Should You Put Your Best Podcast Content Behind a Paywall?

Here is why you should not put your best podcast content behind a paywall. My name is Kevin Spidlin. I'm a podcast growth coach. I'm the founder and host of Grow the Show. Grow the Show has impacted more than 15,000 podcasters and we've got more than 250 podcasters in our three month accelerator program. I say that just to say that there are a bunch of questions that I get a lot and one of them is this. I'm thinking about launching a Patreon or launching a podcast membership and I'm trying to think what content I should put behind the paywall or it's something like I have this really, really great interview and I'm thinking I'll make it so that that interview is only available to my members who are paying me $10 or $20 a month. While I totally hear you and I totally get the rationale behind that where you would think that people pay for the best content and the less good content is free, here's why that is going to actually destroy your ability to grow and monetize a thriving podcast business. It's actually pretty simple. If the only people who hear your best content are the people who paid you, that means that the people who are listening to your free stuff and who are considering paying you are only hearing your mediocre content or not your best content and so do you think that your middle of the road content is going to convince people to pay you for more content? Probably not. It's kind of like a free sample outside of a bakery. If you had a bakery that specialized in cookies and you had 24 flavors of cookies and you were outside the bakery giving people free samples. Would you pick your most middle of the road mediocre cookie to give out as free samples? No. You'd be giving out your best one, your classic, the one that people are obsessed with, the one that you're famous for. You'd be giving that away for free, right? And then inside people would come in by more of that and by more of everything else you have to offer. Think about it at the flip side. If you were listening to a podcast and the show is pretty good, it's kind of okay. Do you think, hmm, I think I'm going to pay $10 a month for more of this? No. You're going to be like, that's kind of okay, but I'm not really going to pay for that. What's fascinating about human psychology though is that when you give away your absolute best content for free, people actually assume that the paid content is going to be better. It's super weird. So if the content that you give away for free is mediocre, people will think that the paid content will be mediocre. If the content that is free is really good, people are going to think that the paid content is even better and they're way, way, way more likely to buy. It's this little weird tweak, right? Because people are like, man, if this is the free stuff, I can't imagine what the paid stuff is. It's not so good. They're just like, I don't really think this isn't so good. So the paid stuff probably isn't so good. Super weird, but that's how our brains work. So if you are a podcaster who is already or is considering putting your best content behind a paywall, I strongly caution you against that because that's actually not going to entice more people to become members. They're just not going to believe you when you say that the paid stuff is good because your free stuff isn't good. So it's actually going to make less. It's going to make fewer people become members of your Patreon or membership. Instead, if you're putting together a Patreon or a membership, consider other perks that is not just bonus content because also bonus content is really, really expensive and laborious to make, right? So you're basically saying, I want to monetize this podcast. So I'm going to charge people for another podcast, right? There are perks that you can offer that are low overhead, are very affordable. Don't take you a lot of time and also are very, very valuable to your listeners. It could be access to you or access to a community. It could be insight to behind the scenes of how the show is made. It could be a number of things. But if you're hoarding your best content, trying to put it behind a paywall and wondering why nobody is buying, it's because your free content is not good enough to make them believe that your paid content will be good, which is the worst thing because then your best content isn't going to be heard by anybody. So that is it for this piece, this quick piece. If that's you, no harm, no foul, just consider putting out your best content and leading with it. Just like the best cookie recipe, getting your best content in front of as many people as possible and watch how much easier it is to grow and monetize your show. So my name is Kevin Schmidland, I am your podcast growth coach. I'll see you in the next piece.