My First Test of Radio Public
You can get your podcast on the Radio Public platform at https://podcasters.radiopublic.com/. Once you’ve been approved at Radio Public, they send a weekly email summary to your email with details about your Paid Listens activity on RadioPublic. Once your podcast earns $25 it will be eligible for payout, and we’ll send an email with information about how to configure the payment step.
Earnings are a combination of your Paid Listens (at a rate of $20 per 1000 listens of your episodes in the RadioPublic app) and for every new listener that hears three episodes of your show in the RadioPublic app, you’ll earn a Loyal Listener bonus of an additional (one-time) $1 – and yes, this bonus layers on top of your Paid Listens rate.
Talking about Radio Public
They send you the help section alot as you are navigating through their service. One page explains how to talk to your audience:
“Listen to [Show Name] on RadioPublic — it’s free, easy-to-use, and helps listeners like you find and support shows like mine/ours. When you listen to my/our show on RadioPublic, everyone benefits.”
On your show:
“Listen to [Show Name] on RadioPublic— it’s free, easy-to-use, and helps listeners like you find and support shows like mine/ours. When you listen to my/our show on RadioPublic, everyone benefits.”
On social media:
“Support [Show Name] by listening with the free RadioPublic app for iOS or Android. When you listen to my/our show on RadioPublic, everyone benefits. [Link to show]”
Or you can go deeper. Here are a few of the reasons people tell us they love RadioPublic. Depending on your audience — and you know them best — you might want to emphasize one or more of the following:
- It works for everyone, everywhere:
- Easy to use:
- Import your shows:
- Privacy: RadioPublic doesn’t require a login, so you can start listening right away, and your privacy is always respected.
- Open platform: While some podcast listening apps take a “walled garden” approach, RadioPublic is open to all podcasts.
- Rewarding podcasters: not only do episodes heard in the RadioPublic apps earn money for podcasters through the Paid Listens rate and the Loyal Listener bonus, we're developing a healthy ecosystem and building a marketplace to support the long-term business models of all podcasters big and small. By listening with RadioPublic, your show can stay financially sustainable so you can keep making episodes.
- Public benefit: RadioPublic is a Public Benefit Corporation powered by bona fide podcast geeks with extensive experience in public and not-for-profit media.
What Is the Criteria For a Listen?
We define a Paid Listen as a listener hearing at least 60% or 30 minutes of an episode, whichever is shorter. For now, only listens in the native RadioPublic mobile apps for iOS and Android count. Multiple listens to a given episode by the same user’s device/account will count as a single listen.
Also, it is important to understand that a download does not necessarily equal a listen. On all podcast apps, including RadioPublic, a given episode's audio file might be downloaded multiple times: the user could have deleted it before listening; a user’s local network error can occur and the file needs to be downloaded again; a podcast hosting provider can have an issue that initiates another download, etc.RadioPublic measures when an episode is actually heard, so you should not always expect a 1:1 download to listen ratio in your hosting provider’s metrics or dashboard.
What to Do If Your Episode Already Has Ads?
It depends. Are your ads a part of your final audio file (usually called “baked in,” these ads are permanent fixtures and considered a part of the overall episode forever), or are your ads dynamically inserted (ads can be added in, removed, or updated over time and operate independently of your episode)?
Depending on your current approach to ads, you have a few options for providing ad-free episodes to RadioPublic:
- Remove the ads from your older episodes in your existing RSS feed by reuploading newly edited audio files to your podcast host. (We understand that this may be more work than you want to take on at the moment, so you can consider ad-free episodes moving forward instead.)
- Create another RSS feed that contains ad-free episodes and provide that feed to RadioPublic.
- Contact your ad sales team and podcast hosting company, as they may have the ability to turn off dynamically inserted ads when episodes are requested from RadioPublic.
Boosting Your Radio Public Effect
An individual episode link gets you but one step away from earning for every listen in the RadioPublic apps for iOS and Android. (Remember, as long as your past episodes do not contain ads, they are eligible for Paid Listens, and for every new listener that hears three episodes of your show on RadioPublic, you’ll receive the one-time Loyal Listener bonus.)
While your show’s RadioPublic link is quite possibly the most powerful podcaster tool at your disposal, your individual episode links are a definite close second (and third, fourth, fifth… keep on counting until you get to the number of episodes you’ve published). Each episode is an opportunity for someone to get hooked on your show, and individual episode pages serve both as gateways for new listeners and regular reminders for your returning ones.
Where Do The Ads Go?
RadioPublic will place audio ads before and/or after episodes participating in Paid Listens, and the ads will be clearly demarcated with audio and visual cues as distinct from your show, not part of it.
This Could Ad Up Except For…
I looked at my stats for the School of Podcasting and I'm getting around 20,000 downloads a month (again, I have over 600 episodes) so at $20 for one thousand downloads that is 20 X 20 or $400 a month. There is only one slight problem. I would need every single person to subscribe on Radio Public, and the listens on my website via their embed-able player don't count. So I am testing the waters to see what happens.
For me, I'm not sure I can look at my audience and say, “Please go listen on this app where I can better advertise to you.”
John Bukenas of www.audioeditingsolutions.com on the www.hatetoweight.com show that he tried to import his shows, and the app crashed.
Patreon Vs Radio Public
Last month on Ask the Podcast Coach I had 3, 852 downloads. If we play in fantasy land and says EVERYBODY heard it on Radio Public, I would make $76. What I do on that show is I do an extra 30 minutes of show with my co-host Jim Collison from www.theaverageguy.tv and put it behind a paywall using Patreon. Last month I'm made $398 (as someone took the option to pay $125/month and receive an hour of one on one coaching) if we removed that (as that slot is not always full that would be $248. (or 3.2 times the amount of money from Radio Public).
Pennies Make Dollars
If you're trying to do podcasting full time, you need multiple streams of income. As with other services I've used that inserted ads paid $1.5 for 1000 listens, Radio Public is a much better solution. But as the average podcaster get around 1500 downloads per episode (source:libsyn.com) I'm not going to retire on the $30 (again that would be if EVERY SINGLE ONE of your listeners was using the Radio Public app)
Improvements Needed
With the short time I tested Radio Public, they need to be able to group podcasts together. I would get to the $25 a month payout fee if all my shows were listed under one account. From what I've seen they are not. So now every show would have to get 1250 downloads (the amount you need to make $25) instead of all of my shows working together. That would make for more payouts, and make it worth my while.
Social Subscribe and Follow Plugin
I had gone to the Internet along with using the branding assets of some apps and went through the joy of resizing them, and then having some with a black background and some with a white background and it looked like this:
Want to see my new page? Check out the new subscribe page
I know Daniel J. Lewis of the Audacity to Podcast. He is a friend of mine and I use his My Podcast Reviews service (which a great) so I decided to check out his Subscribe and Follow plugin and it just makes things so much easier. You can adjust the buttons to match your site. They are all up to date and are using the proper branding. He has everything you'd want to link to covered, and it's super easy to set it up. Check it out at http://schoolofpodcasting.com/subscribeandfollow
$25 a year and $24 sign up for Five Sites
$40.00 / year and a $39.00 sign-up fee for 10 sites
$75.00 / year and a $74.00 sign-up fee for unlimited sites
You can see my new subscribe page at www.schoolofpodcasting.com/subscribe
Pipa Billing Plans Change
My Criteria for Podcast Media Hosting
1. Don't mess with my file. What I upload is what I want people to download.
2. Give me the ability to have an unlimited back catalog (unlimited storage)
3. Don't limit my audience size (unlimited bandwidth)
4. Don't control my feed, and make it easy to leave if I choose to do so. I need to be able to put in an iTunes redirect script.
5. Give me support.
6. Charge me for your service so you can stay in business
7. Give me stats so I can see what's working. It would be nice if they were accurate.
8. Don't own my content, control my links, or block my access to distribution or stats (like Anchor).
Pippa Launched in October of 2017. With a goal of making it easy to start a podcast, and making it easy to monetize. They have done some questionable marketing (by scraping email addresses from the iTunes Database and accusing their competition of inflating their numbers). I've tested their service with The History of Six Shooter podcast. Their interface is simple, and they do offer free transcriptions. I tested their transcription service and it was only 70% accurate (so plan on spending a fair amount of time tweaking your transcription).
Originally they adopted the Soundcloud business plan which enables unlimited uploads and unlimited downloads (And lost 100 million dollars). Recently they updated their pricing. They STILL allow you to upload as many files as you want, but they limit the size of your audience (the more expensive the package, the more downloads you are allowed). For this show that gets over 20,000 downloads a month, I would be on the $50 a month plan. I currently use the $20/month plan at Libsyn.com (use the coupon code sopfree for a free month).
As they limit your number of downloads (when other companies like Libsyn.com and Blubrry.com do not) they are just not a good choice in my opinion. I know people who have received thousands of downloads by being mentioned on an influencer's blog. For me, I'd take a pass on http://pippa.io
For more information on media hosting, see www.podcastmediahosting.com
Ready to Plan, Launch or Grow Your Podcast?
I would LOVE to work with you. I have multiple plans (starting at $1 for bonus content, all the way up to a four-figure mentoring plan). I would love to help you with your podcast. See www.schoolofpodcasting.com/workwithme
