YOU WANT TO HAVE YOUR PODCASTS LISTED ON iTUNES.

It's very important for you to have your podcasts listed on the iTunes site.  This is the big one at this time and having your podcasts listed there will mean your podcasts will be listened to by many people.  To start with go to the site and download the latest iTunes program. Then navigate to the podcast section and you will soon see how important it is to be listed there.  The next obvious question is how do you get listed on this site?  Well once you have your podcast put together and your RSS feeds active you may just find that you have to have a special RSS feed just for iTunes.  ITunes uses their own set of categories in the RSS Feeds and you won't be listed there if you don't use their categories. So the way I got around this was to set up a special iTunes feed and just manually edit it each time I add a podcasts.  Here is a sample of an RSS Feed with iTunes categories in it.  The top section above the bold area is the heading for this feed.  The bold area is the part that describes the podcast itself and the last part is the ending.   I have shown just one podcast on this feed to save space.  Other podcasts would just be added below this one with one blank line feed.  When I want to add another one I just cut and paste an old one and edit it with the new information.  The iTunes categories are easy to spot because the all begin with the itunes tag and end with the </itunes> tag.  I just edit this file in notepad.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rss xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/DTDs/Podcast-1.0.dtd" version="2.0">
<channel>
<title>BBQ Forum Podcasts</title>
<itunes:subtitle>Interviews with BBQ People and more.</itunes:subtitle>
<link>http://www.bbqblog.com/podcasts/</link>
<itunes:category text="Food"></itunes:category>
<itunes:keywords>bbq barbecue barbeque bar-b-Q food contest</itunes:keywords>
<description>Podcasts for The BBQ Forum</description>
<itunes:link rel="image" type="video/jpeg" href="http://www.bbqblog.com/podcasts/300.jpg"></itunes:link>
<language>en-us</language>
<itunes:author>Ray Basso interviewing major BBQ people</itunes:author>
<pubDate>Mon, 29 Aug 2005 00:01:00 CST</pubDate>
<copyright>&#x2117; & &#xA9; 2005 Raymond Basso & The BBQ Forum</copyright>
<itunes:subtitle>Interviews with BBQ People</itunes:subtitle>
<itunes:owner>
<itunes:name>Ray Basso</itunes:name>
<itunes:email> This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it </itunes:email>
</itunes:owner>
<itunes:summary>Interviews and conversations with BBQ people from The BBQ Forum</itunes:summary>
<image>
<title>The BBQ Forum</title>
<url>http://www.bbqblog.com/podcasts/75.jpg</url>
<link>http://www.rbjb.com/rbjb/rbjbboard/</link>
<width>75</width>
<height>75</height>
<description>The BBQ Forum Logo</description>
</image>

<item>
<title>Stephanie Wilson - The Slabs</title>
<itunes:author>Ray Basso</itunes:author>
<link>http://www.bbqblog.com/podcasts/</link>
<description>Stephanie works at the Kansas City Barbecue Society office.
She also cooks on one of the top competition barbecue cooking teams in the
country. In addition to all of this she is a regular poster to the BBQ
Forum. 40:29 minutes
</description>
<enclosure url="http://www.bbqblog.com/podcasts/steph.mp3" length="9720832" type="audio/mpeg" />
<guid>http://www.bbqblog.com/podcasts/steph.mp3</guid>
<pubDate>Wed, 26 Jun 2006 05:11:47 GMT</pubDate>
<itunes:category text="Food"></itunes:category>
<itunes:duration> 40:29</itunes:duration>
<itunes:keywords>bbq barbecue barbeque contest food</itunes:keywords>
<itunes:summary>Stephanie works at the Kansas City Barbecue Society office.
She also cooks on one of the top competition barbecue cooking teams in the
country. In addition to all of this she is a regular poster to the BBQ
Forum. 40:29 minutes</itunes:summary>
<itunes:owner>
<itunes:name>Ray Basso</itunes:name>
<itunes:email> This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it </itunes:email>
</itunes:owner>
</item>

</channel>
</rss>

So when you have your iTunes friendly RSS feed ready to go just go back and submit it to their web page.   It takes them about 24 hours to check out your feed and if you have done everything right your listed.  I have noticed that if you do not add at least one new podcast to their feed a month you will slip down in your ranking.  Apple computers and iTunes has made a big commitment to promoting podcasting and this should tell you that you need to get involved in this now.

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