Loading podcast shows into YouTube

[craigconstantine]

I’ve begun submitting my shows to YouTube so that people can listen, within their YouTube apps. YouTube now has a “Podcasts” section when people are using their app and their web site.

I’m posting screenshots from inside the process so you can read the details and the fine print, without having to jump through the hoops first.

Verification of your YouTube account

Note that YouTube requires verification. I’ve had a YouTube account since long before Google bought it… and yet, since I’ve never uploaded any video, and never “earned” any views… Google didn’t trust me.

I had to go through submitting a video of my face, for my Google Account. (And then waited a day for someone, somewhere to look at the video and agree that I’m a real person. )

The video submission web page had a very confusing, extra, checkbox for also letting Google use my video for other purposes, in addition to the obvious decline/accept buttons. I left the checkbox unchecked—ie, no extra usage of my video—and then clicked Accept.

Other verification options included sending them a photo of a government-issued ID, or uploading videos and organically “earning” verification as a creator (which would take months and what videos would I upload anyway?)

Submitting a podcast RSS feed

Choose “Content” (at the left), then choose the “Podcasts” tab…
then click the “Create” button top-right…
Choose “New podcast” in the menu that appears…
then “Submit RSS feed”…

How it works

First an informational dialog. There’s a “Learn more” link that takes you to all the fine print. That leads to this page, https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/13525207?hl=en.

Enter RSS feed

Verify ownership

I had a little trouble with this. Their first email didn’t arrive—likely do to my spam filtering. I waited a good ten minutes before using the re-send code (not shown in this screenshot) feature.

Here’s the email I got…

Upload

Visibility

I almost missed the “SAVE” button at the bottom of this last screen!

Processing…

Here’s a final shot showing various shows, in various states of uploading.

[ChristiCassidy]

Thank you, @craigconstantine for being the canary in the YouTube coal mine. This info and screenshots are invaluable.

[SMallary (Sean Mallary)]

This is super helpful. Very appreciated.

[craigconstantine]

I’ve been peeking in on it. It seems to have a limit to how many pod episodes it will ingest in one go. All four imports are paused until it does more episodes “tomorrow.”

All four shows are “private”… I’m guessing I won’t be able to make them public (findable/hearable by regular YouTube users) until after they finish importing.

I’ll update as this progresses.

[craigconstantine]

YouTube is slowly getting around to ingesting episodes. I’ve also made each of the shows public.

I’ve been able to find Little Box of Quotes on https://youtube.com (using a not-logged-in-as-me browser to see what everyone else would see.)

It’s going to take it a week to finish importing, if it keeps doing so few each day.

The easy way to get to this “manage my stuff” area (the screenshot below) is to go to, https://studio.youtube.com/

…rather than going to youtube.com and trying to figure out where to go from there.

ɕ

[David3560 (David W. Reynolds)]

@craigconstantine - when we see the words, “ This topic will close 2 months after the last reply” what happens if I bookmarked the post in question? Will I still have access to it if my reminder is dated to circle back in three months (which is after the two months window has elapsed - assuming no other replies, etc.? Or, should I copy and paste a full text version?

I ask because I want to revisit the YouTube idea and am planning on doing so in the spring, schedule permitting.

[craigconstantine]

Great Q @David3560 !

“close” only means new replies aren’t possible. (I do have the ability to re-open an old topic.)

Topics stay as-they-are (visible, fully readable, same URLs) forever here.

[David3560 (David W. Reynolds)]

Thank you!

[Suzi]

Thanks @craigconstantine,

This has been on my list of things to do.

Did you find you had to make each podcast episode/video public for them to appear on your channel?

If I set my whole podcast to ‘public’ it doesn’t appear. I need to go to each video and make them public, one by one. I’m curious to see if there is a quicker workaround.

Suzi

[craigconstantine]

…oh, an excellent question @Suzi !

Yes, I think YouTube is making the podcast episodes public.

I can already find Little Box of Quotes in YouTube and I note it lists it as “VIEW FULL PODCAST” and it lists “195 episodes”…

YouTube is also creating video versions of each podcast. Those are appearing in my Studio content, but are marked as private.

I’ve no intention of making these videos public—I suppose it’s handy that it autocreates them as it imports podcast audio episodes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But I’m certainly not going to come into YouTube’s Studio site to make them public as I publish new episodes.

Hope that helps

[craigconstantine]

And now I understand why the YouTube import is taking really long. They’re auto-creating full-length videos… a static image video file *face palm* for every one of the audio-only podcasts they’re importing. But hey, it’s their disk space to waste

[craigconstantine]

At this point, all four shows have finished importing and should be findable in YouTube (YT).

…although, using the public https://youtube.com/ web site, I still can only find a few of the Little Box of Quotes episodes. YT also made video versions of every audio podcast—but has left them all marked as “private” even though I told it to auto-import and make everything public.

Overall far from a frictionless process for me, the creator.

Can anyone search for my shows to see what they can find?

• Little Box of Quotes
• Movers Mindset
• Open + Curious (that “+” character seems to get dropped by YT’s search logic)
• Podtalk

And another criticism of YT, they don’t pass through to our [us creator’s] chosen hosting platform, so they break our ability to account for listening/listeners/etc.

Do my YouTube stats appear in my podcast host’s total numbers?

No.

How do YouTube stats work for podcasters?

The answer to the question in that title is: They don’t.

ɕ