The Grand Patreon Monetization Experiment - The Podcast Report Episode #45

Paul's grand Patreon monetization experiment. It's the podcast report, episode 45 show notes, links, all sorts of good stuff@thepodcastreport.com 4 5. It's the podcast report with Paul Colligan. And here's Paul. Hey, it's Paul. And this is a special edition of the podcast report. I have re recorded this one more times than I'd like to admit, but I wanted to get it right and, and I think we're going to get it right this time. And of course, if we don't, you're not going to hear this recording because I'll probably do it again. But anyway, Patreon monetization, it's, it's a model, it's the patronage model. It's been computerized, it's been put into the 21st century by the guys over patreon.com and the idea is simple. You got a show, you like it, you can support it on a per episode, per month kind of basis. And the patron, the producer of the content can offer rewards and different things. I've been supporting the 5x5 show Dan Benjamin. I've been doing this for quite some time. I even got a fun little ribbon from Patreon for doing that. And I don't know how I feel about it yet. But before I poo poo it, before I say negative things about it, I thought I'd dip my toe in the water. What's interesting, at the same time, a number of you been asked, asking for some sort of podcast mastermind have been asking for some sort of community option. And so I thought I'd throw all these things together. Now I want to do the benefit of all of us. So here's my plan, here's my strategy at Podcast Movement this August. I'm one of the presenters and I'm going to presenting some real hard numbers and some real specifics about what podcasters can do to see revenue, you know, outside of the CPM ad insert. And I want to chat a little bit about Patreon. So again, I need to have some real world experiment experience. So this experiment will go through, at least through Podcast movement. And if you're listening to this after podcast movement 2015 and you've looked out and the whole campaign's dead, well, you know how it went. But if you got into this early, you want to see how it goes, I would recommend that you do it. So again, before I poo poo it, before I suggest alternatives, I thought I would, you know, give it a Try. Welcome new listeners. My name is Paul. I've been podcasting for 10 years. Got a bunch of books out about podcasting. My most recent one, how to podcast 2015, doing really well at Amazon. The only reviews we have are five star reviews at this point. The podcast report is a show about podcasting the avatar. The user is someone who's podcasting and wants to do it better, bigger, more intelligently, you know, and not how do I get five more dollars out of my per thousand downloads, but how do I build my business out of this? How do I do this right? That's, that's what this show is about. If this is your first episode, it's not the normal format. As I mentioned earlier, I had rerecorded this a couple of times, but this, this should be a fun one. So let's get to work. I am testing a lot of things here in this project and what I'm gonna do is I'm going to offer the results of my testing only to those of you who join me as a patron. And now I'm only gonna ask you to put in a dollar. I want to just get your ideas and I want to get your thoughts on, you know, is the Patreon area, is it easy to navigate, were there problems there, that type of thing. So if you want to get my final report, if you want to get essentially part two for this episode, I'm going to ask you to come in at just a dollar. I've got some other levels that we'll chat about, but we're going there and I'm going to run this until the Expo. I'm going to be running a lot of things that you're going to see. I'm going to be running a lot of tests that you're not going to see. But know a couple of things. Again, this is an experiment. This is not my only revenue stream. This show is not necessarily the ideal show for Patreon, as mine's a deep show, not a wide show. I don't have tens of thousands of listeners, but the podcasters and the listeners that I do have are pretty loyal, pretty exciting. So just because if this goes bad, and I'm hoping it won't be, this book goes bad on Patreon for me, doesn't necessarily mean that Patreon's a bad way to go. If I stay inside of this, and I'm hoping to, I got to stay now that we're going to. There's a grandfather clause here. If you come in at this level and I Change things. And I will change things. I'll keep you in at this level level, even if I increase the price, if you leave and come back, I can't guarantee that. But if you stay inside, however I change it will keep you at that level. And Again, it's the podcastreport.com Patreon so I'm going to tell you about the different levels that I was thinking about, why I was thinking about it, and some specifics there. So the first level that I put in was the curious level. And the idea about the curious level is that just those are those who are curious. I mean, you know, I mean, if I got, you know, if I got as many listeners as, you know, putting in a dollar a month for this show, this could get really interesting and I could have a fun little revenue stream. So microtransactions were always part of the Internet. They never really kicked off. But I don't know, it's interesting. So I put in this dollar curious level. I'm curious about it. And if you want to just, you know, give the show a nod, a wink, a thumbs up, the curious level is the perfect place to do that. And I promise that I will get you my full report of what I end up doing with Patreon. But of course, that's not the real revenue here. It goes higher than that. So I've added a level called the tester level and that's $5 a month. And we're going to do a couple things there. Number one, we're going to have a meetup at Podcast Movement and it'll just be us, a couple special friends. I'm also going to do a monthly how to video. If you haven't seen the video over@thepodcastreport.com Patreon take a look at that. I had some fun with that. I'll explain how I did that. My first monthly video. And we'll just be shipping special premium content, if you will, to the $5 tester levels. It starts to get really, really interesting there. The next level is a jump. It's a $97 a month jump, but it's a mastermind. It's a real podcast mastermind. Some podcasters and some trainers of podcasters have been using Facebook groups to manage the communities for their paid premium products. Well, here's the problem. Best way I read it is that goes against the Facebook terms and conditions. And then the second problem is it's Facebook, which is just, I don't know, it's, it just, it isn't what I like it isn't what I want in terms of getting business done. So I'm going to try to build a for those who come at the Mastermind level and I'm going to do it on Slack initially. If you don't know Slack, give it a try. It's really, really interesting. It's an attempt to solve communications. It's free. If you're going to use it for this level. I'll be paying for some stuff, but you won't. So we're going to have a Slack community. We're going to have a twice monthly live recording invite. I'm going to start inviting you to the live recording. The podcast report should be fun. People want to interact, people want to be part of an experience and I'm going to play with doing these live and I figured part of the Mastermind would keep me hon answer questions, do that kind of thing. I do want to do a monthly Q and A event. It'll be closed only for people come in on the Mastermind level. People got questions they need to get answered. We'll do that. You won't have to be at their live to get that. I will do it live, but there'll be a way to submit questions, that type of thing. We'll do a monthly phone call. This should be fun. You know, if all goes well, I'm just going to turn on the bridge line and we'll chat, we'll go from there. Should be interesting. If it doesn't go well or there's too many of us or whatever, we'll. We'll moderate but should be interested. The last thing I'm doing is I've got an unlisted bonus. I've got something I've been trying to figure out what to do with. I'll tell you this, it's a lot worth a lot more than the $97 a month for this. But I've. I'm going to give it to everybody who joins up as the mastermind. Not going to say what it is, not going to tease, going to definitely point out that, you know, basically if you trust me, I'm going to over deliver and at the $97 a level month, we're good to go. Let's take a look at this idea of a $97 a month show. You know man, if you take a Show that has $45 CPM and you're getting $97 a month from one customer, that means you only need one out of every 2,000 downloads to be part of your community. Interesting idea. The numbers should be there. But anyway, if you wanted to be in a mastermind with me for podcasting, this is the way to do it again. We'll find out, but we'll go from there. Anyway, the next one I've got is the player level and some people wanted to advertise on the show and I've rejected because I want to be careful by. But I think I got this idea here. The player level, the bot to you buy level. Basically you come in at this level and I'm going to say the show is brought to you by X and I'm going to let you pick a topic at least twice a year and we're going to have a 15 minute phone call every month. If you want to stack those up over the months to make the phone call longer, we can do that. But you'd be surprised how much you can get solved in 15 minutes if you want to. That's the player level on the last level is a grand experiment. We'll see what happens there. It's the patron level. That will be three things. Two of them I mentioned in the video, one of them I'm mentioning here and only here. I'm going to do a 67 minute strategy session every month. We can do that by Skype if you want. It could be me and you or me and your team. We're also going to do a 67 commercial, 67 second commercial at the end of the show and I will make sure they know that it's coming and I'll make sure that you get some listens. But it'll be a good chance for you to experiment with who you are and what it is that you're doing. And that's the patron level. The last thing I'm going to do at this 9.97amonth is I'm going to send you a gift every month and it's going to be a fun little cool little technology gift that you wouldn't get elsewhere. If you are a true patron of the show. If you're putting out this kind of, kind of an outlay, I want to return the favor and I'm going to put a smile on your face every time you open up the mail for me. So that's, that's the patron level. So again, this is Patreon. Don't know what's going to happen from this. I'm really, really curious. I'm having a good time putting my, my toe in the water here. If the links to everything will be out atthepodcastreport.com 45 I would love your thoughts. I've got a link. I asked the Google group what they thought of Patreon. A couple people made some suggestions and some ideas and, well, gosh darn it, we're going to see what happens here. It should be a fascinating time. I would love this to extend out. I think this is a great model. I think this is a great idea. The question is, does it just really work on a scalable level? Everybody that I've seen it work for, you know, they could have been seeing revenue from a bunch of other more traditional sources and this just becomes a numbers game game. Not as much as it becomes a patronage game. Like this has been promoted or like this has been sold to us as. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I'm very curious about this. I want to see the results of this and I think this is going to be a great way to do it. So thepodcastreport.com patreon or patreon.com PaulColligan will take you there. We'll find the results out at Podcast Expo. We'd love to have you subscribe to the show. When you get every episode as it comes out, that's when it starts to get interesting. So subscribe@the podcastreport.com iTunes or Stitcher or whatever, they're all there. Tunein is there. I don't have my notes in front of me, but all the major podcast platforms@thepodcastreport.com the show name. I've also got social media thepodcastreport.com YouTube, thepodcastreport.com Twitter, thepodcastreport.com Facebook those will take you to all of our social strategies. There 503-897-1290 is the show number. If you'd like the transcript for today's show, go ahead. Text EP4 5 to that if you want to leave voicemail, that could be fun. And if you want to be a patron of the show, please consider it. Even if you only come in at a buck. I'll give you the full report on what worked, what didn't, and we will all get better for it. Thank you so much. Talk to you next week when I got a more traditional episode for you. But between now and then, podcast like crazy people. Bye.