Monetize Your Podcast with Patreon, Supercast and Apple Podcasts Subscriptions

[00:00:00] Patreon is an exclusive membership platform. Yes, welcome back everybody. Stoked to be kicking off this week with you. Yeah, let's get right into it. I want to talk about exploring how you can create a paid community to monetize your content and deepen your relationship with your listeners.

[00:00:40] There's going to be three platforms that I'm covering today where you can create a community outside of your regular free podcast feed within that community. You can release episodes of additional content. You could do like behind the scenes stuff, question and answers. You could do bonus episodes.

[00:00:59] There's a lot of opportunity to get creative and build a community on the side of your free community. And you're going to be able to make a little bit of money from your content.

[00:01:08] But more importantly, you're going to create a community of what Pat Flynn calls them as super fans.

[00:01:12] The goal is to create value within this community that is more valuable than the free podcast feed that you're putting out because these people are going to be paying customers, paying fans.

[00:01:25] And yes, you want to make money, but you want to provide them with extra value, answer their questions, provide tips, feedback resources and maybe even just bonus content or bloopers or something fun as well.

[00:01:37] But the idea is to create a group that are getting something from you because you're providing additional value to them. And a paid community is a great way to do that. I don't have a paid subscription community. Maybe I'll create one in the future.

[00:01:50] Maybe I won't, but I just wanted to educate you and introduce you to these communities as a way to build deeper relationships with your audience. Make a few ducats along the way and create those connections.

[00:02:03] And I think we're going to see more and more of that as the industry ticks forward. And I'm going to be talking about three popular ones that are easy to join where you can have a private feed.

[00:02:13] And they can still listen to it on whatever platform Apple Spotify by manually adding your show. And I'll get into a little bit of that. Just want to give a shout out to this episode sponsor. That's Riverside.

[00:02:25] And if you didn't know Riverside.fm is an online platform where you can record high fidelity audio and up to 4K video. They also just announced a new feature called Magic Audio. And what Magic Audio is, is it gives you studio quality audio regardless of your recording environment.

[00:02:42] So it's going to cancel background noise, remove reverb and noise from your recording echo, that type of thing. It's also going to automatically adjust your EQ to get your voice sounding as good as it can.

[00:02:56] And so if you're new and you haven't used Riverside, I highly recommend you give it a try. That's Riverside.fm and enter promo code CLIP that check out for 20% off. Okay, so the three that we're going to cover today are Apple Podcast subscriptions, Patreon and Supercast.

[00:03:28] And they all kind of do similar things, but at their core, they are paid communities for your podcast. And Apple Podcast subscriptions is fairly new. It's actually when they changed the term subscribe to your podcast. That's what everyone used to say.

[00:03:45] But then Apple Podcasts created Apple Podcast subscriptions. And so now for the free feed, if you want to follow somebody's show on Apple, that's what they call it. They say, follow my podcast.

[00:03:58] And then if you join the subscription feature, that's when Apple calls it subscribe to my podcast. So some different nomenclature there, but Apple Podcasts subscription are a way for podcasters to offer premium content. You got ad-free listening. You can offer like early access or exclusive episodes, bonus content.

[00:04:18] We talked a little bit about that in the intro. You can charge for this and I don't know what the appropriate amount to charge for you is. I actually joined a colleague of mine, her subscription program on Apple. It was $2.99 a month, so three bucks a month.

[00:04:33] And she would do like bonus episodes and early access to the free podcast that goes out to everybody. You would get early access to that. And so that's pretty cool. And it's all built into Apple.

[00:04:47] And you can, if you're a podcast provider, go to your Apple Podcasts connect, log in and you can set that up. And then you can promote it in your email list, your socials, promote it on the free podcast. Let everyone know, hey, we've got a subscription plan.

[00:05:02] If you guys are interested and we're offering XYZ, if you join the program. And so that's pretty easy because all you have to do is do it within Apple Podcasts. And then it'll show up in people's Apple podcast feed. So super easy there.

[00:05:17] Cool way to add extra value and build a community. The next one is Patreon and it's possible you've heard of it. If not, it's P-A-T-R-E-O-N Patreon. It's weird because I don't know, like four or five years ago, I kept reading it as like Patreon,

[00:05:33] but it's like a patron, I guess, like a patron of the arts. So Patreon is an exclusive membership platform. The difference here is that it's not just for podcasters.

[00:05:44] You could be some other kind of like content creator or artist and you can offer like a paid program within Patreon. So it's just a little bit of difference there, but it's similar. But how Patreon works that's also different is that there's different paid levels.

[00:06:00] So like you could start at like three bucks a month for a bonus episode every week or a bonus episode every other week. And then they have different levels. So maybe the next level up is like $7 a month and at $7 a month, you get the bonus episode.

[00:06:17] Plus you're going to get a once a month behind the scenes episode or bloopers that you could listen to. And then maybe for $10 a month or $15 a month, maybe you're going to get a T-shirt and then you're going to get everything from the two levels below you.

[00:06:31] And then maybe at the highest level, you know, once a week, you get a meet and greet with the host and you get to ask questions. That's what's cool about Patreon is there's different levels.

[00:06:39] So you could start small and maybe, hey, if people want to get up there $50, $100 a month, maybe you offer something really cool that they can't get anywhere else. So you can listen to these episodes directly in the Patreon app on your phone or on the Patreon website.

[00:06:55] You have to log in and then you can stream the episode. But if you have a Patreon subscription plan and you want people to be able to listen to the show on their podcast listening app of choice,

[00:07:08] like listen on Apple or Spotify, your listeners are going to have to your patrons are going to have to take the RSS feed from Patreon and manually add it to their podcast listening app.

[00:07:22] I made a video about this for Apple on how to manually add a show and I'm going to put the link to that in the show notes.

[00:07:27] And I'm also going to put a link on directions on how to do it on Spotify, but essentially Patreon will give you like a URL. And then you'll go to your listening app. You'll click add, which I'll explain how to do in the show notes.

[00:07:42] And then you copy paste it, you manually add it. And so then when those Patreon episodes come out, you're going to get to listen on your platform, which makes it so much easier. I used to I subscribed to a show, a paid show on Patreon.

[00:07:55] I used to listen within the app and I was like, this is stupid. And then I added it on Apple. So now when that comes out every week along with the regular free show, I just listened on Apple. It's so much easier.

[00:08:12] I want to give you guys one thing that you can do this week to improve your podcast. And that is wear headphones. And don't just wear them when you're like recording remotely with somebody so that you can hear them.

[00:08:23] Set it up so that you can hear yourself because when you hear yourself on the mic, you're going to be able to make adjustments. Whether you're too far away from the mic. If you don't have headphones, you won't know.

[00:08:32] You might think it sounds good, but you can't hear yourself so it could sound like shit. Or maybe you're too close and you're blowing out the mic capsule. You're also going to get comfortable with like your intonation and your dynamic level.

[00:08:44] If maybe you're really excited, yes, and you're talking really loud or maybe you're kind of shy and you're just barely talking. And there's this huge dynamic range. You're going to get comfortable creating a smaller dynamic range and being bold and not loud, but being confident on the mic.

[00:09:01] And you're going to know if it's off to the side or, you know, if you're making noise or there's cars going by that you can't really hear. But if you put the headphones on, the mic is like picking those up like crazy.

[00:09:13] So that's my tip for this week. I'm going to be trying to hit you with more like one quick tip per episode moving forward. So wear your headphones and you're going to improve your voice. You're going to get comfortable with how you sound.

[00:09:32] The last one I want to talk about is Supercast. That's supercast.com. And again, this is a podcast specific subscription program.

[00:09:40] I have never used this, but hey, this episode is just all about providing you with some information on how and where and why to create a podcast subscription. But per the website, there's a lot of big shows that use this. Andrew Huberman, Pod Save America, Pat Flynn.

[00:09:58] Those are three that I recognize the Murda murders, the No Sleep podcast, found my fitness. In any case, Supercast.com, you can kind of get an idea of the big shows that are using this, but you're going to get paid by your listeners on your terms.

[00:10:15] And you can also manually add your Supercast feed. You can have your fans manually add it to Apple or Spotify. So if your subscription is through Supercast, they can still listen on their preferred platform, but you're just going to can deepen your connection with your audience.

[00:10:30] I think personalized episodes in your subscribers feed. They deliver that feeling of to your audience of feeling special, feeling wanted, feeling heard. And it's super easy to create that with Supercast or with any of these other platforms.

[00:10:46] They just make it so there's a built in feedback and content loop. And you can connect with your audience outside of just the freebies. Because I think when you start paying for something as a fan, I know it's awesome.

[00:11:00] I just like remember as a kid, like supporting an artist is super into like punk rock and indie music and emo. And I was in bands and just like buying a CD of somebody's was always like it felt so empowering.

[00:11:13] Like yeah, I'm the one paying, but it also felt like I was supporting them. And if I looked up to them and respected them, that feeling of community felt good.

[00:11:21] And I feel like now online with so much scrolling and so much information coming at you from all directions. And although we're more connected, but we're like further apart than ever before in our real lives and our personal lives

[00:11:37] and probably in our own heads or at least in my own head. Got some crazy thoughts up there. But having access to community, it feels special.

[00:11:46] And I think if you build something and you're going to use a subscription, just make sure that your intentions behind it are good. And you plan to add something special that these people can't get on your free podcast.

[00:12:01] And I think if your intentions are good, it's okay to make a little bit of money from your art, from your content. So build that business, but keep your fans in mind and cater to them because they're the reason that you have the success that you do.

[00:12:14] Oh, and one other thing. These are also great places for merch. I briefly mentioned this, but hey, maybe there's like a quarterly like t-shirt design that comes out. And if you were a part, this would work well for Patreon.

[00:12:25] Like if you're part of a certain plan, you get that t-shirt or something. But listen to your audience, ask them what they want once you're in that community in that forum.

[00:12:37] Ask them what they would like to hear, what they would like to see, what they would like to get. You should know who they are. And you know, if you have their names and their email addresses through these platforms, reach out, subscribe and add value.

[00:12:49] That's the first thing. And that's it for me today, guys. Please rate, please subscribe, follow the show, share in the love. And I really appreciate you being here and listening. So keep listening, keep engaging, keep creating. I'm out.