How to Monetize your Podcast with Community and Engagement

Jake Winstanley
Alright, guys, today we’ve got Shannon here, Shannon is the Director of Communications at pod bean, which is a podcast publishing and monetization service. For on top of that they have a bunch of other really cool features that I strongly recommend checking out we’ve bougth here in here today to talk about building engagement craney community and how you can monetize your podcast Shannon, thanks for joining me.

Shannon Martin
Yeah, great to be here.

Jake Winstanley
So what would you recommend people kind of look into first when building engagement and creating a community around a podcast? Is it two separate things or a kind of work hand in hand?

Shannon Martin
I think that kind of work hand in hand, I think when we think about engagement, a lot of times we are thinking the way it’s used in marketing, or just means kind of how many people are clicking and liking and subscribing. And that word community, I think is broader and more difficult and more elusive, but also has a lot more rewards to it. And I think the most important thing with community is to first start with your why. Which kind of everything in podcasting, anything we could talk about, that would be the start of it, but why are you doing your podcast? And that will lead to why anyone would want to be part of your community, you know, what is the value they’re getting out of it and why and also, why would you want to build a community are there. I mean, there may be cases where someone doesn’t want to, and it’s certainly something that takes quite a bit of work and nurturing. So thinking about that, I think Definitely would be a strong advocate for saying, building a strong community and building that engagement with the audience is going to almost always have rewards. I think it’s, you know, I would vote on the side of doing it. But I think you know, thinking about why and kind of, you know, what your plan is with it is where is the place to start?

Jake Winstanley
Yeah, I think the was a big part to obviously, I don’t know if you’re familiar with, is it Simon Sinek? Who wrote the book start with one Yeah, and it’s like a really powerful book I remember reading and it just makes so much sense like focusing on that why and then kind of building on it from there can give it much more kind of power and it kind of helps you discover what you want to talk about as well and what you want to do around it instead of kinda like trying to feel your way through the day. Um, so like, once I building some engagement, what are kind of some of the different places that they can build their engagement up?

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I think that a lot of the some of the social media platforms that you’re going to be on I mean, number one, with everything with social media number one is thinking about, again, coming of back to your why, but where’s the audience you want to connect with? So just for general promotion, that’s, that’s, of course, a good piece of advice. But then for engage, for really engaging with community, some social media is kind of better than others. I mean, you can like with Twitter, of course, you can message back and forth. But it’s going to be more of a conversation. So that’s engagement. But is it it’s not necessarily community forum type of things. And groups are more community oriented in my mind. So the one I see most podcasts doing, and using is Facebook groups. Yeah. And actually, I know a lot of people who don’t really do much with Facebook anymore, but the reason they still go to Facebook is because of groups is one of the best features there. So a lot of you have private podcasting groups for their podcast, and I did a presentation on this not too long well workshop not too long ago. And one of the examples I use it’s a podcast called the gravity beard. It’s hosted with us and they actually were nice enough to record a podcast episode for us, which I used a lot of snippets from, but they have this community and the numbers that they have, when they look at their analytics on Facebook are just incredible. Basically, people, including myself, I’m in the community, we go to Facebook, and that’s the reason we want to be there. You know, we want to see what’s going on in that group. And they’ve made it really fun. But you know, it depends a lot on kind of your audience. So maybe if it’s gamers, it may be doing a discord you know it’s what are they used to, I think live streaming in like in a discord sense, where you have that community or in using just any of the live streaming platforms or we have pod being live is a great way because a typical podcast when you’re putting it out there, you probably have a community that you don’t even know about because it’s more of your voice going out to the world. And so I think those live streaming platforms, things like Facebook groups or other forums, you know, potentially creating your own can be good. But I, a lot of us nowadays, we want to kind of be where we already are on the internet. So it might, you know, another forum or something may not have the ease of access. So those are those are some of the kind of the basic places and things and then it’s more how you nurture it, you know, what do you do? What makes it exciting for people to be there? What are the, you know, like, if it was a gaming podcast, for example, one of the things everybody wants to talk about what are people really into, you know, how is it may be different from what’s out there. And then the example I mentioned the gravity beers, they’re really the sort of all purpose kind of comedy podcast, and their group has ended up being it’s actually called the interns and everybody has roles and it’s all this fun stuff. So their purpose really became to same as their podcast to be this fun, lighter place where people can kind of get away from, you know, any kind of in depth discussions or you know, life in general, just kind of escape a bit. And it’d be a happy kind of fun place on the internet. And so their community in their pocket, it really goes hand in hand. In that case, so it’s, you know, thinking about different different ways to engage that audience then.

Jake Winstanley
Yeah, so I guess, because there’s two sides of the coin to obviously had people that are doing podcasts and then focusing more on the podcasting, and then they kind of had their community. And then there’s also the people that are doing it for like branding or business purposes, they kind of go each direction. I guess like building engagement is when you’re doing it for businesses and stuff like that. It’s a little bit easier because you might have a website, blog posts, and you might have lead magnets and those kind of things. Do you see? So you might have like the people who are more inclined to just like focus on the podcast and looking to monetize a podcast itself. Do you see like, kind of tactics that they can use for engagement that isn’t in line with like, the business side of things, or?

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I think the example I brought up this one Like that, I mean, there, it’s not at all related to a business or anything. And there’s a couple of other groups of men that are very, you know, another one is another comedy podcasts I’m thinking of one other one that I thought about from a while back was a true crime podcast. And so those are generally the things that are more like Facebook groups, communities, and then you just kind of have to think about what direction you want to take, you know, all of those needs to have a bit of moderation to keep them sort of in line with so people don’t get annoyed with spam on it, or just and also to just start the conversation flowing, because at first it doesn’t. I mean, depending on your audience, typically, people are a little shy at first those communities, so you have to be the one posting things and prompting questions. Yeah, like that. So I think that’s more the style for that kind of podcaster. And then then you might wonder, well, what’s the benefit like with a business podcast? Yeah. And the community for bringing in customers is quite obvious what your end goal would be and what your benefit would be for these other products. What I’ve seen is that number one grows, you know, those people are your fans and your champions. So it’s a way to grow your podcast because they’re the ones that are going to, I’m going to remember the ones that were in their group, much more than the other, you know, hundreds of podcasts in my list. And I’m going to recommend it to people. And I’m going to say join the group and I’m going to be your champion more so, but also when it comes to monetizing, you know, if they want to get advertisers if they want to. We’ll talk about all these so I won’t get into all the ways, but it almost all of the ways that you can monetize it will help to have a more niche community. The advertisers, I mean, they look a lot of times at numbers of downloads, but if you can show, you know, look at this engagement we have on our Facebook group, okay, we’re a smaller podcast, but these people are going to buy what we recommend because we we have a relationship. So they get much higher sales percentages. So they’ll even look at a smaller podcast and obviously when it comes to listener support, you know, financial support and stuff, those community members are more likely to do those kind of things. So it can, you know, kind of have a monetary payoff it definitely can help expand the podcast. And again back to for the people that are it’s a much more casual thing that they’re doing a podcast for it’s made it may be because they socially and personally benefit so they really want to have a community of other people like them to kind of hang out with online and so they may be doing it purely for those reasons. So that’s another potential benefit.

Jake Winstanley
Yeah, I think I can make a really good point there with like when people looking to monetize and stuff like that, so let’s let’s move to that kind of area next. So there’s obviously so many different options there are there’s obviously the main ones, which is getting donations or like a Patreon, which is obviously quite large, and then like monetizing with ads. So let’s let’s look at them ones first, and then maybe look at some of the more alternative ones that followed there. But so what do you see is like working quite well in the advertising space and the kind of like the Patreon donation space you’ve mentioned, like creating more engagement, which I think is really on point because you could have 10,000 listeners. But if you’ve got 1000 champions, like you said, they’re going to be far more inclined to be active. And it’s, you probably better off really focusing around building that first, then you are around trying to just hit numbers, which some people get caught up in.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah, definitely, I think so for advertising. There’s a lot of different ways to approach getting advertisers if you’re going to do it on your own or, or maybe with the help of an agent or something like that. So you’re going to get you know, post read ads, you’re going to be presenting directly to an advertiser. Here’s my, actually we have a sample media kit on Podbean I’ll give a little plug for that it’s free. We made that because I think that’s something you should do right away if you’re looking to attract advertisers that way, and in that, that’s where you can put it Okay, yeah, X number of downloads, but you can put more than just that. So that’s your input. Here’s our social media numbers, that kind of stuff. Yeah. So I think that’s very useful. And I think I’ve seen that work well for smaller podcasts, especially when they seek, or maybe they get help with finding an advertiser that’s a more targeted fit to their audience, depending on what the podcast is. Yeah. So that’s one piece of it. There’s all now there’s all kinds of services. So I would say the technology and the services out there. In the five years I’ve been in podcasting, it’s evolved massively. You know, I remember at the beginning, it was kind of like, oh, there’s one or two big companies, there’s mid roll, and there were a couple others, you know, that match you with advertisers, if you have, you know, at least 10,000 downloads, but preferably more and it was kind of like, that’s what there is. And then you can strike out on your own and try to find advertisers, which some people are really savvy with, and other people were like, I don’t know where to begin, so it’ll never happen. That was kind of all there was. But now there’s a lot of we have an advertising marketplace and that is for podcasts of any size of our of our podcasts hosted with any size because it’s the advertiser can buy across a range of podcasts. So if they want 10,000 downloads, they don’t need to get an off of one podcast. Yeah. So that that and that kind of services available. I believe there’s one called Dynamo that spreaker has also, there’s an anchor, it has something internally if you’re hosted with them, that’s that’s somewhat similar. Yeah. So there’s a lot of those coming about. So I guess the other piece nowadays is when you are a bit smaller, you can look at those options. But you know, it’s also some people do want to jump right into that and honestly, like the amount if you’re really small, the amount of money you’re going to make is maybe it might be better to analyze that and wait because small enough money potentially the CPM rate will be small and then maybe you’re, you know, potentially alienating your community or messing up your creativity with your podcasts, you know if that’s your main focus, so just to think about that, but it but there are more opportunities for sure. Yeah. And then the other thing with that is that the technology just for managing your ads has come so far. So the other thing we have which is separate from our marketplace, is we have a just a, we call it a SAAS or software as service for managing podcast ads. So people just bring their own ads, they can get it however they want through, you know, through an agency through themselves, whatever. It’s just the system to manage that. So it it on their behalf, it dynamically inserts the ad so they typically they do a host read ad, or maybe the company provides a pre made one doesn’t matter. But they do that they set the slots, you know, so they look at their content. It’s really good if you can plan it out ahead of time and plan where you’ll have your spots and then it dynamically inserts it on the fly. So it’s just I’ve seen it come so far, because this is something it’s all the big podcasts use that already. So they’ve been using that that kind of technology forever. But smaller podcasts haven’t had access to that. And so people sometimes think dynamically inserted, it doesn’t sound good. It doesn’t necessarily mean host read. It’s just the technology. So you’re hearing them all the time, and you don’t even know it. Because it’s done well. So that’s so much so and it saves time, of course, but also you can generate so much more revenue, because now like with ours, and most of them, you can geo target. So okay, you’re getting an ad. Yeah, so you’re getting an ad for Australia, instead of hearing about a meal delivery service thats only in the US, which as a listener it’s Yeah, it’s much better for you so it can be better for your listeners. But then also, you know, I could say okay, I have a huge popular listeners in Australia, huge population, the UK huge population in the US, I am going through three different advertisers. And there’s a potential to make a lot more money, make my listeners happier. And also I can run time limited campaigns. So in the past the ads, people would put them in, they just run forever. That’s not how advertising doesn’t work.

Unknown Speaker
Yeah.

Jake Winstanley
So, advertisers have been getting a really great deal, but with the dynamic, you know, you can do it more like, you know, other media does. And, yeah, some people that have really, really high downloads on their back catalogue, so it’s much more efficient that way.

Yeah. So it brings the power back to the people and in essence, like it brings it back to the podcast host and it gives them a little bit more control. I think the the geotargeting stuff is really, really interesting as well. Um, so I guess that’s the kind of the ad space and The next kind of most popular spot is a Patreon. And there’s obviously there’s a few other platforms that are like that, but I’ve kind of had more of a look at patreon because it’s the most popular. I think you guys integrate into integrate with Patreon as well as that rigth?

Unknown Speaker
we actually have a built in services. It’s called Podbean patron. It’s not Yeah, yeah, it’s it’s our own service.

Jake Winstanley
Okay so it’s your own services, it’s pretty much like a similar kind of setup, is it?

It’s similar, there’s a few differences because we created ours specifically just for podcasters as opposed to other content creators. So the listener donations are all monthly. Think Patreon has the choice of monthly or pilot by Yeah, that’s a different ways you can send it Yeah, yeah. So as your own monthly, and it’s tied right into our platform, but the concept the concept is similar listeners, you know, recurring donations, yeah, you know, sort of, for content.

So on that kind of level, what have you seen work for you guys and obviously the similar platforms like patreon and stuff like that, what have you seen to work quite well hasn’t worked? What would you recommend people kind of look at doing in that kind of space moving forward?

Yeah, I think that that really ties back into community. So building a strong community first for sure that there’s numbers. I don’t have them in front of me a Patreon pub always publishes numbers about kind of your percentage. If you have X number of subscribers, they have a good breakdown for YouTube YouTubers, and it’s a very small percentage that will actually end up donating, but that percentage is average and it’s really all across the board. So you can have a much smaller number and still be potentially earning and there’s a lot of examples out there. But of course, having you know, either a big funnel, big top of the funnel where you have a lot of people or having more people that are even more engaged and will go down through the funnel and donate. Either of those are good approaches to make sure you know, you can set it up from the beginning but It probably should be your main focus. At first, you know, good content. And I think the people we see that are really successful with it are people that have that they have a strong community and or pretty, you know, just they have something that people are really hungry for content wise. And a lot of times it’s really unique. One of our biggest earners. The last year, we have we have a couple people earning around $100,000 a year from it. Yeah. And one of our big earners. It’s a podcast called REX factor. It’s about Scottish kings. Okay. Very nice. Yeah, very nice. I think they’ve expanded out of it since but yet huge fans, huge fans, and people love it. And so they do part of one of the rewards that they do as a bonus content. And people are so hungry for what they’re providing and they’re the only ones out there doing anything like him. So I always tell people you know, what I love is looking at the comments listener. When they when they become donors, and it’s nonstop, I felt guilty before not being you know, until you set this up, not being able to support your work, you know, I’m so excited to be part of it, I feel and they do a thing where they give a name, you know, you’re, I think you’re a member of the Privy Council is what they do. Yeah. And so I think those that’s a great tip is you know, having these and it’s a great thing, just generally for community, you know, don’t just name your Facebook group, the blah blah, blah, podcast group, you know, make some kind of thing that people like the group I have a site out there, the interns, you know, people feel like there is something special. So I think doing those where your levels have certain names, where you feel like you’re part of the inside track. You know, I think that really helps. And then usually what people want is either they just want to support you. So you know, having some lower tiers where they can just give you a small amount, that’s not really a big deal to give $1 to dollar. Yeah, that can add up, you know, and then thinking about what kind of things they would want, that might encourage them to donate more. And you can go, you know, you can get very creative with it. bonus content is the one that everybody does and everybody thinks about. And I think that definitely works well. But I also think podcasters, before they embark on that journey, should really think about the fact that there’s a balance there. of you know, how much money you’re going to be bringing in versus the amount of work that it takes. And there are podcasts that don’t do any bonus content and have Patreon supporters. So if it’s going to stretch you too thin and make the content, less quality. Yeah. Or have other things happen. You can’t be consistent, that kind of thing, then, you know, maybe that’s not the best way to go with it, but merchant dice and just getting people involved having a special name having them another thing I think that podcast doesn’t state has, if you’re at a certain level, you can suggest a topic or somehow, you know, be involved with the creation. So those are the things I’ve seen people really care about.

I think that’s really cool. Like the let this love being a part of kind of the story, I guess, as well like, like you said, building the community. And then I kind of get a name if they’re part of it. And that kind of stuff. Like it really opens up a lot to because people want to be a part of something inherently As humans, we want to be part of groups. We’re like group animals, if you want to put it that way. We kind of love getting an added little kind of groups and talking about the stuff that we enjoy talking about. But being able to kind of create something along those lines where you engage on a like the next level like being in part of it makes a huge difference. And obviously, it shows with how well those guys are doing with the podcast as niche as Scottish kings.

Yeah, yeah. And I tell people I refer them on time. So look at the comments. I think you can do something. I think you probably see something like that in Patreon, too. Yeah. But if you click on one of our patron, you know, that’s we have some examples up there, some of our top ones, and I say, you know, click on their comments if you’re feeling because of the reaction I used to get now people are pretty used to Patreon. It’s pretty well known. But I used to get this reaction Oh, I can’t, okay, ask people for money. You know, I can’t I can’t do that. And I would say just wait, if you really producing stuff people love or you have an engaged group, they’re going to start asking you, and there’s a there’s another podcast, podcast or who does who solely supports herself, and I think she even has staff now. And she was an example of that she was doing something she loved. And people kept asking her and she said she set up every single possible way they can donate and she’s like, if people want to give money, I’m not going to put a barrier. I’m not gonna say I refuse to sign up for Benbos. she has Paypal and patreon and she said people may even mail her checks.

She’s like, fine, here’s a po box.

So making it easy making it accessible, but it goes back a little bit to thinking about strategy and where you want to spend time and energy because that can be a lot to manage. Yeah, especially if you’re providing a lot of rewards, you know, if it’s pretty straightforward, and you’re not having to manage a ton of rewards back to people and stuff, then it, you know, might not be as much but if you’re gonna, if everyone’s going to get weekly bonus content, then you have to, you know, you’re gonna have to probably hit a certain level of income to make that worth it.

Yeah, so maybe building it out as you progress to kind of the amount of people you have on your team and moving forward might be the best option for them. So what other like I’ve seen a few other kind of tactics one is also like transcribing your content and using your original content and then just delivering it another method and like membership sites are another one. There are a few others that you’ve seen in a walk along those lines, or do you have any experience in those two areas?

Shannon Martin
Yeah, we actually also we also have a premium platform, I guess you could call it. So basically where people can, they can either just sell single episodes like bonus content, we call it bonus episodes where they can sell memberships. And of course, you could also do a membership through like your own membership site or whatever is it similar, it’s just what platform you use. In our case, like we handle all the payment and then we handle the content delivery, so it’s smooth. It’s really easy if there are you hosting with Podbean because they publish an episode just like any other episode, they just click a different button to say it’s this is one that’s for sale. So that makes it easy, but you can set it up however you want. And that also we have, we we saw in both of those we saw around 60% income growth last year. So we see people doing better and better with that and That again, it’s sort of similar in that except for it’s more directly related to content in that case you Yeah, you have to have an engaged community but it’s really about having good content because even if people love you if you don’t go to give them to sell then it’s not going to be so I think that works well for either people that one of the one of the podcasts we have that has done really well without was it some kind of gaming podcast, but they do more real in depth kind of reviews, and maybe really hot topic kind of stuff. So that that’s a bit unique, because that’s not usually the kind of content I see. But that’s what really well for them and whatever particular game or niche there and there was just barely anything out there, I guess, in the quality level that they had and they hit it I forget the right time. Also, they were kind of ahead of anybody else doing that. But then the other area, I see it a lot of people that have either sort of course type of things to offer training, you know thing is that, you know, help you build your business or that kind of stuff. So it’s the kind of stuff that you would put it out there. Yeah, normally as a paid course or something, you can do it as a podcasting, you know, premium podcast content or video or PDFs or kind of the whole, the whole variety so that that tends to work really well.

Jake Winstanley
Yeah, cool. Is there any myths that you kind of that come through in like the podcasting and monetization space that you hear a lot or common things that people bring up that just aren’t true?

Ah, yeah, there’s, there’s so many and the one I mentioned about dynamic ad insertion is a big one still people are like, Oh, no, I’m not gonna do it on my podcast. Well, did you listen to you know, bring up a big game, I guess. I’m like, they use it. And they’re like, oh, but they’re, they’re ad some nice, like, well, it’s just because you have to do it, do it well. So that’s one big one. I think, you know, still that you have to have an exact like 50,000 downloads to ever get an ad, you know, isn’t true. But I also think it’s really a myth that I guess, right now I see a lot of people coming into podcasting and like day one, they’re like, Okay, how do I make money?

Shannon Martin
Yeah. Like, okay, well you might be able to but let’s look at you know what’s with live cast. Let’s look at it and see your how’s your cover art what’s you site? Did you have a following beforehand what you know, what’s the time and they’ll say, well, it’s just me and my buddy talking. Honorable and you know, it’s like, well, you have a little homework to do first. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I think the jumping kind of run into it without some strategy and kind of back work is, you know, it’s common in any content crew in space, I guess. Oh, definitely.

Yeah. And then the other thing we talked Well, I can talk about live streaming in a minute, because that has has a monetization aspect to it. But the other thing that kind of falls in with myths, I guess, in a way is that I think you kind of mentioned this, I think a lot of people are really making money in a more indirect way from their podcast. Yeah.

Jake Winstanley
And that’s probably most overlooked.

And yet, probably where people are making the most money yeah, so people that are, you know, using their podcasts as a marketing tool to continue to build their brand, to it can be anything, anything from building their business and bringing customers and leads and kind of the more typical thing you might think about, but even getting opportunities getting there was somebody recently I know he has a fishing show. Fish nerds, Clay a great guy and he got a radio broadcasting job, his local area because of this podcast, so job opportunities and you know getting speaking gigs. All these kind of things that you know, it can be a powerful thing for nowadays you kind of gang up on where, you know if you’re that person that’s looking to do that you really kind of almost have to have a podcast because, everybody has one.

Yeah, it’s cool. I think, I think how well the the platform’s developed over the past couple of years is, is unreal. Like I really like the area it’s going in. That’s why I’ve started getting involved with the guys a Podkite where we’re working on it, now we’re doing the data and analytics, and it’s, it’s really fun. It’s really cool space. And I think the other side of it too is I come from a marketing background, and like doing Facebook advertising and stuff like that, but then I started moving more towards marketing and content, and the stories that come with content, being able to create stories and then just the capacity even with YouTube to be able if you have a phone, and one of your buddies and you’re just filming something in relation to something that you like you have the potential to create a short series on something that you find is interesting and to come that far from even 10-15 years ago, where online media or media in general was so hard to develop to kind of it becoming easier and easier, more accessible, that gives everyone the opportunity to, to kind of do something that they want to do and it’s so much more opportunity now. And I guess another thing to people get crippled by opportunity, they kind of like what can i do here that can I do there so they kind of need to focus on. I guess what we’ll do at Elliot there why and focus on what they really liked doing?

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And now with podcasting, and same way, we we probably still I don’t remember the David’s four years ago or something in our app, we made it where it’s a podcast recorder. We were, I think, probably the first one out there. That was the podcasting platform that also had that built in. We didn’t get nearly as much buzz as some others that came after us. We’re like a little early to the game, I guess. But now we have a lot more people that use that and because you can do some basic editing in it. And as I said, people are doing me it’s becoming more of thing to do these things on the fly to be able to do this mobile type of recording thing, and then some of our folks just use that as an occasional thing. You know, but it’s an easy tool to have. So yeah, it’s Yeah, it’s really it’s something that, but yeah, I think starting with why you’re doing it and, you know, knowing knowing that it doesn’t have to be you don’t have to be 50,000 downloads to monetize, but you probably have to have some, you know, you know, and you don’t have to necessarily have a formal business plan, but you have to have some assets in place.

Some goal. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think even if it’s totally unrelated to business and marketing, your podcast is really a fun thing. You still think about it in some of the ways that we think about business and content creation in general. Yes, with that strategy in mind.

Cool. So you mentioned live streaming, is that relatively new or so? Let me like fill me in on what’s happening there because I haven’t really heard that much about it.

Yeah, it’s I mean, you know, generally it’s growing a ton and spit in the world in general, but specifically for podcasting, we launched our platform last year, sometime in autumn. And we, because we saw the growth of live streaming, and we thought, well, this ties in so well with podcasting and engagement and community are a thing that people struggle with. And they want more of and they so our platform is audio only. So it’s a perfect fit for podcasters and a lot of them have said Oh, that’s the main reason that when you use it, I don’t want to jump to video yeah, for some of them even make videos for their podcasts but they don’t want to they don’t want to formally have to kind of really, you know, set up for video. Yeah. Yeah, that so and running a live stream videos different than just making a video.

Yeah, it’s a fair bit involved.

Shannon Martin
Yeah, so it’s audio live streaming. And what we’ve seen is it’s been a lot of fun for podcasters for engagement. What’s really cool. And what like kind of warms my podcasting heart about it is that when we jump into some of these and join, we hear people saying, because listeners can call in and they’ll say, Oh, well, I’m in there all over the world. And it seems to be that that it’s that the live attracts even more of an international audience than general podcast listening. And I think that may just be because of what technology is popular different places and live streaming is there certain places internationally, I think where that’s really popular and just and it’s all mobile base. So I think people will just pop it on their phone anywhere in the world. And as you said, People want to connect with other people. So it’s been really cool and then ours has monetization built in. So and it’s and by the way, This is a free feature. And it’s not just for people that are hosted with us. So anyone any podcasts or can use it, so they don’t, it’s not like a pitch for hosting, So anyone can use it. And yet the monetization is that there are their admissions, and you get to set how many free admissions but above that people pay a small like, it’s basically $1. And then you get a percentage of that. So if you get big audiences or you know, if you want to let people do it for you, then fine but if you get if you want to do it more as a money making thing and then people who are listening to you virtual gifts, so go like hey, yeah, I want to buy him a cup of coffee, I want to send him a rose, whatever. And that’s a certain value and then you get the you get the money directly to your PayPal account from it. So yeah, and we see that as we give the podcaster for the live stream hosted engagements for like this. Is your engagement score for that live stream and also monthly if you’ve done multiple This is your engagement score and we were ranking you know them and that’s that’s part of the engagement is you know the gifts you yet how many people attended, how long they listened, and also the comments and call in so people can text and send emojis and stuff in the chat. And they can also call in, you can disable call and if for some reason you don’t want to take calls, but you can have a co host or guests you know, remotely. So that’s, it’s a nice way to do that. And then podcasters get a recording afterwards so they can edit it and do whatever they want with it and post it to their hosting site. Or just some of our Podbean customers just post it directly and I’ll do any editing of it. So whichever way they want to do but it’s a nice way. One thing that really I don’t think was really the part of exactly did it but I think a side thing that I’ve come across a lot is people that want to do the remote calls with guests. said, Oh, this is another method of doing that. And then, you know, we can make it live and invite a lot of invite people or we cannot take calls and then. So I think, I think it’s quite I think it ties in with the whole overall monetization strategy. Because if you’re getting people doing that coming and you know, calling into your show and stuff, they’re going to be more likely to do whatever kind of support besides just what’s in the live streaming, but other support.

Jake Winstanley
Yeah, yeah, it’s really cool. So I guess it brings like a little bit of the radio aspect to it as well like podcasting being separate but it kind of brings out live kind of aspect and turning it into I guess radio little bit but giving you a lot more control over what’s involved in as well. And one thing I was just thinking then, is it possible I guess it is for people they could, they could offer like a live service as a part of their level of their membership or something like that accepted Patreon because they offer if I pay a certain amount I have access to the live and the call in compared to the free people don’t or something like that?

Shannon Martin
Yeah, they can do something, we’re looking at some different ways to integrate that more to do things. So right now, it’s like you set a certain number of free tickets. And I know we have the ability to do it, where it’s more like, there’s a special link or a special codes, that would be what we integrate probably for that. They could also just sort of publicize it to those people. And there’s some ways they could do it now, but I think we’re going to get it where they’ll be a little more sophisticated with that. But yeah, that’s the kind of and that’s those are some of the rewards that I’ve always told people for Patreon are Podbean patron. Yeah, or any of those things that are either more of your content or more of you more of your community and any kind of live streaming. Some of the groups that I’m in they’ve done Facebook Lives. And you know, the group members get involved and that kind of thing. And that’s something those are the kind of things that people, if they’re, they’re into what you’re doing, that’s that’s kind of the stuff that they want. Cool.

Jake Winstanley
So I guess just to finish it off, is there what’s one thing that you’re really excited for in the podcast space that’s like moving forward or that you that you’ve seen that’s coming out? That’s not really that widely known something along those lines.

Shannon Martin
I think right now, the live streaming is a big one, just because we’ve launched it recently. And we’re seeing it, you know, slowly developed and take off and people learn the different ways they can use it. So that’s definitely one and then the other. The other thing we do a lot of which is kind of separate, but I guess it has good parallels with the general podcasting industry is we have a lot of internal podcasts where companies are doing podcasts for internally communicating or training employees. And what’s cool about that is just the intersection of you’ve probably seen a lot of companies that are branded podcasts, usually called branded podcasts, you know, they’re creating some content and there’s some really cool ones out there too, that are, you know, in any way for direct sales from is a diamond. You know, it’s kind of sponsored by the company. They don’t even really there’s no push. you know, at all.

And so that’s that’s kind of the public side of it. And that’s really cool. And then the internal sides. It’s surprising how similar it is. I guess what I would say from that is that I think it’s really cool because it just shows how much more mainstream podcasting is becoming when big corporations, you know, acknowledge it and start to move on it because it’s slower and corporations to adopt sometimes.

Jake Winstanley
So it definitely shows kind of where podcasting is calm. And it also shows all the possibilities. And I think the underlying thing with that is storytelling and or audio as a medium has such power. And when one of the I’m doing a presentation to a group of the do internal podcasting and what some of the stats that they really, they really care about more even than just your general podcast. is it’s like a, it’s about a 500% increase in understanding and retention of information when you hear something audio versus like reading a newsletter.

Shannon Martin
And so for if someone’s doing training and their corporations like, Well, okay, if it’s whether it’s the sole thing we do, or whether it’s, you know, another thing to reinforce it, we should really be to it. Because if we want people to learn this, you know, we’re not going to end we know, it’s even, it’s the on the other side, the reading side is and it’s getting worse and worse, because we’re all kind of bombarded and so we scan a lot. Don’t take it in as much anymore. And so those earbuds it’s like there’s still something and that really makes a connection and a cool, cool stat or cool study. I’ll share with you that I actually found that I was doing my community presentation, and it applies to this group and applies to every podcast or there was a study where they, I can’t remember who did it now, but I can find it. And send it to you, they actually had people listening to audio and they were, you know, running ads in it. And then they took a group and they had them, you have to multitask. Like, we want you to read this thing or do this other thing while you’re listening. And that, that the retention of the information, the understanding of that ad was higher when they multitask.

Jake Winstanley
Oh, really?

Shannon Martin
Which is so strange, because for any other thing, that wouldn’t be the case first, sorry, you can’t multitask and do some things can’t read and, you know, try to driver. So first of all, we know we know we can multitask and podcasting but I always would have thought, well that could be a downside. You know, for ads or for trying to get someone to understand voice. I’m encouraging these people didn’t training podcasts. I’m saying, Hey, your sales people can listen when they’re, you know, flying or, you know, driving their next client, you know, Could have been bad they didn’t, they could have thought, well,then they’re not gonna be paying attention to what we’re trying to get across to them. But this, you know, the study is like, we need to rethink that power of that, hearing that message. That’s the storytelling. And I was talking to a friend about it, who actually is in HR. And she said, That totally makes sense to me. Because when I think back to like, when I was a kid listening to radio and the memories that it evokes, and she’s like, I can’t remember so much of that content. And us podcast fans know that for sure. You know, really, how many times a day you find yourself saying I heard of the podcast?

Yeah.

So it’s really sinks in a lot more. I think.

Jake Winstanley
That’s awesome. Well, I think that’s a perfect note to kind of finish it on there. Thanks so much. I really appreciate your time. And yeah, talk soon.

Shannon Martin
Okay, sounds great. Thank you.