Month: August 2021

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podcast

527- Podcasting and repurposing podcast episodes

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In this episode of The Podcast Reporter, we discuss the topic of repurposing podcast episodes within the area of improving your podcast show and helping it to grow. This theme was conceived by a recent publication of a post in the podreacher.com site, with the address of:  https://podreacher.com/podcast-repurposing-to-grow/?utm_source=podnews.net&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=podnews.net:2021-03-03

And in this mentioned article, the following are sub-topics that are discussed:

  1. why you should repurpose podcast episodes — especially helping search possibilities to your show;
  2. is repurposing worth your time as a podcaster? And to answer that question, there are several reasons given:
    • “Repurposed podcast content will help you grow if:
      • You think more people could benefit from your content.
      • Your content is mostly evergreen (meaning it won’t go out of date).
      • You have an established production process.
      • You’re open to being discovered on multiple channels.”

       

Then there is a 4-step process for repurposing podcast content;

  • Start with the end in mind;
  • Listen for tips and strategies;
  • Start writing for repurposing:
      • Use direct quotes sparingly.
      • Discard parts of the interview.
      • Ignore chronology.
      • Tighten your introduction.
      • Brainstorm multiple headlines.
      • Spot the gems.
  • Editing: refine the position;
  • Then gain practice and become a professional repurposer.

Now, I myself have repurposed content from other podcasts, as well as the current one, when it seemed appropriate. Whether the passage of time requires a refresh of the theme to grow the impact of the podcast show, or whether the theme once again crops up in the news from the podosphere — the time must be appropriate for a repurposed post.

And your downloads and other stats will prove whether it was well received — especially with the feedback.

We hope that you consider repurposing content, when appropriate. And it all does not have to be from a prior episode of your current show. You can repurpose content from other podcast shows, especially if the themes are related. I have done so with repurposed episodes from some of my prior 16 podcast shows from the past — but they must all have had a key relationship to the discussion at hand.

We hope that you, yourself, will consider the idea of repurposed content for your show, if appropriate. And if you find that this becomes a successful strategy, then we hope that your show will benefit by improving the quality and getting more subscribers and downloads which will have your listeners enjoy your content (especially for the newer listeners that were not around for the original episode of content that you repurpose now).

Thank you for your attention.

Copyright (c) 2021, Matrix Solutions Corporation and podreacher.com and michaelandmike.com. All rights reserved.

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podcast

526- Lessons learned after 15 years of Podcasting

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In this episode of The Podcast Reporter, we discuss my own lessons learned and experiences of value gained from podcasting for the last 15 years, when I became a podcaster — with having been within the podosphere as a listener for the prior 2 years (and with listening to over 100 podcast shows per week, as there were not as many shows as there are now).

In a recent edition of the podnews.net newsletter, we had an article that spoke about what experiences and benefits were learned by someone who had just celebrated seven years in podcasting (you can find it at Bruce Wawrzyniak, the host of Now Hear This who celebrated his 7th anniversary of the show with 367 episodes). Well, as a podcaster with over double the time in the podosphere as an active podcaster, and with over 1000 episodes and 2 million downloads, I wanted to also give you some perspective of an old-timer podcaster.

Now, by old-timer, I don’t mean to state that I was one of the original podcasters when the podosphere started. By no means. There were folks like Gary Leland, Todd Cochrane, CC Chapman, Paul Colligan, Rob Walch and Dave Jackson (among others) that already had podcast shows — and some for almost 2 years since 2004. Among them, I seemed to be a newcomer. And my podcast show that I promoted at the time of the early Podcast and Portable Media conference seemed pale in comparison to the work of those earlier maestros.

But now, after 15 years of podcasting, my current flagship podcast show of PodcastReporter.com has between 500 and 600 episodes; my other show of TheStrugglingBiz.com has over 100 episodes; and my other podcast show of 2030podcast.com has over 50 episodes — and the latter is done with a co-host, Matt Cox (a podcaster with over 12 years of his show, Brunch with the Brits.net).

So the question is: what experiences have I learned from podcasting in 15 years? and what is the suggestion that I deliver to new and aspiring podcasters (even though these will never be posted in the podnews.net newsletter)?

  • I have learned that technical skills are important, but that they are not the most important — what is of greatest importance is the value that your show and its episodes will provide to your audience;
  • I have learned that your communication with your audience is critical — and that goes for any planned or unplanned absences (remember — even great podcasters like Daniel J Lewis of The Audacity to Podcast show disappeared for almost six months without leaving word to his audience of any planned or unplanned absence.  But he later made up for it by publishing an episode explaining his forced absence, and then proceeded to return to the podosphere in many formats. And he keeps being a subject matter expert in his own right);
  • I have received value in the faith and commitment of my audience in staying with me, providing me with feedback and commentary, as well as giving word-of-mouth promotion to others in the podosphere;
  • I have received value in seeing the number of downloads increasing for each show (in fact, both The Struggling Entrepreneur podcast show — which has podfaded — and this show have had over 1 million downloads each, and still growing), as well as the popularity of my shows increasing;
  • I have received value when our 2030podcast.com show received promotion on an international live stream — they played episodes from this show to their audiences; they stated that this was a “quality show” to the audience; and they praised the quality of the audio, as well, to their audience and live stream. And they did this WITHOUT any requests from me or any paid promotion or marketing or sales. This occurred because they found value in the show; and as of the date of this episode, it still continues to be published with various episodes and still continues to receive admiration from listeners who found value in the content of this show, even though none of the serendipity results were planned;
  • I found value in other podcasters whom I have met in person or on the web — either a conferences or in remote interviews which I conducted for many of my 16 concurrent podcast shows that I had in 2010, and which I had to whittle down due to health and personal family issues with which I had to deal in 2016 to 2018;
  • and finally, I learned that the VALUE FOR VALUE model applies to podcasters who deliver good content to listeners. I learned this when the value was “treasure” (i.e., monetization), as well as “tech” (i.e., learning valuable technical skills and models), as well as “frienship” value (i.e., starting great relationships with the pundits of podcasting and other podcasters).

And these are just a few of the lessons learned from this podcaster in my 15 years as a podcaster and 17 years within the podosphere.

So, if you think that seven years is a lot of time to learn about value in podcasting, try learning from the podcasters who have spent more than double that time within their craft. This will help deliver lessons learned to the new and aspiring podcasters, so that they can improve their skills and become better deliverers of value to their audiences.

Thank you for your attention.

Copyright (c) 2021, Matrix Solutions Corporation and michaelandmike.com and 2030podcast.com and Matt Cox. All rights reserved.

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podcast

574- Response to most-asked question by podcasters

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In this episode of The Podcast Reporter, we review some content that answers the issue of the most asked question by podcasters in podcasting. So in a keynote at the 2021 Podcast Movement conference, we have the speaker tell all:  “The existential question for so many of us is not how do I grow my audience, but why did my audience stop growing? “

For this, we look to the web site by Tom Webster, who gave a presentation at the conference.

However, in the article from his website, Tom gives the very simple explanation that is above and beyond any SEO or promotion programs or social media referrals, etc.: “There are many answers to the question ‘how can I grow my audience,’ but there is one simple answer to the question, “why did my audience stop growing?” You might not like it, but here it is: because people stopped recommending your podcast.”

So this leads me to believe that WOMMA (“word-of-mouth-marketing-advertising”) may be the best way and the really old way in proven circles to help grow your audience. For myself, as a podcaster, I have seen this work and I am a case study of this with a podcast show that has seen its audience grow for the past year without a single SEO tactic, without a single promotion on the web or on social media, and without any paid advertising of any kind. It was strictly on referrals made by word of mouth by those podcasters who had a stream of shows listened to by the world audiences. They had mentioned that it was a great show, with value — and the audiences grew in their participation very quickly and very largely.

And although I did not plant any questions to my listeners, I feel that those who listened to the show had the following issues addressed, as Tom Webster mentions in his article:

“In my keynote at Podcast Movement I focused on the concept of recommendability, and gave three things every podcaster could do to improve theirs:

  1. Know who you are for, and why they are there
  2. Make your show easy to recommend
  3. Master your craft”

Then Tom goes into detail and explains each one of those three bullets in his presentation. He also has some charts in which he goes into detail about discoverability of podcast shows, and why you should think more about other areas beyond being discovered — especially recommendability.

And I believed that the case study of the show mentioned from my team addressed all of these in several ways. So, sometimes you can reach a level of success in growing our audience without your even planning for it or paying for it — all due to the word-of-mouth marketing and advertising given by others through recommendability.

So, thus, I would recommend that you consume the article from Tom (if you did not have a chance to consume the audio of his presentation from a virtual ticket of the conference or you did not have a presence in person at the conference). You may want to see how you may define and plan for recommendability in addition to discoverability — and beyond — for the success of your show in growing your audience.

Thank you for your attention.

Copyright (c) 2021, Matrix Solutions Corporation and Tom Webster and michaelandmike.com. All rights reserved.

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podcast

525- Scheduling your episodes in your Podcast show

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In this episode of The Podcast Reporter, we discuss an earlier post in medium.com (to which I was alerted in podnews.net) where the topic is: “Scheduling podcasts Helps you level-up without burning out.”

In this article, the topic of scheduling the date when your podcast episode will go live to your listeners and audience is addressed with the tools in RSS. In another tool, WordPress, I have used the time stamp and date feature to do my scheduling for my episodes — all of them for three podcast shows. I have done this for 15 years, and the workflow and operation that I have from editing the episode to publishing and posting and making it live all seem to flow smoothly.

But in this article that originally appeared in RSS.com podcasting, the author goes into a bit of detail (along with screen shots taken when scheduling and using RSS.com podcasting) for each topic:

  • Schedule everything to maximize efficiency;
  • Schedule when your podcast will go live;
  • Scheduling your podcast will make promotions more manageable;
  • When is the best time to schedule an episode to be released?
  • How to schedule your podcast episode (with screen shots and flow)

 

Now, for this podcaster, I have always used WordPress, and I have found it to be sufficiently adequate. Yes, there are a few flaws, as well as features that I wish that it had. But especially for the new and aspiring podcaster, this may be the proper tool at the right time. In fact, there was a tutorial on WordPress located in Udemy, the electronic catalog and learning site, which taught WordPress.

In fact, I am planning, writing the show notes and script, as well as doing the recording, editing and scheduling of this podcast episode in late February of 2021 — which is six months before this episode is scheduled to go live. How is that for scheduling an episode with some evergreen topics?

We hope that you can either learn from this episode and use the tools that are suggested, or that you can adapt WordPress to your own workflow and become a successful podcaster — and that scheduling your episodes will be something that will help you to become a better podcaster.

Thank you for your attention.

Copyright (c) 2021, Matrix Solutions Corporation and medium.com and michaelandmike.com . All rights reserved.

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podcast

524- Podcasting show revives car-cast episode

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In this episode of The Podcast Reporter, we honor the trail blazed by pundit Paul Colligan of ThePodcastReport show, as we deliver a car-cast podcast episode here.

I have delivered car-casts before, the last one in 2007, when my mother had surgery — and I had recorded my car cast while I was in the automobile in the parking lot waiting for the several hours to pass as her cancer operation finished. Unfortunately, she had passed away in 2018.

But for this episode, I used my old and trusty Zoom H2 portable recorder with a very inexpensive microphone and headset that I had used in 2006 and 2007 when I did a “roving reporter” review at the first Podcast and Portable Media Expo in Ontario, California. So, although the tech is inexpensive and old, it served its purpose well and delivered me some excellent recordings. And, yes, I did need to do some post-production on the resulting audio files.

And although this recording was a renewable experiment to go back to some of the beginnings of my podcasting career, I enjoyed the fact that a battery-operated Zoom H2 recorder stood up to the job once again. And this is in spite of not recording while driving, but just recording while I was waiting in the post office parking lot while I waited to mail my business taxes to the IRS.

As you will hear in this audio episode, several short topics were discussed — including the upcoming possible Podcast Movement conference in Nashville, Tennessee. I also included a bit about the Podfest Global Summit that started today online.

As an experienced podcaster, I do encourage you to use your portable recorder to plan for — and to record and publish — a car-cast.

As I mentioned at the start of this episode, I listened faithfully to one of my early mentors, Paul Colligan, as he made use of his time while in the car and recorded to his hands-free recorder the episode in which he delivered some great content on his thoughts. Not only did he record on ThePodcastReport.com, but he also recorded car-casts to his secondary show, Thinking Out Loud. And I always enjoyed them — as he described the tech that he was using at the beginning of each car-cast episode. And, as you can hear, I am emulating him, as well, by describing the tech at the beginning of this episode.

Thus, I hope you do get a chance to provide some variety to your listeners by delivering a car-cast and show your audience that you can be flexible and in the words of Ricky Nelson from his song, you, too, can be a “travelin’ man.”

Thank you for your attention.

Copyright (c) 2021, Matrix Solutions Corporation and Paul Colligan and michaelandmike.com. All rights reserved.

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podcast

572- Take-aways from podcast conferences — then and now

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In this episode of the Podcast Reporter, we discuss some “After-Action-Reports” (as they were called if you were in the military) and a promotion to describe benefits of the conference from some podcasters who did attend in person the Podcast Movement conference — in particular, the latest conference in 2021 and the very first initial conference in 2014.

The first Podcast Movement conference in 2014:

In this same podcast show, we presented an older episode of this podcast show that stated the benefits that you would miss if you would not attend Podcast Movement (initial conference in 2014):

And the slides that promoted this theme are in this PowerPoint slide presentation:

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/fgcastgain/PDF_of_NineThings-PodcastMovement-presentation-slides_1.pdf

The recent Podcast Movement conference after-action report:

In a recent edition of the Podcast Business Journal, Matty Staudt delivered his perspectives by publishing his “Five Things I Learned at Podcast Movement.”

The summary of these benefits received by Matty are stated in the following, as Matt states: “…it was still a an amazing time with some excellent speakers. Here are my top five takeaways.”

  1. Our industry continues to be one where everyone supports each other.
  2. Podcasting for brands is becoming big business.
  3. Monetization is all the talk…. We are still a young industry and a lot needs to shake out, but I’ve never seen so many tools available to monetize shows without relying on CPM. It’s still a tough road to hoe for most, but it’s getting better.
  4. Everyone wants to be Clubhouse.
  5. Radio is getting serious and being taken more seriously.

And you may ask “who is Matty Staudt?” For your benefit, we answer that question with the information in this article:

Matty Staudt is the EVP of Podcasting for Amaze Media Labs producers of podcasts for brands and events, Founder of Jam Street Media, and former VP of Podcast Programming at iHeart. You can find him on all socials @mattystaudt or email at matty@amazemedialabs.com 

It was interesting to compare the notable benefits of attending this same conference as it has morphed into an inbound event within the podosphere. We hope that you, too, can find benefits in attending.

For this podcaster, I did attend the initial Podcast Movement conference in 2014 (in which I did share a booth and meet another podcaster, Mr. Ben Krueger of cashflowpodcasting.com); I also did attend the Podcast Movement 2020-Evolutions in February —  but I did not attend the most recent conference in Nashville in 2021.

However, I do plan to attend the 2022 Podcast Movement conference in the first quarter of the year. I have received benefits both in education and training and knowledge and in-person connections and improvement of relationships with other podcasters — as well as getting interviews from the attendees and the exhibitors at the conference.

Thus, we shall see how the situation for attending live events will evolve and what the nature of the podosphere will be at that time.

We hope that you, too, can attend a conference in person (or online in the virtual conference) and get the benefits to help your podcast show for your podcasts to grow and be successful. For this, we recommend that you do create a cost-benefit analysis to justify participating in an upcoming conference.

Thank you for your attention.

Copyright (c) 2021, Matrix Solutions Corporation and Podcast Business Journal and Paul Colligan and Matty Staudt and michaelandmike.com. All rights reserved.

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podcast

560- Podcast subscription services — seeing the value

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In this episode of The Podcast Reporter, we go into the theme of podcast subscription services. And for this, we refer to an article posted by podcaster Ben Krueger of cashflowpodcasting.com.

Ben Krueger

As we have stated here before, I personally have known Ben since 2014, when we met side-by-side at the exhibit hall of the first Podcast Movement conference in Dallas.

Since then, Ben has delivered lots of great content, especially aimed for the new and aspiring podcaster. And, of course, his calls-to-action are for a subscription to his services or for using his deliverables to help you increase your productivity and head to podcasting success.

In this case, the article that he delivers to us is about the Podcast Subscription Services and their worth to you. He describes what they are in simple terms:  “Podcast subscriptions give you (the podcaster) an opportunity to sell your content to listeners. You can choose to keep some of your content free and create exclusive content for paying listeners or opt for all your episodes to be paid moving forward.”

After explaining what they are, the main topics he covers are the following:

  • How can these services benefit my podcast?
  • What types of podcast subscription services are there?
  • Podcaster options for creating a podcast subscription — and he gives examples with both Apple and Spotify;
  • A wrap-up for monetization that you may select — it is up to you, and there is no one single model.

For monetization options, Ben has always been creative and descriptive of the means for podcasters to generate revenue — especially if the podcaster wants to start a business podcast show.

Please remember that Ben has several free pdfs that outline not only his solutions for you, but also refers to others who have certain expertise that can always assist you: “Ben Krueger is the founder of Cashflow Podcasting and he specializes in helping thought leaders entrepreneurs amplify their impact through podcasting.”

I hope that you can reflect on the subscription services that will help your podcast show generate the revenue with the best model for your business, and that they will be worth it for you to invest some time in creating and executing those that will be beneficial for you.

Thank you for your attention.

Copyright (c) 2021, Matrix Solutions Corporation and Ben Krueger of cashflowpodcasting.com and michaelandmike.com. All rights reserved.

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podcast

523- Being a guest on Podcasting interviews can have good results for your show

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In this episode of The Podcast Reporter, we once again touch upon the theme of being a guest on podcasting interviews in order to improve the quality of your show or grow your audience, and even get new clients for your business.

First, let’s take the last area — getting clients for your business. In an audio interview, Ben Krueger of cashflowpodcasting.com interviewed Mojca Mars in 2017 about this theme. For the 28 minutes of this episode, we hear Ben targeting the area of getting great clients with GREAT INTERVIEWS.

Note: As I have stated many times, Ben Krueger is an authority on monetizing your podcasts and building authority as an influencer by podcasting.

Now, this is not the first time we dealt with success in your business as a result of podcasting interviews — but from the OTHER side of the equation of conventional wisdom. In the past, as early as 2015, we dealt with Tom Schwab and his Interview Valet site (from an audio sound byte at the Podcast Movement Conference in 2015) and his ideas of how to grow your business and get great clients with monetization of yourself being interviewed by other podcasters.

In fact, we would like to include the podcast episode we did earlier at that time with Tom Schwab from this own podcast series:

And, as you can see, Tom has had success in being the interviewee and building up his business in many ways. What helped in his business was his past experiences in the US Navy as a veteran and his acumen for enriching the interview experience for the podcaster.

And also, we would like to point out that Max Flight has also given us some evergreen material in his episode of BEING INTERVIEWED. This is a look at the interview process from the side of the interviewee, and not the interviewer. We now present a past audio episode from this series that is delivered by Max Flight on the issues and the preparation of being interviewed:

However, its my recollection from 2015 that Tom Schwab led the way of other podcasters who jumped on the “guest interview” bandwagon to develop plans and shows and programs to have podcasters become guests on different interview shows in order to promote their own podcast shows — where monetization was the key success factor.

We hope that you can get value from these 3 interviews that will help you determine how you can grow your business, have great interviews, and thus get great clients and great results in podcasting.

Thank you for your attention.

Copyright (c) 2021, Matrix Solutions Corporation and Ben Krueger of cashflowpodcasting.com and Tom Schwab of Interview Valet and Max Flight and michaelandmike.com. All rights reserved.

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podcast

559- Podcasters need to examine adapter requirements new gear

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In this episode of The Podcast Reporter, we deliver a lesson learned by yours truly in the area of planning for new recording equipment. This is a tale of my experience in getting a new handy recorder, but not knowing enough ahead of time of all the requirements for all the attachments (especially critical cables) that are supported and required by podcasters.

This is the case study of my experiences with the Zoom H1n handy personal recorder and how I should have done more research. I have not yet tested thoroughly this piece of hardware for recording and publishing podcast episodes and interviews — but I will do so in the future and relate these results and perspectives to you.

So, in this unrehearsed episode, I go through my documents received with the H1n and I relate to you how you need to know which options and attachments you may need when you order hardware — especially recorders.

Now, how did I get so confident when I ordered the H1n?

Well, in the past 16 years, I have had a Zoom H4, a Zoom H4n, a Zoom H2, a Zoom H1 and a Samson go-mic — and these recorders and hardware devices all used the same micro-USB adapter. However, the H1n has a different micro-USB cable with a different sized input adapter — and the latter needed to be ordered.

As you will hear in the audio episode, there was an accessory pack available with the correct cable. So I am awaiting its arrival after I ordered it — and I go into the cost, as well.

Note: I AM NOT COMPLAINING — this episode is a gentle reminder to fellow podcasters that assuming you know the requirements of the resources you order may surprise you when you may learn that you have to order more gear to make the new system work for you in podcasting.

I thank you for listening to this episode and for your attention about my lesson learned in the world of podcast gear.

Copyright 2021, Matrix Solutions Corporation and Zoom North America and michaelandmike.com. All rights reserved.

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podcast

521- Benefit for Podcasters in screencasting and video creation

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In this episode of The Podcast Reporter, we deliver a repurposed episode for podcasters to learn screencasting and create video courses by using a tool for video creation, video editing and video publishing called Camtasia Studio.

This episode came from a webinar that Lon Naylor delivered to an audience of podcasters who were interested in learning more about screencasting and producing videos (with the possibility of monetizing this for their shows). Lon is the principal of a training program called Screencapturevideo.com, [note: this program was originally called LearnCamtasia.com, where Lon co-hosted training webinars — but it has morphed to today’s Screencapturevideo.com] where Lon hosts webinar training sessions every fortnight (i.e., every other week) with “how-to” advice for screen-capture video creation for both PowerPoint and Camtasia. Although Lon started with his show of ScreencastStudios.com, he now devotes much of his attention to educating podcasters and other New Media professionals to screencasting, video creation and video editing with PowerPoint and Camtasia.

As you will hear in this audio episode, Lon discusses the benefits of being a video editor to enhance your skills which you probably already have with audio editing. Since the audio was captured from a webinar, Lon uses the words of “pointing and viewing” — but these are readily visualized as you listen to the audio; and the video portion of the webinar is really not needed to get the value of what he is delivering in the content of this episode.

This episode and capture of the content was given freely to the podcasting audience by Lon Naylor and we have received permission to syndicate and repurpose it for podcast audiences.

What we would suggest to the podcasters that have a curiosity or desire to investigate video capture, screen capture, video creation and video editing in the pursuit of creating video files in courses such as tutorials or training (and even go further into the possibility of monetizing video training deliverables as a revenue stream for your business) is to take up Lon’s suggestion of downloading the Camtasia Studio program and then trying it out FREE for 30 days — and, by the way, this is a full-function version of the program with no limitations and no  functions crippled (except for the program to stop at the expiration of 30-days). And I would suggest that the price for licensing the program and using it in your business is very reasonable — including the maintenance agreements that let you get a free upgrade for the future versions.

Then, if you wish to pursue learning how to be a video editor or course creator, and create your own training videos or tutorials, then we would recommend investigating and possibly signing up for Lon’s training program at screencapturevideo.com. I, myself, went through his program and learned how to be a professional screen capture and video editor. And I have then monetized this for my business and created training courses for businesses and received profitable results from this by using the Camtasia Software.

Podcasters have an advantage over others in New Media

Because you are a podcaster, you have an advantage already — in that the processes and procedures and functions of video editing are very similar to those of audio editing. In fact, your audio files can be imported and included in any video screencasts that you wish to create — they could be merely “assets” that can be imported into your final deliverable as a video file. And they can be part of the overall list of assets that you can import — or create — to create a video course.

So, we hope that you can investigate the possibility of expanding your reach as a screencaster (in addition to podcasting) and become a successful video editor or video course creator by using Camtasia — and that this could become a revenue producer for you eventually to help your business grow into another environment and succeed.

Thank you for your attention.

Copyright (c) 2021, Matrix Solutions Corporation and Lon Naylor of screencapturevideo.com and michaelandmike.com. All rights reserved.