Whether for personal or business purposes, there are many benefits to launching your own podcast — especially if you’re able to make money from it. However, people often assume the way to do this is through paid advertisements.

While this is the most common method, it’s not the only option. In many cases, a more practical approach to monetizing your podcast is to leverage a subscription model. When you use a solution such as Supercast, the process of doing so is actually quite simple.

In this post, we’ll discuss the benefits of starting a subscription-based podcast and show you how to create such a setup on your WordPress website. Then we’ll introduce you to Supercast, explain how it works, and walk you through how to use it to turn your podcast listeners into paid subscribers. Let’s get started!

The Benefits of Starting a Subscription-Based Podcast

While sponsored advertisements can help you earn money from your podcast, they aren’t without fault.  Landing ad deals can be difficult, particularly when you’re first starting out. It may take time to gain an established following that has demonstrated value to brands.

Also, ads can be distracting and hamper the listener experience. Many people find a subscription fee worthwhile if it means enjoying an uninterrupted, ad-free show.

In addition to making your podcast more valuable, a subscription model can also position you to make more money than you would through advertising income. There are also a variety of ways to go about it.

Some popular ways to incentivize listeners to pay a subscription fee include:

• Ad-free shows, which won’t require you to create any additional content
• Bonus content, such as a member-only email newsletter, extra episodes, or extended versions
• SMS alerts or early release access
• Video and live broadcasts of the podcast recording

You could also add a paid archive of episodes on your podcast website. For example, you could make a handful of new episodes available for free to the public while putting your full list of previously released episodes behind a paywall:

This concept works in the reverse as well. You can provide subscribers with early access to new episodes and only make them available to the public after a certain period of time.

An Introduction to Supercast

Once you decide to implement a subscription model for your podcast, the next step is figuring out how to go about it. Enter Supercast:

Supercast is a podcast membership and subscription management platform that makes it easy for podcasters to charge subscribers. You can use Supercast to:

• Share exclusive podcast content
• Offer paying subscribers ad-free shows
• Integrate your private podcast feed with your existing membership site
• Release early episodes to paying members
• Put your backlog of episode archives behind a paywall
• Gain access to detailed insights and analytics

Supercast also streamlines the technical aspects involved in setting up a private, members-only feed. Rather than asking your listeners to sign-up for a third-party such as Patreon, you can use Supercast to seamlessly integrate your private podcast RSS feed with your membership site.

This platform provides a simple way to sell subscriptions, without requiring your listeners to download multiple apps or go through lengthy payment processes. It supports Apple Pay and Google Pay, as well as a integrations for WordPress, MemberPress, MailChimp, and more. At SecondLineThemes, we added full compatibility with the plugins Supercast works with, so you can easily connect your website to the Supercast plugin alongside membership plugins mentioned here.

How to Turn Your Podcast Listeners Into Paid Subscribers With Supercast (In 3 Steps)

Now you understand what Supercast is and how it works, it’s time to dive into how you can use it to monetize your podcast. Here are three steps to getting everything up and running.

Step 1: Sign Up for a Supercast Account

The first step is to create your Supercast account. On the Supercast website, click on the Get Started button:

You’ll be asked to enter some basic details, including your name, the name of your podcast, and monetization methods you’re currently using:

When you’re done, select Request Access. Someone from the Supercast team will then reach out with instructions and next steps.

Step 2: Create Your Channel and Upload Your Podcast Episodes

Once you have your Supercast account set up, the next step is to create your channel and upload your podcast episodes. You can also customize your landing page and configure the payment and subscription settings. For example, you can make episodes subscriber-only on an individual basis or make the entire feed premium.

From your Supercast dashboard, you’ll be able to review your revenue, subscriptions, and more. In addition to an overview section, the dashboard also provides in-depth data on business metrics and audience analytics.

You can use this information to learn about your subscribers, the performance of each episode, as well as metrics such as average revenue per subscriber. Also, if you have multiple podcasts, Supercast also offers a multi-show account upgrade you can use to view the analytics data from all of your shows from a single dashboard.

Of course, you won’t have any data to work with when you first create your channel. However, familiarizing yourself with the dashboard and the various analytics you can access will better prepare you to take full advantage of it down the road.

Step 3: Add Your Supercast Channel to Your Podcast Website

To share your Supercast landing page with your listeners, you can add the link to the show’s notes section and share it on social media. If you already have a website for your podcast, you can also integrate it with Supercast to sell your subscriptions there too.

If you’re creating a new podcast website, we recommend using a Supercast-supported theme. For example, at SecondLine, our premium podcast themes come with built-in Supercast integration. If you need help setting up your theme, you can follow our Theme Installation documentation.

Simply copy your Supercast link and add it to the landing page of your podcast website. For example, if you’re using a SecondLine theme, you would navigate to Podcast > Settings > Feed details:

At the bottom of the page, next to New podcast feed URL, paste the link to your Supercast channel:

When you’re done, select Save Settings. After users sign up for a subscription, they can use their login to access the otherwise restricted content:

As you can see, they could also use the Supercast dashboard to open the feed in the platform of their choice. At this point, you’re done!

Conclusion

For most people, monetizing a podcast is a no-brainer. It’s figuring out how to go about it that can be tricky. Fortunately, Supercast makes creating a paid subscription model for your podcast simple and straightforward.

In this post, we explained how you can use Supercast to turn your podcast listeners into paid subscribers in three steps:

1. Sign up for your Supercast account.
2. Create your channel and upload your podcasts.
3. Add your Supercast channel to your podcast website.

If you haven’t set up your WordPress site yet, or want an easy way to create a podcast membership website, check out our SecondLine premium podcast themes. In addition to Supercast, our themes also come with built-in support for MemberPress, Memberful, Restricted Content Pro, and more.