It finally happened. After 12 years I stopped hosting my podcast with Blubrry. Before I get into the reasons why this happened I want to say that I’m not disappointed with what RawVoice offers to podcasters. I think they offer the best overall package one can get. You can get stats, media hosting, and even a website for one price. They also have some of the best support staff in the industry. Blubrry hosting is top-notch and for years they have been on the cutting edge of podcast technology. However, when it’s time to retire a podcast there are very few options. This is the case with nearly every hosting provider. Once you decide to stop hosting your files with a hosting provider, access to your files is gone. Forever. I retired The Wired Homeschool over two years ago. I’ve released a few episodes since the “last episode” because a global health crisis forced many parents to homeschool and they were coming to my site for advice. Leading up to the eventual end of the podcast, I reached out to Blubrry on two or three occasions asking if there was some sort of plan where they would continue to host my files but I wouldn’t be allowed to upload any new files. I thought $3 – $5 a month would be reasonable considering LibSyn offers a $5 hosting plan. I didn’t want to continue paying $12 a month just to host my files. I also didn’t want to go through the process of transferring files to a new host like LibSyn because, well, I’m lazy. After repeatedly hitting walls with Blubrry and because I didn’t want to spend the time systematically moving files to a cheaper host, I decided to move the files to Archive.org. I know, it’s not a real podcast host. I know there may be times the files are unavailable. But after culling my available podcasts by 90%, I decided this was going to be the best option. If fact, out of the original 800+ blog posts and podcasts at The Wired Homeschool, there are now only 27 podcasts and 24 blog posts. Over 95% of my content wasn’t even being seen. In fact, 3% of my original content brings in over 90% of the organic traffic to the website. Over three years I reduced the amount of content publicly available to 51 posts. I basically needed a place where I could archive the remaining episodes. I still get affiliate sales that pay for hosting so I’m not losing money but I figure it would be nice to keep more of those affiliate dollars since I had so little content that was still accessible to the public. So there you have it. I stopped hosting with Blubrry because I didn’t want to pay $12 a month to host 30 mp3 files. That’s it. Nothing groundbreaking. Now I need to start looking at the content on this site and start pairing it down too. Support the podcast when you buy me a coffee! Follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite platform.