Paul Colligan, a long-time podcaster and a business podcasting guru, has posted some interesting thoughts on easy ways to make your podcast more valuable, all of which are simple and “bite-sized”:

1. Spend less than ten bucks on a domain name for your new production company. Advertisers don’t want to deal with directors, they want to deal with producers. You’re a producer Рspend $10 looking like one.
2. Get some album art that looks like album art.
3. Don’t advertise anything on your Podcast site that says “I got this for free” РWordPress, design templates, hosting services, etc.
4. Be very careful about using your Feedburner chicklet to advertise how many subscribers you have. You control the message about the size and makeup of your audience, not a tiny graphic from Feedburner/Google.
5. Get rid of the donation button. “Valuable Podcasts don‚Äôt look desperate.”
6. Make your production look as desirable as possible to the outside world. Consider advertising for so “big names” through their affiliate programs, etc.
7. Stop referring to your podcast as “my Podcast”, refer to it as “the Podcast” and “my business.” You don’t produce a Podcast, you have a business that produces a Podcast.

All of these are straightforward suggestions for making your podcast, aka “the podcast”, look more professional. Check out the full article at Paul’s blog.