My First Impression of Radio Public

My First Test of Radio Public

You can get your podcast on the Radio Public platform at https://podcasters.radiopublic.com/. Once you’ve been approved at Radio Public, they send a weekly email summary to your email with details about your Paid Listens activity on RadioPublic. Once your podcast earns $25 it will be eligible for payout, and we’ll send an email with information about how to configure the payment step

Earnings are a combination of your Paid Listens (at a rate of $20 per 1000 listens of your episodes in the RadioPublicapp) and for every new listener that hears three episodes of your show in the RadioPublic app, you’ll earn a Loyal Listener bonus of an additional (one-time) $1 - and yes, this bonus layers on top of your Paid Listens rate.

What Is the Criteria For a Listen?

We define a Paid Listen as a listener hearing at least 60% or 30 minutes of an episode, whichever is shorter. For now, only listens in the native RadioPublic mobile apps for iOS and Android count. Multiple listens to a given episode by the same user’s device/account will count as a single listen.

Also, it is important to understand that a download does not necessarily equal a listen. On all podcast apps, including RadioPublic, a given episode's audio file might be downloaded multiple times: the user could have deleted it before listening; a user’s local network error can occur and the file needs to be downloaded again; a podcast hosting provider can have an issue that initiates another download, etc.RadioPublic measures when an episode is actually heard, so you should not always expect a 1:1 download to listen ratio in your hosting provider’s metrics or dashboard.

What to Do If Your Episode Already Has Ads?

Depending on your current approach to ads, you have a few options for providing ad-free episodes to RadioPublic:

• Remove the ads from your older episodes in your existing RSS feed by reuploading newly edited audio files to your podcast host. 
• Create another RSS feed that contains ad-free episodes and provide that feed to RadioPublic.
• Contact your ad sales team and podcast hosting company, as they may have the ability to turn off dynamically inserted ads when episodes are requested from RadioPublic.

Where Do The Ads Go?

RadioPublic will place audio ads before and/or after episodes participating in Paid Listens, and the ads will be clearly demarcated with audio and visual cues as distinct from your show, not part of it.

Where's the Catch?

The catch is to get credit for the play it HAS to be in the Radio Public app. You will need 1250 downloads (the amount you need to make $25) to get paid on their app.  While they supply a player, it does not count that download as one to be paid for. You get $1 bonus if you get a new person to try the app and listen to three of your episodes.

For me, I'm not sure I can look at my audience and say, "Please go listen on this app where I can better advertise to you."

Patreon Vs Radio Public

Last month on Ask the Podcast Coach I had 3, 852 downloads. If we play in fantasy land and says EVERYBODY heard it on Radio Public, I would make $76. What I do on that show is I do an extra 30 minutes of show with my co-host Jim Collison from www.theaverageguy.tv and put it behind a paywall using Patreon. Last month I'm made $398 (as someone took the option to pay $125/month and receive an hour of one on one coaching) if we removed that (as that slot is not always full that would be $248. (or 3.2 times the amount of money from Radio Public).

Pennies Make Dollars

If you're trying to do podcasting full time, you need multiple streams of income. As with other services I've used that inserted ads paid $1.5 for 1000 listens, Radio Public is a much better solution. But as the average podcaster get around 1500 downloads per episode (source:libsyn.com) I'm not going to retire on the $30 (again that would be if EVERY SINGLE ONE of your listeners was using the Radio Public app)

Improvements Needed

With the short time I tested Radio Public, they need to be able to group podcasts together. I would get to the $25 a month payout fee if all my shows were listed under one account. From what I've seen they are not. So now every show would have to get 1250 downloads (the amount you need to make $25) instead of all of my shows working together. That would make for more payouts, and make it worth my while.

John Bukenas of www.audioeditingsolutions.com on the www.hatetoweight.com show that he tried to import his shows, and the app crashed. 

Social Subscribe and Follow Plugin

I had gone to the Internet along with using the branding assets of some apps and went through the joy of resizing them, and then having some with a black background and some with a white background and it looked like this: (see www.schoolofpodcasting.com/627 )

I know Daniel J. Lewis of the Audacity to Podcast. He is a friend of mine and I use his My Podcast Reviews service (which a great) so I decided to check out his Subscribe and Follow plugin and it just makes things so much easier. You can adjust the buttons to match your site. They are all up to date and are using the proper branding. He has everything you'd want to link to covered, and it's super easy to set it up. Check it out at http://schoolofpodcasting.com/socialsubscribeandfollow

$25 a year and $24 sign up  for Five Sites

$40.00 / year and a $39.00 sign-up fee for 10 sites

$75.00 / year and a $74.00 sign-up fee for unlimited sites

 You can see my new subscribe page at www.schoolofpodcasting.com/subscribe

Pipa Billing Plans Change

My Criteria for Podcast Media Hosting

1. Don't mess with my file. What I upload is what I want people to download.
2. Give me the ability to have an unlimited back catalog (unlimited storage)
3. Don't limit my audience size (unlimited bandwidth)
4. Don't control my feed, and make it easy to leave if I choose to do so. I need to be able to put in an iTunes redirect script.
5. Give me support.
6. Charge me for your service so you can stay in business
7. Give me stats so I can see what's working. It would be nice if they were accurate.
8. Don't own my content, control my links, or block my access to distribution or stats (like Anchor).

Pippa Launched in October of 2017. With a goal of making it easy to start a podcast, and making it easy to monetize. They have done some questionable marketing (by scraping email addresses from the iTunes Database and accusing their competition of inflating their numbers). I've tested their service with The History of Six Shooter podcast. Their interface is simple, and they do offer free transcriptions. I tested their transcription service and it was only 70% accurate (so plan on spending a fair amount of time tweaking your transcription).

Originally they adopted the Soundcloud business plan which enables unlimited uploads and unlimited downloads (And lost 100 million dollars).  Recently they updated their pricing. They STILL allow you to upload as many files as you want, but they limit the size of your audience (the more expensive the package, the more downloads you are allowed). For this show that gets over 20,000 downloads a month, I would be on the $50 a month plan. I currently use the $20/month plan at Libsyn.com (use the coupon code sopfree for a free month).

As they limit your number of downloads (when other companies like Libsyn.com and Blubrry.com do not) they are just not a good choice in my opinion. I know people who have received thousands of downloads by being mentioned on an influencer's blog. For me, I'd take a pass on http://pippa.io

For more information on media hosting, see www.podcastmediahosting.com

Ready to Plan, Launch or Grow Your Podcast?

I would LOVE to work with you. I have multiple plans (starting at $1 for bonus content, all the way up to a four-figure mentoring plan). I would love to help you with your podcast. See www.schoolofpodcasting.com/workwithme