(upbeat music) - We've talked a lot
about the RODECaster Pro and what an awesome tool it is for recording audio
and creating podcasts, but the next question
that comes up inevitably is once you've recorded something, how do you send your
podcast out into the world? My name is Tom, this is
the Enthusiasm project and today I'm gonna share
with you why I use Anchor to distribute my podcast. And this is not in any
way a sponsored video. I did not talk to Anchor
about making this. It's just a thing that I use. I'm just a guy that uses Anchor and I like it and it's very helpful and people have asked this question, so I wanted to share it with you. Why on Earth would you wanna
use a service like Anchor instead of just distributing
your podcast yourself? For me, five or six years ago, I produced several different podcasts and I was in charge of
all the distribution and uploading and I was
doing everything manually and it was awful. I couldn't stand it, it was
like the most tedious process to get everything configured,
to get it uploaded and updated and to set up all the feeds to
go to the different services. It's not that it's the most
difficult thing in the world, but I just found it to be so
clunky and so time consuming, that I actually dreaded, any time there was a new episode, because it meant that I would have to go through
this process again. So fast forward a few years, wanting to start a podcast of my own and Anchor is an option that's available. And the reason I chose Anchor is because it just gets out of the way and let's me upload my
podcast to the world. It's almost like YouTube for podcasts. So once you have your podcasts finished, that means all you do
is upload your MP3 file directly to Anchor and
then it sends it out to all the services that you select. And you can be in charge of which services your podcast is available on. Anchor is owned by Spotify, but it works with all the other services. It takes a couple days when
you first create your account for everything to become active and then after that it's just automatic and it's beautiful and it's free. But there's also a bit of confusion and misconceptions and even
what seems like downright conspiracy theories about Anchor. So I wanted to go through
those and address them and then you can decide for
yourself and your workflow, if Anchor's right for you. This really sounds like an
add, but I promise it's not. But if you're from Anchor
and you wanna pay me for it, I'll take the money. All you do is go to Anchor
and click on Sign up and you can create a free account. From there you'll have a
dashboard to your channel. Here is mine, you can
adjust your channel art, which will appear across
all of the platforms. You can do your description. For me, I have my podcast available on nine different platforms,
so it goes to Anchor, Breaker, Google, Apple,
Overcast, Pocket Casts, Radio Public, Spotify and Stitcher and I have done nothing other
than just click these options, when I started my account. And I just figured why not
put it out on everything. Make it as widely available as possible. And my podcast is very much a side project so I pretty much like never promote it and it still kinda
shocks me if people say, "Hey, I heard that
episode of your podcast". 'Cause it's like, oh,
people can listen to this. But that just proves to me that
these things actually work. It gets out there, people can search things and find things. Once you've got an episode ready to go, all you do is click New Episode and then you just upload
your episode right here. It processes and you click Save. From there, you can add in a description. You can add in season
number, episode number. You can select if it's going to be a clean or explicit episode. You can basically change all that info. You can even do individual artwork for each episode of your podcast. And of course you can schedule it, so it doesn't have to post right away. You can schedule it for
a certain day and time, so that way you can plan
ahead and be very organized and super professional about your podcast. But the cool thing about this
Create your episode page, is it does give you a few options that are kinda awesome. If you don't have your
own editing software, you do a lot just from within Anchor. And they also have an app, so you can even do some of
this stuff on your phone. Which makes everything very
accessible, very, very easy. So from here you can
literally capture audio in your browser, you can do
the same thing on your phone. You can even bring in guests. So if you wanted to an interview, you could do it that way. The coolest thing, I think though, is that you can do messages. So if you click on Messages, people can go to your Anchor page, click on Leave a Voice Message and they can just through
their phone or whatever, just leave a message for
you kinda like a voicemail. And then you can listen to it, but you can bring it
in to a future episode. And one of my favorite things to do, (slam) ouch, when I'm recording, is
I just connect my computer to the back of the RODECaster Pro and if I want to include
a listener message, I just say, you know, "Hey,
we talked about this last week and this person had an idea so here's you know, so and so's message", and then I just play it. Listen to it on the RODECaster, it records directly into the podcast and then I can upload
that as a new episode. You can click on individual episodes and you can see the
analytics for those episodes. Look at this beautiful chart here, it's like the back end of a rollercoaster. There is even a money tab and if you go there, you have the option to use
sponsorships, listener support, different ways to make
money with your podcast. There's no threshold to this. You can start right away and then basically every
impression of an add, or an Anchor sponsorship gets you money. Now for the last part of this video, I want to address where
a lot of the confusion comes from with Anchor. Which is the terms of service. So, I am not a lawyer, I'm not an expert. I've been using it for a couple of years. I have had zero issues. But I just wanna show you
directly from Anchor's website, their terms of service. You can kinda see some
of the more tricky areas that people have been dealing with. Anytime you create an account, you're automatically agreeing
to these terms of services. So it's a good idea for you to read through them thoroughly on your own. They're actually not crazy long, compared to like iTunes or something. So, it's pretty digestible
and they have little summaries throughout to help you
understand what's happening. Basically, there is a lot of controversy about what Anchor was and wasn't doing and Anchor addressed that
by trying to make things as clear as possible and
remove ambiguous language as much as possible. Which I actually really appreciate. So part one is eligibility. Ideally you're over 18 and you're just in charge of everything. But if you are under 18, but over 13, you can use Anchor with parent permission. Registration, they're just saying you're responsible for your account. This ownership section here, number three, is saying that basically
Anchor owns Anchor's stuff. Down here in number four is
where we get into user content. And this is where when we create stuff and we upload it to Anchor, what happens? Where are the rights, who owns it? All that kinda stuff. So, basically what they say is, first you are responsible for
making sure that the content you post is legal, is appropriate,
doesn't break anything. Anchor's not responsible for that. The rights that you're giving Anchor, according to their terms of service, is basically the right to host
and distribute your podcasts. And there was some confusion, because people were saying, "Well, I don't wanna give Anchor
the rights to my podcasts", and you're not giving up the rights to anything that you own. You're giving them the limited
rights to distribute it. Because legally they have
to have some kinda rights to your content in order for them to send it out to other people. You still own everything and
they say that very explicitly in their terms of services. It says in bold, you own your content. Anchor prides itself
on empowering creators and we have no intention to take ownership of your content in any way. You're giving us permission to host, use and distribute the content you create. For example, this allows us
to syndicate your content at other platforms so that you're audience can hear your podcast
anywhere they choose. And then of course, you're also saying, that your content does not
infringe on anyone else's rights. You're not just violating
copyrights all over the place and you're doing you're part, they're doing your part and together, everybody's making podcasts. There's a giant section
on user guidelines. Which kind of looks like the
part of my classroom syllabus that I use with my students. Which is basically all
the stuff you can't do. If it's illegal, or terrible, or in super bad taste, don't do it. Kinda just like with YouTube or any other online platform like this. The monetization section, number nine, kinda goes over what we talked about. How it works, the different
ways you can make money, who's eligible, who's
not, how payment works, when you get paid, how you get paid. All of that sort of stuff. And then they go into account termination and arbitration and more serious things. That's beyond me, nothing
I do is gonna go into that. Hopefully nothing you do
is gonna go that seriously. Essentially, if you just
wanna upload a podcast and not have to deal with all of the feeds and everything manually,
yourself, Anchor works great. I think there are other
services that do similar things. I've been using Anchor for over two years, just about two years and I love it. It works wonderfully, it
maintains audio quality. I've never had a single complaint, and I've never had a single issue. And in conjunction with
the RODECaster Pro, I can finish recording a podcast and have it uploaded to Anchor
within five or ten minutes. And scheduled and ready to go. Which is about the simplest
workflow I can imagine. Now again, I'm not a lawyer, or even a professional podcaster. I'm just a guy who uses Anchor and I wanted to explain to you why that service works
really well with me. Might not be perfect for
you, depending on your needs and maybe there's something
I even missed in here. Something I overlooked
that's really important, where it's like, "Oh my gosh,
why are you using that?" I don't think so, but if there is, I definitely love hear
about that so that we're all as informed as possible. So I hope that's helpful
and useful information. Especially since so many of us have been starting podcasts lately. It almost seems like it's a
legal requirement in some ways. And actually, it reminds
me, do you know what a group of dolphin actors is called? A podcast! Because a group of dolphins is a pod and they're like a cast of actors. (upbeat music)
