Unlocking the Potential of Podcast Memberships: Strategies for Creating Irresistible Subscriber Experiences

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As a serious independent podcaster, diversity in monetisation is the single most

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important part of your growth and your revenue strategy. Eggs in baskets can be very

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dangerous, so making sure you have them spread to as many places as possible.

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Diversity in monetization is one of the most useful aspects of a successful podcaster

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mindset that you can undertake. But what does that mean and how do memberships

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and tipping feature within this mindset? This is of course the podcast accelerator.

[Mark]: 00:00:57

I'm your host, Mark Asquith, and today I'm going to talk about actually What is a

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podcast membership? What is podcast tipping? And I'm gonna, honestly, I'm gonna

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talk a little bit about what we've done here at Captivate to help with that. But before

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I do that, I am just gonna give a bit of a shout out, honestly, to my brand new listener

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support page. It's something that I've just built using Captivate's brand new tipping

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and membership features. You can find it at mark.live forward slash. support. If

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you like the show, you can show your support at that page, mark.live slash support.

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And even if you don't intend on getting involved on supporting the show, it would be

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useful for you to go and look at that page right now on your mobile or your desktop

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or wherever you're listening to this, just so that you can get a bit of context around

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what I'm going to talk about today. Monetisation for a podcaster is of course very,

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very important, but what we tend to find is that scalable monetisation is difficult

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for the podcaster that is not enjoying a huge audience. However, that's generally

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because we're thinking about things like sponsorship via a CPM model, which is

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where a sponsor will pay you per thousand downloads that you get per episode. And the

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problem with that is that we know that that works. That's sort of mass. broadcast

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advertising. In fact, that model is based on display advertising, radio, TV advertising

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and so on and so forth. The problem comes when we see all of these amazingly powerful

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podcasts and podcasters just like you, who have got these really useful and really

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engaged and really passionate niche audiences. Audiences that might not be as large

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as a big broadcast style advertiser might want to access. who are powerful nonetheless,

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who will take action based on something that you ask them to do, if it's within the

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niche or the niche that you're talking to. And it's something that they love and they

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feel passionate about as well. And that is true for so many podcasts. You see so many

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podcasts that have these types of audiences and it's very, very important for us to understand

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that there are benefits to those audiences and that actually they make up the vast majority

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of the podcast in space. So it's such a shame that... many of the things that we

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look to for monetisation, like sponsorships and so on, they feel out of reach for the average

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podcaster because most of the podcast world is made up of you and me, the small indie

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creator. So what we've done at Captivate is we've introduced a range of membership and

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tipping tools that you can use to offer things like exclusive content, like early access.

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to content that will later go public, but also other benefits. You can direct sell

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sponsorships where people put their card details in and buy a mid-roll or a pre-roll

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from you or whatever you want to sell. And they do this on a recurring basis. So from

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day one, with an audience that doesn't need to be huge, you can generate really decent

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revenue through your podcast. And guess what? If people aren't ready to sign up with

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their card or Apple Pay or GPay on a recurring basis, they can leave you a tip,

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a one-off payment to say thank you for all of your work. We've just introduced these

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features to Captivate. They're available to every Captivate podcaster, and it's the

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most useful, highly integrated version of this that you're going to find anywhere

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in the world. It is a fantastic platform. So what I want to talk to you about today is

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really, like, how do you unlock the potential of memberships? What are they? How

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does tipping fit into the mix? What are the things that we can really leverage

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as serious podcast creators? And what I'm going to do is I'm going to step through

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a number of different things. I'm going to step through, obviously the Captivate release

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that I just talked about, I'm going to step through one of the big benefits that

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you get with this kind of monetisation, which I think is absolutely huge. I'm going

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to talk to you about what a membership really is, what actually is a membership and

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how do you sort of benefit from that and how do your listeners benefit from that.

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I'm going to talk to you about how to think a little bit bigger. with this kind of

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thing. I'm gonna talk to you about some of the benefits you can offer. I'm gonna talk

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to you about the differences in the types of content you can offer, how it works

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with RSS feeds, how do people listen, what kind of pricing structures you can use.

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I'm gonna talk about some of the pitfalls when it comes to a podcast membership and also

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why that diversity in podcast monetization is key, all right? So let's get into this.

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It's gonna be fun. I'm looking forward to that. So let's talk about memberships, all

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right? A podcast membership is where someone Pairs you a recurring monthly fee for

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access to something that you give them. All right. A listener pays a recurring monthly

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fee and you give them access to something that they didn't previously have access to.

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Now that could be exclusive member only content where they're literally the only ones

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that get the content that you publish to those members. Or it could be early access.

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to content that will become public later. As an example, this episode today, this one

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that you're listening to right now, publicly for free, I could say, well look,

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actually I'm gonna put this out to my listeners on the 18th of May, but I'm gonna

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give it to my Early Access members four days early, or two days early, or a day early,

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or a week early, whatever I choose. That is called Early Access, or you'll sometimes

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hear that called, windowing. And it's used by some of the most powerful podcasts

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in the world. It's used by Wondery, it's used by Global, it's used by so many other

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high tier podcast publishers that you should be using this potentially as well. But

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you can also do other things with your membership. You can offer other things. So

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you can offer like laptop stickers. We do that with Sparker Rebellion. You can

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offer access to meetups or shout outs on your show. Whatever you can maintain, whatever

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you can do, whatever people want. you can give them access to using memberships,

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and you can power this all using Captivate. It's all built in, okay? What is a membership

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and how does it differ from a tip? Well, a membership is something that people pay for

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on a recurring basis, where a tip is a one off thank you. It's like a, you know,

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validation for all the work that you do. Thank you for doing this show. We really

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appreciate it. Here's 10 bucks. Go and buy yourself a beer. All right. It's that kind

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of setup and it works. Works really well. It's really useful for people that like

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you and know you, but they can't financially commit to a longer term month of recurring

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commitment. No, are they ready for that? They might just simply not be ready. They might

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have got to know you. They may have come to find your content and got to like you

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and really understand what you do, but they're not, you know, they're not yet fully

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super fans. They're not fully ready to commit to a month of recurring payments.

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So they give you a one-off tip and it works really well. Again, it's something that

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you can do through Captivate and you can do that just today. You can just sign in

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and do that, all right? So that's the difference between a membership and a tip.

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The biggest thing, the biggest thing about memberships and tips and monetising in

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this particular manner and using something like your hosting platform Captivate to do

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this is that you control every facet of that monetisation. You're not beholden to

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a brand or a sponsorship partner, you're not beholden to someone saying our budgets

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have been cut so we're going to cut your entire level of funding. We are not beholden

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to someone saying you have to hit a certain number of downloads in order to open

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up our sponsorship money. You can do this from day one of your podcast, whether

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you're a brand new podcaster or a veteran that's ready to get started with monetization.

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You can do this today. And the real beauty with this, the real power comes basically

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from the fact that you do have that end to end control. All right. You can use

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Captivate to... provide early access to provide exclusive content and you do that

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from all one place. You do it from your current platform. You do it with a range of

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check boxes. It's dead easy to do. But the real power is that it's a relationship

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between you and your fans. It's a relationship between you and those who already love you

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and those that will come to love you in the future. This is why it's so important

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because you get the full level of control, end-to-end control over this entire monetization

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option and you get the ability to more effortlessly scale this. Now, I'm not saying

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this is easy, but it's easier to scale this because all you have to do is focus on

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what you were already focusing on, which is find more listeners, marketing, audience

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growth. And as long as you design this well, and as long as you tell people within

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your episodes, go to, for example, with me, mark.live slash support, where you can

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leave a tip, then people will hear that. Yeah, people will hear that and it becomes

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just part of your natural episode flow. So the control aspect of memberships and tipping

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is a huge benefit over other types of monetization. However, the real goal for serious

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independent podcasters like you is that you get diversity in monetization. All right.

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I talked about this at the beginning of the episode. If all your eggs are in one

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basket for monetisation, and I've seen this with podcasters where they go after sponsors,

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they write an amazing sponsor pitch and it's full of all these extra benefits and

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they get the deal and it's brilliant. However, budgets get cut. Episodes don't perform

[Mark]: 00:10:53

quite as well because we're trying new formats or whatever. There's Covid hits or

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something affects the way that people listen or... Times just change, renewals come

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around and they've not seen as a sponsor the sales that they want to see because sales

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is a really tough thing to measure against a podcast. So what they do is they pull the

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sponsorship for the next year. So it's all well and good when you sign the sponsor

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but what happens is you've got to keep pitching that sponsor, you've got to keep adding

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benefits and adding value and then you've got to find another sponsor. You need that

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second pre-roll or that second mid-roll and you've got to do it all again. and then

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the year after all again. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's the way of

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sponsorships. That's the way of sort of, I suppose, thinking of podcasts as more

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of a B2B mechanism, business to business mechanism. Whereas listener support, this diversity

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that I'm talking about, if you use listener support, memberships and tips and so on and

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so forth, yes, do the sponsor work, that's cool, all well and good. Do the pitching,

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whatever you wanna do. If that fits for you, brilliant. However, if you've also

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got some eggs in baskets that's listener support, the rest of it sort of becomes a little

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less urgent because you're not having to worry so much about renewing the next sponsor

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deal or having to provide more value for the same price the next year. And so what

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you find yourself doing is you find yourself with freedom in monetization. You

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find yourself with opportunity to say no, if you want to, because memberships and

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tipping. is underpinned by your fans, it's underpinned by the people that love you

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and will turn up regardless, they are there for you because they have been there

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since day one or from day one that they found you, okay? And what this means is that

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they are much more likely to continue the commitment because they've got a relationship

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with you because you're piping into their ears, you're piping into what they want

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to hear from you and that relationship is so strong that if you've got eggs in this

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basket... the opportunity to be freer with your monetization and not necessarily

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be beholden to all of the different elements of sponsorship or brands or companies

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that have got to go through red tape and bureaucratic processes to get you that

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invoice paid. You don't have to worry about that as much because it gives you opportunity

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if you diversify your monetization. Now, there are other ways that you can diversify.

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You can sell merch, you can sell other products, you can sell guest spots, whatever.

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But the point is... that you've got to start thinking about diversity in monetization,

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all right? And that's why unlocking and unleashing the power of these memberships

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and tipping functionalities gives you a bedrock. Okay. I've just turned it on today

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for the podcast accelerator, mark.live slash support. You can go and, you can go and

[Mark]: 00:13:47

leave me a tip. If you like this episode, you can thank me for this episode. All right.

[Mark]: 00:13:51

Brilliant. I'd love it if you did that. Cause I mean, I can buy a beer. I can buy some

[Mark]: 00:13:54

of beer. She loved that. If you're listening, Sam, and if I do get a tip. I'll definitely

[Mark]: 00:14:01

give that to you as a beer. Why did I say that? I thought myself out of a Mareti.

[Mark]: 00:14:05

That's unbelievable. That is not like me. So the point of this is I just wanna drill

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this home. I really wanna hammer this home is that you are a serious independent

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podcaster and your audience enjoys what you do and loves what you do. And you are deserving

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already because of the work that you put in, deserving already of a high quality

[Mark]: 00:14:26

diversification in monetization. So many times I see people in the Captivate group

[Mark]: 00:14:32

on YouTube talking to me at events saying Mark I wish I could just generate enough money

[Mark]: 00:14:38

to cover my podcast hosting because that would take the pressure off. It would

[Mark]: 00:14:43

stop it being an expense and it would turn it into something that I could break even

[Mark]: 00:14:49

on and maybe after a couple of months I could buy a new mic. Maybe after a few months

[Mark]: 00:14:54

extra I could buy a camera to start doing YouTube stuff. This enables that from

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day one, from today. All right, so just take that for what it is. It's really important,

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I think, that you realize that that diversity is there and that memberships and

[Mark]: 00:15:11

tipping can be a really strong element of that diversity, okay? Let's think about

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how we might work with memberships. Memberships are really powerful when it comes

[Mark]: 00:15:25

to monetising your podcast, but they can be quite tricky because you've got to get

[Mark]: 00:15:29

that pitch right. You know, what are the benefits? So with Captivate, what you can

[Mark]: 00:15:32

do is you can set up different tiers of membership. You can say like tier one is

[Mark]: 00:15:37

free, tier two is like five bucks a month, and then tier three is ten bucks a month,

[Mark]: 00:15:41

up to whatever you want, as many tiers as you want. OK. And then you can stack the

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benefits up. So you can say on the lowest tier you get... a shout out on the episode.

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On the next tier up you get a shout out on every episode. On the tier after that

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you get a shout out on every episode plus you get a laptop sticker and on the one

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after that you get a laptop sticker, invites to meet ups and early access to public

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episodes. And on the tier after that you get early access to public episodes plus

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all the other stuff but you also get exclusive member only access. So what you can

[Mark]: 00:16:13

do is you can compound these tiers up. You can say right we start with this base and

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then we build them up on top of that, all right? And that's a really powerful way

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of doing it. Now, some of the things that you can do, I think the important part

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to understand here is when it comes to memberships, it's vital to only work within

[Mark]: 00:16:33

your means and your boundaries, okay? So what I mean is that one of the risks with

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podcast memberships is that you set out to say, I'm gonna provide an exclusive

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episode to my members. every single week in addition to the public episode that

[Mark]: 00:16:49

I'm already doing. Now, what's the biggest problem that indie creators like you and me

[Mark]: 00:16:53

face? It's either money or it's time, and it's usually time. We're hobbyists. I'm

[Mark]: 00:16:58

talking about Star Wars on my other podcast. It's this is this a labor of love.

[Mark]: 00:17:03

I do it because I love doing it. It's not because I think it's going to make me rich.

[Mark]: 00:17:07

Yeah. Does it pay for itself in hosting? Yeah, that's great. But I'm not going to get

[Mark]: 00:17:12

rich off it. So finding the time to put. into that, when you've got a family and

[Mark]: 00:17:17

when you've got work going on, it's quite difficult. Let's not pretend that it's

[Mark]: 00:17:21

not. So for you to say, look, I love the idea of memberships and I love the idea

[Mark]: 00:17:25

of offering exclusive content, but you've got to ask yourself, okay, can I dedicate time

[Mark]: 00:17:30

to this? Now you might be able to. I know I could with this show because frankly,

[Mark]: 00:17:35

what I would do is on an episode like this, I would do like the main episode, and

[Mark]: 00:17:39

then I'd do a 10-minute extra episode at the end, which was of this topic but just...

[Mark]: 00:17:44

extra content, it was something from a different perspective or a different angle.

[Mark]: 00:17:47

If I'm doing an interview with James Cridland like I've got coming up next week,

[Mark]: 00:17:51

we talk about YouTube and whether or not you should be using it, whether it's a

[Mark]: 00:17:54

good thing for podcasting or not. What I would do is, I would say James, let's stay

[Mark]: 00:17:59

on 10 minutes afterwards. We're going to stop the recording. This is for the public

[Mark]: 00:18:03

and it's a brilliant episode. It's an hour long, but we're going to do 15 minutes

[Mark]: 00:18:06

or so that is just for my exclusive members. Okay. And that can work because what

[Mark]: 00:18:11

I'm doing is I'm bundling it in terms of time and workload, bundling that in to what

[Mark]: 00:18:18

I'm already doing. But a lot of people make the mistake where they say, oh, we're

[Mark]: 00:18:21

going to do another one hour podcast every week. Well, you can't because it's another

[Mark]: 00:18:24

one hour podcast every week. That's just, it's, it can be hard to do that. So one

[Mark]: 00:18:29

of the biggest pitfalls that people find with memberships is... that they bite

[Mark]: 00:18:35

off too much, all right? So what I would say when you're designing your memberships

[Mark]: 00:18:40

out is think about what you can reliably achieve, all right? What can you consistently

[Mark]: 00:18:45

do? Because remember, it's easier to add tiers. So it's easier to start with things

[Mark]: 00:18:49

like, here's a laptop sticker or a shout out on the show. Here's access to meetups and

[Mark]: 00:18:53

invitations to events that we might go to because we already go to them. Here's

[Mark]: 00:18:57

early access because I'm publishing my episodes Anyway, so I may as well, you know,

[Mark]: 00:19:02

it's fine if I give you early access because I've got to do that episode anyway

[Mark]: 00:19:06

Leave it at that for now. Maybe all right And then in the future it's better to

[Mark]: 00:19:10

add on exclusive content as opposed to saying to yourself I'm gonna do exclusive

[Mark]: 00:19:14

content from day one Realize I can't keep up with it and have to cancel it because

[Mark]: 00:19:18

that is not a great experience for people All right, the people that are paying you the

[Mark]: 00:19:22

money. It's not great for them All right, you lose a little bit of trust with that. So

[Mark]: 00:19:25

just that's one of the biggest pitfalls is biting off too much offering too much as

[Mark]: 00:19:30

a membership, offering too much as a commitment from you that people then sign up

[Mark]: 00:19:34

to that you can't deliver on. So ease yourself into this and you'll be surprised

[Mark]: 00:19:39

because people are fans of you, they love what you do. Anything extra doesn't have

[Mark]: 00:19:45

to be a big grand gesture like here's a brand new one hour episode every week. Anything

[Mark]: 00:19:51

is great because they're such big fans of you that they are so deeply connected to

[Mark]: 00:19:55

wanting more of what you do. that extra is enough. It doesn't have to be a big grand

[Mark]: 00:20:01

gesture of a full one hour episode extra every week, all right? So think about that.

[Mark]: 00:20:05

How do you design that? How do you go about that? And also, how can you provide low

[Mark]: 00:20:10

cost things to your patrons? So I know it sounds a bit sort of, I suppose a little

[Mark]: 00:20:16

bit odd, but like old school things, like send them a sticker, send them a pen,

[Mark]: 00:20:22

send them a mug, you know, these are like two pound, three pound. or in the US,

[Mark]: 00:20:27

like three, four, five bucks things. You don't have to do big things, okay? Send

[Mark]: 00:20:32

them a sticker, that costs pennies. It costs pennies to get stickers made, all

[Mark]: 00:20:36

right? Or like 100 stickers is barely anything. You can send them even just a handwritten

[Mark]: 00:20:42

thank you on a compliment slip will cost you pennies. But think about how much

[Mark]: 00:20:48

that will mean to people. It will mean the world to people. It will mean the world.

[Mark]: 00:20:56

to people, okay? So think about how can I?

[Mark]: 00:21:01

How can I, as someone that has a duty of care to my fans, which is what we have when

[Mark]: 00:21:08

we have people loyally following us, we have fans, it can be quite difficult to

[Mark]: 00:21:13

accept that fact as a creator that people like you, we've got to get over that insecurity

[Mark]: 00:21:17

a little bit. How can I give the very best extension of my podcasting experience

[Mark]: 00:21:26

to my fans? OK? So. How can I make them feel great about being a member? How can I

[Mark]: 00:21:34

make them feel like they've got more access to me than they had before they were

[Mark]: 00:21:37

a member? How can I make them feel part of my group, of my crew, of my crowd, of my

[Mark]: 00:21:44

people? How can I make them feel like one of us? And that doesn't have to be big

[Mark]: 00:21:51

grand gestures, all right? Exclusive content is wonderful, and I'm going to talk

[Mark]: 00:21:56

about those differences in a little bit more depth, early access and exclusive

[Mark]: 00:21:59

in just a second.

[Mark]: 00:22:03

It doesn't have to be the be all and end all, you can do other things. All right,

[Mark]: 00:22:05

so think about that. How can you design that? Now, we've got a great set of options

[Mark]: 00:22:09

for you to dig into. We've got some fantastic ideas for you over on the Captivate.fm

[Mark]: 00:22:15

blog. You can go and check that out. Sarah and Ben have put together a wonderful

[Mark]: 00:22:18

tutorial that gives you some Kickstarter ideas, all right, gives you an idea set that

[Mark]: 00:22:24

you can use to build upon. All right, it will detail some benefits and some options

[Mark]: 00:22:28

that you can use to give to your prospective member. So go take. a look at that. What is

[Mark]: 00:22:37

exclusive content? What is early access content? And how does that play with RSS feeds?

[Mark]: 00:22:42

Well, first of all, let's just quickly revisit what an RSS feed is, all right? An

[Mark]: 00:22:46

RSS feed is all of your content from your podcast packaged up neatly into a box

[Mark]: 00:22:51

that the apps and all of the places that people get their podcasts, whether it's

[Mark]: 00:22:55

Global Play, whether it's Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever, they access this box of

[Mark]: 00:23:00

information called an RSS feed and they take data out of it and give it to listeners.

[Mark]: 00:23:05

Every time you publish a new episode, a new episode goes in that box and that includes

[Mark]: 00:23:10

the episode title, the mp3 file, the description, any links, any show notes in there,

[Mark]: 00:23:15

an Apple global, Spotify, they go in and they say, oh, there's a new episode there,

[Mark]: 00:23:20

let me pop that in the directory and people can listen to it. And that's what an

[Mark]: 00:23:24

RSS feed is and Captivate compiles and builds those RSS feeds for you to submit to

[Mark]: 00:23:29

places like Global Player and Apple Podcasts and Spotify. So that's the relationship

[Mark]: 00:23:34

between you, your voice. an RSS feed and the outlets, the apps, okay? So that's

[Mark]: 00:23:38

what an RSS feed is. We know that you're experiencing RSS feeds if you're a podcaster.

[Mark]: 00:23:43

But what about this exclusive and early access? Surely that can't all work on the same

[Mark]: 00:23:47

feed. Well, you're absolutely right, it can. Because that box of content, that RSS

[Mark]: 00:23:53

feed, is public. That goes out everywhere. You couldn't obviously put exclusive content

[Mark]: 00:23:58

in a public box. It's like putting something in your safe at home and then putting that

[Mark]: 00:24:03

safe. in a box outside on your driveway. It just doesn't work. It's the two opposing

[Mark]: 00:24:08

ideas, okay? So early access and exclusive content are delivered by what we call custom

[Mark]: 00:24:16

private RSS feed. You don't have to worry about where they come from. Every time

[Mark]: 00:24:20

you get a member and that member signs up to a early access or exclusive benefit on

[Mark]: 00:24:26

your membership platform powered by Captivate, you... are going to see that the

[Mark]: 00:24:32

person that subscribes to your membership is going to receive a custom RSS feed that

[Mark]: 00:24:38

is generated uniquely and solely for them. Only they have access to it and they

[Mark]: 00:24:45

can listen to that RSS feed and the content they're in using something like Apple

[Mark]: 00:24:51

Podcasts or whatever else, okay? They can go and listen to that custom content in

[Mark]: 00:24:56

their podcast app of choice

[Mark]: 00:25:01

It works. It just does. Okay. That's how they get this private exclusive early access

[Mark]: 00:25:07

content. Okay. Side note, Captivate builds in what we call anti-fraud monitoring.

[Mark]: 00:25:15

So if someone like say, let's say that you subscribe to the podcast Accelerator membership,

[Mark]: 00:25:20

you get your exclusive content via an RSS feed that is unique only to you. You then

[Mark]: 00:25:27

share the RSS feed. and you give it to someone who isn't paying their membership,

[Mark]: 00:25:32

but they're getting that membership content for free, naughty, that's piracy, all

[Mark]: 00:25:38

right? That's naughty. That is sharing RSS test feed, that is fraudulent, okay? We've

[Mark]: 00:25:44

built in some fraud monitoring tools, so what that allows you to do is see how many

[Mark]: 00:25:48

times each episode has been downloaded by each individual member. Because if someone's

[Mark]: 00:25:53

downloading an episode 10 times, Well, they simply don't need to do that. They just

[Mark]: 00:25:57

don't need to do that, all right? So we build in fraud monitoring so you can see.

[Mark]: 00:26:01

You can then regenerate their RSS feed if you think they're sharing it, regenerate

[Mark]: 00:26:06

it, kill the old one, automatically send them a new one, all right? So that's how

[Mark]: 00:26:09

protection works. That's a little bit of a side note, but it's useful to know. Early

[Mark]: 00:26:15

access and exclusive. They're sort of two sides of the same coin, okay? They both

[Mark]: 00:26:19

work delivering content via an exclusive RSS feed, so a private... member only RSS feed

[Mark]: 00:26:26

that only each member has unique access to. The difference between the two is this.

[Mark]: 00:26:32

Early access content is content that you will release publicly later. So I could

[Mark]: 00:26:38

take this episode, like I said earlier, release it on Thursday the 18th of May, but

[Mark]: 00:26:42

choose actually to give it to you, the member of the podcast accelerator, a week early

[Mark]: 00:26:49

or two days early, and it will go down your private RSS feed you will get it before

[Mark]: 00:26:55

anyone else and then eventually whenever I tell it to, whenever I set it in Captivate

[Mark]: 00:26:59

to, it will switch over to being public. So that's a big benefit for you. It's exclusive

[Mark]: 00:27:04

to you until that window ends. And that's very, very common. Very, very common. Exclusive

[Mark]: 00:27:11

content is essentially member only content. It is content that will only be published to

[Mark]: 00:27:20

your members. So it will never go from being exclusive to being public. This is fully

[Mark]: 00:27:27

exclusive content and that tends to be extra content. Okay, where early access

[Mark]: 00:27:32

is early access to normal content, exclusive content is different content. Okay, that is

[Mark]: 00:27:40

huge. That is huge. All right, works really, really well. So that's the difference

[Mark]: 00:27:45

between early access and exclusive content. I highly recommend that you take a look at

[Mark]: 00:27:50

these because you can be using them today to generate revenue from your podcast.

[Mark]: 00:28:01

There's a lot to this subject and I am going to be putting out more and more episodes

[Mark]: 00:28:05

about this particular topic. Next week we've got an interview with the wonderful James

[Mark]: 00:28:10

Cridland about YouTube and it's foray into podcasting and what that might mean for

[Mark]: 00:28:14

us, the serious indie creator. And then we're going to be back with another episode

[Mark]: 00:28:20

on really how to work with memberships and tipping more specifically. So this is really

[Mark]: 00:28:25

an overview introduction episode that I wanted to bring to you quite early. And to

[Mark]: 00:28:29

close up... on this. I want to really, really just hone in on just the idea that this

[Mark]: 00:28:41

is about diversity. It really is about diversity in podcasting and about diversity

[Mark]: 00:28:47

in revenue. Okay. If you are a serious independent creator, if you want to create

[Mark]: 00:28:55

content that really resonates with your audience but that will give you a return on

[Mark]: 00:29:00

that time investment, then I highly recommend that you look in to memberships and

[Mark]: 00:29:06

at the very least, activating tipping on your podcast right away. It's so important

[Mark]: 00:29:13

as a serious creator to get rewarded for our time and for our efforts. What we don't

[Mark]: 00:29:20

often realise is that our fans are ready

[Mark]: 00:29:27

that validation and to give us that thanks. We just don't always have an easy means

[Mark]: 00:29:32

of asking for it or more importantly, a secure, safe and easy way to financially

[Mark]: 00:29:41

transact with us. Now we do. Built into your Captivate Dashboard is all this goodness,

[Mark]: 00:29:48

all of these features that I've just talked about. It's all powered by Stripe Marketplace.

[Mark]: 00:29:52

It's all safe. It's all secure. It's all powered by Apple Pay and GPay and card

[Mark]: 00:29:56

transactions and you can do so much with it. I've talked about some pitfalls. I've

[Mark]: 00:30:01

talked about the differences between exclusive and early access content. We've talked

[Mark]: 00:30:05

about RSS feeds. We've talked about some base level structures that you could use.

[Mark]: 00:30:10

And you can find more about that on Captivate.fm forward slash blog. And we've

[Mark]: 00:30:16

talked about generally. how and why you should be activating memberships and tipping

[Mark]: 00:30:22

functionality for your podcast today in order to begin that diversity in monetization.

[Mark]: 00:30:28

Please take heed of this. It's very, very important because I truly believe that

[Mark]: 00:30:33

now is the time for creators like you and me to spread our wings, to open up a range

[Mark]: 00:30:39

of options for monetization and to start being fairly compensated for the time that

[Mark]: 00:30:42

we put in. And our fans are more than willing to do that. We just have to ask them.

[Mark]: 00:30:49

Our fans, let me say that again, our fans are more than willing to help us and to

[Mark]: 00:30:55

support us and to thank us for all we do. We have to be just willing to ask. So go

[Mark]: 00:31:02

and ask. Go and get this set up. Get started with memberships, get started with

[Mark]: 00:31:08

tipping and go and check out mark.live.com forward slash support and you can leave me

[Mark]: 00:31:12

a tip if you want me to buy some that beer. But until the next time, I'll be back

[Mark]: 00:31:16

next week with an episode. featuring the wonderful James Cridland where we go deep

[Mark]: 00:31:20

into YouTube for podcasting. And if anyone is at the podcast show in London next

[Mark]: 00:31:25

week, maybe we'll use some of that tip money to buy you a beer as well. Until next

[Mark]: 00:31:30

time, keep up the great work, enjoy what you do. Keep on sharing your voice because