Boosts

Oscar Merry: 00:00:05

The Podcasting 2.0 payments are essentially bringing the Patreon model into the listener apps so that for people who are listening to your show, they don't have to leave the app to send you money.

Because the payments are integrated into the listener app, you, as a podcaster, you're not just receiving money, you're actually generating the discovery for your show. And they're kind of letting their audience know, hey, this episode was worth listening to. Go and check it out.

And we've heard time and time again from podcasters and listeners that people are discovering their show through the boost that we surface. You don't really need to worry about the fact that it's Bitcoin, though.

You can always convert the money that you make through boost and streaming sats into your local fiat currency. And there's loads of great options for doing that.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:01:06

Welcome back to Podcasting 2.0 in Practice.

Before we get started, I just want to reassure listeners that in the homework episodes that accompany this and other episodes in this module on ways to financially support podcasts and podcasters directly within modern podcast apps, I will explain exactly how to begin giving and receiving micropayments. So sit back and take in what our experts have to say, safe in the knowledge that I will go on to show you exactly how to do the thing.

We are going to be talking this episode about boosts.

Now, for everybody that's already been listening to the whole course in order, you'll know that value for value doesn't just mean boosts or streaming. It means time. What does it mean, Oscar? What is it?

Oscar Merry: 00:02:03

It's time, talent and treasure.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:02:06

Yes, we spoke about that. We did a whole little episode about that. We've also talked about the funding tag, which involves real ways with real money.

And I know that oftentimes people get a bit concerned about it's SATs. I don't know what it means. I don't understand it. But we are going to make it all crystal clear. Today.

I've asked Oscar Merry to come and be my guest expert for this episode. Oscar, introduce yourself and tell me why I chose you, my expert.

Oscar Merry: 00:02:36

Well, thank you so much, Claire, for inviting me on. So, yeah, my name is Oscar Merry and I'm the co founder and CEO of Fountain.

Fountain is one of the Most popular Podcasting 2.0 apps and we've made the value for value payments a big part of the app experience.

We highlight that and so, yeah, happy to share as much info as will be useful to the audience in terms of how that all works and how to maximize your income from this new system that we're all working on.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:03:08

Brilliant. Thank you. Right, we're going to go absolutely right back to basics and then build on that.

So first of all, what are boosts and what are boostagrams? Both terms I've heard. Are they the same? Are they different?

Oscar Merry: 00:03:22

That's a great question. So I will just take one more step back and start with a high level overview of monetization for podcasts, which is what essentially the boosts are.

So there's kind of two main ways podcasters make money directly from their show. One is through advertising. There's a bunch of issues with that model, which I'm sure your audience are very aware of.

And then the second method of monetization is direct listener support.

And traditionally this has been served through platforms like Patreon, which have done a great job in allowing podcasters to make money directly through listener support. The issue with Patreon, though, has always been that it's kind of outside of the listener experience. So you have to go to a separate Patreon link.

You have to kind of sign up there.

The Podcasting 2.0 payments are essentially bringing the Patreon model into the listener apps so that for people who are listening to your show, they don't have to leave the app to send you money. They can send a one off payment anytime they like with a message, and that's what's called a boost or a boostagram.

Or because we now have micropayments in the form of Bitcoin and satoshis, listeners can also stream money for every minute that they listen to you.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:04:53

FYI, guys, Oscar and I talk in more detail about streaming in a future episode.

Oscar Merry: 00:05:00

Yeah, high level.

A boost is the same thing as a boostagram, and it's essentially just a in app payment with a message that goes directly from the listener to you as a podcaster.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:05:11

Brilliant. Thank you. I'm going to get into a bit more detail about how you actually do that a bit later.

Some people may tell you that, in fact, a boost is a payment without a comment and a boostagram is a payment with a comment. But I'm not going to split hairs.

And as we'll discuss in a future episode, the whole terminology business with Podcasting 2.0 is like the technology itself, evolving. You mentioned micropayments, and when you are boosting a show, it says you can boost however many sats. What does that mean?

Oscar Merry: 00:05:52

The payment technology that we use within Podcasting 2.0 is Bitcoin.

I'm sure a Lot of your audience have heard about Bitcoin and it can be an intimidating word, especially because of some of the headlines in the news about people losing money and stuff like that. The way to think about this is Bitcoin is just a payment technology.

The same as historically, gold was a payment technology, and now over the past 100 years, fiat currency, central bank issued currency, is a payment technology. It's just an evolution of this thing that humans call money.

And it's a better form of money because it allows you to transmit it digitally and also build micropayments, which you can't do with credit card because the fees are too high. You don't really need to worry about the fact that it's Bitcoin though.

You can always convert the money that you make through boost and streaming sats into your local fiat currency. And there's loads of great options for doing that.

We just have chosen to use Bitcoin within Podcasting 2.0 because it enables these new experiences like streaming micropayments every minute. So Bitcoin is the currency, and then satoshis, or sats for short, is kind of like the subunit of Bitcoin.

So just like you have pounds and pence or dollars and cents, you have Bitcoin and you have satoshis, and there's actually 100 million satoshis in one Bitcoin. So when somebody sends 10,000 sats in a boost or 20,000 sats in a boost, that's equivalent to about, you know, five, ten dollars as a boost.

So the conversions can take a little while to get used to.

But I think the main thing to take away about using Bitcoin within Podcasting 2.0 is that this wasn't possible before, because with the traditional financial rails, you can't actually do micropayments. And also it's not interoperable between the different apps.

That's why traditionally, if you use something like Patreon, you would have to send your audience outside of the listening app.

Because the Bitcoin payments are programmable, it means that you can receive support from all kinds of different apps, like Fountain, like the other Podcasting 2.0 apps, and all of those payments can be aggregated for you in your wallet, even if you haven't done an explicit integration with one of those apps. So, yeah, that's the kind of high level overview of why Bitcoin. It's just a newer, better payment technology.

But don't get intimidated by it because you can always just convert all of your earnings back into dollars. Or pounds once you receive them.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:08:42

Yeah, brilliant. I think that's the reassurance of you can put money into it, but you can get it back out again.

And we're going to talk about how you actually do that and certainly how you do it within Fountain on a later episode. In the meantime, then. So when we're talking about micropayments, is there a minimum amount of sats that you can send to a show?

Oscar Merry: 00:09:04

Yeah. So within Fountain, we make it really easy for listeners to support their favorite podcasts.

As I said, you can stream tiny amounts for every minute that you listen, but you can also send a one off payment for a boost. In terms of minimums for boost, we set it to a hundred sats, which is, you know, about probably 5, 5p, 10p.

And then for streaming sats, it's slightly lower. It's set to 10 sats. And that's because listeners are sending these payments for every single minute that they listen. So the minimums are quite low.

But the cool thing about this, and this is what I really want people to take away from this episode episode is because the payments are integrated into the listener app, you as a podcaster, you're not just receiving money, you're actually generating discovery for your show. Because the way we do this in Fountain is we surface the payments. We surface those boosts, which are payments with a message on the episode pages.

We surface them in our home feed, which is like an activity feed of what everyone that you follow has been listening to.

And so even if someone's just sending you a 250 SAT boost, they're also kind of like leaving a comment on the episode page, broadcasting that out to their network and the people who follow them. And they're kind of letting their audience know, hey, this episode was worth listening to. Go and check it out.

And we've heard time and time again from podcasters and listeners that people are discovering their show through the booths that we surface. And again, that's what Bitcoin and micropayments enable is these like cool interoperability things.

Because if someone goes to your Patreon page and subscribes to your Patreon, that's great because you received the money. But no one's going to know that it's not the same as like a review or a social media share.

And you often hear podcasters at the end of their show say, hey guys, like, if you want to support this show, you can subscribe on Patreon, you can leave a review on Apple Podcasts, you can Share a clip from your favorite episode on social media.

What we're doing with Fountain and More broadly Podcasting 2.0, is combining these things whereby the payments are actually the discovery signal that helps other listeners find your show.

And I mean, philosophically, we think this is really important because if you're sharing an episode link on say, like Twitter or Instagram or one of these other social platforms, you're competing with all of the other noise that exists on those social platforms.

Whereas if you just see this in your podcast app, people discover your show and your content and they're already primed in that decision making mode of what do I want to listen to?

Claire Waite Brown: 00:12:00

The whole discovery interactivity thing is what we've been promoting as best we can by, you know, explaining these features and explaining that it's more than just a matter of you get some dosh, you can be helped to be found, you can help to connect with your listeners, listeners connect with you. Listeners can tell you that you're doing a good job, or they can tell, as you said, other people that you're doing a good job.

So I'm going to ask you two sides of this question. And first one is as a listener, I mean, generally lots of listeners are podcasters as well.

But let's just take it from the point of the listener, they're in one of the Podcasting 2.0 apps. Bearing in mind, I do realize, and I will be explaining this, that the symbols sometimes differ between the apps of what what you click on.

But how easy is it for a listener to boost a show?

Oscar Merry: 00:12:59

It's much easier than you think. And there's two options to get started. The first thing you need in order to send a boost is some Bitcoin.

And if you've never touched Bitcoin before, you can do this in two ways. Number one, in Fountain, we make it really easy to buy your first Bitcoin.

You can do this directly from within the Fountain app using Apple Pay or Google Pay just to top up your wallet with a bank card. So that's super easy.

So you can buy your first Bitcoin within the Fountain app, or you can just top up your wallet within the app from any exchange or bank that supports Bitcoin.

I think another thing that's really important to note is that the adoption of Bitcoin, the adoption of the Lightning Network, and the adoption of micropayments, this is something that is not just happening within Podcasting 2.0. This is happening more broadly around the world, in countries all over the world.

And it's becoming easier and easier for people to acquire Bitcoin and to use it every day. A great example is Cash app in the U.S. you know, it's one of the most popular, if not the most popular, kind of banking apps for people.

And you can buy Bitcoin really easily in Cash App. You can send Bitcoin from Cash app to Fountain and, you know, a couple of taps. So, yeah, those are your two choices to get started as a listener.

Either buying directly in Fountain or finding the banking app or the exchange in your country. That is kind of supporting Lightning. And there's many of them that will kind of make it easy just to send from your existing balance.

I'll also mention another company called Alby, which is an amazing Bitcoin Lightning wallet that allows you to use your Bitcoin on the Lightning network for Podcasting 2.0, but also for other things like Nostr and for Zaps and these kind of other micropayment experiences that are popping up on the Internet. And yeah, so definitely check out those two options and just remember this is something that is. We're going to see more and more on the Internet.

It's kind of like a new wave of the Internet with payments built into it.

And just like in the early days of the Internet, you need to kind of like do a little bit more work at the start because everything's still new and there's a bit of friction there.

But over time it will get easier and the more you can experiment with Value for Value now, I think the more success you're going to have in the future.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:15:46

Do podcasters and their shows need to do.

I believe they do need to do something specific in order to be able to receive these boosts from their fabulous listeners who love them and send them loads of boosts.

Oscar Merry: 00:16:02

Yes.

So as a podcaster, whenever you see a new aspect to your podcast that you want to include, you'll probably need to do something, you know, in your hosting company dashboard.

So, for example, if you want to add a transcript to one of your episodes or add some chapters or edit the show notes, you need to go into your hosting dashboard and make those changes and essentially to, you know, start receiving these Value for Value payments. You also need to make a change either in your hosting company's dashboard or your RSS feed.

The hosting companies have been great in adopting the Podcasting 2.0 features. And there's a bunch of hosting companies that will allow you to turn on Value for Value directly from your hosting dashboard.

Now, if your hosting company doesn't support Value for Value.

Fountain also has a service called the Podcaster Wallet, which can kind of manage all of your payments for you, like, outside of your hosting dashboard. So, yeah, just check whether your hosting company supports Value for Value payments. If they do, you can set this up from your hosting platform.

If not, go to Fountain FM Podcasters, and we have a guide on how to get set up. You can claim your podcast in the Fountain app and you can set up your wallet.

And this works not just in Fountain, it works in all the other Podcasting 2.0 apps. So those are the two options for you. And going into the future, I think more and more hosting companies will support this spec.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:17:48

Okay, so that makes a bit more sense to me now because I was a bit confused about claiming your show in the listening app. So if you can't sign up for this through your host, you're then going to want to go to each of the apps and claim your show on each of the app.

Oscar Merry: 00:18:05

So you don't need to claim your show in every single app. The way this actually works under the hood is Podcast Index, which is the open directory of all the podcasts.

They have a service called Podcaster Wallet, which allows podcasters to add this payment option independently of whether their host supports it. And we essentially use their APIs to facilitate the wallet creation.

So if you claim your show in Fountain, you don't need to repeat that process in all of the other Podcasting 2.0 apps, because we will let Podcast Index know.

Okay, here's the payment details for this show and whether you're listening on podverse or Podcast Guru or any of the other apps, that will all work perfect.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:18:57

Because earlier on in the course, and I was speaking with Dave Jackson, and then in the homework, I told podcasters how they could go directly to the Podcast Index and sign themselves up. So if they had done that, if people have done their homework, does that then mean they'll be able to go to Fountain and they'll be.

Their show will be eligible to have sent to them?

Oscar Merry: 00:19:18

Yes, exactly. So if you've already done that step, then you should be set up.

And also if you've already done that step, feel free to get in touch with either me or Nick from Fountain, and we're happy to share some best practices. We also have a great guide on our website talking about how to get the ask right, because the ask is really, really important.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:19:38

That's my next question, which is, do you have any thoughts on what podcasters can do to incentivize listeners to boost their shows?

Oscar Merry: 00:19:49

Yeah, I think there's two parts to this question. Number one is, how do you ask your audience to support you? And then there's number two, how do you incentivize your audience to support you more?

The first part is the ask. And the reality is, if you don't ask your audience to support you, they're not going to support you.

So if you're not asking them in some form, then it's not really going to work. On Fountain, just this year, we've had over $120,000 sent from listeners to podcasters through these payments.

And what we see is the shows that are very successful with this have some kind of regular segment where they ask people to support them. They talk about why they are asking for support. They frame the value of the podcast. They say, are you enjoying this show?

Like, is it meaningful for you? Do you want me to carry on doing it? If so, I would love to get some Support through Podcasting 2.0, but also hear your feedback.

And that's where the boosts come in, because they are the feedback, the comment, the payment, all in one entity. Another thing to do as well is to actually weed out the top boost.

So we see a lot of shows will kind of like read out the top 1, 2, 3 boosts on each show, and it doesn't have to be part of the show. It can be at the end. And that's just a nice way for you to remind your audience that other people are supporting and for you to support too, as well.

That kind of gets to the word incentivize as well, because the more you boost, the more likely you are to make it onto that top three list. So, yeah, asking actually in the audio of the episode is really important, and that feedback loop is also really important.

So hearing the other listeners boosts read out on the show really works well.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:21:46

Brilliant. Where does the podcaster see the boosts?

Obviously, I'm assuming in the app in order to be able to, you know, read them, see how much money they've been boosted and, you know, read them out to the listeners. Where do they find that information?

Oscar Merry: 00:22:02

Yeah, this is a great question. So we display the boosts in the Fountain app in a bunch of different places. We display them on the episode and show pages as comments.

So you'll see, like, the list of boosts underneath the episode in kind of reverse order of how much each boost was.

We also show them in the Fountain activity feed, which is kind of like a feed of all of the people you follow on the app and what they've been boosting so listeners will discover them there. And that's how people can discover your show through the boost that your existing audience have sent, which I think is really cool.

And then if you have claimed your show on Fountain and you're using the Fountain Wallet to receive your sats, we also have a podcaster dashboard where you can see more information about what was the top boost for the last seven days, 30 days, how much have you earned over time, that kind of thing.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:23:07

I'm sure you won't be too surprised to hear that I do talk in a little more detail about claiming your podcast on Fountain and Trufans in a future episode.

Oscar Merry: 00:23:19

One other thing I'll just mention is with our recent Nostr integration, which is a whole nother thing, that maybe is best left for another episode. But the boosts also, if a user has connected their Nostr account, they also appear on Nostr as well.

So people might discover your episode from a boost that they've seen in a Nostr client like prime or Damus.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:23:42

Brilliant. Yeah. Right now, and I know that this is the holy grail of cross-app comments.

Right now, each boost, as it is sent in, each listening app, will be accessible through that app. If I was boost on TrueFans, I would only see that if I was looking on TrueFans.

Oscar Merry: 00:24:04

Yeah, that's correct. Right now. The change we recently made to integrate Nostr is this step in the direction of making the boost like truly cross app.

And you know, the goal that we've always had within Podcasting 2.0 is, is we know podcasting is decentralized. There's many different apps that people listen on, and that's great because it gives people choice.

The goal that we've always had is for somebody on one app like Fountain to send a boost or to leave a comment on the episode and have a listener in a different app like podverse or Podcast Guru, see that comment, reply to it on their app, and then have the reply show up back in Fountain. This is something we've been working within the Podcasting 2.0 community really hard on.

And my view is that the Nostr protocol is what's going to enable us to do this. That's why we moved our commenting system to Nostr.

And I think you'll see over the next couple of months, this Cross app comments emerge as a thing that works across all the apps. I'm really excited to make that happen. And yeah, maybe next time I'm on, we'll have that working between all the

Claire Waite Brown: 00:25:15

apps, you let me know. You let me know when you're ready and it's all nice and easy for people to do and that would be super. Thank you so much for that, Oscar.

That has been really well explained. Got it all in my brain, so thank you so much.

Oscar Merry: 00:25:29

Yeah, of course. Happy to, to help as much as I can. And yeah, I would just say to everyone listening, you know, this stuff is new.

You know, it's new technology, it's a new kind of paradigm of programmable money that can work between a bunch of different apps. But I have such strong conviction that it is the future.

And the more you can experiment when it's early, the more success you'll have when, you know, the onboarding gets easier and these major tech companies start to add support for, for the Bitcoin Lightning network. So yeah, give it a try.

And if you have any questions, please do reach out to either myself or Nick from Fountain and we're happy to like help you have a one on one call. All our contact details are on our website Fountain.FM. Brilliant.

Claire Waite Brown: 00:26:19

Thank you so much. Visit creativityfound.co.uk/podcasting to find out more about my guests and access lots of useful podcast resources.

If you'd like to get in touch, you can send a boost. But if you haven't got to that lesson yet, feel free to reach out to me on my Instagram account, @podcasting2.0inpractice.