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You can now easily set up a podcast subscription for your show and make incremental revenue if people sign up. That of course assumes that people will pay to listen to your show. Depending on your audience that could be a big if. Or it could be a question about pricing – what’s the right price?
Nonetheless, let’s talk about the technical aspects of setting up a podcast subscription.
The easiest way to set up a podcast subscription from my experience is through Anchor.fm. I host and publish my podcast through the platform – which has worked well for me. And now I can even share a video version of episodes to Spotify through Anchor.
Podcast subscription setup in Anchor
From your dashboard in Anchor, click on the Money section. From there, you can set a price as low as a few cents a month to a few hundred dollars.
If you have listener support turned on you have to turn that off. Listener support is a feature that has been around for years and that allows listeners to donate an amount that they choose.
From there, it’s a pretty straightforward process and you can choose either all episodes or just specific episodes to be behind a pay wall. So for example, you could choose to have the last two episodes be available to everyone and then episodes in the archives require a subscription.
Podcast subscription set up on Apple
On Apple Podcast, you can also set up subscriptions but you have to pay a membership fee to join the program.
Should you offer a subscription for your podcast?
Personally, I struggle with this decision to put the episodes behind a pay wall. I want people to listen to them. And I don’t want that barrier of having to sign up for subscription stand in the way.
My podcast is primarily about awareness. I do run ads on them and they do make some revenue. But having an ad at the beginning is very different than not allowing people to listen to the show unless they pay.
So it depends on your goal. It also depends on what kind of podcast strategy you have. For example, if the majority of the content gets used on other channels, maybe it’s OK to try to put the podcast behind a pay wall.
But if your goal is to quickly grow your audience, adding that subscription might get in the way.
Apple does promote subscription podcasts and maybe you are in a niche that doesn’t have any yet. So that’s another way to consider trying it – even if the subscription revenue is low.
But, please keep in mind whether you do a paid subscription or not building your podcast audience does take time and effort.