Factsheet
Anyone else using Anchor?
Anchor podcast hosting looks good - what are the cons?
I've been happy with it. I've been doing my podcast about three months and already have fans sponsoring me and am getting revenue from ads. So I have no complaints. As for the comment about needing fancy equipment to do a podcast I think that's BS. Your equipment should never be better than you are. If you have an established show with a following, then maybe you can justify upgrading to better equipment, but just starting out there's no reason you can't record into a decent phone.
It's more important to have original ideas and a passion for what you're doing. The podcast market is flooded with people trying to become the next Serial or Sword and Scale. It's best to find a niche that is something you're actually interested it and not just something you're doing because you think it's popular.
More on reddit.comIs there anything else as simple as Anchor
Anybody Here Use Anchor?
Anchor is run by Venture Capital funds and just transitioned (It's 3rd pivot in a few short years) to a podcast media host / production company in February 2018. I would be cautious using anything Anchor related if I was a podcaster wanting to own and sustain my own content for the long term.
I realize this response has nothing to do with the actual App but there are better ways to produce your own content. In particular I'm looking forward to the Backpack Studio from the creators of BossJock Studio.
In choosing where to host my podcast I follow several criteria that have served well to differentiate podcast media hosting services over the years.
First, Dave Jackson from the School Of Podcasting came up with some criteria for podcast hosts a few years ago. They are:
Don't mess with my file. What I upload is what I want people to download.
Give me the ability to have an unlimited back catalog (unlimited storage)
Don't limit my audience size (unlimited bandwidth)
Don't control my feed, and make it easy to leave if I choose to do so. I need to be able to put in an iTunes redirect script.
Give me support.
Charge me for your service so you can stay in business
Give me stats so I can see what's working. It would be nice if they were accurate.
Over the past few years I have come up with some additional important considerations including:
SP1: Easy to download from a webpage
SP2: Quickly adapt to changing industry standards
SP3: Quickly adapt to new publishing destinations.
SP4: The provided statistics must be IAB Podcast Measurement Guidelines "compliant."
SP5: The company must be run with above-board ethics and have personnel that do not embarrass my brand to be associated with their brand
SP6: The company providing the service must not be operating on venture capital.
If you combine all of those I only find two companies that meet all the criteria: Libsyn and Podbean. Unfortunately Acnhor does not meet those criteria.
Out of Libsyn and Podbean Libsyn gets the slight edge from my personally because they are faster to adopt to changing standards and new publishing destinations (a new one coming in December 2018 apparently according to Rob Walch) as well as Libsyn provides an easier one-click webpage file download capability but really either Podbean or Libsyn will work. There are a few other new podcast media host companies that I'm keeping my eye on to add to this list (Anchoe is not one of them) but for now I can only recommend Libsyn and Podbean.
Let me know if you have any questions.
More on reddit.comVideos
So I’ve been using Anchor to post podcast content to Spotify because it’s a free ‘hosting’ platform, but I’ve noticed that most podcasts that are much ‘bigger and seemingly more professional’ all seem to use more official RSS feeds. Is there a very specific reason for this? Is it the only way to get monetised and more exposure? If anyone else knows more about Anchor, could you share what any drawbacks are? Thanks.