I’m Stopping the Fan-Supported Podcast Experiment • Hacker News Board

Re: I’m Stopping the Fan-Supported Podcast Experiment

#11

Post by mgalgs » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 4:46 AM UTC

I'd hesitate to generalize this across the podcasting space. Tim's podcast is pretty unique in this regard. He _really_ does have unique and interesting advertisers, probably because his scale means he can pick basically whoever he wants.

Sam Harris did this same experiment recently and has stuck with the ad-free model. I listen to both podcasts with roughly equal frequency and interest and I immediately subscribed to Sam but not to Tim.

Not sure what the mechanics are going on here but bottom line is that both models seem to work well in different contexts.

Re: I’m Stopping the Fan-Supported Podcast Experiment

#12

Post by em-bee » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 6:29 AM UTC

mcbits wrote: post #7

falcolas wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A la carte works remarkably well with Patreon. Personally I support 11 different video, podcast, and writers. Perhaps that’s the real takeaway: make it easy to do a la carte, and people will.

It works well for Patreon, but Patreon content creator earnings seem to follow the same power law that afflicts much of the economy. Almost nobody makes more than a couple bucks until they have network effects strong enough to fuel orders of magnitude higher earnings outside of Patreon with traditional (annoying) merch/advertising. That's not to shit on Patreon. I think it's the right idea but still far from effectiv…

actually it doesn't work as well for patreon as they'd like because these small transactions still cost to much. banks charge you through the nose for them, so they take a share of the profit here.

Re: I’m Stopping the Fan-Supported Podcast Experiment

#13

Post by elp » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 6:48 AM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #6

A few tidbits: 18k respondents to his survey offered up $30k per month in donations .. but ads are better .. for a podcast. He has 400M downloads from ~300 episodes. One subscriber paid $1k per month. Despite respondents to the survey saying they'd pay $5 or $10 he tested $9.95 and $19.95 payment levels as the minimum and 83% paid whatever the lowest was. So, prior to the subscription 24% said they'd pay $5, and only…

I'd never heard of him before today either.

He wrote a book called the 4 hour work week that claims he makes 40k/month by only working 4 hours a week. The amazon reviews are a mix of creepy 5 star reviews by pod people and 20% 1 & 2 star reviews mocking it. The comments on his podcast (on castbox 200k subscribers) are similar with lots of whining about the length of the adverts and how boring the show is.

After a bit more looking... absolutely fascinating. Obviously he's a complete con-artist and he works like a dog but his marketing ability is psychopathic genius.

Re: I’m Stopping the Fan-Supported Podcast Experiment

#14

Post by reagle » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 3:30 PM UTC

elp wrote: post #13

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #6

A few tidbits: 18k respondents to his survey offered up $30k per month in donations .. but ads are better .. for a podcast. He has 400M downloads from ~300 episodes. One subscriber paid $1k per month. Despite respondents to the survey saying they'd pay $5 or $10 he tested $9.95 and $19.95 payment levels as the minimum and 83% paid whatever the lowest was. So, prior to the subscription 24% said they'd pay $5, and only…

I'd never heard of him before today either. He wrote a book called the 4 hour work week that claims he makes 40k/month by only working 4 hours a week. The amazon reviews are a mix of creepy 5 star reviews by pod people and 20% 1 & 2 star reviews mocking it. The comments on his podcast (on castbox 200k subscribers) are similar with lots of whining about the length of the adverts and how boring the show is. After a bit…

He began his career by pushing a supplement (first for the brain, then pivoted it to performance) https://hackinglife.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/razodglh#supplement...