How iTunes ranks podcasts is a little mysterious, but I think I can confirm that the number of downloads of files - rather than the number of times people check your feed - is what counts. This means, if you want to do well in iTunes, you have to publish regularly, to encourage more downloads. Once a week is probably the minimum.

For a variety of stupid reasons, I was late publishing our latest Storynory episode this week, and we’ve slipped, losing our much prized first ranking in iTunes kids and family in the UK. I hope we will be back up later in the week.

We’ve published regularly every week for a year now, and this is partly why Storynory does reasonably well, and hopefullly will continue to build an audience. So my top tip for iTunes, week in, week out, publish on time.