My experience of creating podcasts on iTunes

I spent a few days for creating my own podcast. This task, as it appeared, was more difficult than I expected. But now it seems easy to me because I understood the principle, the idea how it works.

It is necessary to give a few definitions.

RSS is a specially formatted web page that allows readers and podcast applications to subscribe for syndicated content. "RSS" stands for "Rich Site Summary, it is a collection of XML ("extensible markup language") standard formatting. For creating podcasts we need to create your own RSS feed.


Preparation:

1.) Creating a picture for the title of future podcasts. The mandatory size of the picture is Podcast feeds contain artwork that is a minimum size of 1400 x 1400 pixels and a maximum size of 3000 x 3000 pixels in JPEG or PNG format.

2.) Creating of the audio mp3 file.

For creating my own podcasts I did two tries.

The first way: Using blogger.com

I have a blog on this service with address: item1000.blogspot.com
The task is publishing on the blog not only texts but also audio files.

Here are some steps:
1.) Changing some features on the blog for access to audio files.
2.) Uploading audio file to Google Drive and making it open for public (sharing).
3.) Publishing the link to the audio file on Google Drive on the blog.
4.) Burning a feed using a google service feedburner.google.com
5.) Adding to the feed a title picture as I was mentioned in preparation section.
6.) Checking if a new created feed correct for publishing on the service feedvalidator.org
7.) While publishing the feed on iTunes I received the message about errors.

The way which I described above wasn't successful because of errors in XML file. My knowledge wasn't enough for solving this problem and I had to use the second way (described below).

The second way: Using soundcloud.com

1.) Creating of account on the site soundcloud.com . The service SoundCloud is not a free, but if we haven't reached the limit of space on the server, it is free.
2.) Uploading a title's picture
3.) Uploading an audio file to soundcloud.com and copying link to your feed in menu Setting-Content
4.) Checking feed from your account on SoundCloud on the site feedvalidator.org
5.) Go to iTunes Connect and check your feed.
6.) If you received the error "No episodes exist in your feed", go to SoundCloud, edit your episode, chose the tab "Permission" and click "Include in RSS feed"
7.) Applying to Apple company and publishing the feed on iTunes

To submit your podcast:
Click Submit in the new podcast page for a previously validated podcast.
Podcasts Connect validates and submits your RSS feed.
Click OK.
After your RSS feed passes the initial validation (for example, the RSS feed contains all of the recommended tags for the iTunes Store) and submission, Podcasts Connect displays your podcast in the dashboard along with the Submitted for Review status. As a result, I created my podcast. Probably I will continue working for receiving the result with the first way because it would give me freedom in hosting of audio files. Anyway, my podcast is available on the SoundCloud:
https://soundcloud.com/anatoly-learner/christmas-story-with-controversial-ending 

And just now I received this email from Apple:

Dear podcast owner,
Your podcast, located at http://feeds.soundcloud.com/users/soundcloud:users:277667315/sounds.rss, has been approved. You should expect to see it on the iTunes Store within the next few hours. When it's available, you will be able to access it with the URL below. 
https://itunes.apple.com/ru/podcast/telling-stories-for-studying/id1200207041?l=en 
You can find your podcast using iTunes Store search in the next two days.
January 30, 2017

It means that soon it would available on iTunes with the title "Telling stories for studying English".

Welcome, everyone ...