Podcasting is a lot of fun if you are passionate about your topic. But it won’t put food on your table unless you treat it as a business. These days, people are looking to the Internet and other sources to find content to consume at home and on the road. A killer podcast can not only help you take your blog to the next level, it can give you a legitimate chance of making it as a professional content publisher.

Unfortunately, you can not create podcast episodes as fast as regular blog posts. Podcasters need to do a lot of work to create high quality content. While not everyone makes it big with a podcast, there have been people who have gone on to start their own TV shows or syndicated radio programs. You won’t get there overnight. But you’ve got to start somewhere. Here are 5 ways you can go about starting your podcast business:

Create Unique Content

Nobody likes to hear the same old things over and over again. People are not going to stick around if you can not produce high quality, unique content on a consistent basis. Let’s keep in mind that you can’t expect to have too many bad days as a podcaster without losing some listeners. Even if you are talking about topics that others have covered in their work, it never hurts to come at those from a different angle.

Have Your Own Style

Not everbody is going to like your podcast. That does not mean you should not try to have your very own style. You have probably found some podcasts very tough to listen to in the past, no matter how good the content. Your talking and programming style does matter.

Brand Yourself

If you want to build a business around your podcast, you need to brand yourself. Everything you do to create and promote your podcast should be aimed to enhance your brand. Giving your fans your branded merchandise would not hurt either.

Start a Membership Site

One of the most significant steps you will take in your podcasting career. Those of you who have been podcasting for long can take your previous episodes and let people download them on-demand as long as they join your membership club. Of course, you want to offer additional content and value to those who spend money to join your club. Running a membership website is not going to be that easy. But it can guarantee you a certain amount of revenue on a monthly (or annual) basis. That allows you to focus more on generating powerful content instead of focusing on other things.

Give Away Full Episodes For Free

One of the best ways to promote your podcast is by giving away full episodes for free. A few advanced podcasters have adopted freemium business models. Essentially, they give away an hour of each podcast episode for free and ask their listeners to join to download the second hour. This business model may not be right for you. But you can’t expect to go far if you decide to charge for every little thing you offer.

Starting a business around your podcast takes some time. But if you take a long-term approach with your pod-cast, there is no reason you can’t go on to build a highly successful audio-publishing business.

When choosing a mixer, you want to make sure you get one that gives you the biggest bang for your buck. Some mixers allow you to conduct interviews with multiple people on the line. Some allow you to record your podcasts to your iPod. Whatever the case, you want to make sure you know exactly what you need for your podcast and choose your mixer accordingly. With that in mind, here are 5 mixers that can come in handy for podcasters.

Belkin TuneStudio Portable Digital Multitrack Recorder: pound for pound one of the best podcast mixers around. It’s not only capable, it’s very portable as well. Great for the road trip.

Behringer DJX700 Professional 5-Channel DJ Mixer: a pretty affordable mixer for those who are just getting started with their podcast. Comes with 4 dual input stereo channels, 1 ULN microphone channel, and high quality audio.

Alesis iMultiMix 8USB: an innovative mixer for podcasters that let you record your content on your iPod without having to worry CDs, DVDs, and so on. Comes with 100 on-board, 28-bit studio quality Alesis digital effects.

Numark iDJ2 iPod Mixer with Scratch Control: another cool iPod mixer that lets you connect not only your hard drives but also your hard drive to record your content on the fly. It supports multiple audio formats to help you set up your podcast as you prefer.

Behringer 2442FX 24-Input 4/2 Bus Mixer: not exactly for beginner podcasters. It comes with Studio-grade 24-bit stereo FX processor with 100 awesome presets. It’s pretty affordable considering its feature set.

What’s your favorite podcasting mixer?

Having a decent microphone is a must if you intend to talk for more than 5 minutes in your podcasts. It’s always tempting to go for a cheap microphone, but there are real voice quality differences between cheap microphones and those premium ones. If you are looking to start your own podcast or take it to the next level, you should try getting one of the below microphones:

Audio Technica AT2020USB Condenser USB Microphone: it’s the microphone I use for my projects. It’s not super expensive but the quality is very high. It does the job well and comes with its own stand and support for USB.

Shure 55SH Series II Microphone: I am not a musician, and at some point better quality doesn’t justify the price for me. At the same time, for bigger podcasting projects, it is essential to invest in better equipment. Shure 55SH Series II is actually a bargain and a killer microphone.

Samson CO1U USB Condenser Mic: another decent choice if you are looking for a fairly high quality Microphone. For most podcast projects, this is enough.

Samson G Track USB Microphone and Audio Interface: a very high quality microphone for pod-casting and video-casting. It comes with USB connectivity (a must), a computer audio interface, and a stereo headphone jack for no-latency monitoring. It’s not that expensive either.

Snowball USB Microphone Bundle: this sounded like the perfect microphone for me until I realized that it was not compatible with my Vista 64. If you are still using XP, this will work just fine.

Blue Microphones BlueBird Condenser Mic: a bit more expensive than some other microphones available on the market, but you can’t argue with the quality. Frequency Response: 20Hz – 20kHz.

I do recommend going for a bit more expensive microphone in order to avoid having to re-invest in a new one soon. Once your pod-casts grows, you are going to need better equipment. By investing a bit more up-front, you can provide better quality pod-casts and worry more about creating high quality content than your equipment.

Your take: what brand of microphone are you using for your pod-casts or video recordings?