AP 0302: How Do I Keep MP3s for Customers Only?

AskPat 302 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here. This is Episode 302 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Awesome. Now let's get to today's question from Anabell.

Anabell: Hi Pat, This is Anabell Engleton of the Pregnancy Perfect podcast at PregnancyPerfect.com. I feel like I already know you since I had your lovely wife April as the first guest on my show. But anyway, this question is for you. I want to start monetizing my podcast/business, and I'm putting together a digital product to sell. I will be interviewing pregnancy professionals like a pediatrician, an OBGYN, lactation consultant, and asking them tons of questions that my audience wants the answers to. I'll be making these MP3s and selling them on my site both individually and as a set. My question is, what distribution method do you think is best? I'm concerned about having them on a page on my website for fear of others finding the page and downloading them without paying, thus me losing a profit. Would it be best to deliver them via email and have them download them there after purchasing? Thanks for your help, Pat. Tell April, Kai and Keoni I said hi. Looking forward to hearing back!

Pat Flynn: Hey Anabell. What's up? Thank you so much for the question. It's good to hear your voice again, and my wife said she had a good time on your show, and that was really cool. She hasn't done one since, and you could tell she was a little bit nervous but she loved being on your show and she still talks about that. So, thank you.

For this question, too, I think is one question that a lot of people have some interest in, especially because of how easy and awesome it is now to kind of go out there and meet new people, interview them, collect those interviews and potentially share them with the world either for free through a podcast like you're doing, like I'm doing, like a lot of us are doing, or through a paid product. And there's a lot of different ways to go about it. The first before I get there is just make sure that when you interview these other people, that they know what their interview is being used for. That you are indeed selling their content that they're sharing with you. Make sure they sign release forms and all that stuff, and you want to make sure you connect with a professional or an attorney to help you make sure that you get everything all in order just so you're not running into any trouble down the road. I'm sure you've thought about that already, Anabell, but just for everybody else out there, make sure you've got all that covered before you actually start selling these things.

Now in terms of protecting your audio, I mean, this is something a lot of us worry about. And not just for audio, but for ebooks and things like that. From membership sites, people passing out passwords and all this stuff, and we always think of the worst things possible. But the truth is, well, the honest truth is some people will share it, and it's just the way it is. You don't want to waste so much energy trying to password protect everything and get it to a point where every time someone plays a new file or opens it, they have to put a different password in that's unique in the last thirty seconds, and authentications and all this stuff only ruins the customer experience, and that takes away from the overall value of your product. And some people are going to slip through, I even know that the Smart Podcast Player, there's going to be a few hackers out there. For example, for this software product that people have to pay for, that are going to figure out how to unlock it and that's just something that you have to do basic things for to protect, but know that it's just going to go out there.

And there's a few things you can do to minimize that from happening. First of all, you just want to mention when you share your content, and I mentioned this in Ebooks The Smart Way I believe. “Hey, I worked really hard on this, I've done this to provide a value for you, and it would be really awesome if you didn't share this. I worked really hard on this, and if you do want to share this.” Here's another strategy, if you do want to share this with somebody else, you can actually make money from doing so. So if you have an affiliate program that actually helps deter people from sharing it with everybody for free, knowing they could share it with other people and potentially get paid for it. So having an affiliate program on the back end of this could be very useful and a great way to just spread the message. And, you know a lot of the people who are going to go through your course and listen to these interviews and these audio files, Anabell, they're probably going to know a lot of people who could benefit from that content as well.

First of all, some people just won't know that it's not okay, and they'll share it. So again, like what I said earlier, just telling people that, you know, “please don't share this, I've worked really hard on it.” That sort of thing. Just being honest and open about that up front. That's going to stop people from doing it. But, if you have an affiliate program to along with it, that'll get people who do want to share it to potentially get off that fence and share it and actually help you make money and help them make money too, and it's a great way to have your audience and your customers start to market for you, to become sort of your sales force, which is pretty cool.

Now, in terms of delivery, there's a lot of different ways to do it, and you have to also balance what is convenient for the people who are purchasing it. If they had to go to a different email for every different audio file, that could obviously become a hassle.

I feel like the best solution here for everybody, especially because if you have this thing online like a membership site with something where people have to login. Something that's secure. It’s not just a link that people go to, but it's a link that people go to and then they have to login. Some of those programs that allow you to do that have IP protection, or they give you notices when somebody from a different IP address logs in to the same account, and you have to be careful with that because they might be on vacation on somebody else's computer or something, but those things will help and password protecting those areas, that seems to be the most common solution. Again just making sure to balance that, the ease of use and download, and for MP3 files, there's a number of ways you could do it. Depending on your audience, also, it might be as simple as a restricted RSS feed, for example.

Maybe it's a series of interviews or something just like a podcast that people are getting these from your podcasts. Maybe it's access to a feed that is specific for them to subscribe on that they have to go into a password protected area to get. Perhaps it's just a separate feed that you have on Libsyn or your other host that is just non accessible to the public. You don't put that on iTunes, but it just happens to have all of these things, and what's really cool is that then it becomes more like the experience of what your target audience has had with you already, and so they just get access to this new feed. That's another idea. I mean, there's a lot of different ways you can go about it.

What's the best way? My thoughts are they get a really nice email from you after purchase, it has their login information, or they have to go to a website to create a username and a password, and that just makes it really official. That just shows them right away that this is something that is not just shown to everybody. And if you then say, in like a welcome video after they go to that first page after they login for the first time, you know, “hey, welcome, this is what the course is about, and I would really appreciate it if you made sure that you kept this, you know, not secret, but that you didn't just share this because I worked really hard on it and I want to make sure that you get a lot of value. But, also, if you do want to share it, I do have an affiliate program to go along with it. You can sign up here below, but first, make sure you go through the content, know that you like it before you share it with anybody else, want to make sure that you're confident that this will help you and those around you.”

So things like that would help, and then having a really nice, it doesn't have to be super fancy but just a nice way to navigate, and comment, and things like that. If you do want to bring commenting in, I mean, that's one thing if you had that sort of protected feed like I said earlier. Something you're not going to get here. This platform online, this membership site, this could perhaps be forming the community you have with your customers, and if it's what I know your audience is about, people who are in their months of pregnancy, they want to talk to people. I know April, she was very fortunate to have a couple friends who were pregnant at the same time as her, and they were just talking about their experiences with each other, and she was always asking people who had already had their babies what life was like and was going to be like and all those sorts of things. I mean, the last thing a pregnant person wants to be is alone, I'm sure. And so having a community involved with this can really be helpful too, and that's why I think the delivery method in terms of a password protected membership site that they get access too but also can continue to login to, even after they've listened to all the interviews, they'd be able to connect with each other.

So either that, or a Facebook group. Although, you know, Facebook groups are great, but you have to realize that you are putting people and gathering people in a space that is not your own. Now, it is much easier. A lot of people are on Facebook and that's a great thing to perhaps start out with if you don't want to either spend the money, or you don't have the resources to create a forum on your own site. I mean, Facebook is great. It's really easy, it's going to be the most active. So, a combination of any of those things from above will help you, and yes, like I said earlier, some people are going to share it without realizing that they're not supposed to. Some people are going to figure out a way to get it without having to pay you, and that's just the way it is. That happens in the movie industry every single time a person sneaks into a theater, or every time pirated DVDs or Blu-Rays get put out there, yet the movie industry is still going well and people are still loving it, and people will continually pay for it.

I feel like if you do a great job of just providing value in your show, which I know you do because I've listened to it before, they're going to want to pay for it. And, you know, those people who get it for free will, whatever, right? It's a digital product, and it's not going to take anything but some work upfront for you to do it and hopefully do well with it.

So, Anabell, I hope that answers your question. For those of you listening, if you have any advice that you'd like to share along these lines, go ahead and use the hashtag #AskPat302. Again, that's #AskPat302. I know Anabell is on Twitter. We’ve tweeted a couple times before, so she'll be there following that hashtag as well. And let's continue the conversation there. Offer your advice. Perhaps this is something you've done before as well. For me in the past when I shared my MP3 files for an audio product I had, which was essentially the audio version for an ebook that I had, it was literally a .zip file that they had to download. The tough thing about that was it was several megabytes in length and some people didn't have the ability to download it all at the same time, and you know the email delivery of audio just doesn't sound very good as an experience. I didn't have the resources back then to create a membership site or some type of platform to be able to have people login and access it in a very professional way. And it also gives you an opportunity to promote further things or share news or things like that. When you get people on your website, on your platform, that gives you an opportunity to have them take even more action.

So that is something I wanted to share with you, and everybody else out there. Thank you for listening. Anabell, we're going to send you an AskPat t-shirt. My assistant Jessica will be in contact with you very soon to collect your information within the next week or two. And for those of you listening, if you would love to have a question featured here on the show, and also potentially get and AskPat t-shirt along with it, head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask right there using the Speakpipe.com widget.

Thanks so much for listening in, and as always, I love to end with a quote, and today's quote is from Mark Zuckerberg over at Facebook. He says, “Move fast and break things, unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.” So good. Cheers, take care, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Thanks guys.