This time on Ron’s Amazing Stories – The Blog, we take a minute to appreciate TuneIn Radio. They have played a part in history of the show since 2013. When I first started the podcast in 2011 I didn’t have any idea of what I was doing. I certainly didn’t understand social media, how it worked or how to promote the podcast. I had to teach myself everything, and it was a slow start. You have much to learn when creating a podcast. What hardware do I need? What software? What is compression? What bit rate to record at? What music can I play? Who is going to host my podcast? HTML what? RSS, CSS, Iframes, enclosures…… it’s enough to make you go mad!

Then you have to decide what your podcast is going to be about. You have to research, find out what’s hot, and what’s not. Ask yourself, “What do I know that other people might like?” AND, if you don’t ask, “Am I passionate about this?” You will never make it in the podcast world. If you don’t love what your talking about it will become work and nothing more than a bunch words thrown together. Once you figure all of that out, then the work begins. How do I get my podcast out there? Thank goodness there are people who care about your work as much as you do.

Liberated Syndication (libsyn) pioneered the system to host and publish podcasts in 2004, and since then has grown to be the largest leading podcast network with over 2.6 billion downloads in 2014. Libsyn hosts over 25,000 shows with 44 million monthly audience members. This is where Ron’s Amazing Stories ended up. Libsyn provides everything your podcast needs, except the listeners. It’s your job to grow your podcast. Back in 2013 I was still struggling to get listeners. iTunes is great, but they will accept just about anybody and everybody. There are a billion subscriptions spread across 250,000 unique podcasts, and more than 8 million episodes have been published in the iTunes Store to date. You are a small fish in a ocean of small fishes.

Step in companies like TuneIn Radio.

TuneIn Radio is a privately held company based in San Francisco, California, founded by Bill Moore in 2002. TuneIn has more than 100,000 broadcast radio stations and four million on-demand programs and podcasts from around the world. In May 2014, TuneIn announced that its service had over 50 million monthly active users. Surely a company of this size would not care about the little guy. Well, it is because of TuneIn that Ron’s Amazing Stories exists today. I added my little tiny show to them and it took off. Within the next week I had over 400 subscribers. I was so thrilled to finally have an audience and that drove me to create better content. Today Ron’s Amazing Stories runs on live radio in nine cities and averages 14,000 downloads per week on the internet. I still have only have about 500 subscribers on TuneIn, but it was their passion for the little guy jumped started me and the show.

Thank-you TuneIn Radio for being there for me!

-Ron

This Week’s Podcast:

On the podcast this week we have a couple of adventure tales told by the people who lived them. They all come from a little known radio series called World Adventurers Club. You can listen to this podcast on Thursday at Ron’s Amazing Stories, download it from iTunes, stream it on TuneIn Radio or listen to it on your radio Saturday night at 6pm Eastern time. Check your local listing or find the station closest to you at this link.