Each month a new podcast is selected as the “Podcast of the Month”. Selection is primarily based on fan votes (details below). The Podcast of the Month will be featured on the website and promoted by Podcast Land.

How does voting work?

  • Each month fans can vote for a podcast to be “Podcast of the Month”.
  • Fans can vote for as many different podcasts as they like throughout the month.
  • Fans can only vote once per podcast, per month. Meaning, as a fan, you can vote for as many different podcasts as you like throughout the month but you can only vote for each podcast once per month.
  • To help prevent fake votes, each vote is tied to an email address and must be confirmed by email.
  • Creating fake email addresses to artificially inflate your vote count is against the rules.
  • I have special ways of checking for fake email addresses and will remove all votes suspected as being fake.
  • To keep things interesting, the top 5 podcasts are displayed in random order to give each of them an equal chance of being listed at the top.

What are some other rules?

  • The most important rule is: don’t do anything shady to cheat the system.
  • What constitutes being shady and cheating? If you’re worried that what you’re doing is shady, it probably is.
  • Don’t spam.
  • Don’t create fake emails for fake votes.
  • Don’t use bots.
  • Don’t try to hack the system, break my code or otherwise try to game things.
  • Don’t exchange money or similarly bribe people to vote for your show.
  • Do create good podcast episodes so people will want to vote for you.
  • Do ask your fans to vote for you.
  • Do ask your friends and family to vote for you.
  • Do give yourself a bonus freebie vote by casing a vote with the special email [email protected] I will confirm all votes which are sent to that address as a thank you for reading these rules.

How is a winner determined?

  • For the most part, a winner will be determined by the number of votes.
  • For the most part?
    Yes. Sometimes the #1 voted podcast won’t be selected if I suspect it of cheating or if it’s extremely popular. This site is built to help promote small independent shows. If a popular show like “The Adam Carolla Show” gets the most votes, I won’t select it as the Podcast of the Month. That show is great but I’m trying to help the little guy here.
  • How do you know if you’re too popular to win?
    An easy way to tell is if you’re on iTunes popular podcasts list or if you get tens of thousands of downloads per episode, you’re too popular to win. If you fit that criteria, you’re doing great and should give the new guys a chance.
  • In the interest of keeping things fresh, a podcast can only be selected as the Podcast of the Month once every 12 months. Fans can still vote for your podcast and your show can still be at the top of the charts throughout the year but you won’t get the title of Podcast of the Month twice in a 12 month period. This keeps any one podcast from dominating the site and allows new shows to get some attention too.

To keep the rules from being a massively long legal document, I’m going to reserve the right to disqualify anyone and remove any votes I see fit. If I see something shady happening that isn’t specifically against the rules, I don’t care, I’m going to take action. Don’t worry, I’m not going to disqualify someone willy nilly but I’m giving myself room to handle any unknown future issue with someone trying to game the system.

Let’s keep things in the spirit of fun and podcast discovery! If you’re not sure if something is OK or not, feel free to ask in the comments below.

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