elBenbo’s failed paid podcast adventures
Published: Fri, 05/15/20
The idea was this:
I’d been publishing a free podcast for over 2 years at the time. And I filled it with all kinds of valuable info, a lot of which was way too valuable to be giving away free. So I says to Producer Jonathan (who produced the podcast) one day, “Let’s make it a paid podcast — for a small monthly fee, people can subscribe to a membership site that has the podcast, as well as a bunch of other valuable perks — like a private Facebook group, interviews with my business & marketing “heroes”, and the list goes on.”
Within a few months we had it up and ready to launch.
And it was one of the the most profitable launches I’d done at the time.
We got around 1,000 members, and would have probably gotten at least a few hundred more if we could have used PayPal (we couldn’t for some reason). And with a “foundation” to grow it to thousands more members fairly quickly.
But we’ll never really know how big it could have gotten.
Especially since I killed it off before the launch even ended!
I distinctly remember not sending the last few emails, already knowing I wanted nothing to do with the accursed subscription business that was set to pay us all a bundle over time.
Why did I kill it off?
Because it turned into a monster I despised:
People sending me support tickets (instead of using the support email).
People hunting us down on Facebook asking tech questions instead of, again, using the support email address.
People (rightfully, this was 100% my bad) pestering me about why they couldn’t download a lot of the content as our web host decided to take a dump on us that weekend. elBenbo’s Law: Whatever nightmares can happen during a launch WILL happen… This was, incidentally, when I realized I have the single best audience I could ever ask for. Their level of patience about this was astonishing.
I am finding this to be true again THIS week, incidentally.
The Learnistic launch has had its share of belches & farts, as is what happens with tech no matter how prepared one is. And some of the customers and those getting the test drive who have had some glitches have had the patience of Job. Even Troy was saying how astonished he was at how high quality & high class my boys & ghouls are compared to other lists he's launched software to.
Anyway back to the podcast:
I called Producer Jonathan the next morning saying the paid podcast had to die.
He was as relieved as I was, but his wife, Cupcake, couldn’t believe it.
“Why would that Ben kill off such a profit machine?” she said, pulling a knife out of the kitchen drawer.
Answer:
Because it’s not about the money.
It’s about peace of mind first.
And freedom — as I’d have been trapped by that membership site. It was intolerable at nearly 1000 members, and it would have gotten exponentially worse at 5k, 10k, members and beyond.
Now, “fast forward” to last Summer.
I was in Napa, CA, enjoying some wine with “Email Players” subscriber Troy Broussard at a mastermind.
“Didn’t you do a paid podcast?” he asked.
“Yes, it was a nightmare…” I snapped, and then proceeded to tell him all the above.
To which he smugly replied, “You could have avoided all that simply by putting your paid podcast on a mobile app.”
He was 100% correct, too.
Take our Learnistic mobile app service, for example.
It’d have been easy as pie to put the entire membership site, podcast, interviews, etc, right in the app, without relying on multiple platforms, content hosting clouds, flakey websites going down, bandwidth issues, security updates, customer login problems, etc, had I used something like Learnistic.
It’d have turned my phone into a podcast studio, in the palm of my hot little hand.
I could have sold it via in-app purchases via the Learnistic merchant account, or via my own merchant account. I also could have had members automatically tagged by email, with content delivered right to their phones in an app they are always logged into, that is designed for maximum user friendliness (you can listen while the phone’s screen is off, have unfinished content pick up where they left off automatically, etc). And also be able to do upsells by email and let them know about new content via push notifications right to their devices. i.e., circumventing any annoying spam filters to tell them when a new episode is up.
This would apply to almost any kind of digital courses or subscription offers, too, of course.
If you want to see what this looks like in the "digital flesh", time is almost up to get that righteous free test drive.
The launch ends tonight.
After that, it all shuts down for a spell.
And then when it comes back, the price if you decide to graduate past the free test drive will be significantly higher.
If this interests you, here is how it works:
1. Until tonight (Friday May 15th) at midnight EDT you can get a free test drive of it — after which the site will be closed down for a while to “iron out” any lingering bugs & glitches, etc
2. Use it, brand it, add content to it, show it to your clients & colleagues if you want… and see if it “clicks” for you — with no credit card needed, and zero obligation
3. If you decide to subscribe during your test drive, and if you do it before Sunday May 31 at midnight EDT… you can have it for $99/month instead of the $150/month it will cost right after that. Plus you will be “grandfathered” in for life at that price forever — including when we add our own email broadcasting/autoresponder platform and other expensive features later this year… after which the price will balloon to over $200+/month over time
Bottom line:
If’n you want to try it free, I highly recommend you do it today.
I’ve learned the hard way already launching software ain’t like info products.
By that I mean, you don’t want thousands of people piling in right away. That only makes for a lot of frustrated & unhappy customers. It’s much better to grow slowly and roll out over time. Thus, tonight’s deadline to get your free test drive may get abruptly shortened without warning — even at this late of an hour, with the team standing by. And, even people who get in for the test drive may not be able to buy for a while if you linger too long to make a decision once inside. And of course if that happens where we close it early due to demand… and you wait too long to buy it after taking your test drive, you will miss out on the above savings.
So if this interests you at all, I would not procrastinate on getting your test drive, if I were you.
To get the full details read the page carefully here:
http://www.EmailPlayers.com/learnistic
Ben Settle
P.S. If you are an “Email Players” subscriber in good standing, make sure you use the link inside this month’s May issue and NOT the above link. If you have not received the May issue in the mail yet, let me know and I will give it to you.