With the rollout of Apple Podcasts’ new subscription option, a brand new avenue of podcast monetization is now at your fingertips! Whether it’s your only monetization tool, or you use it alongside other money-making methods, it’s a steady source of income that allows you to further strengthen your relationship with your listeners. But how do you create a success podcast subscription?
Check out our top podcast subscription tips!
Declare Your Value Upfront
Before you start putting content behind a paywall, ask yourself what you’re going to be offering at a premium compared to your free content. Will it be the ad-free version of your podcast? Will it be a longer version of an edited-for-time interview? Are you going to record content separately for your podcast subscription? Formulate a plan and figure out what type of content works best for you and your audience before you register for anything.
This is where your audience avatar can come into play. When targeting your podcast, you can take that same avatar and ask yourself, “What extra content would they want based on how they engage with my podcast? At what price point would they be comfortable paying for that extra content?”
Price Yourself Accordingly
Apple Podcast Subscriptions have several preset price points for you to select from, meaning that you can choose how much to charge for your subscription fee. Compare what you’re offering to what other podcasts may be offering and what their price points look like. Things that impact what price you should choose from include:
- How often you’ll be uploading your podcast subscription content
- How long the subscription-only episodes are
- If you’re going to have the subscription-only content be released for free at any point
- What kind of content you’re sharing to your subscription channel
The important thing to remember is that you can make adjustments over time – if you start at once price point and receive feedback that you’re pricing some dedicated listeners out, you can adjust the price point. Once you set a price and start getting subscribers, look to your community for feedback!
Give Your Subscribers A Community
Out of all the podcast subscription tips we have, this one could be the most important: you don’t just want a list of subscribers, you want a community. Having that dedicated community has quite a few benefits to your podcast, including making your podcast subscription more successful.
So how do you provide your subscribers a community?
- Give them chances to be involved with the subscription content. Answer fan mail, or have a subscribers-only Q&A sessions, or have them vote on the topics that you cover
- Offer them exclusives inside of the subscription content, such as coupon codes for exclusive merch or discount codes for any live shows or events that you’re going to be part of
- Give them a place to converse! Whether it’s a Discord channel or a Facebook group, giving them a place to meet up and converse gives them more chances to connect with you and fellow fans, and will go a long way in deepening the relationship they have with your podcast
Consistency Is Key
This could almost go without saying, but it’s important enough to make our list of podcast subscription success tips. Much like keeping a dependable schedule for your non-subscription content is crucial for building up your audience, it’s doubly so for your subscription-only content. Having a steady schedule builds up your listeners’ trust, and losing that schedule means that you lose that trust. Without that trust, listeners are less likely to make the leap from the free content to the paid content.
You also want to make sure that you stay consistent with your free content as you shift to offering both free and paid content. If you start focusing solely on your subscription-only content, you’re likely to lose a good chunk of your audience.
Promote, Promote, Promote! (Did we say promote?)
Promotion is absolutely vital to podcast subscription success. If no one knows that you have premium content available, no one is going to make the leap to join your subscription!
This is where you can really take advantage of audiograms and clips for social media. Highlight some of the best bits from your podcast subscription content, and share with your social media following – not only does it hype up your podcast in general, it lets your non-subscriber listeners know what they could be missing out on. FOMO is still a big thing, and you can use it to your advantage by showing everyone what your podcast subscribers are getting access to.
This is also where your free trial can come in! Apple Podcast Subscriptions offer you the ability to set a free trial for your content, meaning you can encourage potential subscribers to start a free trial to experience what your subscriber-only content is like.
Ready to get started with Apple Podcast Subscriptions? Check out our video on getting started!
Hi, is the subscription free? I don’t see any details.