The Risky Future of Value for Value?

The risky future of value for value.

This is the future of podcasting, where we ponder what awaits the podcasters of today.

From the school of podcasting, here's Dave Jackson. And from the Audacity to Podcast, here's Daniel J. Lewis. Daniel, future of podcasting. I think we're up to episode 58.We're talking about the Risky future. Question mark. A value for value. Good to see you, buddy.

It's always great to talk about the future of podcasting. The past, the present, and the future. Value for value. First thing here, Dave. I.I chuckle because sometimes whenever you talk about value for value, you associate it with one specific thing, and I want you to embrace that right now and tell me, what do you always associate value for value?

Oh, for me, it's been streaming satoshis from day one when I was like, as soon as I heard, the longer they listen, the more you make, I was like, okay, you have my official, undivided attention. Because to me, that was a way for every podcaster to make even the smallest amount. It was just. And I. I kind of get that.Some people feel that kind of acknowledgement, like, my podcast is only legit, which I think is kind of sad, but I think a lot of people have this mindset. My podcast is only legit when I have a sponsor, if I'm making money of some sort.Because I'm like, you could just be talking about anything, and you bring joy into somebody's life. That's value. It's not really, but we all kind of come from that mindset of radio.And I don't know how we fall into that trap, but I see that a lot where people are like, well, I just saw it today on Reddit. The guy's like, I've been doing this for five years. I'm only getting 40 downloads an episode. And, you know, he was kind of down in the dumps.He's like, but I'm having a lot of fun, and that's why I do it. And I was like, well, there you go. I ride my bike in the summer. I don't make a dime from it. In fact, it cost me money.But I have fun and it's good exercise. So I've never had anybody come up to me and go, oh, I see you're riding your bike. How much money make you doing that? I'm not. I'm losing money.I had to buy new tires or brakes or something. So, yeah. But for me, it's always been satoshi.So when the whole Albie Albymageddon came and, you know, I realized there's still Fountain and there's still, you know, other apps, but I understand why they quit. I was kind of like, oh, and then I know Dave.Remember when Dave had some company that he was working with that he had an NDA, and like, every week I was tuning in, like, is the NDA done? Is like, can we hear what's. This big company was coming. And then whoever it was apparently kind of backed out or just. We never heard about it.

Well, here's the thing about NDAs. No one should really know that you're under an NDA. So just that we know nothing about the NDA means that he is adhering to the NDA.

Yeah.

There could still be something amazing that Dave Jones is working on and he's under NDA, and so of course he can't tell us anything about it.

Yeah. When I kind of got like, okay, I didn't hear, you know, we've kind of moved on with. I know Adam's understandably preoccupied with.With God Caster, because he just launched that and, you know, he's trying to get the word out about that and some other things, and I just didn't hear any. For me, I'm not hearing any priority of like, hey, we got to get this fixed, because there's still Fountain and what's the other one? Pod?

Podcast guru.

Well, podcast guru. Yeah, there's one, but they all have that kind of.You gotta go through strike to go to the thing, and then you do the thing and then the hokey pokey and turn yourself around again and then you get your wallet kind of thing. And I was like, oh, so that's as good as it's going to be for now, for a while was we're making strides and more apps were adopting it.And so not that it's gone away. Right. You've always got Fountain. And I know they came out with a new interface today, so that's good. But I was just like, eh, it doesn't.It seems that it kind of lost some of its momentum. So when that went away. Yeah, there are all sorts of great things with 2.0 that have come along.You know, transcripts is 2.0, and that was adopted by Apple, so there are all sorts of things to cheer about. But that was the one. You know, it's kind of like, oh, you.I don't know if you'll even get this, but if you're old and remember Leonard Skynyrd, it'd be like going to Lynyrd Skynyrd. And then finding out halfway through the concert, oh, they're not doing Freebird tonight. You're like, wait, what? That's. That's why I'm here.

Am I supposed to laugh at that or not? Because I don't. I really don't know.Yeah, I identify as young and handsome, so if you, since you're laughing at that, I assume you're laughing at the Yun part. But.

Exactly.

The reason I bring this up and the reason we very specifically had a question mark in that title is a few reasons here. Yes, yes, there is a risky future to value for value, but it depends on how you define value for value right now. Dave, to you very much.When people say value for value to you, you instantly think crypto. And in fact, that was the origin of this very podcast before you renamed it to the Future of Podcasting and before I joined you on it.It was this whole thing about trying to understand crypto and walking through that and explaining that that is an aspect. Value for value is a concept. It is not a technology.Value for value really pioneered and made popular by Adam Curry, the podfather, the co creator of podcasting, and John C. Dvorak and their podcast no Agenda.It's a concept that you are creating value by creating your podcast and you can ask and give opportunities for your audience to provide value back to the podcast. So you're exchanging value for value. Hey, that's the name of the concept. So it's not a technology. Technologies will come and go.Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak on the no Agenda podcast do value for value through checks. So does Jen Briney from Congressional Dish.So do countless other podcasters through Patreon, through checks, through PayPal, through gifts, through support, through talent, through time, through treasures, these time, talent and treasure that Adam Curry talks about.So it is this value exchange, and that's the basis of why we have currency, is because you might not want the chickens that I have in exchange for the podcast expertise that you have, which you can get over@schoolofpodcasting.com and you might not want the chickens that I have. So we have a currency because then we attribute value to that currency and we exchange based on that currency.And in podcasting we can do that same thing. But some people don't have the currency, but they do have the talent we or the time to offer for things.So the concept of value for value, there is no risk in that future. The risk is in some of our technological implementations of it.And I would Say it's not actually a bad risk, but potentially a good risk because it can mean better potential coming in the future. So consider this.One of the biggest reasons that we've jumped on the crypto train for trying to exchange value for value payments is the micropayments being able to stream payments while you're listening to a podcast. So for as long as I'm listening, I'm streaming payments back to the podcaster. The longer I listen, the more I pay. It's a great concept.How much do audiences actually want to do that? I don't know. But still, it's a good concept. Whether that is making a one time payment or it's streaming those payments as they're listening.It all builds around this concept of the micropayment or I'm actually going to use the term nanopayment because in the business world micropayments can often mean less than $10 or less than $20. I've not seen a definite number, but it's many dollars basically.But in the value for value streaming satoshis, we're really working with Nano payments where it's maybe pennies worth of a payment per minute that someone is listening. So it totals up to maybe only 50 cents. But here's the biggest problem with that.You look at all of the major payment platforms, whether that's credit cards or unconventional methods where it allows for some API integration back and forth. So PayPal, Stripe, many platforms like that, they all charge a percentage on the transaction. That's normal. Okay. Nothing wrong with that whatsoever.A transaction fee, that's a percentage based thing.We have that even in the streaming payments, it's part of the splits or the fees that some of the payment providers or networks take or anything like that. That's fine. Percentages are fine. What kills the Nano payment are the flat rate fees on the transactions.PayPal, for example, and Stripe, many of them, it's around 50 cents per transaction. Regardless of the size of the transaction, it's a 50 cent payment.So it is impossible for someone to send you 50 cents through those platforms because the platform would eat that up in the fee. And then they still need their 2.9% or 3%, whatever it is for that system. So the Nano transactions just cannot exist on those platforms.But what if those platforms decide to drop the 50 cent per transaction fee?

That'd be a beautiful thing.

It would be. But see, that is a risk to the value for value structure that we have right now. And yes, that is a risk to building around the Lightning Network.And I'm not saying that we need to hold everything off until this ever happens or if it ever will happen.It is a risk, but it is a good risk that if that were to happen, I think that could open the floodgates and I can potentially see a future where something like that happens.Like maybe they say, all right, if you want to be able to accept Nano payments, we'll drop the 50 cent per transaction fee, but your percentage will jump up to 5% or 10%, something like that. I would be fine with that because 10% of 50 cents is still a whole lot less than 50 cents of 50 cents.

Yeah, exactly. It would be interesting to see, and I know there are some options. Was it this week, last week, that Apple came out with the big news?

Yeah, let's talk about that.

I always just called it the Apple Tax. You know, if anybody bought anything in Apple, they would take 30%.And I'm not sure if it was in the US or what court was it in the US that they lost this. Well, lost. We'll see, because I'm sure they're going to appeal.But at this point, they basically have a judge that has said, yeah, the 30% Apple tax is gone. It's something to do with being too competitive or whatever. Monopolyptic. Did I just make up a new word?

This sounds good to me.

Yeah, you can explain this much better than I can.

Yeah, it was Epic Games, the company behind the hugely popular, insanely popular, insanely, insanely popular game Fortnite Battle Royale, or just now known as Fortnite.And on the iPhone, they had Fortnite on the iPhone and Epic Games wanted to be able to sell things, but Apple wanted to take their 30% and that has been their requirement, is that if you sell anything digital through an app on the iPhone, you have to use Apple Pay, and Apple has to get their 30% from that.And you even see that in the podcast subscriptions aspect, although it is for Apple, they say there's the 15% until a certain threshold or a certain amount of time, and then it's 30%, that kind of thing. Or it's 30% and then it's 15. I forget which way it is. But still, basically, Apple gets a 30%, they get a cut, they require that cut.And I will say this in defense of Apple, it is Apple's platform and they should be allowed to set their own rules.The problem is, I think when a platform gets so ubiquitous as the iPhone has and so prominent so widely built upon, that's when I think they can no longer set all the rules that they want. I'm a small government kind of guy, so I don't like the government getting involved unless they have to.But there does come a point where I think the government has to. Because there is a point where a company becomes a monopoly.If I make the Daniel phone and I say, all right, you are only allowed to post pictures of cats on my phone. Any other picture that you want to share through my phone, you can. You're not allowed to do that. Okay, I could do that.No one's going to buy that phone. Or maybe a few people will buy that phone. But yes, it is technically a monopoly, but a monopoly among the few people who buy it.But if a billion people buy that phone, and I'm saying you can only do this, you're not allowed to use competing things. It's not even really about what are you allowed to do with the phone. But it's about business practices and anti competitive behavior.And it has nothing to do with moderation policies or anything like that. That's where it becomes more complicated.

Yeah. When you have Apple Music, but you have a Spotify app. And so Spotify has to. If you order Spotify on your iPhone, they're going to take 30%.Whereas if you bought it on the Spotify website, you wouldn't.And so all these companies had different things where if you would click on the buy button, you might get a message that says, hey, if you like our company, do us a favor, don't buy this here. And they would send them to their own website. So they're not going through the Apple system. And.

But even that was forbidden.

Yeah. And that's where you get into really anti competitive. You're like, look, you can't tell me what I can do on my own website.And so things got kind of ugly.And it is one of those things where, you know, there are some people who go, well, that's just business, you know, and if you don't like it, build your own store. But it's like. And 30% is a chunk.

It is.

Ouch. Yeah.So when this came out, I know, I heard, I think it was James Credlin today said that Patreon has already put a update to their app because, you know, and then there were things like Pocket Cast came out, I don't know, a couple weeks ago or I'm not sure eventually when they did it, but now they have the funding button. You can now basically map that to anything. Which was nice because it used to Be right.We're talking about satoshis, but you can link that to Strike, I didn't realize. Or Stripe. You always have to like strike with a P.There is a page you can send people to and just let them pick however much they want to send you via credit card. But there are services like Buy me a Coffee and Ko Fi and Patreon and a bunch of them.

Yeah. So let's back up though, before we dig into some of those, because it would be good to.Is what changed recently now a week or two ago, by the time you're listening to this, is that Apple had their hand slapped because this whole thing with Epic Games went through in the United States. And there have been similar court cases with Google, also with Apple overseas as well as in the United States.But Epic Games, props to them, they really stood firm on this and would not give up.And that's why Fortnite was pulled from the iOS store, because they'd rather have it pulled than compromise on what they believed were their principles. So great job, guys. And Apple had this ruling come down from the court that basically said you're not allowed to do this kind of thing anymore.You have to do it differently. So Apple kind of did letter of the law, but inappropriately so to the point that the court came back and the letter was kind of scathing.What the court basically said is basically it's a, it's a huge slap on Apple's wrist saying no, you cannot do these things that you tried to do to try to circumvent this order, to try and work around this. Absolutely not. You are not allowed to do this.It's been made extremely clear that Apple has to open it up so that other payment methods can be accepted. You can make notices on the app that you'd rather people pay a different way. You don't have to hide information.So a lot of this anti competitive stuff is now gone. And so that's why a lot of these apps have been uploading things.And some of the big concerns for this, like with podcast apps even I know for a little while, remember Marco with Overcast had supported a feature kind of like the funding tag. This was before the Podcasting 2.0 funding tag existed. And Dave, explain the funding tag briefly as opposed to the value tag. What is the funding tag?

The funding tag. And this is where I always get these confused. So let me know if I'm going down the wrong road.But that's the one where you put a link to whatever you want it to go to.So that can be buy me a coffee or really anything you could put the link to, like, Buzzsprout and Captivate have their own kind of systems where you can receive payments. You could put that. Anything you want, you could put there.

It could go to your book store, it could go to your merch store, it could go to your website, it could go straight to the PayPal link or anything you want. Yeah.

Yeah. And right now, I'm really loving Pocket Cast.But the thing I discovered, because I never closed Pocket Cast, that I was like, I kept hearing people talk about this. I'm like, I do not see this little dollar sign.So then I made sure I had stuff in the right tag, and I'm like, I'd go to my show, and I'm like, it's not there. I had to close the app. And when I did, it was like, hey, there's an update available. I updated it, and then I reopened it and it was there.So if you're a person like me that never closes the app, you have to close it and reboot it, and then you'll see it come up. And then once I did, it was right there, and it's on the website, and I forgot to check that as well.But, yeah, so I love the fact that it's super flexible.You can, you know, like you said, if you're an author and the way you monetize is by book sales, you could put a link right there to where people could, you know, you could say, hey, if you're listening to this on Pocket Cast, just click on the dollar sign and that'll take you right to our book sales. You know, and it's not just Pocket Cast. There are other apps that are using that feature as well. So that's the other thing I didn't quite realize.I thought it was. I knew it was there, but I didn't realize other apps were using it.

Yeah.So before the funding tag existed in podcasting 2.0, Marco with overcast built something pretty cool where he would discover support links in podcast feeds as well as I think he suggested ways that podcasters could add one. Again, this was before the funding tag existed, maybe even before podcasting 2.0 existed.But he pulled that not because Apple told him to, but because he was worried Apple would tell him to pull it. And he didn't want anything about his appeal preventing updates from going out, so he pulled it. Now there's not that fear anymore.So now even whether that was justified before, now podcast app developers don't have to worry about that, because Apple has to allow that kind of thing, at least in the United States, probably soon, the European Union. And I would really suspect at some point Apple's just going to open this up internationally. And I would really hope they do.I think it would be wise for them to. But that presents that opportunity to let your audience give value back to you.That doesn't have to be anything like satoshis or crypto or anything like that. If the app can make that button visible, then link it to something that lets your audience give value back to you in whatever they.Whatever way that they want. Try to make that landing page. So I always tell people, never say Patreon in your podcast. Dave, you're great at this. With Ask the Podcast Coach.Where do you tell people to go?

Yeah, I always say, go to askthepodcastcoach.com awesome.Because when I originally started playing with those tools, there was a service by Google called Jaywalk that was kind of cool, very much like Patreon. And I was like, oh, okay, I'm going to use Jaywalk. And then they were bought by Google and immediately shut down.So if I'd been telling people, oh, go to jaywalk.com, dave, or whatever the website was, I'd have 15 episodes with a dead link in them. Where when you say, oh, go to my website.com whatever, then you control that link.Like, right now, I was on Patreon, I kind of like Supercast a little better. I don't know that they're any cheaper. I just like their interface better. I think it's a better experience for the listener.Cause they kind of can detect what phone you're on and then suggest things where with Patreon, if somebody actually wants to listen and say, Apple Podcast, you've got to go find your feed. You've got to copy the feed. Go on Apple Podcasts, click on the three little dots. It's just that easy. So again, I switched.I didn't really do anything. It's still. You go to askthepodcastcoach.com awesome.It's just now there's a button there for Supercast where before it was a button for Patreon where, you know, if I'd been saying, oh, go to patreon.com DaveJackson okay. Getting people, you know, like, it's a podcast. I've.Unless that was somehow dynamically inserted, there's no way I'd have to go back and rerecord all those episodes.

Yeah. And there's also the whole thing about you're mentioning another brand name in your podcast.And will people even know how to spell that brand name correctly? Yeah, like I, I've seen it so often when people say I was trying to join your patron, but I can't find you on patron. Com.It's no, it's Patreon, that kind of thing. But you can make a landing page or even simply a redirect or whatever it is.Even if you do link that funding tag directly to Patreon, you should be allowed to do that now in iOS. And also you've been allowed to do that in Google because Google had a very similar issue happen on their side.It's just it didn't make such a big splash because Google wasn't being such Nazis about it like Apple was no soup for you. That kind of Nazi.So now we've got this option and I think for the whole value for value concept, again as a concept, not an implementation, I think the funding tag is the better approach because what it can do is it can give your audience the choice you've used for a while. Dave the service called Genius Link, and I just recently signed up for it and I met the gentleman from Genius Link at a recent podcasting conference.And Genius Link is an affiliate linking service where you pay them and then insert your affiliate IDs into their system. And what they can do is make it much easier for you to create affiliate links to products that you want to recommend.But not only that, you can make what they call choice pages where you link to the same product on multiple retailers. So I could say, hey, go buy the ATR2100X USB at this link. That link takes you to my Genius Link.And then on the Genius Link it has that product photo and underneath it it has Amazon B and H, adorama, Sweetwater, Walmart, eBay, you know, whatever. Yeah, on there.And the gentleman from Genius Link said that they've been tracking the stats on it and very interestingly, they see more conversions happen on the Choice pages than a single link directly to one retailer. And I realized that makes sense for this reason.Now there are those studies that the things like if you present the audience with too much choice or it's not audience, if you present the consumer with with too much choice, like too many different kinds of peanut butter, they'll be less likely to buy. The thing is here that's choosing between a product like which product is best, right?Well, when you already know the product, the consumer can make the decision much more easily. It's it usually comes down to one of these two things. Actually I want to see, Dave. I want to see if my guess of these two things is correct for you.If there's a product you already know you want to buy and you see it's available at three to four different retailers, what makes you choose one over the other?

Typically it's price. But almost the first place I'm going to look at is Sweetwater free candy. But their service is insane.And the price is almost always the same if not cheaper than Amazon. The shipping is just as fast as Amazon. Because I don't know about you, but lately Amazon shipping is like, hire some more people, folks.And then their customer service is almost annoying. It's so good. I'll get an email, hey, this is shipped. And then I'll get a phone call when it arrives.And they're like, hey, is everything okay with it? Anything you need, anything else? And I'm like, okay. And then you open up the box and there's free candy. I'm like, who doesn't want free candy?

So you just said the two things I was thinking price and loyalty. Yeah, so many people will shop just purely based on price. Some people will compromise on the price because of loyalty.And people will love it when they win on both the price and the loyalty. That is the consumers will love it when they win with that.So when you're presenting a choice page in that sense, some people, they're subscribed to Amazon prime, they get that free two day shipping or next day shipping or whatever. They maybe they live right next door to Amazon warehouse so they know they get their stuff within five minutes when they order.Whatever the case, they might always see that and decide, I always want Amazon. So yeah, it's nice to know it's available at these other places. But I really appreciate that there's an Amazon link or it's the Sweetwater thing.Maybe they just always want to buy from Sweetwater regardless. And none of these companies by the way are sponsoring our content here.We have affiliate relationships with these companies but they're not paid to get mentioned here, just that disclosure.So when you're presenting a choice in that sense, it makes sense to me that that helps people convert better because for one thing they get to choose their preferred retailer, which maybe their preferred retailer is not Amazon. So if you're always only promoting Amazon affiliate links, it would make sense that your links aren't converting as well.Maybe they prefer somewhere else.But the other thing is it also enables them to very quickly compare on that other metric that matters to them, the price, they could just open the link. Okay, you. If Amazon is this much, B and H is this much, Sweetwater is this much, they're all the same price.Or, oh, wait, this one's $5 cheaper and still has free shipping. Okay, I'm going with that one. So you've enabled them to make a better choice. So all that to say, I think, on the payment side as well.And there is a limit, I think, to this kind of thing where you don't want to overload with 20 different choices.But there is maybe on the payment side, and this is a theory right now for me is if you present the audience with a couple of options for payment, that might make it easier for them and maybe make it more profitable for you. And I actually have some experience with this for a little while. I accepted PayPal payments on Podgagement.Actually, before it was podgagement, back when it was called my podcast Reviews. I accepted PayPal payments in the beginning and for many years.But PayPal is a pain to deal with on an accounting side, and I just didn't want to mess with it. But I also wondered what would be the cost to not use PayPal anymore.And I experimented with it, and I experimented with hiding the PayPal payment option on my checkout process.And sure enough, I got fewer conversions when I removed PayPal from the site because people wanted PayPal now for me, I decided it's not worth it to me to keep supporting PayPal. I'll take the hit just because I don't want to have the personal expense of dealing with PayPal.But that proves that point or helps confirm that point that sometimes the audience needs more choices.So for your funding tag, what might be better is pointing them to a page on your site where you have those links of, hey, you can send us PayPal, you can send us crypto through this. You can pay with your credit card right here. Here's the form right here. Or you can. Here's the P.O. box for you to send us a check or cash or whatever.Or here's the buy me a coffee link. Here's the Patreon link that can all be on that page that you point people to.And I love deferring the details of the call to action like that as well. So your call to action can be as simple as visit, slash, awesome, or whatever.And then they go there and they can make their choice of which way they want to support you.

And then the thing you want to be. Cause I thought about this. Whatever that page is, go to it on your phone and see what it looks like.Because back in the day, right, there used to be people listening on their computer. Nobody's listening to a podcast on a computer. Very few compared to the early days.And so you want to make sure that those buttons are big, they're easy to find, and they can click on them on a phone because that's where a big chunk of your audience, they're going to click on that button, and then it takes them to that page. You want to make sure that works on your phone.

Something.I'm glad that we haven't said this word, but this is one of my concerns about a risky future of the value for value ecosystem and concept the word donate. I think there's some risk to using the word donate. And you've had this conversation with your cpa, haven't you?

Yeah. Cause if people think it's a donation, they might actually want to claim that on their taxes.And then they go look for Ask the Podcast Coach in the nonprofit world. And they're like, we can't find a nonprofit labeled Ask the Podcast Coach. And they're like, oh, okay.Because somebody at PodPage had said, hey, we have links, like if you do a, you know, whether it's PayPal or Buy Me a Coffee or Ko Fi or GoFundMe. And somebody said, hey, can you guys add stripe with a P? And I was like, oh, we don't have that. Okay.And so first I was like, you can make a link in stripe and you can. And so I went over and just in their. Their support area, I just typed in donate button.And in that, they have a lot of things that's like, hey, easy with the donate button. You might want to call this. And this is Adam's favorite term, a tip. And I was like, oh, he's not going to like that.But there was a lot of documentation, kind of the same thing, like, be careful calling this a donation, because you're not really a nonprofit. So you got to be careful with that.

I like the term give back. It's a combination of concepts. I've heard different people say. I've seen some studies on nonprofits that have said that donations.And this is in the nonprofit organization, tax deductible donation world. But they've shown that when they use the term gift. Would you like to gift to someone?When they use that term, their donations have gone up and they have to use that term consistently throughout the call to action, like on the buttons in their language. And Everything. So nowhere does it say support or donate or anything like that.And they cross compared it to words like donate and support and they found that the word gift converted much better. And I think that makes sense because people, I think, have a more emotional connection to the word gift.They think of like the joy of at Christmas time, when you give a gift to someone and see them open it up and oh, wow, you know, it's just what I wanted so much. You know, that expression of love and getting to enjoy people seeing them open their gifts and receive their gifts. I think that makes sense.Now, that word doesn't work so much in the podcast world, but I had this thought of the term give back because it does a couple of things. One, it doesn't have this negative or potential risky connotation of donate associated with it.But the other thing is I love it for how it builds into the value for value concept of really, we're talking about a sense of reciprocity, where when I say, not just would you give to the podcast, but would you give back to the podcast? What that extra word back is adding is that sense of, hey, I'm already giving something to you of value.Would you consider giving some value back in exchange? And it doesn't have to. You don't have to use those actual words exchange. But give back to the podcast can be a better way to use that.So if you're in that area of using the word donate, be careful. That is a risky future. I don't think so much you're the one in trouble, but you could get other people in trouble.But certainly there could be a point where, I don't know, some companies or government organizations starts to try and crack down on saying, hey, you really shouldn't be doing this. Like, the FTC would probably be the people to do this if they haven't done it already since they started cracking down.They still call it guidelines, though.And if you've seen Pirates of the Caribbean or Caribbean, whichever one that you watched, Hang the code and Hang the rules, they're more like guidelines anyway. Yeah, well, the FTC guidelines kind of treat it like law.And there are some other countries, though, that have similar guidelines or actual laws around language and the ways that you can endorse things. Be careful with that word donate. That is a risky future.And with anything, any kind of terminology that you're using, there is some risk to how you communicate that.So that's why I think the best way to communicate it is really around this concept of value for value of hey, we've given you not we're selling you something of value unless you are selling, but we've given you something of value for free. And if you find value in that, would you consider giving some value back to us?

Yeah, because the other thing it does is you can give somebody three easy steps to blah, blah, blah, whatever it is, or today I'm doing a review of a product. I mean, we watch movie reviews because we don't want to go sit in a movie for two hours. It's awful, right?You know, so those people are saving you time. You just don't realize it.And so there are times when you just by reminding people, like, hey, if this is a great fit for you, as I talked about this piece of equipment, you know, you might consider using my affiliate link in the show notes. That's a way to give back.And so just by reminding them that, hey, you just spent X amount of time with me and hopefully you're in a better place than before you hit play. And just by politely reminding them that, hey, I gave you some value, they might actually give some back. So that's the cool thing.It's kind of the whole teacher, tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them and then tell them what you told them so that you're kind of reminding them that, hey, I spent some time on this, this was valuable and you got something out of it. Can I have some of that back now?

What have you thought about streaming payments, both as a podcaster receiving them and as a listener sending them? Like, what's been your feelings about not the experience, like the technological experience, but the emotional experience?Do you have much of a different emotional experience with the streaming payments versus Boostergrams or any kind of single one off payments?

Yeah, very much so. Because, you know, and the other apps I was thinking of were podverse and True Fans are ones that have that built in.And I can put money in my wallet, but I never got a notification. Sometimes the app might say, hey, you've got nothing in your wallet.But there wasn't any kind of red flashing light or there wasn't an email that's like, hey, you bomb your. Your wallet's empty.So there'd be time when I'd be listening and I would go to Boost and that's when I would see, oh, wait, I don't have any money in my wallet.

Oh, because it all streamed out.

It all streamed out. And that's when I would get this feeling in my heart of like, oh, I got value. I'M not giving value back. And I kind of felt like I ripped them off.And so then I would fill up my wallet and go back and send a boost because I have no idea how long it's been empty. And so there is definitely a different way.And when I started using pocketcast, I want to say there were three, maybe four shows that I was listening to on Podcast Guru, which was kind of a pain in the butt because everything else is in one place. And so I was talking with Matt Kundal of soundoff Podcast.They said, hey, in the event you see streaming satoshis dry up for me, it's not that I said, I'm probably going to move everything to PocketCast.I said, and I'll just send you a fiver every now and then, because that's probably more than I gave him in satoshis, because I was streaming, I think at something like 50 satoshis a minute or something like that, because I wanted it to be small so that as I listened to more shows, everybody would get a piece of the piece was the idea. And I was like, but there is a thing where I'm like, oh, wait, what's going on with Todd and Rob? Oh, hold on, I gotta switch apps to listen to them.And so it's just one of those where I'm like, again, first world problems, but I'm kind of like, oh, wait, I gotta go to Podcast Guru now to listen. And I was like, it would just be so much easier if they were all in one place, because then they could be in my playlist and things like that.So I am still doing that. I still have two apps going. But it's been on my mind that I'm like, I might quit doing that just because it's, again, gotta go into strike with a K.Put money in from my bank so I can go into the thing and throw it into the thing. You know, it's like, okay. And if they're not gonna make it easier and this is the way it's gonna be, I was like, maybe I'll just.Like I said, you know, hey, put something in your funding tag and I'll throw you some money another way, maybe. I don't know. Dave, how do you feel about it?

I. I think it's a neat idea, but I've never thought it should really have been implemented the way it was, because, for one thing, I.I think James Cridland really pointed this out in the beginning, and it makes sense because he was a victim of this, in a sense where Pod News Daily is a very short podcast, and even in a week's worth of listening, it's shorter than than many single episodes of other podcasts. But the value I get from POD News and the value he delivers and packs in such a small little nugget of POD News is much higher.So for me to then have to sit and here's the thing, there's a great book out there. It's a bit outdated in some of its technological talks, but the concept, though, isn't outdated.

It's.

Don't make me think it's a book about user interface design and a lot of great studies and information in there, but it's the thing of don't make people have to think about some of these decisions, make it obvious and easy for them. And I think the streaming satoshis and just streaming payments of any kind are one of those kinds of things where it requires you to think about.Like let's take POD News for example here. It's a very short podcast.There was at one point he was around only two minutes, and now I think it's a little bit longer, but still very short daily podcast. Now for me to think about, okay, how much is that worth? To me if the episodes are about three minutes on average?So that means I need to be streaming this many satoshis per minute in order to give him this much value for every episode that I listen to, and then that totals up to this much value per week. See, you're having to do all of this head math or the maths to speak British badly. I don't think the audiences should have to do that.What I would so much rather see is a system where it's.Maybe it's just a per episode or a per month thing, kind of like you've been able to do on Patreon for a long time, where you could say for every episode of this I listened to, I want to give back this much to them. And as long as we can make the nano payments possible, I think it's okay to make those be nano payments.Because while my cash flow is still an issue and I would love to be recklessly generous to a lot of people, I could do something like 10 cents per episode. That's super achievable. Or 25 cents. Hey, 25 cents per. Per episode directly to the episode host or the podcast host.That is much more than they would get from a podcast sponsor, paying them a typical CPM many times more than they would get from dynamically inserted programmatic ads in their podcast. So don't think of 25 cents as nothing. Of course, not all of your audience will do it.But the Nano payments, I'd rather see it be something where I could just set it as a per episode thing or even a per month. And maybe the apps could do that where they say, you want to support this podcast? Would you like to support it per episode?Or would you like to support it per month automatically and then just set your amount in a local currency that, you know, none of this satoshi stuff and whatever's happening under the hood is fine. But if it's a per episode thing, or maybe if it's a per month thing, that could be activated only if I actually listen.And so they are getting payment and the more I listen, the more they get paid. Potentially that takes a lot of the guesswork out of it for the consumer and I think makes it a lot easier for the podcaster as well.

Yeah, I remember I talked with Ted from Apple at an event and he wasn't anti at all. You know, the 2.0 stuff. He said the only thing with the satoshi thing, he goes, it has to be easy. And he goes, and when I mean easy, I mean easy.And he goes, and it's nowhere near that. And so I'd love to see, you know, if they're going to take 30%, they're going to take 30%.But I'm always like, okay, now that they've kind of had this thing, it would be interesting.I know you can have premium podcasts in Apple, but it'd be great if they made some sort of click here to send a payment to me button in Apple Podcasts. That would be huge.

And maybe they will at some point. It would still. The Apple tax would still be an issue.But the thing is in the Apple Podcasts section, not like the Apple App Store, the whole Epic Games thing, I think that the way that Apple Podcasts has made it so seamless inside of the podcast app, I think that is worth the 15 or 30% that you pay them because they've made it such a great experience.

That's it. They could make it easy.

And now with this whole thing that's happened, circling back to the Epic Games issue, what I think, and I hope this will do is open the floodgates now that a lot of developers will will not be so afraid to support some of these fringe or edge case payment opportunities.And there could be ways that the app developers could build this into their apps now and it can be profitable for them, profitable for the podcasters and easy for the consumers. And here's the thing about that, too. I am not so sure it has to all be using the same technology.Consider this, let's say podcast app xyz, the Acme podcast app. These two podcast apps, one of them uses satoshis, one of them uses Stripe the consumer.For both of them, all they have to do is they scan their credit card or they use Google Pay or Apple Pay or whatever the payment system is built onto their phone. They don't care about the underlying technology. Then from Acme podcast app, I get satoshi's deposited into my wallet.From podcast app xyz, I get a monthly Stripe deposit into my bank account. I don't really care which way necessarily. What matters more to me is that it's easy for the audience and easy for me to receive those payments.So if different technologies are supported by different apps, I think that can be okay, as long as the podcaster still benefits.And for the developer, if they're taking their payments, they could take their own 10% on top of the we'll round it up to 5% or so that the payment gateways use. I think that could be okay.

Yeah.It kind of goes back to, you know, the early days of podcasting when people used to say, I don't care how they listen, as long as they listen, whether it's Apple or whatever, it's like, I don't care how they pay me as long as they pay me.

I love that. So you heard it here first, folks.

Yeah.

Copyright™ Dave Jackson, Skillpodcasting.Com now, all of this conversation about payment methods and everything, I realized recently that we haven't seen the notifications for the booster grams and streaming payments that we've received, but we have received them. So thank you very much for those things. And let's just do this.If there was a booster gram you wanted us to read in the podcast, send it again with a bigger payment this time. No, I won't say that. I already did.So if you want to send it with a bigger payment, that's fine, but if it was something really important that you wanted us to mention on the podcast, please send it again, even if it's only with one satoshi. But, you know, be generous to give back if the podcast brought you value. So let's kind of just declare inbox bankruptcy on that.But we are very grateful for those streaming satoshis, the streaming payments and such.And there are other ways too, that you can support what we do, either by buying the things that Dave And I sell, or by referring other people to the things that we sell. Like, for me, my big thing right now is podgagement.So if you want to not just track the download metrics from your audience, but want to track the engagement with your audience and grow that relationship with your audience, that's what podgagement is built to do. To help you track your ratings, reviews, your rankings now and get feedback from your audience, like voicemails and messages from them.Discover networking opportunities and more. Go over to podgagement.Com and to support what Dave does, go over to schoolofpodcasting.com and Dave, why should they do that and why should they send other people to it?

Well, you get step by step courses. You get an amazing community. We just had a marriage counselor join, so now we're all gonna get our marriages back in shape. So that'll be great.And then you get unlimited coaching with me. So if you got a question, I always go, here's my calendar. And they go, I see there's a spot on Wednesday, so I could take that.I go, if it's available, take it. And so far, that's not been a problem.So, yeah, you can find that@schoolofpodcasting.com and speaking of value for value, we both have affiliate programs, so if you want to sign up as an affiliate, you can refer all sorts of people and make money that way as well.

Get paid to bring other people to our businesses. We love that. We love the referrals.

Yeah. But thanks, everybody. This has been episode 58. We do have a contact page.If you go out to futurepodcasting.net contact you can leave us a message that way. You can also go to futurepodcasting.net voicemail and we might hear your smiling voice right here on a future episode of the future of podcasting.

Keep boosting. Should we really say that anymore? But at least we can keep saying keep podcasting.

There we go. Keep valuing. What do you. We need a verb for that.