SPI 443: A New Way to Monetize Your Podcast with Jason from Supercast

SPI 443: A New Way to Monetize Your Podcast with Jason from Supercast

Pat Flynn:
So as we all know podcasting has sort of taken over the world recently, and I’ve obviously been a big fan of it for a while now having since launched a podcast ten years ago, over a decade ago, which is pretty crazy. But it’s interesting because only within the past year have we seen a ton of activity, especially in the software space in terms of solutions and companies spending loads of money, creating new startups, and all these really fun, amazing tools that we now have access to as podcasters. And whether you are a podcaster or not, it’s very important to pay attention to some of the trends and some of the things that we are seeing here.

Pat:
And today, I’m really excited because I have a friend on, Jason, who is the founder of Supercast, and Supercast is one of those brand new—not platforms, because podcasting is a platform—but this is something that you add on top of your podcast to help you make more money.

Pat:
In fact, to give you a little bit of insight: This is a way for you to create a membership-like opportunity with your show, a paid RSS feed or a paid subscription model for a podcast. And you’ll hear the ins and outs of this story, the startup, how this person, Jason, has taken hold of these opportunities within the podcasting space to serve a big problem. Monetization is much harder on a podcast versus something like YouTube where you can make money through Google AdSense and the advertisements that you see there.

Pat:
Brand deals, sponsorships, yes, that’s available on podcasts too. But now we finally have something that can allow us to build on top of this amazing platform and the relationships that we build. And whether you choose to have a premium podcast on top of your free one or just a paid one in and of itself, similar to various tools like Substack, which is a paid email subscription tool. Yes, you can actually get paid to have people join your email list, and people do make a lot of money doing that. Now we can do this with our podcast using Supercast.

Pat:
So pay attention, we got a lot of stuff to talk with Jason about today. But first, let’s cue the intro.

Announcer:
Welcome to the Smart Passive Income Podcast where it’s all about working hard now so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host, if he was at Hogwarts, he’d be in House Slytherin, Pat Flynn.

Pat:
What’s up, y’all? Welcome to session 443 of the Smart Passive Income Podcast. My name’s Pat Flynn, here to help you make more money, save more time, and help more people too. And like I said, today we’re talking with Jason from Supercast.com. In fact, if you wanted to check out the affiliate link for that or maybe you might want to wait until the end to do that, that’s going to be SmartPassiveIncome.com/supercast. And there’s a fun little contest going on right now where you can actually win a lunch with me if you get in on time. If not, you can still check out Supercast obviously.

Pat:
But anyway, let’s just get to the conversation with Jason and learn more about this program and how it all works, and how we might be able to best use this in a way that makes sense. Here we go.

Pat:
Jason, welcome to the Smart Passive Income Podcast. Thanks so much for being here today.

Jason Sew Hoy:
Awesome to be here, Pat. Really excited to chat.

Pat:
I can’t wait to talk podcasting, the future of podcasting, podcast monetization in a very unique way, and all about Supercast in just a moment. But I’d love to get a little bit more background on you and your story. When did entrepreneurship and startups become a thing for you?

Jason:
Yeah, that’s a great question. I’m going to have to wind back the clock a little bit here.

Pat:
How far?

Jason:
Well, I think at university. Growing up around computers, my older brother used to sell computers way back in the day when he was in his 20s or so. It was really early on. I’m talking about the days where it was still five and a quarter inch floppy disk. That was the latest thing before hard drives even were a thing. So I remember just playing computer games as a kid, doing everything from Test Drive to Mongo Bongo to just the really old school Sierra games. And through that path, when I got to university, computer science seemed a really natural fit for me to go down. And I just found it really fun, and I was also pretty good at it. So I ended up landing a job at a company called Unisys, which is a global multi-national.

Jason:
And the reason why I guess I touched upon this regarding to your question about entrepreneurship, is I was offered a choice straight off the bat when I started joining Unisys. Do you want to get on the technical path or do you want to go down the more kind of business path? And even though I’d studied computer science and could write software and write code, I decided to go down the business path, because I always saw myself as someone who was curious about entrepreneurship. I always wanted to be more than just a person you just put into a box and said, “Hey, that’s your role,” when it comes to software development or anything else. And I liked having my fingers in lots of pies.

Jason:
So, I went down that path that led to a career in sales in IT. Then, I moved to a smaller agency. Then, I moved to Australia. I’m originally from New Zealand, and when I moved to Australia I found a company called 99Designs. I was just in the right place, right time quite frankly. Joined 99Designs as fifth employee, so it was just a couple of developers and a designer prior to that, as well as the founder, Marc Harbottle, who’s very much a serial entrepreneur. And that was really my foray into, I guess, startups and entrepreneurship on the internet because I was able to grow alongside that marketplace.

Jason:
So, for those that don’t know, 99Designs is a global community of designers, and a global creative platform where you can go and get anything from a logo to a T-shirt, to a website, to even a car wrap or a tattoo designed on 99Designs. What we do really well is match you to the right designers for the task, from the 1.5 million designers that we have spread across the world.

Jason:
I was with 99Designs for ten years, and that was all about how do we make a great design experience on the internet for both customers who need something designed, much like a lot of the entrepreneurs that are listening on this show, through to also servicing the designers and helping them create a business and an income from their passion, which in their case was design. They had a lot of design skills. They wanted to earn some extra money, maybe work had dried up in their local area. That was basically the role that we played for the huge design community that we had on 99Designs.

Jason:
Then, an opportunity came up to join Supercast. I got talking to Tiny, Andrew Wilkinson, who is the founder of Tiny, that owns a portfolio of around 20 internet businesses, as well as Aidan Hornsby, who’s a co-founder of Supercast. And, it was in the world of podcasting, and as I dived into it, I was already curious about podcasting because I’d listened to Tim Ferriss. I’d listened to him and he changed my life through my ears, you know? I changed my diet. I changed some of my workout schedules. I changed the way I think about outsourcing some of the things that I didn’t need to hold on to and didn’t quite get my work week down to four hours, but had an immense impact on my life.

Jason:
So, when I evaluated Supercast and being able to jump on board with this early stage startup, do it all over again just like 99Designs, but serving a different creator obviously, podcasters, and helping them earn an income and build up a sustainable business in more a passive way that’s linked to building an audience, I just couldn’t resist. So, yeah, had to jump in and do it all over again.

Pat:
That’s really cool. Thank you for that run down on your path. I’d love to go back a little bit to your schooling and having learned a lot of the technical aspects of computer science and those sorts of things, engineering and what not. And then, having this choice to go the business route is really interesting. I’d love for you to perhaps speak to a little bit about, because a lot of people who listen to the show, they’re at a 9:00 to 5:00, they are very technical, they do know those things. But when it comes to business and entrepreneurship and sales especially, it’s a whole different world. What was the biggest lesson you’ve learned and the takeaway that you had when you transitioned into that part of your life away from, or perhaps, less focused on the technical stuff and more on the sales? What one or two lessons were really huge for you in helping you really enjoy that, but also get good at it too?

Jason:
That’s a really great question. I’m actually really fond of sales. I guess for people that have worked in agency context or a services business, sometimes they can feel like you get caught up in meeting the demands of clients. And you don’t really feel like you’re building something ongoing. You don’t feel like you’re getting behind a product or a collection of products or something that you can kind of really get attached to and service the same bunch of people and build on over time. At least, that’s the position that I found myself in when I was in an agency sales role.

Jason:
And when I moved over to Australia I promised myself, I said, “Okay, no more services business.” I said, “I really want to get into product, in a product business. I want to get behind a particular product and maybe sell that instead. Or maybe get into more of the development side of things.” But what I realized over time and having found a product business is actually the skills that you learn in the business world and in the agency world, they’re just as valuable in the product business or whatever kind of entrepreneurship role you find yourself in.

Jason:
And particularly sales, in my context. I have given a talk on this, and I’ve always just found that you’re always selling. It doesn’t matter whether you are pitching early employees on joining your startup, on whether you are pitching to early customers to try to validate your solution, maybe convincing family and friends to kick in a little money and support you with getting a new business off the ground. Or even, going and convincing banks for example to support you. There’s just no shortage of opportunities for you, for sales skills, to really help you and your goal. So, yeah, I would say those skills that you’re working on now, and maybe feeling like they’re not being put to the best use, don’t worry about that.

Jason:
As you take your steps into entrepreneurship those will absolutely find a home. And for sales in particular, you never stop using it. It comes to a point where, as your organization grows, you then start to have to be selling to your teams about why it is that they should build this particular feature. Because if you can’t convince your team to get excited around going down a new particular path, or fulfilling an annual vision or a quarterly vision, then that’s when your entire organization starts to be less effective than it could be as well.

Jason:
So, yeah, I look fondly back upon those days. And I think they served me really well.

Pat:
Part of what’s helped me as well with sales, which is something I was not good at either, I was the person at the desk drafting up blueprints and whatnot on Auto CAD and having to become then an entrepreneur, almost forced to be an entrepreneur after getting laid off. I actually learned that failing is a part of the process. Getting through 99 nos to get to that one yes is selling. And learning and iterating as you go, understanding what helps people understand what it is that you’re sharing and presenting.

Pat:
And as you were sort of learning these business skills, and becoming and developing your skills and talents as a sales person, what were some of the big failures that you might remember from the early days? Whether that’s in your agency role or as you started to join these startup companies like 99Designs. By the way, love 99Designs. We’ve worked with them before. Caleb and I, who’s my videographer, and in our business SwitchPod, in fact, our logo for the Switch Pod came from 99Designs.

Jason:
Amazing.

Pat:
Particular designer that we found there who we worked with individually, because you can do contest there as well, but you can work with individual graphic designers there too. And that’s been huge, because that’s now a product that’s sold over 12,000 over the world, and over a million dollars in sales. It’s awesome. So, big thanks to 99Designs. I didn’t know that you were number five there. That’s pretty amazing. But, going back to your question, in your career, what were the big failures that you remember that almost made you even stronger?

Jason:
Yeah, so maybe before I get to that, because you just touched on something that I think is really important.

Pat:
Oh please, yeah.

Jason:
With the question around sales. And your particular context where you were in architectural school, I guess, when you created your first product because you realized that there must be other people out there that were struggling with the same exam. I think the best form of… Often you can think about, “Hey, I need to find a sales person. Or I’m not good at sales, I need to go and find someone else that can help me with that.”

Jason:
I think often the best form of sales is actually from the subject matter expert directly. It’s not from somebody whose core skill is necessarily selling and they’re really good at just pounding out the emails or picking up the phone and dialing one number after another. I think there’s the message and the way you carry yourself when you’re the subject matter expert is markedly different that just can’t help but come across when you’re talking to customers and prospective customers.

Jason:
So, I think in your case, the fact that you had just studied this architecture exam and were in that moment, and you were absolutely in the head space in the customer that might be searching for your product, I think that carries a lot of weight that people might discount. So, I think if you’re a technical specialist listening, and you’ve always wondered, “Hey, I’m not really that comfortable with sales.” I would also encourage them just to give it a try. Because it really, you don’t have to try hard for it to be authentic. And a lot of what matters in sales is actually being that authentic person and that authentic advisor that your customer can really count on.

Pat:
Thank you for that. I love that, thank you. And then, if you could speak to a couple sort of lessons you’ve learned over time, I’d love to then transition after that into some Supercast and podcast stuff, which is sort of why we’re here. But I’d love to know a little bit more, because I know a lot of the audience is in the same position and starting their career in their own business or another startup and would love to kind of fast forward through some of the hardships.

Jason:
Yeah, so I think one big one is always to start with the customer, and always to start with the customer experience and the customer’s view of the world and the specific problem that you’re trying to solve for them. I don’t think there’s ever a time where you can focus too much on the customer. But particularly when it comes to putting a new product out to the market, or seeing if you’ve got something that you can make money on. It’s all too easy to fall into the trap of, “Hey, what’s the technical solution I need to bring together who are the right people to be working on this. Okay, if I grab these five engineers and this designer and this product manager and we go and jump into a cave for two years. Then, we’ll come out with a perfect solution.”

Jason:
I think the world of entrepreneurship and startup has just moved a long way beyond that. And really, there are just so many great tools and some great ways to get started these days, whether it be the likes of Google Forms or Type Form, or using something like Wix to put up the first version of your site. Using something like Teachable to put up a video course. Obviously Supercast to put a paid podcast. All of these tools just make it a lot easier to get something up today or tomorrow.

Jason:
And, I think the closer you are to actually getting customer feedback and putting a little chat bubble on the screen so that you can hear directly from customers when they get stuck, that is one of the big lessons that I’ve learned over time. Because there’s certainly been lots of cases at 99Designs, and I’m just thinking about 99Designs because that was a big part of my early days, where we over-invested in certain things. We might have spent even a couple of months building out new features, which just fell flat when they launched, because we didn’t take the time to really make sure that customers wanted it, and it served a big enough problem that they were going to be excited about using it when it came out.

Pat:
That makes sense, yeah. Focusing on the customer is huge. I mean, I teach that and it’s something that will unlock so many new directions for you, and a lot of empathy for who it is that you’re serving as well. And like you said, stop you from perhaps going down a path that you think is the right path to go on, but isn’t really where you should be going. So, I’d love for you to speak on that related to Supercast. How and who were you listening to, and what were the problems that you were solving with regards to this brand new company, and Supercast and what it offers? Tell us a little bit about what it is, and then sort of the origin story behind it as well.

Jason:
Happy to. So, Supercast makes it easy to add a paid membership to your podcasts—in a nutshell. So, a lot of podcasters that are listening, maybe you’ve already built up an existing audience that is in a particular niche and you’re publishing that podcast on a regular basis, whether it be through Libsyn or Anchor or any one of the podcast hosts that help you distribute your audio and then, get into your listeners’ ears. What we do is we actually bring on a private-feed technology, and a private-feed platform through Supercast, which allows you to easily convert a small percentage of your audience into paying members.

Jason:
What we generally see is anywhere from two to seven percent of all of the average downloads per episode that you might get might pay you just a little bit of money per month to get some more insight from you, more content from you. And, just to really step inside your mind as somebody that is, again, a subject matter expert on the topic that you’re podcasting about and get a little bit deeper connection with you as well. One of the beautiful things about podcasting is it’s a very intimate medium, and through listening to someone repeatedly you really get that connection with them and feel like it’s somebody that you know very well on an everyday basis.

Jason:
And a paid membership allows you to take that even further with a small group of your audience who wants that. So, the way we got started with Supercast was actually going back to the minimum viable product story, or kind of building things the simplest way possible. It was actually not to build a platform right from the outset. It was actually helping big podcasters, from the likes of Sam Harris, Peter Attia, Rhonda Patrick. It was thinking through solutions for them about how they could build a paid membership that led us to the Supercast opportunity.

Jason:
They obviously have highly engaged audiences. Advertising wasn’t necessarily a natural fit for them, and they thought that they could offer more value to their true fans, their thousand true fans, by creating this premium membership model where they’re giving more access to themselves and more content in exchange for that monthly fee. So, when we switch on solutions for those podcasters we were just stunned by how big a business they could build. Sometimes into the millions of dollars from a really highly engaged audience who just really wanted to get in a little bit extra.

Jason:
So, it was at that point where the penny dropped for us, and we thought, “Wow, how many podcasters are out there sitting on a gold mine and just don’t yet realize it yet?” So, that’s why we built Supercast out as a platform that the whole podcasting world can leverage and take advantage of.

Pat:
You know it’s interesting because it similarly reminds me of a service called Substack for email.

Jason:
Absolutely.

Pat:
Email marketing, you sign up, you subscribe, you get the emails. Well, with Substack you can actually charge to have people subscribe. And that caused a little bit of a stir because hey, emails are supposed to be free and that sort of thing. But there’s a lot of people who have highly technical knowledge, or some special access and people are willing to pay to get access to that.

Pat:
Then, on the podcasting side, I mean, my question for you is, and this is a response I know people are going to have to this, is I thought podcasting was supposed to be a free thing. Now, we’re putting it behind a pay wall where this isn’t podcasting anymore, is it? How do you respond to those who are just because we’ve been so conditioned to see podcast be something for free? I mean, there’s no way we could charge for this unless we are comfortable with this, and how do we get comfortable with this idea?

Jason:
Great question. So, I think the way Substack is set up, and also the way Supercast is set up is very much the freemium model. And it’s a little bit of a jargony term from the software world, but if you think about a lot of the software that you use these days, whether it’s QuickBooks, or Xero, all kinds of accounting software, through to a website builder like Squarespace or Wix or Weebly or something like that. Often your first experience is free. You get a chance to get in there and get a taste of it, play around with it and maybe get a limited feature set. But at a certain point, if you use that product on an ongoing basis and you get value from it, then often you will pull out your credit card and pay to get that better experience.

Jason:
The freemium model also lends itself to, I think, newsletter writing in the case of Substack. Or podcasting in the case of Supercast. So, the free part is, of course, the podcast you’re already doing. So, we certainly would never recommend that somebody that is already producing a podcast and giving that content away for free goes and puts that behind the pay wall completely, and loses all of their sources of incoming traffic from iTunes and whoever else. And more over, those customers that they’re all serving, the listeners, were used to getting that for free. So, it’s just not going to fly to all of a sudden wake up the next day and find out that you have to pay for something that you’re used to getting for free.

Jason:
So, instead the way we encourage people to think about it is everyone is loving your content for free. Keep doing that, but there is a certain portion of your true fans that really engage with your story and the value that you have to offer them. They will, and this is where the two to seven percent comes in, they will be happy, from our experience, to pay you anywhere from $5 to $15 per month to get more access to you and more content from you. So, it’s things that you’re adding on top as opposed to anything that you’re segmenting, and pulling away from them to put behind the pay wall.

Jason:
Then, so in terms of what you can offer, this is where I guess we differ from something like Patreon, where a lot of Patreons are set up really just as a way to support a creator for something that they were already doing. Supercast, one, is developed specifically for podcasters. So, we can reduce like a 10 step sign up process in Patreon down to five steps in Supercast. Just to sift through it a little bit, as [inaudible 00:24:46], rather than clicking a link in the show notes, choosing a plan on Patreon, signing up for Patreon, entering your credit card, landing on a member page, finding an RSS link, copying it into Apple Podcast if that’s your player. You have to find kind of an add show by URL link, and then pasting in their RSS link. That’s kind of the 10 steps that you would have to go through with something like a Patreon.

Jason:
With Supercast, what we’re focused on, is just a really seamless, simple experience for your listeners. So, if they hear you talk about your premium offering and the fact that it offers additional content, and maybe AMA’s, maybe an ad free feed in your actual podcast episode, then you direct them to click a link in the show notes. That link takes them to your plan or your plans on Supercast landing page. You can pay with Apple Pay, Google Pay in one step. You don’t even require a password.

Jason:
Then, once you’ve paid, you just simply tap the podcast player of your choice. So, again, Apple Podcast if you already use that, and it automatically opens up and auto populates the RSS feed with one more tap, so that the premium version of your podcast is loaded right into the player where they listen to podcasts every day.

Pat:
That’s really cool. So, it’s definitely a lot simpler. I have a ton of questions that I know my audience is going to be curious about. The first one that I have is specifically to… and this is a struggle when a lot of people start charging for things just in general, right? They’ve been giving away a lot of free information, building this audience, and then they charge for a course or they charge for something else. Now, we’re charging for something that people are used to getting for free, but it’s separate, right? So, I love that you sort of delineated that.

Pat:
No, we’re not putting what was once free behind a pay wall. We’re just adding something for those who want to go deeper, or who would love to support us. And I love that, that’s definitely a Patreon-like thing, but then potentially even more valuable with the podcast being the center of it all.

Jason:
Actually, and just to get back to that point, Pat, sorry to interrupt. I think the internet, and websites, are actually kind of a great analogy here in terms of where we are in the cycle of monetizing and charging for podcasts being something that people are comfortable with. If you think about the early days of the internet, how do people monetize websites? It was just all of those cheesy banner ads, right? And, AdSense came along and that just kind of made that whole thing explode.

Jason:
But if you think about contrasting those early days, where that was the only way to make your little bit of money. A couple of cents a click at a time, through to the internet today. There’s just so many different ways you can monetize your web presence, whether that be a membership site on the internet that’s tried and true. It could be creating a Teachable course, a video course, an audio course. There’s just proliferation of so many different ways. Obviously selling things, E-commerce has exploded.

Jason:
I think what we’ll see the same thing in podcasting, and audio more generally, where yes, advertising was first there because we know how to do ads and there’s plenty of companies out there that are willing to pay for attention. But I think there are much more kind of many more levers that we can create as well that perhaps are even more directly aligned with what the audience that your serving is looking for. So, rather than kind of throwing mattress ads at them when they’re not necessarily shopping for a mattress. If they’re listening to your podcasts, and they’re loving your podcast, and creating a premium membership allows you to serve them better, then ultimately we think that that’s going to help you create a better show overall.

Pat:
I mean, even when we bring the math into it. You had mentioned 1,000 true fans, if they each pay you $5 a month for this additional content, additional access, et cetera, and you make it easy for them to do that. I mean, that’s an additional $5,000 or $60,000 a year that’s coming in as a result of that, which is really amazing to think about, especially when it allows for even a cooler experience for those who are already fans, who have probably been looking for different kinds of ways to support you.

Pat:
However, where I was going before, and I know this will be a struggle is like, okay, if we open up this new feed that is new content for our audience, how do we best know what goes on the free feed and what goes on the paid feed? This starts to become a big internal struggle for a lot of people. And it almost makes them either feel bad about putting something behind the pay wall, or within the paid feed versus giving it away for free. Or feeling bad for the people who had paid, who see that okay, there’s now information that’s good going into the free spot. How does one, or how do you help us manage that internal battle of what’s free versus what’s paid?

Jason:
Great question. What a lot of podcasters do is they really reserve some of the things that give deeper connection for the private feed. So, a lot of the interviews that they do with guests, if it’s a guest-oriented show. They will still continue to put out into the public feed, just as they do today, and from time to time, if a really big guest comes on, that’s kind of an opportunity maybe to reserve that episode for the private feed. And what you can do is, you know it’s up to you, different podcasters have a different take on this.

Jason:
But, you can also, for example, take that one special episode and put a teaser of that onto your public feed. And how much of that you give away is really up to you. Sam Harris, for example, he cuts off episodes, a lot of episodes, and kind of really strongly encourages people to go over to the private feed. [inaudible 00:30:46] tease just a couple of minutes of an episode, whereas others can give away 90% of the episode, and then it’s just kind of the last maybe five or ten minutes that they put onto the private feed where they might ask a few specific questions about the key learnings in life that that particular person has learned. And kind of boil their secret sauce and what they think makes them successful down to a few key pieces of information that they could put onto the private feed.

Jason:
So, that’s kind of one way to think about it, is special episodes and how you kind of tease that, and use that as a way to encourage people to pay for your private feed. Another way to think about it is access to you. And being able to engage with you is actually a really valuable thing that a lot of your audience would probably pay money for, especially the more subject matter expertise you have, the more valuable that that is, of course.

Jason:
So, something that we very commonly see is monthly or quarterly AMA’s, where audience members get the opportunity to ask you questions. And then, you’ll record an episode once a month, once a quarter, where you actually answer the top questions. And then, deliver it back to those private members as a private episode on the private feed. So, that’s an example of something where it definitely is going above and beyond what you might be doing on your regular show, and therefore it justifies you being able to position that as something that only premium members can access.

Jason:
And, actually that one particular thing we’re seeing in such regularity that we’ve actually built out an AMA platform into Supercast where people that subscribe on Supercast can actually ask you questions via the AMA portal that they get access to.

Pat:
With their voice or text?

Jason:
Just with text at this stage, but what you can do is you can also search over previous questions that have been answered. So, it builds up kind of this big repository over time.

Pat:
Ooh, that’s cool.

Jason:
Then, once a month you can look over, “Hey, what are the top questions?” They can be up voted by other listeners. Then you record it with your voice. Upload one episode to Supercast, and then you can time code where those answers actually appear. So, when the listener gets notified that question seven has been answered, they simply hit play and their answer starts playing right from the time code of that episode.

Jason:
So, we’re thinking more and more about how to make it easy for podcasters to actually create some of this value through things like AMAs as well.

Pat:
That’s really neat. I’ve seen a couple other use cases for privatized feeds and having people pay for them. I know a couple podcasters who, for example, at the end of their interviews, they will keep the person who they’re interviewing on for another 15 minutes sort of after the regular episode has wrapped up to do some bonus content, which might be a little bit more light hearted, or even potentially more serious or what have you. But, there becomes this sort of rhythm of, “Hey, there’s this sort of insider’s circle that you kind of have to pay to get access to after the regular episode, where you can get an additional 15 minutes of time with myself and the person who we’re interviewing.” And that’s a pretty cool use case.

Pat:
I know also we’ve discussed potentially offering a private feed for certain memberships that we already have. Is that a particular use case that Supercast can support with? For example, you have a membership community. You want a podcast but not a public one. But a private one that only those members who perhaps are elsewhere can find.

Jason:
Absolutely. We’ve seen people make use of private feeds in a lot of different ways. It’s one of those mediums where when you get into it, it just serves all kinds of different use cases. So, just to give a couple of examples, so we have Electrician Success Academy, who have a really great Teachable video course actually. And they help electricians level up their business. And maybe go from being a single electrician who’s struggling to kind of keep everything in order and manage a business, as well as getting to appointments on time, through to just really having an electrician business with multiple staff members on auto pilot. They’ve had this Teachable course for years, but the first video in the course is actually go and sign up for this private feed on Supercast, and you can imagine the use case. Electricians are driving around all day from one house to another. And they can’t always be watching video.

Jason:
So, the audio mechanism allows them to serve kind of more use cases and get more learning time in than would otherwise would be possible.

Pat:
So, is that the audio of the course essentially, that they’re listening to instead, and it just so happens to be delivered through a unique Supercast podcast feed? Is that how it worked?

Jason:
It’s actually something on top of that.

Pat:
On top of that. Okay. Well, either one would actually be pretty useful. Maybe there’s two feeds in there. And this is a value-add play, right? Supercast is an additional value that’s added to the course or do those members of the course who see those videos, if they want to get access, they have to pay additional?

Jason:
No, it’s all bundled in. And I think-

Pat:
That’s really cool.

Jason:
I think because it’s a monthly subscription model, it’s actually genius. Because video, once you’ve watched all the videos often you’re done, and it’ll either be a one off charge or maybe you stop subscribing at that point. Whereas getting somebody to go through that course but then also overlaying that with an ongoing podcast means that that person continues to receive value over the long term. And also, sticks around and continues to be a long-term subscriber. I think it’s one of those things where you can just build in a habit on top of just taking a course as a one off.

Pat:
That’s really cool. That’s actually really smart. So, in Supercast I could come in, set up a feed, and not charge a thing. It’s essentially free, but it’s private and this is how you would set this up, right? So that you could just offer that information or you could have people sign up or technically find the feed from there, from within, and there’s no pay wall because it’s a free thing, but it’s still private, right?

Jason:
That’s right. So, we can integrate it a number of different ways. For a lot of people who they just have a podcast and they may or may not have a website, if they’re starting really with their first steps into monetization, then we can provide the landing page where they can, just with a couple of clicks, they can put together their first plan. Describe what they want on that plan, decide on a price. We take care of all of the payment, and getting those feeds in a really slick way into listeners’ podcast players. That’s one use case.

Jason:
In a situation where people already have a membership site, maybe they already have a Teachable course, and they’re already accepting payments somewhere else. We can hook into that so that, and this is via integrations through a platform called Zapier or even direct integrations. We can hook into that so that you take care of collecting payment somewhere else, and you can charge whatever you want obviously for your membership offering. Then, in the backend when you tell us there’s a new member, we’ll just use the APIs to allow Supercast to come back and say, “Okay, you’ve got a new member. Here’s their individualized RSS feed that you can have them load into their podcast platform.”

Pat:
Ah, an individualized RSS feed, meaning that’s unique to them and they can’t really share it with anybody else. So, there’s some protection there.

Jason:
Absolutely. So, this is something that we did from day one, and felt was very important in terms of setting up the future of what this offering could be. So, yeah, at a first glance analytics is something that is a huge benefit of this. We can tell for each individual listener how often they’re engaging with content and what content they’re engaging with, which obviously is something that you don’t get from [crosstalk 00:39:21]-

Pat:
No, we don’t get that anywhere else.

Jason:
And then, secondly, in terms of feed privacy, it means that somebody can’t take their feed and share it on Reddit and get away with it. If you only had one private podcast feed, which some podcast hosts also offer, if that happened you’re kind of stuck. It’s already getting pirated and you also can’t change the feed because everybody else who’s legitimate relies on that feed to access your content. But in the Supercast world if somebody… if we detect and we have algorithms that are monitoring and looking out for things like, “Hey, this feed was used in ten different cities in the same day. That doesn’t look right.” And what we can do is we let the podcaster either get in touch with that person or just suspend that feed immediately, and that doesn’t affect anybody else that’s listening on a legitimate basis.

Pat:
Oh man, that’s [crosstalk 00:40:12]. Now, okay, so this is getting me excited because there’s so many use cases. In addition to bonus content that people can pay for and a fan would love to support you with, as opposed to just a tip charge, you’re actually offering something of value and can get pay back in return even on a monthly recurring situation. Now, this sort of privatized feed that you can control on top of other things that you’re doing. For example with SPI Pro, our membership. We are on the team discussing a SPIpro private feed for people who are part of this membership. Sort of like as another value add and a reason for people to continue to stay in and it’ll be sort of additional access to the team and some things that we aren’t really sharing elsewhere, and specifically for things that are sort of above those who are just literally starting from scratch in their business. So, this would be a perfect place to put it, and a great way to keep people in the membership, a great additional access to the team, and to have that sort of be a part of it and have every member get sort of an individual feed that they get when they subscribe is huge.

Pat:
I’m imagining also if you have an online course, having a feed that’s maybe just the audio of your course, and just another value add that you can add on top of the videos that you have. Hey, if you are out and about all the time you can actually subscribe to the podcast and inside the feed already is all the course material. So you can actually listen your way through and get through the course even faster. Then, maybe there’s some, of course, other things that you can add on, on top of that as well.

Pat:
There’s just so many cool opportunities I’m thinking of related to how this can be used in that way. That’s got me really excited Jason. Thank you for that and for those ideas.

Jason:
Yeah, and I think it’s just the start when it comes to what we can do with individual feeds. I think it just changes the dynamic of the connection that you can have with the audience when you can actually get into a group of people’s ears, or one person’s specific ear. If you were also an event-space business, where you did live events. Obviously now is not a time where a lot of those are going on. But, if you were making a trip out to New York and you wanted to reach all of the listeners in New York. That’s something that is possible when you know kind of where people are.

Pat:
Wow.

Jason:
And how to reach them. If you wanted to do something like we talked about feed fraud, for example. But, there’s also other times you might want to reach people like their credit card expired, or it’s their birthday or it’s their anniversary. Imagine being able to drop an episode into one person’s feed just to let them know that you appreciate them, and to help them celebrate their anniversary or-

Pat:
What? Oh my gosh, that’s huge. Huh, dude, wow. Okay. I mean, even again I’m thinking about SPI Pro because it’s on the top of my mind right now. But, if there was some way to integrate some way to know whether or not they’d been in for a month. It’s their month anniversary after subscribing, then we can pop in some episode or some special audio that just says, “Hey, it looks like you’ve been a member of SPI Pro for a month. Just wanted to say thank you from the entire team.” And I can have the whole team sort of say something nice. That is, yes, scalable because we’re sharing it with everybody, but it goes out in those specific moments. That’s really interesting. Geez. Okay. Sorry. My head’s just kind of spinning.

Jason:
No worries, yeah. I’m excited because through previous conversations with you, I know that you do get excited about these personal touches. So, that’s just something that we are continuing to think through and just come up with. We want to come up with all of the cool things that we can do to not only deliver this stuff in a private way, but add all of these additional adds on top to really enrich the medium.

Pat:
I mean, I’m imagining a YouTuber, who maybe has a lot of influence. They are a vlogger and they have this really deep connection with their audience on YouTube in a more public arena. Imagine if that YouTuber were to then say, “Hey guys, by the way, I’m doing a daily private podcast. It’s just going to be my thoughts. When I wake up in the morning I’m going to record just how I’m going to be approaching my day for 30 minutes. You’re not going to get it anywhere else except on this podcast feed. So, come here and subscribe and get access to that.”

Pat:
What if I did that? Like I had a Pat’s daily diary podcast, where you’d pay $5 to support, but every morning I would just share, sort of like a diary, or maybe it’s the end of the day and just talking about and being very honest and vulnerable and open with people. Who would subscribe to that? The super fans who want to hear those kind of things anyway. It’s not for everybody, but it would be something I think people would enjoy. Not saying I’m going to do that. I’m just kind of sharing this out loud. But man-

Jason:
No, I love that. For some reason, I remember that story that you shared of, I think it was right before FlynnCon. Where you were up late at night and you were getting a glass of milk from the fridge or whatever, and then you just dropped it on the ground and you had a meltdown-

Pat:
Oh, and I started crying, yeah. [inaudible 00:45:13] what are you doing?

Jason:
Maybe if you’d had this private podcast you could have grabbed the mic and just kind of let it all out.

Pat:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, wow, there’s some really cool use cases here. But, Jason thank you for this. Then, finally, can you just go over technically, a person signs up or gets access to this feed. I’m trying to still imagine how this gets into our favorite podcast app, right? It’s hard to tell people to go, “Hey, I know you listen on Apple Podcast, but you got to now listen here instead.” That’s a big barrier I would imagine. I know you solved this problem. So, can you explain how that works?

Jason:
Sure. So, philosophically we don’t want people to have to do anything different. So, it’s not a special app. There’s no special apps to download. And if somebody is using Apple Podcast and that’s where they listen to all of their other podcasts, then actually we want them to listen to the premium version of your podcast in Apple Podcast as well.

Pat:
That’s possible?

Jason:
Yeah, so that’s absolutely the flow that we have created. So, just to step through that again. If they’re listening to your show and they hear a call out to go and subscribe to SPI Premium, let’s say. And you direct them to go and click a link in the show notes. They can then click that link. They’ll go to a landing page, choose their plan. They’ll pay with Apple Pay or Google Pay. Then, on the next page it’ll say “add the premium podcast to your podcast player.” And it’ll have an icon for all of the popular podcast players that support private feeds.

Jason:
So, Apple Podcast is absolutely there, Castro, Pocket Cast. There’ll be an icon for each one of those. And all they’ll have to do is tap that icon. It’ll automatically open up on your phone, Apple Podcast, and it’ll bring up automatically the little box that says “add a podcast” and it’ll have the private feed that’s unique to you automatically populated. So, it’s really two taps. You pay once, you tap once to pay. You tap once to select your podcast player, and then tap one more time to subscribe. Then, from there on out Supercast is invisible. Every day you’re just loading up Supercast, sorry, you’re just loading Apple Podcast.

Jason:
And often what our podcasters do is they create a premium version of their podcast artwork so that you can differentiate between the public and the private feeds.

Pat:
But it’s not going to be in Apple Podcast‘s directory?

Jason:
Exactly. It’s not in the directory. So, there’s no risk of people that aren’t paying seeing that because you’ve added it specifically by the private-feed URL that we’ve given you and auto populated into Apple Podcast.

Pat:
Nice, that makes sense. I think if I were to do that I would still, I would create a public feed with the same artwork or the pro version, and just have one episode that says, “Hey, you found this by mistake. It’s actually over here. You could pay to get access to the pro version.” Or something. That way, because I know people are going to probably look it up and anyway, I’m just thinking out loud.

Pat:
That’s so cool that you saw that problem, because I know that that was a big question that a lot of people might have. That was the first question I had. I was like I don’t want to change where I… Am I going to have to go somewhere else or listen to this private feed elsewhere? Is it just website based? No, it’s in your app that you already listen to, which is super cool.

Pat:
So, hopefully, audience, you’ve got your gears turning and have thought about different ways that you’ve been able to utilize a tool like this. Jason, where should people go to check it out, get access to it, et cetera?

Jason:
Yeah, so you can find us at Supercast.com. And, yeah, that’s where you can find a lot of information on obviously how it works, a little bit of a video of that experience that we just talked through. And we’ve got actually a pretty in depth membership guide on there as well, where you can find it up in the navigation where there’s seven chapters of how you think about putting together a paid membership. Everything from planning it, testing it with your audience, pricing it, working out what you should put in in terms of those premium features, through to launching it and then continuing to grow it on an ongoing basis.

Jason:
So, if you kind of need to read through it more in more detail to get comfortable and just want to see some use cases, that’s there. We’ve got a customer case study section where you can get a little bit more of that as well. And, yeah, while you’re on the website you’ll probably see a banner at the top that Supercast has a paid to podcast competition where we’re giving away over $100,000 to the podcasters who can build the biggest membership over the second half of 2020. So, this just launched actually at the beginning of July, and we put up a lot of cash and a lot of prizes from an industry collective of great podcasting companies. The likes of Descriptfor editing, Captivate for podcast hosting, DoubleUp
for marketing consulting.

Jason:
And what really got us excited was this guy named Pat Flynn very generously offered to also sit down for lunch with the grand prize winner. So, we’re just super excited to be able to fly that grand prize winner and provide return travel, as well as accommodation to go and meet you, Pat.

Pat:
Yeah, I’m excited.

Jason:
Hoping this whole thing wraps up at the end of the year.

Pat:
Yeah. And when it’s safe to do so, obviously. Yeah, Jason dude, thank you so much. Supercast.com and just thank you so much for just giving us this opportunity to potentially monetize in a really amazing way. I think it could be a perfect solution for a lot of us who have been struggling for different kinds of ways to monetize and just haven’t really hit the nail on the head yet. So, anyway, thank you Jason, appreciate you. Looking forward to seeing who wins the contest.

Pat:
And for everybody out there, Supercast.com is where you want to go. And yeah, appreciate your time.

Jason:
Awesome. Very grateful to be on the show Pat.

Pat:
Thanks Jason.

Pat:
All right, I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Jason. Jason, thank you so much for coming on and for delivering value to us today, and also for creating something great for those who are looking and seeking for other monetization opportunities within the podcasting space. You can, of course, check out Jason and Supercast over at SmartPassiveIncome.com/supercast. That’ll take you to the right spot, and you can obviously, like I said earlier, take advantage of that contest that’s going on right now, so long as you’re listening to this soon after this episode comes out. If not, obviously still check out Supercast and see how they’ve evolved.

Pat:
And we’re going to get Matt and I, Matt on my team and I are definitely going to get involved with seeing how Supercast might be able to provide more value to you, as well as our students and members in SPIpro as well. So, we’ll see what happens, but really excited about this, and other monetization opportunities in this space and other spaces too. And we’re going to continue to keep you up to date on all these things. So, make sure, if you haven’t done so already, please hit subscribe. And good luck to you, appreciate you, thank you so much. And as always, #TeamFlynn for the win. We’ll see you in the next episode. Peace out.

Announcer:
Thanks for listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast at www.SmartPassiveIncome.com.