shareable link to all of the places you can hear the show without using a paid subscription of pod page. Remember I'm paying for my domain.
And then I'm also then paying for pod page. So I was trying to eliminate one of those paid things. So bundling it back into Canva made sense for me. And that's where I built how to podcast.ca. If you want to see what a Canva website looks like, then go to my website, how to podcast.ca. You'll see it.
But here's my big thing just to remind you is if pod pages of thing you want to try, then great go do it. It's a monthly fee. They have different levels that you can choose based on how much money you want to put it on a monthly basis.
They do have a great team. Awesome. But if you want to own the conversation, the one thing downfall of using these third party places is you're giving them your SEO. You're giving them all your Google juice. So I'm coming to you on your website, but you're sending me to Facebook. Who benefits do you benefit by redirecting me to Facebook or does Facebook benefit Facebook benefits. If I redirect you to Instagram, who benefits Instagram benefits.
If I redirect you to pod page, who benefits you or pod page. Pod page, you're creating SEO traffic to the places you point your website to. I would much rather you benefit from the long term growth of your website, the authority of your domain, all of that leading back to you.
Not to some third party that could be here today and gone tomorrow, we could have one of these third party things bought up by another hosting site and they just delete it and you're done. It happens everyone. It does. So what can't be deleted is your domain because you own it. So I'm encouraging you.
If you do start with the third party solution for your podcast in the early days, that's fine. But I would love to see you migrate to being your own website presence for you alone that serves you and not another party.
When I type in your website or search for you, I want all of that benefit to go to you, not to the third party that you're redirecting me to. Do you understand? You deserve all of the hard work and credit for all the things you've done, not a third party that you are using their service.
If that's your, you have the opportunity to create your own website and do your own thing, please do that. And if you need help with that, how to podcast.ca. I'd love to help you walk through if you want to try Canva. You can try Canva website. There's Wix. I don't, I would never advise you to use WordPress because that's just, that's no.
There's Squarespace. There's a bunch of different options that you can try. I love Canva because it's already in my Canva subscription. So if you already have Canva, you're not going to pay anything extra to have your website hosted through Canva.
And all the tools you're used to on Canva can be applied to a website. So check it out. How to podcast.ca. My big takeaway for you is just to remember that you want to own the traffic. Don't be a renter on rented land on someone else's platform giving them all of the SEO juice that should go to you.
Don't redirect the attention away from yourself. Redirect and focus the attention on yourself because Google loves to send people to websites that bring value. You bring value. And if you need a website for your podcast, let me know. I'd love to help you at how to podcast.ca. Stop giving away the attention others. You deserve to keep it for yourself. If you need help, let me know. Thanks for listening. Talk soon.