Well, I've been at Libsyn almost a month. I doing support, and it's a really interesting look at the podosphere. Here are some of the things I see that cause problems.
- Free tutorials that are outdated (promoting Feedburner) (see quit podcasting like it's 2012)
- People worrying about Libsyn “Going out of business tomorrow”.
- When I spoke with Libsyn, the two words I wanted to hear were “Profitable” and “Growing” before I came on board (the last company I worked for was not, and hence I was looking for a job). I heard them both. Libsyn is growing. Proof? They just hired additional support (me).
- Libsyn Controls Your Feed.
I see this come up over and over and over. There are companies that do this:
If you're using Podomatic you have to upgrade to a premium version (non-free) to enter the iTunes redirect code. Blog Talk Radio requires you to send them an email. With Libsyn you don't even have to ask. We even have directions on our own website on how to leave. Why? Because we want our customer to stay because they WANT TO not because THEY HAVE TO.
So for anyone who thinks I'm lying.
You will see in the above screen shot a place for you to put a 301 redirect, and in the Extra RSS tags you can enter your iTunes redirect.
Again, you can do this without even contacting anyone in Libsyn.
If you have multiple feeds with us (Google Play, Libsyn). they all have the same setup. You can enter your new feed anytime you want.
So if someone is telling you “Libsyn controls your feed” let me share a story.
In 2014 I was getting a Denial of Service attack on my website schoolofpodcasting.com To put that in English, people were trying to hack it, and I had so much traffic I could not login to my website. I had “Control” but it didn't matter. When I contacted my hosting company they advised me to get anything that required bandwidth off my site. When I finally was able to get into my control panel, the item that was getting hit thousands of times per day was my RSS feed.
For the record, I'm not “Any-Wordpress” for your podcast feed (as long as you keep the plugins down to a minimum). I just hate to see people propagating “facts” that are untrue.
Libsyn does not control your feed. If someone tells you differently, you might want to think twice. If they aren't being honest about this, what else are they not going to be honest about?