The Future of Podcast Monetization, With Jason Sew Hoy

Let me take you back in time to 2018, back to precedented times, where tide pods were of great concern, and the biggest global event was the winter Olympics. 2018 was also the year that I started my first podcast, Philly Ho, and while times were much simpler back then, I was still facing a conundrum. You see, my podcast, Philly Ho, had been around for six months. It had grown, and I had even already gotten my first advertisers. Yes, I was making some money from ads, but it wasn't enough money, nor was it consistent enough. And my savings that I had been living off of for months were about to run dry. It was at this point that somebody recommended to me that I try launching a Patreon. I thought, no, I don't have time for that. Besides, none of my listeners will be willing to pay monthly for anything. Six more months went by. By now, it was 2019, and I had started making more money via paid ads, live events, merch, and a few other things. But I still hadn't launched that Patreon, and I still kept hearing that I should. So I thought, fine, I'll launch one, and I did in July 2019. Within one week, five people signed up for the top tier at $25 per month. As it turned out, there were people in my small audience who really, really loved my show and were thrilled to have the opportunity to support the show and get more. Now it's 2021, and yes, the world looks a little different. Philly who has grown well past six figures in revenue, and I've launched this podcast to grow the show, which has done the same in only six months. Within the three years in between, podcast monetization overall has come a long way. And particularly so has podcast membership monetization. Just a few weeks ago, Apple and Spotify both announced the ability for listeners to subscribe in their apps to paid podcast memberships. So today, we are going to talk about membership monetization. But we're not going to talk about Apple and Spotify because for once, the big tech companies are actually behind the curve today's guest is actually a podcast subscription pioneer. And we're also not going to talk about Patreon because while Patreon is the biggest name in membership platforms for creatives, what I've found through a year of extensive and exhaustive work in helping podcasters grow and monetize is that there is an easier way. So today, we are chatting with Jason Suhoi, who is the CEO of Supercast. Supercast is the very first paid membership and subscription service made especially for podcasters. And today, Jason's going to join us to share how he built Supercast to be one of the most podcast or friendly membership platforms currently available. He'll explain exactly why paid memberships and the passion economy are blowing up and he'll give you strategies to help you build out your membership platform right away. Because through a premium membership, you don't have to wait until some mythical someday to monetize your podcast. And if you stay tuned to this episode, you'll be able to monetize your podcast today. This is Grow the Show. My name is Kevin Schmidland and my mission is to help you, the independent podcaster, to grow your audience and monetize now so you can have a thriving podcast business. Today we're joined on Grow the Show by Jason Suhoi, who is the CEO of Supercast, which is one of the first paid membership platforms made specifically for podcasters. And he's here today to teach us all about how we can take advantage of one of the fastest growing forms of podcast monetization. So stick around and forget about finding sponsors today on Grow the Show. I'm Jason Suhoi and I'm the co-founder and CEO of Supercast. So I've always worked in the field of tech technology. I trained at university as a software engineer, but I actually realized pretty early on that didn't necessarily appeal to my entrepreneurial streak. So straight out of university, I went down the sales path. But then five years on and after getting into frontline sales myself, I moved over to Australia. I'm from New Zealand originally, hence the accent. And when I arrived in Melbourne, I joined a company called 99 Designs. 99 Designs is a global design marketplace, a global creative platform. With over 1.6 million designers, freelancers predominantly, and what we did with 99 Designs is we connected them with small businesses and marketing teams that needed graphic design s. We did a lot of logos, you know, probably the most logos in the world. But when Jason joined the company, it didn't have anywhere near 1.6 million designers. I joined as COO and the fifth employees. The joining founder and, you know, just a few engineers in a designer building out this little design startup. And I was just quite frankly, you know, right place, right time, because I joined a rocket ship. You know, this was going back to 2009 and we were just, you know, this little team in Australia trying to fake our way to being, you know, on a global stage and servicing customers that were predominantly here in the US. And the way that we exploded onto the scene is because we planted the idea of a design contest. So if you're after a logo for Grow the Show, for example, you just say, Hey, look, you know, I've got a show called Grow the Show. I'm willing to pay 300 dollars and show me what you got. And so in a week, you would typically get 80 to 100 different logos from a dozen different designers. Wow. Of course, you get to choose your favorite. You can kind of like send it around to your team members and get people to vote and all that sort of stuff. We just built out this amazing creative platform for, you know, customers and brands and startups to meet the right designer for them and enable that a massive scale, you know, with the power of the internet. About 10 years into this time at 99 designs, Jason had played a huge role in growing the company. But he also decided that he needed a change of peace. I had had an amazing ride as COO and had the chance to do like a lot of different roles over that time. But, you know, I came up point in time where, you know, I felt like to continue the learning trajectory. And if I was ever going to leave, you know, it was really to do my own thing. So Jason started to look for new opportunities. And at about the same time, his future co-founders were discovering a business opportunity in the podcast space. So Supercast was actually brought to life by a parent company called Tiny. They kind of discovered this opportunity for subscription podcasting largely by accident. You know, they have some agencies as part of their portfolio who just started working with podcasters like Sam Harris, like Peter O'Tear and Rhonda Patrick in the health space. And they had grown large audiences and where advertising wasn't the best fit for them in terms of a monetization channel. So, you know, through those experiences of building out a subscription solution for those podcasters, we would just blow on away by how powerful monetization engine subscription is, you know, and to the tune of, you know, five to six figures per month. After stumbling their way into massive success with direct listener support on other shows, the folks at Tiny began to dream up a platform designed specifically for podcasters who were also looking to make money via memberships. They launched it on product hundreds of timber 2019. And so that was when I first had the conversation with them. Productant, by the way, is a website to share and discover new products, usually tech-based ones. Essentially, Jason learned about Supercast the same day that the rest of the world learned about it. And as he did, he was immediately drawn to the company for a few reasons. One, you know, like I absolutely wanted to go back and do the startup journey all over again. Yeah. The most amazing thing for me was the whole 99 designs journey, but particularly the early parts, you know, like where it's messy and it's chaotic and you're trying to figure out your place in the world and you're trying to build the team and everything's coming at you all at once, you know, I love all of those elements of it. And so that was appealing to me, continuing to work with creators, you know, I'd already been doing it for 10 years with designers. Now I would get the opportunity to do that with podcasters and, you know, the nascent and, you know, like fast evolving audio space. So that was, you know, really cool. And then as I, again, I realized that I actually already had, you know, pretty good affinity with podcasting. Where 99 designs was one of the earliest sponsors on the Tim Ferriss Show, when he, you know, first branched out into podcasting. But moreover, I, myself had embraced Tim Ferriss's diet, you know, I had, you know, just by listening to his show as a result, you know, like I, I got that connection and I felt like I knew him and, you know, I just really developed that connection that we know and love about podcasting. Jason literally had changed what foods he ate from listening to a podcast. That is what we call a transformational show. Side note, if you want to learn how to make your show transformational, check out episode 10 of this podcast with Jay Akunzo. Anyway, Jason felt so connected to the hosts of the podcasts that he loved as a listener that he immediately wanted to help other podcast hosts achieve that level of connection with their audience while actually making money. And so when this idea of being able to bring this, you know, amazing new business model, that actually strengthens that connection and builds on that direct relationship that podcasts can have with their listeners, I was like, oh, this is, this just feels right. But there was one final idea that pushed Jason to join supercast. And Jason Horowitz wrote this paper on the passion economy and the idea that, you know, we all know the gig economy and what that's all about. Right. Basically people getting paid extra for their skills and labor, whether it's driving a car or delivering food, the passion economy on the other hand, you know, is kind of like this transition that certain parts of the creative class are moving to where they're getting paid for their ability to build an audience. And you can now build up this base of income that's coming to you like from all over the world. And, you know, that's all based on your unique talents and your unique skill sets. And so all of those factors combined just made it feel like an amazing opportunity for me that I couldn't help but jump on. The challenge though was that when Jason joined supercast, podcast monetization was in its infancy, but he did recognize a pattern in podcast monetization that has been displayed before in another digital platform that is a little bit older than podcasting. If you think of like the internet and websites, for example, right, 90s, you know, like it was all. It's in spatter ass, right, like a clicky, you know, like shoot the monkey style, you know, and is on websites and that was how people earned money on the internet, you know, like a few cents at a time, right? But the proliferation of ways that you could earn money on it is just like flourished, right? Like it's e-commerce is still growing like crazy, you know, like there's just like so many different ways to earn money on the internet now. I think we are just at that early stage with podcasting where people have built up an audience and right now they only, they only know one ham at a throw it at when it's time to turn on the money tab, you know, and that's it's true, paid ads are not the only way to monetize a podcast and they're not even the best way to monetize a podcast. Now, what we are discovering here at Grow the Show and what Jason has proven during his time leading supercast is that direct listener support is not only more profitable and more effective than paid ads, but it's also easier. What we find beautiful about direct monetization and memberships is that your audiences already there because they love your work and because they love your show and they love their connection to you, what subscription allows you to do is basically a certain segment of your audience, you know, love you so much and get so much value from your show that they're willing to take it to the next level. So unlike something like advertising where, you know, whether it's COVID or something else, like you're kind of at the whim of advertisers and at times, you know, on mass, you know, your advertising might dry up, listener support because it's, you know, you've got a lot more listeners, it's not just like one or two big advertisers, you've got a lot more listeners hopefully and you're based in a paying you, it smooths out those ebbs and flows and also allows you to ultimately align incentives with your audience. This is a key point. As soon as you bring on sponsorships, you have a new customer, your sponsor. Now, you have to constantly play the game of keeping both your listeners happy and your sponsors happy. This is a constant balancing act and can get dicey when your sponsors want something that your listeners don't want or vice versa. Your audience, however, just to love you and the show you make, that's why they're here. With a subscription model, they continue to love you and you'll continue to have a solid base of income. The best part is that you can start right away. You don't have to wait until a certain audience size to make money with membership models. But the question is, and the question I've heard a lot, why would you use supercast over a more well-known membership site like Patreon? Supercast is 100% tailored for podcasters. It's the only people and kinds of people that we serve. What that means for us is that we can really streamline both the listener and the creator experience for what happens in the world of podcasting. With supercasts, you hit the landing page, you choose the plan you want to sign up to. You pay, and then on the very next step, you're adding it back to your podcast player. Basically, you just choose which of the podcast icons, like you listen to, much like subscribing to someone's public show. Once you hit that, it'll open up. If you're on your phone, it'll open up that app. The unique RSS feed will automatically be pre-populated there so that all you have to do is hit subscribe. That's half the number of steps. It's just infinitely easier and to get you back into a space that you're already familiar with. Instead of having to go to a website that listeners don't usually go to to consume the bonus content that you offer them, supercasts gives your listener a private RSS feed that will show up in their favorite podcast player so you can meet them exactly where they are. That convenience factor really pays off when it comes to conversion rate. That actually translates into real business results. So, Canada Land is a big, independent news media player in Canada. They had built up north of $30,000 on Patreon per month. They decided to trial supercasts January last year, just a bit over a year ago. They thought, well, look, we think we'll already squeeze the blood out of the stone, but if we could get 100 members, then that's interesting. They got 400 in the first month. Wow. It just kept going. Even though that didn't advertise it to Patreon members, they'd discovered it nevertheless. Anyway, they came back and they gave feedback to Canada Land that, hey, this is amazing. So, fast forward a year, Canada Land's now bought all six shows over to supercast, all six shows in their network, because we're a tailor-made podcast, we can do things like bundle together. There are six shows into one subscription, so you can, rather than six dollars for a show, you can pay nine dollars for the entire network. And as a result of all of those things, they can look back now after a year and say, yep, we're growing three times faster than we were having joined supercast. And the average revenue that we make per user has gone up 20% as a result of that bundling component. For Canada Land, centering their subscription model around bundling was the secret sauce that bumped their earnings up. But since you probably only have one podcast, you'll have to explore different reward systems and tiers to see what gets your audience excited. Luckily, there are tons of examples of successful direct support models that you can use for inspiration. One of my favourites that Pat Flynn is doing right now is a backstage pass. What he's doing is he's recording an extra five to 15 minutes with every guest that he brings on the show. And he is basically at the end of the episode, he's saying to them, I look like we're just going to head backstage now. And he uses an opportunity to really let the guards drop on both sides. And even though you're still sitting front on the same mic, you really get to dig into a bit more about what drives that person, what their habits, what their cheat codes are to life. Another one that I like personally, because again, you're already doing those interviews. You're not having to double the number of interviews. All you're doing is you are doing something a little bit fun with other people that you're already being on the show and just getting them to do a little bit extra at the end of that. That technique I actually use on my own show, Supercasters. So I, to get people to sign up for the premium feed, I reserve one topic that I know that each guest is an expert in and would be really interesting to the listeners. And then I just tell them at advance, hey, I know that this particular nugget, you've got a lot to give and I'd love to discuss that at the end of the episode so that we can put it in the premium section. Very cool, very cool. So there's, you know, that's the kind of stuff that you can do with the existing guests that you've got. Obviously, you can take a whole episode and you could make that premium only. That's another effective technique. So if you've got a VIP guest or, you know, maybe if you've got like, for example, a fiction series and you've got an alternate ending, that's something that you could make only available to paying subscribers. And then what you can do with those is just tease them on the public feed. So there's that kind of thing. And then other people are doing things like restricting access to a backhead log. So maybe after six months, you know, you take stuff off the private feed, you only put it available on your, on your show or early access to episodes. Regardless of what you do, Jason has one primary rule for building your own membership model. So what we generally try to guide people towards is just launching it as simple as possible. And I think, you know, that's, there's definitely something to be said for just keeping it simple, do it in response to real feedback from your members as opposed to, you know, just chewing in the kitchen and over creating. Keep it simple. Try to find the stuff that naturally fits in with your production schedule already. If you can do that and you can make it easy for yourself to fulfill those extra perks, then you'll be poised to take full advantage in the coming tidal wave of premium podcast subscribers. It's, you know, very clear to us that this is a business model that's only going to grow an adoption. And so I think for the podcasts that are embracing it early, getting on board now with something like Supercast just, you know, the, the opportunity is there, you know, like the latest stats from pod news, James Kroodland, are that, you know, 19.7 million people, you know, have already paid for a podcast and are likely to do so in future. That number is only going to get bigger. And so if you're not already, you know, offering subscription, then, you know, I'd be very seriously thinking about why not. Why aren't you offering a subscription? Don't you think it's time to monetize? I do. So here is my challenge to you. Think about what bonus subscription perks your audience might love. And as you do that, keep in mind that you want to make the fulfillment of those perks, something that you can actually do regularly with consistency. And once you've got that, or at least an idea, just do it. You don't have to make a huge deal out of the launch. Just set it up, hit go, and make changes as you learn. If you would like support and feedback to help you with those changes and to help you build a profitable membership offering even faster, join us in the free Grow the Show Facebook group where I and nearly 600 other podcasters are all growing and monetizing our shows together. We'd love to have you and to help you too. The link is in the show notes. Grow the Show is a Q9 production. This episode was produced and hosted by me with associate production by Catherine Nails and a very special thanks to Jason Suhoi. For Grow the Show, my name is Kevin Schmitland. See you next time.