Some people feel funny about charging for their show, and I agree. For the rest of my podcasting career, I want my episodes to be free to enjoy for anyone who wants to hear me talk. But there are “exclusive extras” that can be offered in a few ways. You can offer transcripts of the show, bonus content or interviews, exclusive interview or advice series, or perhaps even just outtakes. Loyal audience members will want an inside peek and bonus content…and with MyLibsyn, it’s super easy to deliver. Girl On Guy and Adam Corolla both have their premium content set up very inexpensively for the listener: $2 gets you the monthly subscription, $6 gets you a 6 month subscription and $9 pays for the whole year. To me, as a fan of those shows, paying for that would be a no-brainer.

If you don’t have Libsyn, you can still offer premium content in this way, but you’ll deliver it differently. Perhaps you have a separate mailing list for people who want your premium content, and it comes via email once a week or however often you want to deliver it. Or you can have a password protected page or a membership site that allows you to give access to different pages based on their membership level. However you choose to deliver premium content, your audience will appreciate your “exclusive” level and your bank account will appreciate it as well.

You can also use Patreon to put some content behind a pay wall. If you check out the site, you’ll notice that people can “pledge” a few bucks a month for early access, premium episodes, and more. There are only a few podcasts doing this now but it’s growing – and one podcast in particular is making over $22K a month!


Skills Needed:

If you have Libsyn hosting, pretty much no skills. You just need to come up with ideas for content. If you don’t use Libsyn, you’ll need the ability to create a separate email list, payment subscriptions, membership website, etc. or the ability to outsource.

Resources:


Girl on Guy – premium
Adam Corolla – premium
Patreon
Patreon example: True Crime Obsessed