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Glow.fm’s pitch is: “The easiest way for podcasters to offer exclusive content to their listeners.” The company says it can easily help you build a podcast membership program. And you know what that means….more money in your pocket. We wanted to get you more detail than what you could fine on the company’s website, so, we interviewed the CEO.
PBJ: What is Glow and why should podcasters consider taking a look at it? Amira Valliani: Glow is the easiest and most flexible way for podcasters to build membership programs. Podcasters can use us to offer paywalled exclusive content, simply to collect contributions for your show. Listeners can pay one time, on a monthly basis, or annually.
Every podcaster should have an easy way for their listeners to pay them, and Glow is the easiest way to get started. Podcasters can launch in less than 10 minutes, and your listeners can pay you and start listening to bonus content in less than 30-seconds using Apple or Google pay. It’s frictionless and quick, for both you and your listener.
PBJ: What makes your company unique? How are you going to break through the clutter? There are a lot of companies vying for podcasters these days? Amira Valliani: We’re podcast-first, and born out of my personal frustration trying to build a subscription program for my local news podcast. That means we are building for podcasters who are interested in growing their businesses.
That means that we put the podcaster’s branding first, built the checkout experience so it barely interrupts listening, and created a product that integrates easily with other membership programs.
We’ve broken through the clutter because we’ve built a product that’s rooted in what podcasters are looking for, grounded in my personal experiences as a local news podcaster. We also are highly-personal. It’s the wild-west out there, and everyone’s figuring out what does and doesn’t work. We help each of our podcasters onboard and design their membership programs, using what we’ve seen work to help them build a program that works for them and their listeners.
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Glow.fm CEO Amira Valliana[/caption]
PBJ: What are the different costs to podcasters for your product offerings? Amira Valliani: We just announced yesterday that we no longer charge to process payments. That means that if you only use Glow to collect listener support, you’ll pay credit card fees, nothing more. For podcasters who take the next step and want to offer exclusive content to listeners, we offer that at a flat rate, starting at $.55/listener. We also offer programs where we can layer on top of your existing membership program (such as through Memberful or Woo Commerce), and provide enterprise-level analytics and private feed distribution. Those are customized to each podcaster, so best to reach out directly.
PBJ: What have the results been so far. Give us an example or two of how much money a podcaster is making? Amira Valliani: We’ve seen podcasters have incredible success with bonus content. Acquired, a tech show, is a twice-monthly show that used us to roll out their bonus content program, where they provide behind the scenes looks into their lives as venture capitalists. 5% of their listeners are now paying $5/monoth for the premium show, which has allowed the show to double their revenue and make more through bonus content than they do through ads. They still have ads, so they’ve effectively doubled their revenue.
We’ve seen other shows use us to offer ad-free content to their listeners, and those have been incredibly successful - and an easy way to start. They often see 1-2% of their audiences convert to ad-free, and all of that revenue is incremental. It also gives them the chance to engage with their biggest fans directly, because they now have the email addresses of their biggest fans.
All of our shows are still going and continuing to experiment with ways to offer membership or exclusive content–we’ve seen everything from behind-the-scenes newsletters, to direct-to-consumer-audiobooks, to fitness training programs. The growth is incredible, and we’re happy to be with podcasters on every step of the journey.