Maximize Podcast Revenue: Exploring Listener-Supported Models on Five Minute Mondays (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: Today, on Five Minute Monday, you'll learn how your listeners can directly support your podcast. Welcome to Five Minute Mondays, where we bring you the best tips and strategies for building your podcast in five minutes or less. So if you're new here, consider subscribing. Now we are in the middle of a nine-part series about podcast monetization, the pros and the cons of each of the currently popular strategies to help you decide which, if any of them, are right for your podcast. And today, we're going to talk about the listener-supported, or patron, model. And the reason that this is a really popular monetization strategy, especially in podcasting, is that not all shows really lend themselves to host-read ads. So for instance, if you have a podcast that offers spiritual advice or life advice, you might not want to fill that podcast with ads or podcasts with short episodes. If your episodes are five minutes or less, you don't want 20% of that to be taken up with a host-read ad. Or podcasts that teach against materialism or consumption, it doesn't really make sense to put a host-read ad in those episodes, right? This week's episode on how to take a digital detox is brought to you by Squarespace, probably won't resonate well with your listeners. So there are definitely some scenarios where doing a host-read ad is not the best way to monetize your podcast, because remember, the most important asset that you have as a podcaster is the trust of your audience, so you don't want to do anything that could negate that trust or impact it in any negative way. So if you're not interested in doing ads, you can ask your listeners to support your podcast directly. And actually, the first group, the first company that did this pretty successfully wasn't a podcasting company, it was a radio station. So one of the most successful listener-supported campaigns every year is held by National Public Radio, or NPR for short. And they do have lots of popular podcasts, but most of those podcasts are actually radio shows first. And to keep shows on the air and cover production costs, NPR will hold fundraisers. So NPR's radio podcasts do not carry traditional commercials, so they rely on their listeners to support the content that they enjoy listening to. And it works. Every single time they do these fundraisers, they raise enough money to cover their costs and continue to stay on the air. So there are two main ways to incorporate listener support where you say, hey guys, I'm not gonna run ads on my podcast, but to help cover some of the expenses and to recoup some time and be able to outsource editing and things like that, I need to ask you guys to help me continue to make this podcast awesome. There's two strategies that you can implement to do that. The first is probably the easiest, and that is just to create a PayPal account that listeners can donate to. So you would get a link that you can share, and then when someone clicks on that link, they can donate money directly to your PayPal account. And so then in each episode, you would mention that you rely on your audience to keep the podcast going and encourage them to donate with either a one-time or a recurring gift using your PayPal link. And then you put that link in your show notes, on your website, in your email newsletters, and in the support the show field in your Buzzsprout podcast settings. Because there are certain podcast apps that actually have a button where you can click the button and go and donate through PayPal, which is pretty cool. So that's the easiest way to get set up. And then the second strategy takes a bit more time, takes a bit more work, but will actually probably be more lucrative for you, and that is to create a Patreon account. Now Patreon is just an online platform that allows fans to support the creators that they love. And so what you would do is you would set up a page for your podcast, you'd set up different levels of support, so $2 a month, $5 a month, $10 a month, et cetera, and then throw in bonus content or exclusive access to you as a reward for each of those levels of support. And typically, as someone supports you with more, every single month you would give them more bonuses and more exclusives to kind of sweeten the pot and reward them for supporting. And the more enticing your rewards are, the more likely someone will be to actually support your show. So Patreon has a lot of resources on how to use their platform effectively, and you can certainly go to the Patreon blog and check those out. But if you're gonna do listener support, those are the two main ways. Either create a PayPal account and use that, or create a Patreon page. So if you're looking for an alternative to host read ads, then you should consider a listener-supported model instead. And in next week's episode, you'll learn how to make and sell info products to your podcast listeners. Well that's it for today. Hit the subscribe button if you're watching this on YouTube, or you can subscribe to the Five Minute Mondays podcast on your favorite app. Squeeze even more podcast-related content into your life. And I left a link in the show notes to our new blog post that covers monetization strategies, if you wanna peek ahead and see what's coming up. And if there's something that you want us to talk about on a future episode, you can click the link in the show notes to submit your question. Thanks for listening, and as always, keep podcasting.