Budgeting for Bandwidth


Before you can sit back and wait for your listeners to tell you how much they love the podcast, you should be ready for one tiny detail. Many blogs and podcasting websites contain some language about how they'll handle "excess" bandwidth demand. Your first job is to figure out how many downloads constitute "excessive" and how to make sure your downloads each month total less than that.

Take a look at your podcast files. If you're like most people, you find that your average podcasts are all about the same size. For the sake of a good illustration and easy math, let's say that the average is 10 Megabytes. This means that 10 downloads will be 100 Megabytes of bandwidth, while 100 downloads is one gigabyte. If you actually had 100 downloads of your 10 Megabyte podcast, the total bandwidth would be a bit more than a gigabytethe web page, pictures, and other information on your site all take up bandwidth, too.

Now that you know how to figure out the bandwidth, begin looking at your expected traffic levels, and how you'll deal with "the horror of success". You can either pay your service provider for more bandwidth, or you can unplug your server when you hit the monthly limit. If you want a successful podcast, you'll choose the former, with a Tip Jar, perhaps, to help offset the cost of bandwidth.

That's the basic list of hardware and software you need to get started on the road to podcasting. Now, let's start looking at the question of how you should be using all that nifty hardware and software.

The Absolute Minimum

Once you decide on your basic computing platform, it will be time to collect the hardware and software required for a podcasting studio.

Your podcast starts with the microphone, and a low-cost condenser mic will get you started. As you develop your podcast you can invest in a superior microphone.

Headphones are crucial for a successful podcast; they let you know how your listeners will hear the podcast.

You may decide to take your podcast production on the road. There are a variety of portable recorders, available for field recording.

There are many software options available for creating your podcast. You'll want to find options for recording, editing, FTP, tag creation, and uploading. There are a number of capable programs available that combine all the critical features for developing and managing podcast sites.

Every time someone downloads your podcast, it adds to your monthly download total. Keep an eye on the size of your podcast, since your user agreement with the ISP or blog-hosting site might include a limit on how much bandwidth is included in your monthly fee. Be proactive talking with your ISP about changing programs, even for a short time, to a plan with a higher bandwidth limit.




Absolute Beginner's Guide to Podcasting
Absolute Beginners Guide to Podcasting.
ISBN: B001U8C03Q
EAN: N/A
Year: 2004
Pages: 167

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net