Podcasting can become a very significant tool in driving traffic to ones shopping cart site. Therefore, I always recommend that my customers incorporate podcasting in to their online marketing plan. What is Podcasting? Well, podcasting gets its name from Apple’s iPod product, and at first it implied any audio that could be played on Apple’s exclusive audio player known as itunes. Nevertheless, as the technology has spread like wild fire over the past few years, podcasting has taken on a whole new meaning to basically sum it up it now refers to multimedia on the web which follows an arrangement of a regularly-recorded show.

Now that you know the history of Podcasting it’s time to get down to the nuts and bolts of how to create your very own personal podcasting show on the internet. There is no need to spend lots of money on equipment, especially if this is your first time doing a podcast. Here are the tools you will need to get started.

• A High quality microphone (I usually suggest a USB mic)
• A mid range sound card, but even if you have an onboard card it should be fine.

Once the hardware is out of the way it’s time to focus on the software. With software you have two avenues to go, the first being free and the second paid.

• Propaganda (http://www.makepropaganda.com/) is paid software which will record, optimize and publish your podcast.
• Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) is a great free alternative, but it might require some more technical knowledge.

In my next shopping cart software post I will review a great podcasting software which will create your audio RSS feed as well as manage your online podcasts.