Mike MurphyAI Handyman
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Episode 144

The Wordpress.com Show

June 8, 2018 ·

EP144: THE WORDPRESS.COM SHOW In today’s episode, I share a chapter from my new eBook How To Podcast on WordPress.com and share 14 reasons to consider using WordPress.com to launch your podcast and website. Episode Summary: Why Use WordPress.com as a Podcast Media Host? Why should you consider using WordPress.com if you are launching a new podcast and website? What are 14 benefits WordPress.com brings to the table?

Episode Summary: A chapter from Mike’s eBook How To Podcast on Wordpress.com, sharing 14 reasons to consider WordPress.com as a combined podcast and website host. Note: plan names and pricing reflect 2018 and have since changed.

What You’ll Learn

  • 14 reasons WordPress.com made sense as an all-in-one podcast and website host in 2018
  • The three WordPress.com plan tiers at the time and what each unlocked
  • How WordPress.com handled reliability, customization, and multiple/private podcast feeds
  • Monetization options available through WordPress.com hosting

Mike’s approach to recommendations: he only endorses tools he genuinely uses and believes in, because trust — that he knows what he’s talking about and actually believes it — is the foundation of the whole brand. These are the 14 reasons that were compelling enough to write an entire eBook about it: How To Podcast on Wordpress.com: The Step-By-Step Guide.

14 Reasons to Use WordPress.com

1. Simplicity. One price covers both podcast and website hosting. Mike’s own setup at the time wasn’t simple — separate bills to Libsyn, Siteground, and Sucuri (for security, after a website hack) — which made the WordPress.com all-in-one approach appealing.

2. Trust. WordPress has a long track record and roughly 30% of websites run on WordPress.org or WordPress.com. Paid plans included email and live chat support.

3. Affordability. Every paid plan bundles podcast, blog, and website hosting plus a free custom domain. Note: the Free Plan doesn’t support audio uploads, so podcasting requires at least a paid tier. At the time: the Personal Plan ($4/month, 6GB — roughly 200 thirty-minute episodes worth of storage), the Premium Plan ($8.25/month, 13GB, premium themes, video support), and the Business Plan ($24.92/month, unlimited storage/bandwidth, plugin installs, custom themes like Divi, automatic backups, e-commerce). See current WordPress.com pricing for today’s plans and rates.

4. Reliability. WordPress.com’s server infrastructure is built for uptime, security, backups, and heavy bandwidth — with enough redundancy that an individual site going down independent of a platform-wide outage is unlikely, unlike smaller shared-hosting setups.

5. Customization. The base tier is limited to free themes; the mid-tier unlocks hundreds of premium, mobile-responsive themes; the top tier allows full custom theme uploads (Divi, in Mike’s case). For a podcast that just needs a home base, the entry-level plan is often enough.

6. Domain name included. Paid plans include a free custom domain for the first year (renewal was $13/year at the time), replacing the default yourpodcast.wordpress.com address — or you can bring your own existing domain.

7. Social sharing. One-click publishing to Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms, plus automatic email alerts to blog subscribers when a new episode goes live.

8. Scheduling. Prep episodes in advance and schedule them to publish automatically — useful for maintaining a regular schedule while traveling or batching production.

9. Flexibility. Podcast name, description, cover art, and even individual episode audio/titles/show notes can all be changed after publishing — helpful for anyone still figuring things out early on.

10. Multiple shows. Multiple public podcasts and RSS feeds can run from one WordPress.com site, each submitted independently to directories.

11. Private podcasts. Private RSS feeds don’t appear in directory search but can be shared and added manually — useful for internal business communications, school courses, or selling access to bonus/archive content.

12. Monetization. PayPal integration supports e-commerce (podcast swag, private feed access), Patreon-style recurring monthly payments, selling older episodes via a private feed, selling bonus content, and WordPress.com’s own affiliate program for referring other podcasters to the platform.

13. Mobile app. A free WordPress management app (iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, Linux) — not for listeners, but for managing the site and podcast on the go: stats, comment moderation, posting.

14. Own your content. Content created on WordPress.com is exportable at any time — a meaningful advantage of self-hosting over some fully closed third-party platforms.

Quick Recap

Simplicity (one bill), trust (an established name), affordability ($4/month at the entry tier), reliability, customization, a free included domain, easy social sharing, scheduling, flexibility to edit after publishing, multiple shows, private feeds, monetization options, a mobile app, and full ownership of exported content.

Show Notes & Links