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Becky Mollenkamp: When you podcast and you don't get any engagement, and I, I have that as well, it's a lot harder to be excited, to stick with it. I think the thing that's kept me so excited about this show for so long now is, oh, people are finding it and they're talking to us and they're interested. That's cool, because it's really easy to start getting into that place of, okay, are we being smart and strategic here? And have we thought through blah, blah, blah. And then you start to lose the fun and then you don't want do it anymore.
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Claire Waite Brown: If her transcripts were Podcasting 2.0 transcripts with the SRT or VTT, then many of the apps that show that transcript can show them as captions. Including TrueFans, of course.
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Sam Sethi: Yes. Correct.
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Claire Waite Brown: I'm quite clever at this, aren't I?
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Sam Sethi: You are.
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Claire Waite Brown: I've remembered so much stuff.
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Sam Sethi: Things you never thought you wanted to remember or.
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Claire Waite Brown: No, no, I know. Welcome to Creators from TrueFans. I'm Claire Waite Brown, Head of Community at TrueFans.
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Sam Sethi: And I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of TrueFans.
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Claire Waite Brown: Download the TrueFans app to not only listen to podcasts from around the world, but interact with their creators and start paying the shows you value.
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Sam Sethi: Click on the Big Purple Become a fan button to be notified or emailed when new episodes of this podcast are
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Claire Waite Brown: released, and follow @TrueFans.fm on Instagram or threads to be kept up to date on all the latest TrueFans features designed to improve discovery, interactivity and monetization opportunities for podcasts and their creators.
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Sam Sethi: Hey, Claire.
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Claire Waite Brown: Hi, Sam. How are you doing?
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Sam Sethi: Very hot. But hey, it's only a week we can survive. Claire, who are you featuring on this episode?
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Claire Waite Brown: This time I chatted with Becky Mollenkamp, who is an independent podcaster and supporter of other indie podcasters through her network, Feminist Podcasters Collective. I'm here today with Becky Mollenkamp. Hi, Becky, how are you?
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Becky Mollenkamp: I'm great, Claire. Thanks for having me.
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Claire Waite Brown: You're very welcome. Start by telling me the name of your podcast and what it's all about.
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Becky Mollenkamp: Yeah, I co host Messy Liberation with my biz bestie Tyena Brown, and we talk about pop culture, politics, business, life, and all of it is through the lens of people who are trying to do better in the world, who want to create a more equitable world. How we do that, but in a way that honors the nuance of also existing inside of systems that aren't made for us. So it's not about perfection. It's not about trying to be the perfect liberationist, but it's like, how do we go about creating better lives that also honor the fact that we can't change everything overnight.
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Claire Waite Brown: The nuance element is messiness, isn't it?
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Becky Mollenkamp: Yeah. And we talk about that a lot on the show. Like, oh, there's nuance. We live in a world that doesn't reward nuance.
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Claire Waite Brown: Yeah. Why did you want to start the show and when did you start it?
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Becky Mollenkamp: Actually, yeah, we're at a year and a half. Ish. Just about. And it started because Tyena and I used to have conversations every once in a while. She came on my podcast. We're in a couple of communities together, so we had times where we would have conversations, and every time we did, I loved it. I walked away from the conversation thinking, like, I want more of that. And also, I think many people can relate in the business world that it's hard sometimes when you meet somebody really cool and you have a networking call or you show up at a event every once in a while together and you want more. But it's like, what's the excuse for that? We do the same thing. So we're not going to hire each other necessarily. Right. Like, there was just not a logical way that we would be regularly meeting. Finally, I was like, I just wanted more conversations with you. What if we start a podcast? She thought about it was like, okay, that sounds cool. So it was really an excuse to just have more conversations with a friend.
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Claire Waite Brown: Wow, brilliant. The most recent episodes that I've been listening, listening to, you've mentioned change. So how has the show changed and how does it progress? Because I see sometimes you've got guests. Most of the time that I've listened to anyway, it's just the two of you. So tell me a bit about the evolution and how the show looks now.
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Becky Mollenkamp: It wasn't a strategic decision to launch the podcast. It's not necessarily in support of our businesses, although that has changed because an offer has come out of it. So now we're actually doing business together as well. But when we started it, there was no game plan. It was just like, let's have these conversations and keep talking. And eventually we. Taina was the one who brought up, like, what about having some guests? Mostly because there were other cool people she wanted to have conversations with. And anyone who has a podcast know, like, a podcast is a great reason to get to talk to cool people. Right. They may not have a conversation with you if you just, like, call them up and say, can we talk but if you say you want to be on my show, they're like, oh, sure, yeah, of course. So it was a good excuse to have conversations with either people that we like and wanted to have more conversation with, or to be able to get people that we don't know specifically. We had Julian Womble come on and talk about Harry Potter, and he's a professor who teaches about Harry Potter Potter through this liberatory lens. Very cool guy with a big following who probably would have not given us an hour of conversation if it wasn't for a show. So that's where the guests came in. We still want to primarily be us because that's why we started the show, for us to have conversations together. But we try to maybe once a month. Ish. I mean, we don't have a specific cadence, but we try to have guests on. And then more recently, we had these women from a show called BRB Crying. It's a podcast that Tyina loves and was really fun to have them on the show. And I was listening to their show in preparation of that interview, and I loved their approach where they each came to the room with a story, and so they would each sort of read each other a little essay or something they had written and end up crying. But I liked this approach that gave the show that was otherwise just two friends talking like ours, some amount of structure. So I proposed to Taina not long ago, what if we try out again? It can be messy. It may not be what we like. Try out. Having a little structure where on our episodes where it's just us, I bring something messy and you bring something messy, and then we talk through those things. And that has added just a little bit of structure. That's nice. Something to kind of hang the hook of the show on, you know, And I've enjoyed it. So we'll see. I think we may stick with it.
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Claire Waite Brown: Yeah. You're sticking with the theme, with the messy all the way through?
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Becky Mollenkamp: Well, for sure. I mean, that's the whole thing we want to model, too, is we don't have to have all the answers. We don't have to know what we're doing. We don't have to Waite until it's perfect to start it, because that has been something. I've had that problem in the past. I don't want to start it till I know exactly what the show's about, what the reason for it is. Who are the guests I'm going to have on? I want to have recorded, you know, 10 episodes, so I know they're good. All of that. And with this, it was such a different approach. It was just like, let's do this because it'd be fun. We don't have any plan. We're just going to do it. And then, like, we started releasing episodes right away. There was no plan. And it's been a lot of fun having that kind of freedom.
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Claire Waite Brown: Yeah, well, good for you, because often you get told all of those things, don't you? That's the advice that you're given. And very often I say, don't listen to other people's advice.
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Becky Mollenkamp: Yeah. You know, some of it can be good advice, depending on the point. Right. But this show was never really meant to be that. It was meant to be a playground. And so we need to let it keep some of that because it's really easy to start getting into that place of, okay, are we being smart and strategic here? And have we thought through, blah, blah, blah. And then you start to lose the fun and then you don't want to do it anymore.
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Claire Waite Brown: Yeah. You mentioned that both you and Tiana have your own businesses. So how does this fit in with the rest of your life?
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Becky Mollenkamp: Well, we're both coaches. We're both feminist coaches. And in the beginning, I mean, I think it, again, it was just meant to be something that adds to our life, something that wasn't just business in the calendar, which is really nice. So in that way, it really helps with life. And Tyen and I have actually now started a business out of this. About a year into it, we decided we both want to talk about how do we do coaching in this more like liberatory, equity focused way. And so we've created a coaching community of people who, you know, who are in that same messy liberation boat and been quietly, slowly growing that as well. So it's provided a little extra income for us in addition to the joy of it.
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Claire Waite Brown: Oh, that's really interesting because that's often one of my questions is about monetization. Not that shows have to monetize.
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Becky Mollenkamp: Right.
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Claire Waite Brown: In some cases, it can be that it's a lead to your business and that's how you can earn some money from it. Have you had interaction from listeners at all? And is that what maybe led onto this partnership with the coaching?
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Becky Mollenkamp: The coaching thing's a little separate because we both kind of have known people in that world. And so it started out of personal invitations, and then now we've been starting to use the podcast, like using our podcast as our advertising tool for that, which is great. So that's sort of not come out of those conversations. But I think the thing that keeps me really going. This is my third or, I mean, my first podcast had three iterations, then this one, and I had another. So I've had, what, five podcasts or three, depending on how you do the math. But I've done a lot of podcasting in the last decade plus. And what's been really fun about this is just this, like, slow, organic growth that's happening, and particularly with YouTube, which is a new avenue for me with podcasting. And I know people have lots of thoughts about video versus audio, and we do both, but this show versus my other shows has had more growth on video than the others. It's not like, huge. We have like 250 subscribers, but we started the year at less than 90. So it's not a lot, but it's just this constant uptick of people finding the show themselves. And then they're also commenting, which they're commenting a little bit on Spotify, but the bulk of the comments are coming through YouTube. And that engagement, and some of it because we talk about politics, some of it's pretty unkind, but a lot of it is really kind. And it's enough that gets you excited. Like, oh, even the unkind stuff, as much as I don't love it, I'm like, people are finding this somehow because, I don't know, those angry people, they're finding us, and they're interested enough. Whether it's because they're angry or they're not, they're interested enough to engage. And that's when you podcast and you don't get any engagement. And I. I have that as well. It's a lot harder to be excited, to stick with it. I think the thing that's kept me so excited about this show for so long now is. Is, oh, people are finding it and they're talking to us and they're interested. That's cool. Not just my mom and dad.
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Claire Waite Brown: Exactly. And that's not a small number either.
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Becky Mollenkamp: Well, yeah, I mean, it's like, you know, it's not enough to monetize on YouTube or any of that. Like, it's not a huge number. But I don't take it for granted. If I had 250 people show up on my front porch, I would be like, oh, my God, what's happening here? Right. So, of course, it's amazing. And the fact that it's growing so much, it's not me out there asking people follow me on YouTube, and we're not even saying it on the show. They're just. They're finding it through some of the efforting that we're doing. That's really low effort of creating shorts, of doing some SEO optimization, talking about things that are probably somewhat timely and interesting helps, and people are finding it. And that's. I don't know. I just think that's so cool.
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Claire Waite Brown: There are apps as well. I think people are very used to commenting on YouTube because that's been around forever. There are TrueFans included podcast apps where you can comment as well within the.
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Becky Mollenkamp: Yeah, that's something that's been lacking. And I love that you guys are doing that because it is like Spotify is doing it. But I think. I don't think most people even know they can comment. And I know a lot of podcasters because I run a podcast community. Most of them don't even know where to find the comments. They don't realize people can comment. It is kind of fun because when you go in and you go, oh, I had comments in here, and I didn't even know it, like. But it's also not great for engagement if the host doesn't even know about where to find the comments or comment back, and people aren't realizing they can do that. That's one of the reasons I'm drawn to YouTube. Not because I like doing video. I actually don't love showing up, having to show up and feel presentable. But I do love that that platform is so well thought out in that way that it encourages engagement. And I'm excited to find more apps like yours that are encouraging engagement because we need that in that podcasting space. It's too lonely otherwise.
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Claire Waite Brown: It is good. Okay, let's talk about podcasting generally then. Or maybe specifically. Give me your one frustration and then one really cool, exciting thing about podcasting, whether it's for yourself, for the wider industry.
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Becky Mollenkamp: I mean, I probably have the same frustration that most people have. It's just that there's so much. It's like so much work. I just want to be able to push a button and like, it edits itself, it distributes everywhere itself. It creates its own graphics. I know that's not. I shouldn't say, it's not possible. We're probably moving that way with AI. But just the time. The tedious detail work is the thing that I don't love about podcasting because I love everything about the conversations and the putting it out there, all that. I just don't love all of the, like, admin part of it. But yeah, I mean, the Thing I love outside of, like, just getting to share our my voice and stuff. Thing I really love is the community. The more I'm tapping into podcast community of, like, the community of podcasters, the more fun it is to podcast. Because I was doing it alone for so long and I would occasionally meet another business owner who had a podcast and we talk a little bit about it, but I didn't have any real support in, like, how do I reduce how much time I'm spending on editing? Or, hey, you had a cool guest. Can I get an introduction to them? Or whatever. Just having people you can talk to or even those conversations of. Is anyone listening to your show? Because I don't know if it feels like no one's listening. Listening to mine and having people say, like, oh, my God, I feel that way too. All of that piece. The community around podcasting is the stuff that's really got me excited about podcasting, like, renewed excitement about it.
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Claire Waite Brown: And that leads me nicely to the collective. Tell me about the feminist podcast. A collective, because that's something you've started, isn't it?
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Becky Mollenkamp: Yeah, almost two years ago now. As a podcaster, I'm also a podcast listener and I listen to a lot of shows and I would keep hearing different podcasts I love run these ads, and they'd be like, basically, hey, if you like this show, you're going to love this other show from our network. And I didn't really know what a podcast network was at the time. And I was like, hey, how do I do that? And then it was quickly discovered, oh, they don't want me because I don't have the kind of numbers that make me valid or important enough to be in a network. But I'm like, but that sucks, because I like that. I, as a listener, I like Discovery because I like the show. I mean, most of the shows I have discovered, frankly, are through that somebody saying, on a show that I like, you like this, you'll probably like this too. That's how I find things. And they're usually right, like, yeah, that vibe is what I'm looking for. So I got together a group, there were 15 of us to start, of podcasters that I knew because again, I had met a few business owners who had podcasts and was like, would you be interested in something where we kind of provide each other that sort of support, but on like a low threshold, no requirements, no paying, you know, whatever? At first, it was all free. And slowly, over time, they were telling people and other people were like, I need a space, like that. So it was like over a year before I even started charging dues. And the dues are all equitable, so they're sliding scale based on people's needs. And we even have some people who are in on scholarship because I don't want to turn people away based only on money. I think we all deserve to have community. That was the thing I hate about networks is they were judging me based on, like, metrics. And I don't want to judge people based on metrics or financial ability because podcasting doesn't usually pay well.
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Sam Sethi: Right.
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Becky Mollenkamp: There's ways, as you said, to monetize it. But this community has really grown. We're up to 50 member shows and growing, and we're all shows. Ultimately, the only thing that binds us is we are all independently produced, meaning we're not part of these big networks and we all care deeply about creating a more just and equitable world. It doesn't mean our shows have to deal with those. Messy liberation does. But many of our shows don't specifically deal with those issues. It's just the hosts. I'll say I care about this. We do things like Pitch Fest, where we have. We've had specifically black women come in and pitch, giving an opportunity for voices that are not often heard to be elevated. Give them that chance to get in front of 50 shows and say, here's what I can talk to you about. People get booked that way. We have outside speakers come in. I think you're going to come in and do a little presentation, which is amazing. And many of those voices are also women and other marginalized voices who don't otherwise always get to be in the Joe Rogan bro space. They don't always get the chance to be elevated. So it's just about trying to collaborate, support each other. Not just in, like, I'll run your ad if you run mine. That happens. But also in the I see you. You're not alone in this. We have a slack space. So there's constant kind of chatter amongst the members. And it's just been like, I'm not a podcast expert. And yet somehow I found myself now into this podcasting industry by starting this community. And it's become the thing I'm sort of most excited about. I love this community. It's such a cool. Podcasters are cool people, right? Because they're creatives and they have something interesting to say and they have the confidence to believe what they have to say is interesting. And so it's just a cool group of people to hang out with. And I really love it.
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Claire Waite Brown: Yeah, good for you. 50. That's a brilliant number as well.
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Becky Mollenkamp: Thank you. We're trying to grow to a hundred to see how that feels, because it is still ultimately sort of a collective. I mean, I, I started it, I run it, it's mine. However, we do a lot of joint decision making about what we want. And I listen to the community about what it is that they need. What kinds of topics do they need speakers on? We're now having a more organized system around how do we swap ads, swap trailers. So I'm listening to them all the time about what do we want? And so we'll see. We're going to try to get to a hundred and then just sort of see. Is that too many voices, not enough? 50 is really great right now because at every call we'll have 15ish people who show up. And that's a nice number in the room. But I could also see doubling that and still feeling pretty good. So we'll see.
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Claire Waite Brown: Brilliant. Good stuff. I've been writing down a couple of other things. I wanted to chat with you about some Podcasting 2.0 features that could work well within the whole group.
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Becky Mollenkamp: Oh, good.
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Claire Waite Brown: So I'm going to ask you First. Is Podcasting 2.0 a term that you're aware of? Is it something you know stuff about?
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Becky Mollenkamp: Claire, I literally had never heard it till you mentioned it on a call we had. And I was like, excuse me, what? I guess. So clearly I'm still existing in podcasting 1.0 because I didn't even. Or maybe 0.0 because I didn't even know what it was after we talked, looked it up a little and was like, oh, that'd be cool. And I, I'm sure that if I don't know, then a lot of our members don't. We have members who run the gamut. We have podcast producers that produce other people's shows and they're in our community for their own show. So people who know the industry really well to people who are like, low budget with it, which is also great and fine. But we run the gamut. So we probably have people who know, and probably a lot of people like me who are like, what's that?
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Claire Waite Brown: Yeah. When you were looking through, were there any features that stuck out for you that you. You thought might be good for you?
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Becky Mollenkamp: I don't know, Claire.
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Claire Waite Brown: That's fine. I've got my suggestions.
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Becky Mollenkamp: This is why I'm excited for you to come talk to our community to talk about that, because I want to know more. I think sometimes I hear about these things and I think, oh, that's not for me. That's for the big shows, not for our shows. So I'm interested to hear you say, like, how can we, as really small independent producer or independent creators, use those things? But I think the biggest thing for me is anything that encourages engagement, and I do think that's probably part of what's inside of that 2.0.
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Claire Waite Brown: Yeah.
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Becky Mollenkamp: Is how do we increase some of the engagement.
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Claire Waite Brown: Yeah. This is something that other people do and they make the tags. And I go, oh, that sounds like a good thing to do. Why would that be good? Okay, let's communicate why that's good. So I can understand the features and think that would be good for this particular show. Basically, what it is is these little signposts within your RSS feed that give your listener extra stuff that can help you and your listener with discovery, interactivity, and monetization. So when I was listening to Messy Liberation, the first one for you guys, I think would be the transcript, which you say you make a transcript and you put it into ChatGPT, but you haven't attached the transcript to your RSS feed.
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Becky Mollenkamp: I don't know. Talk to Transistor, because I do every episode it's in there.
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Claire Waite Brown: Really?
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Becky Mollenkamp: I upload it into every episode of Transistor. So if it's not getting distributed, that's frustrating because I don't know why it's not. Because I. I literally, every episode, we upload the transcript as a T, as a text file.
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Claire Waite Brown: That is interesting. That I think is a very useful one, especially for your show and because of the kind of terms that you'll be using and what you're talking about. This is going to be good. Extra search, extra SEO.
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Becky Mollenkamp: Yeah. Well, and I also want it for accessibility, which is important to us. Yes. And I also make sure every episode is Captioned through Riverside versus counting on YouTube to do a good job of it so that I know that the captioning is good. So when I. The videos all have captioning on them and I am uploading the transcript. This is really interesting because if they're not showing up, and I've just been sitting there blindly believing that if I put it into Transistor and say go that it all goes where it's supposed to.
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Claire Waite Brown: So the other one I thought of for you, chapters, which Transistor do support, mainly because you and. And I said your co host's name a bit incorrectly earlier.
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Becky Mollenkamp: Oh, it's okay.
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Claire Waite Brown: You and your co Host will talk about a different topic. So it could just be those chapters like for your topic and for her topic, and then maybe you have some kind of conclusion. Or if there are, for example, with 2.0 chapters, you can add pictures and you can add links. So if you wanted to send someone you know to somewhere else, chapters for you guys wouldn't take a lot of extra work. You use your transcript, you get your timestamp. So that I think would be useful. Something that you can do in TrueFans itself, which is a bit of extra SEO, is to actually add blog posts in the TrueFans app. Because I know you do your substack, you can just copy that over. It's just another place for it to be. But while we were talking about the collective, two things came to mind. One is called Podroll and that is where you can recommend other shows and you can choose what shows you recommend. That would be great for the collective to recommend each other's shows.
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Becky Mollenkamp: I've heard of Podroll and don't know how to use it, so this is very interesting.
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Claire Waite Brown: A good thing for you to do would be to listen to my podcast called Podcasting 2.0 in Practice, and I have episodes on the various features, but I also have a homework episode that tells you how to implement it. But basically you go to your Podroll and you'll just type in the name of a show and add it to your Podroll. And then there is a thing called a publisher feed which isn't within transistor, but what you could do within TrueFans alone is you can create your own publisher. So say you created a publisher as the Feminist Podcasters Collective. Then you can put all the shows that are in the collective in that publisher on TrueFans so that when somebody is listening to Messy Liberation on the screen, it will say published by such and such. Somebody can click on that name of that publisher, go to that publisher, and they'll see all of your collective members shows. It's another discovery thing for your group.
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Becky Mollenkamp: We have a podcast, I mean a website already with all the member shows. Yeah, but it would be nice if you do it inside of one of these systems if it makes it easier for people to find while they're native. Because that's the biggest thing about podcasting is you want to reach them while they're in, wherever they're listening to podcasts. That's the best place to hit them with these things.
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Claire Waite Brown: Exactly. That's what the Podcasting 2.0 features are about, you know, making it easy for listeners, making it easy for hosts as well for there to be discovered to connect with their listeners, but also to do things within the app that they're listening on. The other thing we talked about briefly was comments. Anybody right now can comment on your show. In TrueFans, we talked about interactivity, so I just thought I'd mention that.
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Becky Mollenkamp: I love it.
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Claire Waite Brown: Thank you so much. Becky, tell us again the name of show how we can find you, et cetera, et cetera.
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Becky Mollenkamp: Yeah, Messy Liberation. We own Messyliberation.com to make it easy for people to go and find the show. You can also learn about our coaching community inside of there. And then Feminist Podcasters collective is feminist podcasterscollective.com or feministpods.com so either way you'll find us and we're always interested in new members who share our value set.
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Claire Waite Brown: Brilliant. Well, I will be putting a link to Messy Liberation in the show notes, but also what we do is I switch a magic switch on that means that your show comes under the Podcasts We're Loving list on the home page at TrueFans. So whenever you bring out a new episode, it will go to the front of that list. And the last thing is I've been sending you a little bit of money. I have been streaming your show and paying you five sats per minute. You can on TrueFans do your currency. You don't have to do the stats thing because when you sign up to TrueFans, you get given a digital wallet. When you claim your show, any money that anybody's been sending you is saved in your wallet. So when you claim your show, you will have a very small amount of money in your wallet from me.
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Becky Mollenkamp: And I have claimed my show.
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Claire Waite Brown: You have claimed your show.
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Becky Mollenkamp: I have.
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Claire Waite Brown: Good.
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Becky Mollenkamp: Because I spent some time after we talked playing around in there.
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Claire Waite Brown: Oh, well done. Thank you so much for chatting with me and I'll see you soon.
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Becky Mollenkamp: Thanks, Claire.
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Claire Waite Brown: Becky says she uploads a transcript through transistor and I noticed it wasn't coming up on TrueFans so I checked on Fountain and on Podcast Guru and there were no transcripts there. I checked Apple and the transcript there was the Apple generated one. However, on Podcast index I can see there is a transcript for some episodes but not others. Do you know what's going on?
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Sam Sethi: Yes, Claire, I do know what's going on. Thank you for highlighting this. So I looked in the RSS feed for the show Messy Liberation and Transcript Txt is the URL that Transistor FM her host is using and that's not Wrong. One of the issues that James Cridland, my co host on Podnews Weekly, has been raising about the transcript tag is that there are too many formats that people can use or support. So you can have HTML, you can have. TXT, you can have VTT, you can have WebRT or SRT. I mean, the list goes on. And Fountain, TrueFans, podcast guru, do not Support currently the TXT format. The conversation right now within the Podcasting 2.0 community is should we just have one format, VTT, which is the format that Apple uses? Should we just therefore all say that is the standard and therefore things like this one here, where it's just type is text slash plain. We could support it as TrueFans. We already support HTML, SRT and VTT. Could we just add one more? Course we could. It just means we're just adding more and more every time we find an anomaly. And this is an anomaly.
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Claire Waite Brown: That's fantastic. Thank you so much for figuring that out, Sam. Becky, I'm sure you're listening. There's your answer. Could it be that. So for example, in TrueFans and then in Buzzsprout you get the option of what file to upload. So if transistor is given the option and Becky's using the txt, she might be able to use the option of srt. Hi, future Claire here. I've done a bit more research since Sam gave his initial explanation. I had a look into how transistor support transcripts and you can upload an SRT or a VTT instead of the txt. Becky said she was using Riverside to make these. So instead of downloading the transcript as transcript, use the subtitles option, which basically gives you the SRT and the title. Subtitles instead of transcript is kind of explained by what I say next in the actual recording with Sam. FYI, future insert own name here is an open source resource. Please feel free to use it in your own podcasts or blogs. Martin Quibbel already has just a note as well. If her transcripts were Podcasting 2.0 transcripts with the SRT or VTT, then many of the apps that show that transcript can show them as captions. Including TrueFans, of course.
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Sam Sethi: Yes, correct.
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Claire Waite Brown: I'm quite clever at this, aren't I?
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Sam Sethi: You are.
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Claire Waite Brown: I've remembered so much stuff.
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Sam Sethi: Things you never thought you wanted to remember or.
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Claire Waite Brown: No, no, I know. If you'd like to chat with us about your independent podcast or your music, send a comment or super comment in TrueFans to any creators episode by clicking on the Speech bubble icon or on the comments tab. In future episodes of Creators from TrueFans, I'll be chatting with Tina Dietz about how she can help you turn your podcast into a book with Mel Barfil from the Indie Business Club podcast and Andrea and Julian from podvision.
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Sam Sethi: Questions, questions, questions. Claire, are there any questions for me this week?
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Claire Waite Brown: Yes, I do have a question, Sam, I was wondering because there are lots of options I'm aware of. So could you explain to me how many different ways there are now for independent podcasters to generate revenue within TrueFans?
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Sam Sethi: That's a great question. The first one is very simple. You have a wallet. When you join TrueFans, you can top it up, where's Apple or Google Pay? And on the back of that you can then stream those sats or local currency to your favorite podcast creators. So I might say I want to give a thousand sats per minute or 10p per minute to my favorite creator and that money goes from my wallet to their wallet. So streaming sats or streaming currency is one way of doing it. I might want to leave a comment as a bit of feedback for an episode or to a podcast creator. And if I attach a payment to that, we call them Super Comments. That's the second way that people can make money as a creator on Truth hands. The next one is you can have somebody pay you for a premium episode or a premium podcast. So you might say in your Creators Dashboard, this episode is too good. I've just had Claire Waite Brown as my guest and I want to charge 20p or a pound or whatever amount you want. And again, you can do that both in micropayment, bitcoin, sats or in your local currency. The fan then when they click play will be prompted with a pop up that says please pay this amount. When that amount is paid, we will unencrypt the episode. So what we do to prevent people being naughty and just looking in the RSS feed and finding the enclosure and nicking the audio file is we encrypt that audio file so they can't just go and nick it. Then once they pay, we then update that audio file and boom, you have a playable episode. So that's another way. One more way is that of course you could have someone subscribe and become a supporter of your show. So they might say they want to put 3, 5, 10 or another amount per month. Every time you deliver a new episode, they will have money taken from their monthly budget, which is what they've decided as a supporter and you will get given that there are other ways as well. So we will be bringing out the ability to have free blogs or paid blogs. That's one way. So you'll be able to say this item has to be paid for before you read it. We do events with tickets, so you might have an event online or offline and create tickets. And of course you can have a merch store. So there are a lot of different ways that you as a creator can generate revenue from your fans, which is why we have monetizing fandom as our strap line. But also, yes, you can still go and do post read ads within your podcast. Hope that helps.
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Claire Waite Brown: Yeah, definitely. So the beauty of it is that you can do it all in the one place where of course, the listener is listening to your podcast because they've chosen TrueFans to listen in and they can do everything else. How can said creators find out, for example, with streaming and super comments and premium, where their money in and out is coming from or going to, like money they might be paying to other shows?
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Sam Sethi: Yeah. If you click in the top right hand corner on your avatar, you will see a wallet icon and there's no monetary amount, which is the amount in your wallet. Currently, you click on that icon for the wallet and you're taken to a tab within your profile, which is the wallet tab. And in there you'll see all of your transactions, people who play your podcast, people who maybe left you a super comment or bought your premium content. So you can see the transactions you've received money from, but you can also see the transactions where you've paid money out. Now, the nice thing is that same wallet is the wallet that is in your creator's admin dashboard as well. So whether you choose to look at it in your admin dashboard or in your user profile, it's exactly the same wallet. And there are nice filters in there, so you can say, show me the play verb. So that's only payments for where people have played my content and show me it only for this month or this month and this month or this week only. And when you find the transaction you're interested in, you can click on the information icon and you'll see who made you that payment and for what episode they paid that to.
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Claire Waite Brown: Brilliant. Cool. So you can keep track of everything that's going on.
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Sam Sethi: Exactly. Fanbox. Claire. Now, have we had any nice messages from people?
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Claire Waite Brown: Well, actually we've had a promotion.
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Sam Sethi: Ooh.
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Claire Waite Brown: If you look on our show page. So the creators from TrueFans page that shows lists all the Episodes, whether you're on the app or on the desktop, same thing. You'll see our featured episode at the top. Often people will use that for their trailer. Then you'll see our latest episode. And then in the next slot right now is the latest episode of the Tea Party Media podcast from friend of the show, Martin Lindeskog. What is that doing there, Sam?
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Sam Sethi: I don't know. It's a bug. It's a bug. No, it's not a bug. Thank God. So one of the other ways I didn't mention for podcast creators to make money is to accept promos from other podcasters. What we did a few months ago was we enabled it so that you could say, oh, I would really like to promote my podcast on your show, but I don't want to change the audio. I just want to be featured on the podcast page. So what you can do is request to be featured as a promo on someone's podcast page. The creator that you request gets a notification and an email saying, claire, Waite Brown would like to be, for example, on your podcast page. Now, Claire will make a offer. So she'll say, I'll pay you a thousand sats to do that or 10,000 SATs to do that or £5 or whatever you want. That offer gets sent to the creator. The creator then goes, oh, yes, that podcast is very similar to my podcast. So we'll have some good crossover in fans. And yeah, I accept the amount. That's pretty good. They accept. And once the accept has been confirmed, we will then put the podcast cover art and the description in that second slot on the podcast page. So then people who come to your page will go, oh yes, there's the latest episode. Oh, number two says, Tea Party Media. Excellent, I like that show. Or I want to know more about that show, then can click on it. The idea of this promo is not to add anything to someone's audio. There are platforms that do that. We didn't want to change the audio, but we wanted to give podcasters the ability to cross promote between each other, give each other small amounts of money. This doesn't have to be hundreds or thousands of pounds. And it's a nice way again for people to make money from their podcast page. The length of these promotions can be variable as well. So they could be one day, one week, one month. You can choose how long you want as well. I think promos are a great step forward. We are enhancing that and you'll see that in the next couple of days on truthbounds, where if you are a creator and you've claimed your podcast already in TrueFans, we will actually highlight that in the second slot and give you a request button there on the page. This is what your podcast could look like in this slot and I think that's a great idea. That came from Claire, by the way. If you aren't a creator and you have never claimed a podcast on TrueFans, that slot will not appear. So we hide that from just normal general users. But I also think I've just thought about it as well, Claire. Why don't we extend this to POD roles? So why can't I request to be in your POD role? And that would be a nice way as well for cross promotion and discovery.
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Claire Waite Brown: Yeah, definitely. Good idea. Good thinking, Batman.
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Sam Sethi: Thank you.
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Claire Waite Brown: Any news you want to share this week?
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Sam Sethi: Yeah, I do. There's a really interesting story about YouTube now auto labeling AI content. And I think this is important because up until now, if you've got a podcast, you could label it as explicit and it's self labeling. If you have a podcast, there is the new AI tag proposal that RSS.com came up with and TrueFans has implemented where you could go into your Creators Dashboard and say, yeah, the host of this show is AI, click turn that on and let people know. And then in the user settings for TrueFans, you could filter out anything that's AI content. Right? So it's all self regulating at the moment. Of course James, my co host on Podnews will say, well, people won't do that because, you know, they don't want to be filtered out. And I argue back and say, well, they do it for explicit. Why wouldn't they do it for AI? Right? But he may be right. So YouTube automatically tagging and labeling AI generated content is a really good step forward. And I've also said that actually we should auto tag it and generate explicit tags because we now have transcripts where we can see if there's rude, naughty words in there. I go, yep, sorry mate, you haven't tagged it, but we've found the words. We're tagging it for you. And I think Russell from pod 2 actually proposed auto tagging as well a little while back, which unfortunately Adam Curry and James poo pooed. But now YouTube's doing it. I'm sure they'll embrace it with open arms. But the thing about it is it does bring up one micro problem, which is how much as a percentage of the show has to have AI in order for it to automatically be tagged on Podnews. Weekly review. We have probably one, maybe two announcements at the beginning, maybe in the middle, which are AI generated voices. Does James And I therefore have to tag Podnewsweek a review as AI? Because that's probably only got 5%. And so this is the problem. How much of a show or podcast needs to be AI generated for it to be tagged automatically as AI? And therefore I think we need to learn from YouTube. When did they mark or self label the content as AI? Was it 10%, 20%, 30%? In many ways we would have to mirror that then and say, okay, if we detect more than x percent of this podcast with AI generated voice content, we will auto label it. It's open at the moment. It's literally only happened this week. So let's see what the result is. Really?
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Claire Waite Brown: Yeah. Cool. Thank you.
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Sam Sethi: And that's it for this week, Claire. Our audio is recorded on Riverside, it's edited by you and we're hosted on
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Claire Waite Brown: TrueFans on the TrueFans app. Click on the purple button and become a fan of this podcast.
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Sam Sethi: You could also support us by streaming sats from the TrueFans wallet. Click on the currency or bitcoin icon under the play button or leave us a super comment by clicking on the speech bubble icon.
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Claire Waite Brown: We would love to have you follow us on Instagram or threadsrewfans fm.
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Sam Sethi: And as we talked about in this show, if you'd like to promote your podcast in this show's feed, go to your Creators Dashboard and click on the pencil icon next to your podcast location. This podcast creators from TrueFans and send
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Claire Waite Brown: us a request and you can find out more about how to use the features of the TrueFans platform by listening to our sister podcast, Fanzone.
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Becky Mollenkamp: When you podcast and you don't get any engagement, and I, I have that as well, it's a lot harder to be excited, to stick with it. I think the thing that's kept me so excited about this show for so long now is, oh, people are finding it and they're talking to us and they're interested. That's cool, because it's really easy to start getting into that place of, okay, are we being smart and strategic here? And have we thought through blah, blah, blah. And then you start to lose the fun and then you don't want do it anymore.
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Claire Waite Brown: If her transcripts were Podcasting 2.0 transcripts with the SRT or VTT, then many of the apps that show that transcript can show them as captions. Including TrueFans, of course.
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Sam Sethi: Yes. Correct.
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Claire Waite Brown: I'm quite clever at this, aren't I?
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Sam Sethi: You are.
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Claire Waite Brown: I've remembered so much stuff.
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Sam Sethi: Things you never thought you wanted to remember or.
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Claire Waite Brown: No, no, I know. Welcome to Creators from TrueFans. I'm Claire Waite Brown, Head of Community at TrueFans.
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Sam Sethi: And I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of TrueFans.
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Claire Waite Brown: Download the TrueFans app to not only listen to podcasts from around the world, but interact with their creators and start paying the shows you value.
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Sam Sethi: Click on the Big Purple Become a fan button to be notified or emailed when new episodes of this podcast are
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Claire Waite Brown: released, and follow @TrueFans.fm on Instagram or threads to be kept up to date on all the latest TrueFans features designed to improve discovery, interactivity and monetization opportunities for podcasts and their creators.
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Sam Sethi: Hey, Claire.
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Claire Waite Brown: Hi, Sam. How are you doing?
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Sam Sethi: Very hot. But hey, it's only a week we can survive. Claire, who are you featuring on this episode?
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Claire Waite Brown: This time I chatted with Becky Mollenkamp, who is an independent podcaster and supporter of other indie podcasters through her network, Feminist Podcasters Collective. I'm here today with Becky Mollenkamp. Hi, Becky, how are you?
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Becky Mollenkamp: I'm great, Claire. Thanks for having me.
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Claire Waite Brown: You're very welcome. Start by telling me the name of your podcast and what it's all about.
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Becky Mollenkamp: Yeah, I co host Messy Liberation with my biz bestie Tyena Brown, and we talk about pop culture, politics, business, life, and all of it is through the lens of people who are trying to do better in the world, who want to create a more equitable world. How we do that, but in a way that honors the nuance of also existing inside of systems that aren't made for us. So it's not about perfection. It's not about trying to be the perfect liberationist, but it's like, how do we go about creating better lives that also honor the fact that we can't change everything overnight.
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Claire Waite Brown: The nuance element is messiness, isn't it?
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Becky Mollenkamp: Yeah. And we talk about that a lot on the show. Like, oh, there's nuance. We live in a world that doesn't reward nuance.
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Claire Waite Brown: Yeah. Why did you want to start the show and when did you start it?
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Becky Mollenkamp: Actually, yeah, we're at a year and a half. Ish. Just about. And it started because Tyena and I used to have conversations every once in a while. She came on my podcast. We're in a couple of communities together, so we had times where we would have conversations, and every time we did, I loved it. I walked away from the conversation thinking, like, I want more of that. And also, I think many people can relate in the business world that it's hard sometimes when you meet somebody really cool and you have a networking call or you show up at a event every once in a while together and you want more. But it's like, what's the excuse for that? We do the same thing. So we're not going to hire each other necessarily. Right. Like, there was just not a logical way that we would be regularly meeting. Finally, I was like, I just wanted more conversations with you. What if we start a podcast? She thought about it was like, okay, that sounds cool. So it was really an excuse to just have more conversations with a friend.
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Claire Waite Brown: Wow, brilliant. The most recent episodes that I've been listening, listening to, you've mentioned change. So how has the show changed and how does it progress? Because I see sometimes you've got guests. Most of the time that I've listened to anyway, it's just the two of you. So tell me a bit about the evolution and how the show looks now.
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Becky Mollenkamp: It wasn't a strategic decision to launch the podcast. It's not necessarily in support of our businesses, although that has changed because an offer has come out of it. So now we're actually doing business together as well. But when we started it, there was no game plan. It was just like, let's have these conversations and keep talking. And eventually we. Taina was the one who brought up, like, what about having some guests? Mostly because there were other cool people she wanted to have conversations with. And anyone who has a podcast know, like, a podcast is a great reason to get to talk to cool people. Right. They may not have a conversation with you if you just, like, call them up and say, can we talk but if you say you want to be on my show, they're like, oh, sure, yeah, of course. So it was a good excuse to have conversations with either people that we like and wanted to have more conversation with, or to be able to get people that we don't know specifically. We had Julian Womble come on and talk about Harry Potter, and he's a professor who teaches about Harry Potter Potter through this liberatory lens. Very cool guy with a big following who probably would have not given us an hour of conversation if it wasn't for a show. So that's where the guests came in. We still want to primarily be us because that's why we started the show, for us to have conversations together. But we try to maybe once a month. Ish. I mean, we don't have a specific cadence, but we try to have guests on. And then more recently, we had these women from a show called BRB Crying. It's a podcast that Tyina loves and was really fun to have them on the show. And I was listening to their show in preparation of that interview, and I loved their approach where they each came to the room with a story, and so they would each sort of read each other a little essay or something they had written and end up crying. But I liked this approach that gave the show that was otherwise just two friends talking like ours, some amount of structure. So I proposed to Taina not long ago, what if we try out again? It can be messy. It may not be what we like. Try out. Having a little structure where on our episodes where it's just us, I bring something messy and you bring something messy, and then we talk through those things. And that has added just a little bit of structure. That's nice. Something to kind of hang the hook of the show on, you know, And I've enjoyed it. So we'll see. I think we may stick with it.
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Claire Waite Brown: Yeah. You're sticking with the theme, with the messy all the way through?
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Becky Mollenkamp: Well, for sure. I mean, that's the whole thing we want to model, too, is we don't have to have all the answers. We don't have to know what we're doing. We don't have to Waite until it's perfect to start it, because that has been something. I've had that problem in the past. I don't want to start it till I know exactly what the show's about, what the reason for it is. Who are the guests I'm going to have on? I want to have recorded, you know, 10 episodes, so I know they're good. All of that. And with this, it was such a different approach. It was just like, let's do this because it'd be fun. We don't have any plan. We're just going to do it. And then, like, we started releasing episodes right away. There was no plan. And it's been a lot of fun having that kind of freedom.
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Claire Waite Brown: Yeah, well, good for you, because often you get told all of those things, don't you? That's the advice that you're given. And very often I say, don't listen to other people's advice.
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Becky Mollenkamp: Yeah. You know, some of it can be good advice, depending on the point. Right. But this show was never really meant to be that. It was meant to be a playground. And so we need to let it keep some of that because it's really easy to start getting into that place of, okay, are we being smart and strategic here? And have we thought through, blah, blah, blah. And then you start to lose the fun and then you don't want to do it anymore.
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Claire Waite Brown: Yeah. You mentioned that both you and Tiana have your own businesses. So how does this fit in with the rest of your life?
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Becky Mollenkamp: Well, we're both coaches. We're both feminist coaches. And in the beginning, I mean, I think it, again, it was just meant to be something that adds to our life, something that wasn't just business in the calendar, which is really nice. So in that way, it really helps with life. And Tyen and I have actually now started a business out of this. About a year into it, we decided we both want to talk about how do we do coaching in this more like liberatory, equity focused way. And so we've created a coaching community of people who, you know, who are in that same messy liberation boat and been quietly, slowly growing that as well. So it's provided a little extra income for us in addition to the joy of it.
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Claire Waite Brown: Oh, that's really interesting because that's often one of my questions is about monetization. Not that shows have to monetize.
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Becky Mollenkamp: Right.
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Claire Waite Brown: In some cases, it can be that it's a lead to your business and that's how you can earn some money from it. Have you had interaction from listeners at all? And is that what maybe led onto this partnership with the coaching?
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Becky Mollenkamp: The coaching thing's a little separate because we both kind of have known people in that world. And so it started out of personal invitations, and then now we've been starting to use the podcast, like using our podcast as our advertising tool for that, which is great. So that's sort of not come out of those conversations. But I think the thing that keeps me really going. This is my third or, I mean, my first podcast had three iterations, then this one, and I had another. So I've had, what, five podcasts or three, depending on how you do the math. But I've done a lot of podcasting in the last decade plus. And what's been really fun about this is just this, like, slow, organic growth that's happening, and particularly with YouTube, which is a new avenue for me with podcasting. And I know people have lots of thoughts about video versus audio, and we do both, but this show versus my other shows has had more growth on video than the others. It's not like, huge. We have like 250 subscribers, but we started the year at less than 90. So it's not a lot, but it's just this constant uptick of people finding the show themselves. And then they're also commenting, which they're commenting a little bit on Spotify, but the bulk of the comments are coming through YouTube. And that engagement, and some of it because we talk about politics, some of it's pretty unkind, but a lot of it is really kind. And it's enough that gets you excited. Like, oh, even the unkind stuff, as much as I don't love it, I'm like, people are finding this somehow because, I don't know, those angry people, they're finding us, and they're interested enough. Whether it's because they're angry or they're not, they're interested enough to engage. And that's when you podcast and you don't get any engagement. And I. I have that as well. It's a lot harder to be excited, to stick with it. I think the thing that's kept me so excited about this show for so long now is. Is, oh, people are finding it and they're talking to us and they're interested. That's cool. Not just my mom and dad.
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Claire Waite Brown: Exactly. And that's not a small number either.
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Becky Mollenkamp: Well, yeah, I mean, it's like, you know, it's not enough to monetize on YouTube or any of that. Like, it's not a huge number. But I don't take it for granted. If I had 250 people show up on my front porch, I would be like, oh, my God, what's happening here? Right. So, of course, it's amazing. And the fact that it's growing so much, it's not me out there asking people follow me on YouTube, and we're not even saying it on the show. They're just. They're finding it through some of the efforting that we're doing. That's really low effort of creating shorts, of doing some SEO optimization, talking about things that are probably somewhat timely and interesting helps, and people are finding it. And that's. I don't know. I just think that's so cool.
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Claire Waite Brown: There are apps as well. I think people are very used to commenting on YouTube because that's been around forever. There are TrueFans included podcast apps where you can comment as well within the.
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Becky Mollenkamp: Yeah, that's something that's been lacking. And I love that you guys are doing that because it is like Spotify is doing it. But I think. I don't think most people even know they can comment. And I know a lot of podcasters because I run a podcast community. Most of them don't even know where to find the comments. They don't realize people can comment. It is kind of fun because when you go in and you go, oh, I had comments in here, and I didn't even know it, like. But it's also not great for engagement if the host doesn't even know about where to find the comments or comment back, and people aren't realizing they can do that. That's one of the reasons I'm drawn to YouTube. Not because I like doing video. I actually don't love showing up, having to show up and feel presentable. But I do love that that platform is so well thought out in that way that it encourages engagement. And I'm excited to find more apps like yours that are encouraging engagement because we need that in that podcasting space. It's too lonely otherwise.
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Claire Waite Brown: It is good. Okay, let's talk about podcasting generally then. Or maybe specifically. Give me your one frustration and then one really cool, exciting thing about podcasting, whether it's for yourself, for the wider industry.
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Becky Mollenkamp: I mean, I probably have the same frustration that most people have. It's just that there's so much. It's like so much work. I just want to be able to push a button and like, it edits itself, it distributes everywhere itself. It creates its own graphics. I know that's not. I shouldn't say, it's not possible. We're probably moving that way with AI. But just the time. The tedious detail work is the thing that I don't love about podcasting because I love everything about the conversations and the putting it out there, all that. I just don't love all of the, like, admin part of it. But yeah, I mean, the Thing I love outside of, like, just getting to share our my voice and stuff. Thing I really love is the community. The more I'm tapping into podcast community of, like, the community of podcasters, the more fun it is to podcast. Because I was doing it alone for so long and I would occasionally meet another business owner who had a podcast and we talk a little bit about it, but I didn't have any real support in, like, how do I reduce how much time I'm spending on editing? Or, hey, you had a cool guest. Can I get an introduction to them? Or whatever. Just having people you can talk to or even those conversations of. Is anyone listening to your show? Because I don't know if it feels like no one's listening. Listening to mine and having people say, like, oh, my God, I feel that way too. All of that piece. The community around podcasting is the stuff that's really got me excited about podcasting, like, renewed excitement about it.
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Claire Waite Brown: And that leads me nicely to the collective. Tell me about the feminist podcast. A collective, because that's something you've started, isn't it?
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Becky Mollenkamp: Yeah, almost two years ago now. As a podcaster, I'm also a podcast listener and I listen to a lot of shows and I would keep hearing different podcasts I love run these ads, and they'd be like, basically, hey, if you like this show, you're going to love this other show from our network. And I didn't really know what a podcast network was at the time. And I was like, hey, how do I do that? And then it was quickly discovered, oh, they don't want me because I don't have the kind of numbers that make me valid or important enough to be in a network. But I'm like, but that sucks, because I like that. I, as a listener, I like Discovery because I like the show. I mean, most of the shows I have discovered, frankly, are through that somebody saying, on a show that I like, you like this, you'll probably like this too. That's how I find things. And they're usually right, like, yeah, that vibe is what I'm looking for. So I got together a group, there were 15 of us to start, of podcasters that I knew because again, I had met a few business owners who had podcasts and was like, would you be interested in something where we kind of provide each other that sort of support, but on like a low threshold, no requirements, no paying, you know, whatever? At first, it was all free. And slowly, over time, they were telling people and other people were like, I need a space, like that. So it was like over a year before I even started charging dues. And the dues are all equitable, so they're sliding scale based on people's needs. And we even have some people who are in on scholarship because I don't want to turn people away based only on money. I think we all deserve to have community. That was the thing I hate about networks is they were judging me based on, like, metrics. And I don't want to judge people based on metrics or financial ability because podcasting doesn't usually pay well.
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Sam Sethi: Right.
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Becky Mollenkamp: There's ways, as you said, to monetize it. But this community has really grown. We're up to 50 member shows and growing, and we're all shows. Ultimately, the only thing that binds us is we are all independently produced, meaning we're not part of these big networks and we all care deeply about creating a more just and equitable world. It doesn't mean our shows have to deal with those. Messy liberation does. But many of our shows don't specifically deal with those issues. It's just the hosts. I'll say I care about this. We do things like Pitch Fest, where we have. We've had specifically black women come in and pitch, giving an opportunity for voices that are not often heard to be elevated. Give them that chance to get in front of 50 shows and say, here's what I can talk to you about. People get booked that way. We have outside speakers come in. I think you're going to come in and do a little presentation, which is amazing. And many of those voices are also women and other marginalized voices who don't otherwise always get to be in the Joe Rogan bro space. They don't always get the chance to be elevated. So it's just about trying to collaborate, support each other. Not just in, like, I'll run your ad if you run mine. That happens. But also in the I see you. You're not alone in this. We have a slack space. So there's constant kind of chatter amongst the members. And it's just been like, I'm not a podcast expert. And yet somehow I found myself now into this podcasting industry by starting this community. And it's become the thing I'm sort of most excited about. I love this community. It's such a cool. Podcasters are cool people, right? Because they're creatives and they have something interesting to say and they have the confidence to believe what they have to say is interesting. And so it's just a cool group of people to hang out with. And I really love it.
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Claire Waite Brown: Yeah, good for you. 50. That's a brilliant number as well.
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Becky Mollenkamp: Thank you. We're trying to grow to a hundred to see how that feels, because it is still ultimately sort of a collective. I mean, I, I started it, I run it, it's mine. However, we do a lot of joint decision making about what we want. And I listen to the community about what it is that they need. What kinds of topics do they need speakers on? We're now having a more organized system around how do we swap ads, swap trailers. So I'm listening to them all the time about what do we want? And so we'll see. We're going to try to get to a hundred and then just sort of see. Is that too many voices, not enough? 50 is really great right now because at every call we'll have 15ish people who show up. And that's a nice number in the room. But I could also see doubling that and still feeling pretty good. So we'll see.
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Claire Waite Brown: Brilliant. Good stuff. I've been writing down a couple of other things. I wanted to chat with you about some Podcasting 2.0 features that could work well within the whole group.
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Becky Mollenkamp: Oh, good.
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Claire Waite Brown: So I'm going to ask you First. Is Podcasting 2.0 a term that you're aware of? Is it something you know stuff about?
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Becky Mollenkamp: Claire, I literally had never heard it till you mentioned it on a call we had. And I was like, excuse me, what? I guess. So clearly I'm still existing in podcasting 1.0 because I didn't even. Or maybe 0.0 because I didn't even know what it was after we talked, looked it up a little and was like, oh, that'd be cool. And I, I'm sure that if I don't know, then a lot of our members don't. We have members who run the gamut. We have podcast producers that produce other people's shows and they're in our community for their own show. So people who know the industry really well to people who are like, low budget with it, which is also great and fine. But we run the gamut. So we probably have people who know, and probably a lot of people like me who are like, what's that?
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Claire Waite Brown: Yeah. When you were looking through, were there any features that stuck out for you that you. You thought might be good for you?
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Becky Mollenkamp: I don't know, Claire.
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Claire Waite Brown: That's fine. I've got my suggestions.
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Becky Mollenkamp: This is why I'm excited for you to come talk to our community to talk about that, because I want to know more. I think sometimes I hear about these things and I think, oh, that's not for me. That's for the big shows, not for our shows. So I'm interested to hear you say, like, how can we, as really small independent producer or independent creators, use those things? But I think the biggest thing for me is anything that encourages engagement, and I do think that's probably part of what's inside of that 2.0.
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Claire Waite Brown: Yeah.
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Becky Mollenkamp: Is how do we increase some of the engagement.
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Claire Waite Brown: Yeah. This is something that other people do and they make the tags. And I go, oh, that sounds like a good thing to do. Why would that be good? Okay, let's communicate why that's good. So I can understand the features and think that would be good for this particular show. Basically, what it is is these little signposts within your RSS feed that give your listener extra stuff that can help you and your listener with discovery, interactivity, and monetization. So when I was listening to Messy Liberation, the first one for you guys, I think would be the transcript, which you say you make a transcript and you put it into ChatGPT, but you haven't attached the transcript to your RSS feed.
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Becky Mollenkamp: I don't know. Talk to Transistor, because I do every episode it's in there.
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Claire Waite Brown: Really?
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Becky Mollenkamp: I upload it into every episode of Transistor. So if it's not getting distributed, that's frustrating because I don't know why it's not. Because I. I literally, every episode, we upload the transcript as a T, as a text file.
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Claire Waite Brown: That is interesting. That I think is a very useful one, especially for your show and because of the kind of terms that you'll be using and what you're talking about. This is going to be good. Extra search, extra SEO.
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Becky Mollenkamp: Yeah. Well, and I also want it for accessibility, which is important to us. Yes. And I also make sure every episode is Captioned through Riverside versus counting on YouTube to do a good job of it so that I know that the captioning is good. So when I. The videos all have captioning on them and I am uploading the transcript. This is really interesting because if they're not showing up, and I've just been sitting there blindly believing that if I put it into Transistor and say go that it all goes where it's supposed to.
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Claire Waite Brown: So the other one I thought of for you, chapters, which Transistor do support, mainly because you and. And I said your co host's name a bit incorrectly earlier.
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Becky Mollenkamp: Oh, it's okay.
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Claire Waite Brown: You and your co Host will talk about a different topic. So it could just be those chapters like for your topic and for her topic, and then maybe you have some kind of conclusion. Or if there are, for example, with 2.0 chapters, you can add pictures and you can add links. So if you wanted to send someone you know to somewhere else, chapters for you guys wouldn't take a lot of extra work. You use your transcript, you get your timestamp. So that I think would be useful. Something that you can do in TrueFans itself, which is a bit of extra SEO, is to actually add blog posts in the TrueFans app. Because I know you do your substack, you can just copy that over. It's just another place for it to be. But while we were talking about the collective, two things came to mind. One is called Podroll and that is where you can recommend other shows and you can choose what shows you recommend. That would be great for the collective to recommend each other's shows.
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Becky Mollenkamp: I've heard of Podroll and don't know how to use it, so this is very interesting.
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Claire Waite Brown: A good thing for you to do would be to listen to my podcast called Podcasting 2.0 in Practice, and I have episodes on the various features, but I also have a homework episode that tells you how to implement it. But basically you go to your Podroll and you'll just type in the name of a show and add it to your Podroll. And then there is a thing called a publisher feed which isn't within transistor, but what you could do within TrueFans alone is you can create your own publisher. So say you created a publisher as the Feminist Podcasters Collective. Then you can put all the shows that are in the collective in that publisher on TrueFans so that when somebody is listening to Messy Liberation on the screen, it will say published by such and such. Somebody can click on that name of that publisher, go to that publisher, and they'll see all of your collective members shows. It's another discovery thing for your group.
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Becky Mollenkamp: We have a podcast, I mean a website already with all the member shows. Yeah, but it would be nice if you do it inside of one of these systems if it makes it easier for people to find while they're native. Because that's the biggest thing about podcasting is you want to reach them while they're in, wherever they're listening to podcasts. That's the best place to hit them with these things.
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Claire Waite Brown: Exactly. That's what the Podcasting 2.0 features are about, you know, making it easy for listeners, making it easy for hosts as well for there to be discovered to connect with their listeners, but also to do things within the app that they're listening on. The other thing we talked about briefly was comments. Anybody right now can comment on your show. In TrueFans, we talked about interactivity, so I just thought I'd mention that.
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Becky Mollenkamp: I love it.
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Claire Waite Brown: Thank you so much. Becky, tell us again the name of show how we can find you, et cetera, et cetera.
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Becky Mollenkamp: Yeah, Messy Liberation. We own Messyliberation.com to make it easy for people to go and find the show. You can also learn about our coaching community inside of there. And then Feminist Podcasters collective is feminist podcasterscollective.com or feministpods.com so either way you'll find us and we're always interested in new members who share our value set.
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Claire Waite Brown: Brilliant. Well, I will be putting a link to Messy Liberation in the show notes, but also what we do is I switch a magic switch on that means that your show comes under the Podcasts We're Loving list on the home page at TrueFans. So whenever you bring out a new episode, it will go to the front of that list. And the last thing is I've been sending you a little bit of money. I have been streaming your show and paying you five sats per minute. You can on TrueFans do your currency. You don't have to do the stats thing because when you sign up to TrueFans, you get given a digital wallet. When you claim your show, any money that anybody's been sending you is saved in your wallet. So when you claim your show, you will have a very small amount of money in your wallet from me.
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Becky Mollenkamp: And I have claimed my show.
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Claire Waite Brown: You have claimed your show.
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Becky Mollenkamp: I have.
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Claire Waite Brown: Good.
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Becky Mollenkamp: Because I spent some time after we talked playing around in there.
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Claire Waite Brown: Oh, well done. Thank you so much for chatting with me and I'll see you soon.
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Becky Mollenkamp: Thanks, Claire.
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Claire Waite Brown: Becky says she uploads a transcript through transistor and I noticed it wasn't coming up on TrueFans so I checked on Fountain and on Podcast Guru and there were no transcripts there. I checked Apple and the transcript there was the Apple generated one. However, on Podcast index I can see there is a transcript for some episodes but not others. Do you know what's going on?
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Sam Sethi: Yes, Claire, I do know what's going on. Thank you for highlighting this. So I looked in the RSS feed for the show Messy Liberation and Transcript Txt is the URL that Transistor FM her host is using and that's not Wrong. One of the issues that James Cridland, my co host on Podnews Weekly, has been raising about the transcript tag is that there are too many formats that people can use or support. So you can have HTML, you can have. TXT, you can have VTT, you can have WebRT or SRT. I mean, the list goes on. And Fountain, TrueFans, podcast guru, do not Support currently the TXT format. The conversation right now within the Podcasting 2.0 community is should we just have one format, VTT, which is the format that Apple uses? Should we just therefore all say that is the standard and therefore things like this one here, where it's just type is text slash plain. We could support it as TrueFans. We already support HTML, SRT and VTT. Could we just add one more? Course we could. It just means we're just adding more and more every time we find an anomaly. And this is an anomaly.
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Claire Waite Brown: That's fantastic. Thank you so much for figuring that out, Sam. Becky, I'm sure you're listening. There's your answer. Could it be that. So for example, in TrueFans and then in Buzzsprout you get the option of what file to upload. So if transistor is given the option and Becky's using the txt, she might be able to use the option of srt. Hi, future Claire here. I've done a bit more research since Sam gave his initial explanation. I had a look into how transistor support transcripts and you can upload an SRT or a VTT instead of the txt. Becky said she was using Riverside to make these. So instead of downloading the transcript as transcript, use the subtitles option, which basically gives you the SRT and the title. Subtitles instead of transcript is kind of explained by what I say next in the actual recording with Sam. FYI, future insert own name here is an open source resource. Please feel free to use it in your own podcasts or blogs. Martin Quibbel already has just a note as well. If her transcripts were Podcasting 2.0 transcripts with the SRT or VTT, then many of the apps that show that transcript can show them as captions. Including TrueFans, of course.
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Sam Sethi: Yes, correct.
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Claire Waite Brown: I'm quite clever at this, aren't I?
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Sam Sethi: You are.
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Claire Waite Brown: I've remembered so much stuff.
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Sam Sethi: Things you never thought you wanted to remember or.
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Claire Waite Brown: No, no, I know. If you'd like to chat with us about your independent podcast or your music, send a comment or super comment in TrueFans to any creators episode by clicking on the Speech bubble icon or on the comments tab. In future episodes of Creators from TrueFans, I'll be chatting with Tina Dietz about how she can help you turn your podcast into a book with Mel Barfil from the Indie Business Club podcast and Andrea and Julian from podvision.
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Sam Sethi: Questions, questions, questions. Claire, are there any questions for me this week?
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Claire Waite Brown: Yes, I do have a question, Sam, I was wondering because there are lots of options I'm aware of. So could you explain to me how many different ways there are now for independent podcasters to generate revenue within TrueFans?
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Sam Sethi: That's a great question. The first one is very simple. You have a wallet. When you join TrueFans, you can top it up, where's Apple or Google Pay? And on the back of that you can then stream those sats or local currency to your favorite podcast creators. So I might say I want to give a thousand sats per minute or 10p per minute to my favorite creator and that money goes from my wallet to their wallet. So streaming sats or streaming currency is one way of doing it. I might want to leave a comment as a bit of feedback for an episode or to a podcast creator. And if I attach a payment to that, we call them Super Comments. That's the second way that people can make money as a creator on Truth hands. The next one is you can have somebody pay you for a premium episode or a premium podcast. So you might say in your Creators Dashboard, this episode is too good. I've just had Claire Waite Brown as my guest and I want to charge 20p or a pound or whatever amount you want. And again, you can do that both in micropayment, bitcoin, sats or in your local currency. The fan then when they click play will be prompted with a pop up that says please pay this amount. When that amount is paid, we will unencrypt the episode. So what we do to prevent people being naughty and just looking in the RSS feed and finding the enclosure and nicking the audio file is we encrypt that audio file so they can't just go and nick it. Then once they pay, we then update that audio file and boom, you have a playable episode. So that's another way. One more way is that of course you could have someone subscribe and become a supporter of your show. So they might say they want to put 3, 5, 10 or another amount per month. Every time you deliver a new episode, they will have money taken from their monthly budget, which is what they've decided as a supporter and you will get given that there are other ways as well. So we will be bringing out the ability to have free blogs or paid blogs. That's one way. So you'll be able to say this item has to be paid for before you read it. We do events with tickets, so you might have an event online or offline and create tickets. And of course you can have a merch store. So there are a lot of different ways that you as a creator can generate revenue from your fans, which is why we have monetizing fandom as our strap line. But also, yes, you can still go and do post read ads within your podcast. Hope that helps.
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Claire Waite Brown: Yeah, definitely. So the beauty of it is that you can do it all in the one place where of course, the listener is listening to your podcast because they've chosen TrueFans to listen in and they can do everything else. How can said creators find out, for example, with streaming and super comments and premium, where their money in and out is coming from or going to, like money they might be paying to other shows?
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Sam Sethi: Yeah. If you click in the top right hand corner on your avatar, you will see a wallet icon and there's no monetary amount, which is the amount in your wallet. Currently, you click on that icon for the wallet and you're taken to a tab within your profile, which is the wallet tab. And in there you'll see all of your transactions, people who play your podcast, people who maybe left you a super comment or bought your premium content. So you can see the transactions you've received money from, but you can also see the transactions where you've paid money out. Now, the nice thing is that same wallet is the wallet that is in your creator's admin dashboard as well. So whether you choose to look at it in your admin dashboard or in your user profile, it's exactly the same wallet. And there are nice filters in there, so you can say, show me the play verb. So that's only payments for where people have played my content and show me it only for this month or this month and this month or this week only. And when you find the transaction you're interested in, you can click on the information icon and you'll see who made you that payment and for what episode they paid that to.
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Claire Waite Brown: Brilliant. Cool. So you can keep track of everything that's going on.
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Sam Sethi: Exactly. Fanbox. Claire. Now, have we had any nice messages from people?
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Claire Waite Brown: Well, actually we've had a promotion.
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Sam Sethi: Ooh.
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Claire Waite Brown: If you look on our show page. So the creators from TrueFans page that shows lists all the Episodes, whether you're on the app or on the desktop, same thing. You'll see our featured episode at the top. Often people will use that for their trailer. Then you'll see our latest episode. And then in the next slot right now is the latest episode of the Tea Party Media podcast from friend of the show, Martin Lindeskog. What is that doing there, Sam?
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Sam Sethi: I don't know. It's a bug. It's a bug. No, it's not a bug. Thank God. So one of the other ways I didn't mention for podcast creators to make money is to accept promos from other podcasters. What we did a few months ago was we enabled it so that you could say, oh, I would really like to promote my podcast on your show, but I don't want to change the audio. I just want to be featured on the podcast page. So what you can do is request to be featured as a promo on someone's podcast page. The creator that you request gets a notification and an email saying, claire, Waite Brown would like to be, for example, on your podcast page. Now, Claire will make a offer. So she'll say, I'll pay you a thousand sats to do that or 10,000 SATs to do that or £5 or whatever you want. That offer gets sent to the creator. The creator then goes, oh, yes, that podcast is very similar to my podcast. So we'll have some good crossover in fans. And yeah, I accept the amount. That's pretty good. They accept. And once the accept has been confirmed, we will then put the podcast cover art and the description in that second slot on the podcast page. So then people who come to your page will go, oh yes, there's the latest episode. Oh, number two says, Tea Party Media. Excellent, I like that show. Or I want to know more about that show, then can click on it. The idea of this promo is not to add anything to someone's audio. There are platforms that do that. We didn't want to change the audio, but we wanted to give podcasters the ability to cross promote between each other, give each other small amounts of money. This doesn't have to be hundreds or thousands of pounds. And it's a nice way again for people to make money from their podcast page. The length of these promotions can be variable as well. So they could be one day, one week, one month. You can choose how long you want as well. I think promos are a great step forward. We are enhancing that and you'll see that in the next couple of days on truthbounds, where if you are a creator and you've claimed your podcast already in TrueFans, we will actually highlight that in the second slot and give you a request button there on the page. This is what your podcast could look like in this slot and I think that's a great idea. That came from Claire, by the way. If you aren't a creator and you have never claimed a podcast on TrueFans, that slot will not appear. So we hide that from just normal general users. But I also think I've just thought about it as well, Claire. Why don't we extend this to POD roles? So why can't I request to be in your POD role? And that would be a nice way as well for cross promotion and discovery.
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Claire Waite Brown: Yeah, definitely. Good idea. Good thinking, Batman.
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Sam Sethi: Thank you.
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Claire Waite Brown: Any news you want to share this week?
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Sam Sethi: Yeah, I do. There's a really interesting story about YouTube now auto labeling AI content. And I think this is important because up until now, if you've got a podcast, you could label it as explicit and it's self labeling. If you have a podcast, there is the new AI tag proposal that RSS.com came up with and TrueFans has implemented where you could go into your Creators Dashboard and say, yeah, the host of this show is AI, click turn that on and let people know. And then in the user settings for TrueFans, you could filter out anything that's AI content. Right? So it's all self regulating at the moment. Of course James, my co host on Podnews will say, well, people won't do that because, you know, they don't want to be filtered out. And I argue back and say, well, they do it for explicit. Why wouldn't they do it for AI? Right? But he may be right. So YouTube automatically tagging and labeling AI generated content is a really good step forward. And I've also said that actually we should auto tag it and generate explicit tags because we now have transcripts where we can see if there's rude, naughty words in there. I go, yep, sorry mate, you haven't tagged it, but we've found the words. We're tagging it for you. And I think Russell from pod 2 actually proposed auto tagging as well a little while back, which unfortunately Adam Curry and James poo pooed. But now YouTube's doing it. I'm sure they'll embrace it with open arms. But the thing about it is it does bring up one micro problem, which is how much as a percentage of the show has to have AI in order for it to automatically be tagged on Podnews. Weekly review. We have probably one, maybe two announcements at the beginning, maybe in the middle, which are AI generated voices. Does James And I therefore have to tag Podnewsweek a review as AI? Because that's probably only got 5%. And so this is the problem. How much of a show or podcast needs to be AI generated for it to be tagged automatically as AI? And therefore I think we need to learn from YouTube. When did they mark or self label the content as AI? Was it 10%, 20%, 30%? In many ways we would have to mirror that then and say, okay, if we detect more than x percent of this podcast with AI generated voice content, we will auto label it. It's open at the moment. It's literally only happened this week. So let's see what the result is. Really?
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Claire Waite Brown: Yeah. Cool. Thank you.
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Sam Sethi: And that's it for this week, Claire. Our audio is recorded on Riverside, it's edited by you and we're hosted on
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Claire Waite Brown: TrueFans on the TrueFans app. Click on the purple button and become a fan of this podcast.
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Sam Sethi: You could also support us by streaming sats from the TrueFans wallet. Click on the currency or bitcoin icon under the play button or leave us a super comment by clicking on the speech bubble icon.
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Claire Waite Brown: We would love to have you follow us on Instagram or threadsrewfans fm.
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Sam Sethi: And as we talked about in this show, if you'd like to promote your podcast in this show's feed, go to your Creators Dashboard and click on the pencil icon next to your podcast location. This podcast creators from TrueFans and send
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Claire Waite Brown: us a request and you can find out more about how to use the features of the TrueFans platform by listening to our sister podcast, Fanzone.
