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Hey Reader,

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Welcome to the first email in my series about improving your podcast membership! I'm teaching you how to tweak your podcast's membership programme to get more people to pay you to make the content you love.

We'll walk through the three podcasts whose memberships I chose to join, why I joined them and what you can do to improve your podcast membership and gain more members.

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Podcast #1

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Title: Psychology In Seattle

Membership fee: 54€/year (monthly rate available)

What’s included: Gated content; ad-free episodes

Member since: Approx January 2021

How I discovered the podcast: YouTube

What I appreciate about the membership: Gated content and the host’s genuine, heartfelt and frequent thanks

Will I keep my membership? Yes, for as long as I’m interested in the premium episodes

Would I upgrade my membership: No, the added benefits (merch, emails more likely to be read by Dr Kirk) don’t interest me enough

My journey to membership:

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A lot happened in the world in 2020. And whilst it happened, I stayed home, watching TV.

In September, Paris Hilton released a documentary called The Real Story of Paris Hilton. Blessed with time on my hands, I watched it. And later on my YouTube home page, I saw the thumbnail for a reaction video from a psychologist sharing his thoughts on Paris’ documentary. I clicked it, enjoyed it and watched a few more videos on the same channel.

When I started leaving the house more, I found the guy’s podcast and subscribed so I could listen to him on the move.

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Psychology In Seattle is one of the OG podcasts. It’s been going since 2008 (!) and is now Dr Kirk’s full-time job.

I heard him promote his membership on his free episodes but made the leap to join because of his gated content. Dr Kirk makes the first part of his gated episodes available to all listeners then gates it when he gets to the good bit, which honestly was kind of annoying when I didn’t pay for them.

I heard a few of these trailer episodes but then he convinced me to join when he did a much longer trailer (about 40 minutes, if I remember correctly) for a topic that I was very, very interested in.

I heard just enough to hook me in and I knew I had free time coming up to be able to listen to the hours of gated content I could potentially access.

So, I joined the membership and am still a member today.

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I don’t listen to every PIS episode (he makes a lot of episodes - about 12 per week) and I don’t even listen to every premium, gated episode. Not every topic he covers interests me. But the ones I do like make the membership worthwhile.
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Lesson: Take a side step, sweetheart.

Dr Kirk makes episodes about a lot of topics within psychology, but by themselves, these topics are unlikely to pick up a huge audience. By covering trending topics from his signature psychology angle, he reaches more people, some of whom will also be interested in his core content, thus more likely to subscribe in the future. They've also already started the know-like-trust journey with him on his free content.

These pop culture episodes are easy for Dr Kirk to make (mostly, he’s reacting to TV shows) so it makes sense to make them free to all viewers, compared to his gated episodes that require hours of research.

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How you can be like Dr Kirk: Take one small step away from your main topic and make episodes about it. Say you podcast about home cooking, you could cover what celebrities say about the food they make at home.

Since this is an experiment, keep costs low. Promote your ‘core’ content on your ‘side’ episodes. Monitor your stats and proceed accordingly.

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Catch me here next week for another easy change you can make to grow your podcast membership!

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~Sarah at CopyHop~

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