What is the clearest signal you can get in a spammy world? In Ep#44 we're going to examine why a boostagram is the best feedback you can get from your audience and feels good for everyone involved.
Huge thanks to ChadF & Robert Sasuke for supporting the show whilst it was live. Absolute legends! Also a shoutout to @[email protected] for the interview he had with Ainsley Costello on America+, really helped to showcase why the power of a boostagram lies mostly in the connection, not solely on the money.
15% of this episode is going to Moritz for building Alby and helping more Podcast 2.0 apps to enable the functionality of boosts. So don't forget to send one in!
Handy Links:
Cole's Interview: https://fountain.fm/episode/r2f3eNvTSAzOiPQQWzL1
Value 4 Value Support:
Boostagram: https://www.meremortalspodcast.com/support
Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/meremortalspodcast
Connect With Kyrin/Mere Mortals:
Website: https://www.meremortalspodcast.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/jjfq9eGReU
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/meremortalspods
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meremortalspodcasts/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@meremortalspodcasts
Huge thanks to ChadF & Robert Sasuke for supporting the show whilst it was live. Absolute legends! Also a shoutout to @[email protected] for the interview he had with Ainsley Costello on America+, really helped to showcase why the power of a boostagram lies mostly in the connection, not solely on the money.
15% of this episode is going to Moritz for building Alby and helping more Podcast 2.0 apps to enable the functionality of boosts. So don't forget to send one in!
Handy Links:
Cole's Interview: https://fountain.fm/episode/r2f3eNvTSAzOiPQQWzL1
Value 4 Value Support:
Boostagram: https://www.meremortalspodcast.com/support
Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/meremortalspodcast
Connect With Kyrin/Mere Mortals:
Website: https://www.meremortalspodcast.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/jjfq9eGReU
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/meremortalspods
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meremortalspodcasts/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@meremortalspodcasts
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What is the clearest signal you can get in a spammy world. Welcome everyone to another episode of the Value for Value podcast. My name is Kyrin, host of the Mere Mortals podcast, but also this one from Diving deeper into the Value for Value World. This is the podcast for those digital content creators who want to learn more about how they can deeply connect with their audience and also receive support from them with a direct peer to peer payment rather than having to go through financial intermediaries, through doing things like the advertising model, through paywalls and all of those things, which I don't think helped contribute to the growth of the show and to forming a real deeper connection.
Now, I just want to reiterate, this is a live show that I do on Wednesday 10 a.m. UTC plus ten, which is the equivalent of on the Tuesday, Wednesday midnight at UTC zero. So just take off or add whatever timezone you're in from that midnight time and you will find if you could join me in live. I really do appreciate it. I know there's a couple of people listening in right now and so yeah, I would just recommend that. So let's get into the topic for this week's episode and this is Boostagrams messages with money. So last week we were talking about these streaming micropayments.
They actually work and this is kind of a continuation of this theme, which is, yeah, being able to actually get support directly from your audience. But this time it's going to be slightly different than the micropayments aspect and this is something that is called a boostagram So what is a boost? What is a boostagram? Well, this is something that you can do within your podcasting app if you have a decent one. And I would recommend that because if you're listening to this show, for example, you'll get things like transcripts. You get things like chapter out, you'll get things like links popping up on your screen, you get a better experience on these apps.
And you can also do something by helping support me directly in the show, which is called a boost and a boostagram. So this is usually a individual one off payment that is typically larger than something you will see with the micropayments. And it can occur usually due to a call to action from the host. So for example, myself saying, Hey, send in a boostagram if you want to just highlight something on the episode or if you want to, I guess treat it as kind of a comment. And some of these apps will show it as a comment that can be posted underneath the actual episode.
So if you go to Fountain, for example, in the activity tab, which is the first thing that pops up, you will see people that their comments, if you want to put it that way or that boostagrams that have come in. And the difference with this between something like a YouTube is that there is actual some money attached to it, a portion of Bitcoin. So the cool thing with this is it can be somewhat automated for recurring ones if, if you want to do this and I should just explain. So a boostagram is when it has an actual message attached to it so you can have your name and it says, you know this is from Harry and your comment your thing that you want to write and you can send that in and it will show up on the episode for, I think about half of the apps.
It shows up on the actual episode somewhere. And then for the rest of them, it's kind of hidden at the moment. It's kind of hidden Miss, which app you choose that does that. And you can also do it without sending a message, without sending your name in. If you want to, you can do this anonymously and you can just send in what is called a boost, which is just an individual tap of your phone. Oh, I really like what he said there. I'm just going to hit the button and send in and payment of money. Now, this can be automated, for example. And this could perhaps and I suppose I should just one back a bit.
If you look at something like the no agenda show, the way that they have done value for value over these past ten plus years is they've done it through the PayPal model, which allows for similar functionalities. You can send in money to the show and you can attach a message to that and you can have your name attached to that as well. And so they will do this and they'll call it out in the show. One of the great things with PayPal is you can automate it so you can have a monthly one coming in. So every month of the month there's a monthly donation to no agenda.
Here's $5 or $10 or whatever amount that it is that you choose. So this is kind of lacking a little bit, I would say, at the moment in the in the podcasting world. So there are a couple of ways this can be automated for recurring a support, even if you're irregular in listening. So this is just, hey, I don't know if I'm going to be able to get to this show this week or it's just easier for me. I don't want to continually having to do this Every time I press, I listen to the show. I would just rather know in my my mind, in my heart of hearts that I'm supporting by this way.
And so there is a a service called Oak, which is more of a Bitcoin thing. So you have to kind of be a bit onto the lingo and know how to do it. I suppose a bit more about the Bitcoin Lightning Network to be able to use that one. But if you type in Bitcoin, you should show that up and it will show you how to do that. And there is a very another very niche one called Cron. So this is being able to a cron job. I honestly have no idea how, how this works. It's a very programming thing. So if you're a programmer you can actually get into the weeds and do this and automate it yourself.
And one coming up is called Podfans, which is a a podcasting app. It's on the desktop at the moment. And one of the features they have in there is to be able to have a budget and this can go out through the month. You say I have a monthly budget and I want to spend only this amount. I have this. This is I suppose there's variations of this. You can have very different ways of doing this. But I think one of the ways that some might be doing it is that if you want to, every time an episode drops, you automatically automatically send in an amount to that show.
So a very similar concept that's going on there. Now, why is this important? Why are boostagrams critical? Why that? Why do they help? And this attached message can provide the show extra content and is valuable feedback as well. And it's kind of solving the black box problem for creators and for producers of of this content. So based on Graham, you want to help support the show. You send in a an amount of money and a message attached to that fits perfectly and with value for value because you get to choose the amount. And this is typically measured in Satoshis, which is a portion of Bitcoin.
As I mentioned in the previous episode on streaming of sets. Now let's get into the feedback loop and I suppose why this is important with value for value. So and why this is actually providing extra content and is helping out your your producer as you're, you know, helping out the show as you're doing it. Adam Curry likes to say and this is the host of the No Agenda show, the kind of create or the value for value model. He likes to say he has producers and these are people who are helping to produce the show. They are providing content, they are actually funding and supporting the show.
And so they're not just a listener, they are actually in a producer of the show. And if you go on to embed, you can actually see that people are listed as producers for this show. And so it's kind of is a legit claim to be able to make, which is what that services that website is used for. I believe it's to be able to show, yeah, I worked on this show, I helped contribute to this. So the feedback loop I suppose is the biggest portion of this and this is why this is important, why this ability to do this easily, quickly within your app is so cool. I mentioned Paypal before and you could just be going, Well, I could just do it like that.
And it's like, yeah, you can, you can do that. But it's an extra five steps. If you're listening on a podcast, you're a new listener and you hear someone say, Oh, go to PayPal, okay, got to find the link. Then you got to click on it, then you got to log in. And if you don't have one yet, you've got to sign in and you've got to choose the amount, then you've got to, yeah, there's an extra six steps and this is just trying to condense all of this down into maybe three steps or two steps or hopefully even one step in the future. So the feedback loop is, is critical in this.
And sorry, this is addressed mostly this section now to content creators, the people actually doing this, how, how can I incentivise my audience to, to send me an a boost and a boostagram and this is where you have to go. Okay. Well they need to know about the the benefits of this. They need to feel like they're actually doing something. And so the feedback loop is critical. If I send in something to a show, I kind of want to know that that show is actually receiving it, that it's actually going somewhere. And so the worst way for this is, is to ignore them.
So if you if you know that they're coming in, if you don't ask people to send them in, they're not going to do it. And the second worst way is to unintentionally not know about them. So this is going onto a little story I like to repeat every now and then. When I first started podcasting and was putting my show out, no one listening. And rightly so. Because rightly so. Because it wasn't a good product. I was testing the waters. I was doing something for the first time. As I started to get better, I was going, Oh, okay, I'd really like to connect with people and I would like to kind of let people know that I was doing a show but not, not do it in a spammy way.
And so one of the things I was doing was I would find new podcasts on Instagram. I would add them, I would listen to an episode or two. I would then leave them a comment or a review on Apple. And I would always give five stars because I was just like being positive. And I would say something nice that I enjoyed about the show. It's something that I thought was unique, something that I thought they did well, and then I'd reach out to them on Instagram afterwards with a with a direct message. And I usually do it as a as an audio, and probably only about half of them, I think, responded to me.
And this really was a feeling of, okay, well, I don't think, you know, all that effort I just put into was kind of worthless. Even if they saw it. I mean, if they just ignored it, then it's kind of like, well, I'm not going to put in more effort again, I'm not going to bother to to do this. And a very similar thing happened to me when boostagrams I found about them for the first time. I was like, Oh my God, this is so cool. Now, this was right around when they were first happening for the first time. And I'm talking in the kind of first, I don't know, 3 to 6 months, something like that.
And so not many shows were doing this because it was so new. But the ones that were I think I tried to go to almost every show. So it was only 500 to 1000 of them, something like that. And I would send them in a boost, a boostagram And what happened was a lot of shows actually didn't know that this was a functionality that you could see the messages that were popping up. And so I remember trying to send one into the What is Money Show, which is a Bitcoin podcast, and quite a few of them actually. And I remember listening to episodes afterwards to see, okay, did they acknowledge it?
Did they do that? Are they going to read out my message or anything like that? And they didn't. And that was, I think mostly because they didn't actually know that was a thing. It that those boosts coming in could be a boostagram and actually have a message attached. And so they were just assuming, okay this is just someone someone supporting the show who doesn't want or need or doesn't want or need any acknowledgement for doing that. They just enjoyed the show for its own sake, which is, you know, in an ideal world, well, not even in an ideal world it is. I think that some people do, but I think a lot of people like myself, they like to know that you at the very least receive the message that is seen.
I'm not going to put in, you know, write out a huge email to someone or and do something which is requiring a bunch of my time and energy just to have it just go into the into the black box, too. You don't know if it's been seen or not. I mean, hell, if you just look at the amount of messaging apps which now have a function which show that it's been a received and to read it so I'm thinking things like WhatsApp, I'm thinking things like Telegram, I'm thinking things like Facebook Messenger. You can see this is an important thing for people to do when it's when it comes to messaging.
And Instagram does the same thing. I'm not sure if Twitter and Twitter doesn't have that function, but you can you can see, okay, it's important for people to know if they're sending someone a message that is, one been received and two, that they can respond to it. If they choose to. And so if we're going into, I suppose, more of the feedback loop, you might say, okay, well that's, that's great client. But you know, DMS messages, emails, a lot of it spam, a lot of it's just kind of junk that people are sending in and they don't, they don't care.
And you're on the receiving end of this, you're just feeling like I'm just getting so much trash. Well, unlike direct messages or spam or things like this, the signal is way higher. No one can afford to spam with legit money. If you are sending in money to a show or to someone, you can't do that indefinitely and you can't do it at the scale of a automated bot. Just sending in these sorts of things and just going and sending it out to, you know, 100 different podcasters. I get emails like this all the time of, Hey, I've seen your show on Instagram or I've seen your podcast on YouTube or whatever, I can create shorts, I can do this for you, I can do that for you, and you can tell it's spam because they don't include your name at the top or they they type in hate me and models, which is obviously not my name.
And if you just look down below you, it's not too hard to find my name in there somewhere. So this is, I suppose, just the signal side of things. So once again, if you're the content creator, it's such a genuine feedback in comparison to the YouTube comments, which can be they can be good, but a lot of times they can be crap to the emails you get. Sometimes they can be good, but a lot of times it's crap when it comes to this. When money is attached, it is pretty much always good. And I don't mean good in the sense of you're going to get positive feedback.
I've seen boosts being sent in by people who were critical of who was saying that the audio was not great. How we got one just the other day saying the audio was a bit patchy and I mean that is just amazing feedback to receive and they can just be straight up hateful. But even then it's like, okay, well you're sending me money, so I'm kind of okay with this. So it's a very different experience from, I suppose, the typical ways that you will receive messages as a as a podcaster. And so you might be thinking, okay, well, how can I help to incentivise my audience to do this?
How can I make this easier? How can I close the feedback loop so that they know they are actually being received? And so here's a couple of suggestions of shows that you can maybe check out and see if you like, the way that they're doing this. And if you go back to season two, you probably see a lot of it in there because I talked about how they were doing this with their boost agram section. So I would definitely just recommend going to season two and checking that out. But a quick one here is you can do a quick acknowledgement like the flooding with Bitcoin people.
They just say thanks to, you know, memorials to Harry to John to use the for supporting the show this week. Just real quick brief one. They don't actually talk about the messages at all. I didn't particularly enjoy that one. I didn't find it incentivising. So I'm probably not going to send in another one to that show. I also just the show was not my cup of tea, so I probably wouldn't listen to it much more. Anyway, there's another one TFTC which used to be Tales from the Crypt. I actually have forgotten that. Change the name because that is trademarked.
And what they do is they read out the top five each week, which is something that you, you, you might have to do if you start getting a lot of messages in. And so yeah, they just do it. Top five here's this week and thank you they thank those five directly there is the ordering from small to the smallest the largest like on the America Plus podcast all of his ones when he gets them in, he reads them out from the smallest to largest. And Cole’s excitement goes from already pretty excited to very excited when he gets to the top one. So that's a nice way.
On my own show, for example, the mere mortals, we kind of just do it as they come in, so in a chronological format. So I guess that's incentivising to, to send one in earlier in a way. But we give big detailed answers to it. So we do like to respond to it and use it as content for our show. And so if someone sends in something, yeah, it's a it's a big message that we what we even if it's a small message, we try and drag it out into a larger theme, which is what we enjoy doing. Or you can mix it with the PayPal, like podcasting 2.0 where they have just a big section.
So I would just recommend your show format. Probably will have to change a little bit if you want to lean into this. I have seen shows where they get a lot of comments from people, a lot of boost agrams coming in and they don't even acknowledge it in their show itself. People are just content to say, you know, I'm going to just put this here. And the benefit is for myself. And knowing that I help contribute to the show, you don't need to receive that support, that that recognition that that's fine. I'm sure that works. I would just say if you want it to work the best, you do need to have a, a closing of that feedback loop so that people know, oh, hey, I'm not just sending money to nowhere and it's not doing anything.
So I would just definitely recommend that. Let's talk about the listener side of things so that you can help direct your listeners to or if you're just a listener yourself and wanting to know more, this is probably the easiest way to get started off this because you might be saying, okay, like, well, how do I do this? I've found out what a boostagram is, but you know, bitcoin's attached. It's kind of hard. It's difficult. So this is my my easiest steps that I would say at the moment. So the first thing to do is you're going to need to acquire some satoshis, which is a portion of Bitcoin.
Now, the easiest way that I would say to do this is a combination of either using if you're on the desktop of using Alby, which is a Chrome extension. So if you go to getalby dot com, it will get you through the process of how to download that extension. Most of us would probably download an extension before. So assuming you're capable of that and then within the actual extension itself there is a button which says you buy bitcoin, you can do that and then you can use a debit card to be able to do that. So that's a relatively easy way of of getting your first.
That's another way is probably if you're on your mobile is to use the Fountain app and this is where it's a podcasting app which pays you to listen to podcasts a very small amount. And so it's not like you're, you're going to acquire a whole ton unless you're and they cap it at a certain amount per day. I can't remember how much it is. I think it's a couple of hundred SATs. So over the course of a week of listening you might get $0.50 worth of, of, of money into your little fountain wallet there. But once again, this is an easy way where you don't have to do anything yourself.
You just have to listen to stuff and then you can pass that on if you choose to. And so this is getting to the next section, choosing where to boost from. At the moment, I believe there's about eight podcasting in 2.0 apps which can do this. So this would be fountain, it would be Castamatic, it would be podverse, it would be podcast guru on your phone, on the desktop. It would be curiocaster It would be pod fans, it would be podverse again because they've got a desktop version and there is another one holds, I should have brought this up, um, as I was doing this in freehand.
So let me just jump on to here quickly. Go down, down, down to here, go down to the filters, go down to value. And so the other one pod friend, of course, pod friend. I was just forgetting about that. You can also do it on Breeze on your on your mobile as well. So there we go. There's quite a few options there for you to to be able to do that and to send in some value. So you need to choose one of them. They all have different functionalities. As I mentioned, Fountain is probably my, my daily go to one that I use. I use pod verse pretty regularly as well.
And they all have different integrations. So Fountain has their own wallet set up. The thing with Alby, which is really cool, is they've had actually got a lot of integrations with these apps. So in particular with podcast Guru with Pod verse, and I'm not actually too sure about castamatic because I don't have an iPhone, so I'm not exactly sure how they they do it. But you can use this Alby thing, this Alby Alby thing, this I'll be wallet to be able to connect with them. So if you set it up on the desktop, then you can actually have this kind of integration with your mobile phone.
So you have some money sitting in there. Then you say, Oh cool, that money is now sitting on my podcast app. Once again, you probably only want to be using smallish amounts, which you would be okay losing. So I don't know, $20 worth, $40 worth, something like that. And then just topping that up as as you want a couple of other ways of doing this is on the podcast index website. So if you go to podcast index dot org and you choose a show that you like listening to, you'll see on your little browser extension, the the Alby a button will turn green on.
In my case, on if I'm using the brave browser and then I think it might turn blue if I'm using the chrome. And this is just a way of being able to do that of boosting directly from the from the desktop page itself and some future functionalities that I see coming. There's a service called Mash. I've been meaning to integrate it to my website for ages. I just haven't got around to it. It's a very, very similar concept where people, no matter what page they are on your website, they can help boost that in. So this is for the podcasters or content creators. If they want to do that.
There is a thing called the boost bot, which is okay, you can actually add functionalities to this because you can now have anyone who gets a boost message coming in. This message can be integrated to Mastodon, for example, and it will show up as a as a, as a post. I, for example, have these showing up on my telegram and on my desktop on discord, which is an easy way for me to collate them so I can actually see where all of the messages that I want to read out for the incoming week. And this is where I'd use a service like Satoshis Stream, which is really good for that Satoshis dot stream.
As I mentioned with the cron job, as I mentioned with the streaming of stats in in the previous episode, this doesn't have to just be done with Bitcoin. This can actually change two different currencies if there's development on this. So if you are an Ethereum developer, if you are on one of the other cryptocurrencies, you can actually do this yourself. Is it going to happen? I don't know. We've we've been doing this for a couple of years now and there hasn't been much interest from people trying to do that. So it seems like this is the way at the moment. And then if you want to go real crazy, go check out a show like Behind the Schemes where they have every time a boost comes in, they and of certain amounts they have it so that a audio and a jingle will play of, you know, a goat being slaughtered or a random noise popping up if you do the boob donation for example. 8008 there's all these kind of funny ways that you can really create a dynamic, interesting show if you want to do use this.
And once again, this is all being kind of connected with money. So it's kind of incentivising people to do certain actions, which is, you know, just the way the world works. If you're incentivised to do something, then then you're going to do it. So there's a lot of very, very cool things happening with with all of these boosts and boostagrams. And I would just say that just on a personal note, the first time that I got one in was it was kind of like a revelation to me because that one was just a signal of of recognition, I guess that someone was willing to value the show and actually do it with some money.
And it didn't even matter to me. The amount, to be honest. In the future it will. I want to be able to create a a lifestyle, an income from this. So yes, the amounts will now, but for me it's always been the most important thing is just okay people actually listening to the show and then valuing it and giving me feedback, which is just the black box of podcasting I mentioned right at the start, the first six months, the first year when you were just absolutely getting nothing. There's nothing in return that no one cares. And it's just it just feels so demoralising.
It's just really, really sucks. And so having this mechanism available and and being able to direct people to it, I feel is much more valuable than directing them to leave you an Apple review or leaving a comment on YouTube because one, all of those things can go away if, if you get, you know, deplatformed or even if there's just technical errors on a glitch and everything gets wiped. And this actually, you know, it does have some real life use case. It does have some real tangible, valuable money attached to it. And the other great things with two grams is, you know, people can choose whatever amount they want.
I talked about the boob on the men on this podcast. We've kind of cultivated or started one, which is the baby boost, the 3838. And this was because one had a baby recently. And so yeah, it's kind of just a way of someone being able to just send in a baby boost, you know, it's kind of funny. So very, very cool, very exciting. And I would just say, Bruce, two grams are, I believe, the the way the future there's so many other additional technical things behind the scenes that that really make them powerful. You know, they using Bitcoin, which I think is a really solid money and allows anyone to support you no matter where they are in the world in a easy, quick, cheap manner.
Um, because the thing with PayPal, for example, is they take a, you know, minimum, I think it's like minimum 50 cent fee. And so if someone wants to send you in $0.51, you know you're not getting any of that, you're getting $0.01, whereas if you're using boostagrams essentially all of it goes in plus all of the other additional benefits of being able to use splits and new hosting it yourself. So, so many benefits, so very, very cool on, on that aspect. I'm now going to go into my own boostagram Lounge and to be able to show you guys how all of this works.
So take it away. Adam Curry Welcome to the Value for Value Boostagram Lounge And of course the irony of this is that the very episode where I want to demonstrate how these boostagrams work, how you can complete the feedback loop. I get none in this week. Oh, the irony, The irony of it all. So if you want to see how it did work, go out to the any of the previous episodes and probably to future episodes because I'm going to use the most powerful tool that I had in this. I didn't want to do it this season. I was really hoping to avoid it, but I'm going to have to bring it out.
Indeed it is the sad puppy. If you're looking on your screen right now, there is a very, very sad puppy and that's because I didn't get any boost agrams in this week. So please, I would just recommend if you want to help support the show and if you do want to make it not as ironical for next week's episode, if you can send in a boost, I would really appreciate that. And look all of this as well as I was having some troubles with the set up that I have, I'm pretty sure that none came in, but I can't be 100% guaranteed. So once again, if there were any mistakes, if there was, if you did send something in and I didn't acknowledge it, please reach out to me in another manner and I will definitely come back and and acknowledge you for that once.
Because like I said, there's nothing more sucky than sending out a message and it just going nowhere. So, yeah, just, just reiterating that. So. All right. Well, we'll jump on to something a bit more fun, a bit more exciting rather than an empty boostagram lounge Let's get onto my tips section. So the most powerful bit in this is the actual connection. As I mentioned, the money is is great, but it's not the most powerful thing. And so I really my my tip for this week is to go check out the Cole McCormick interview that he had with Ainsley Costello on America Plus.
And Ainsley is an artist who a musician, I should say, who recently put up her music as anyone could, could download it for free, could listen to it for free if they wanted to. But if you wanted to help support her as well, she had a lightning address and attached to to that feed to that music so that if someone wanted to they and they wanted to play her music, you could include her into your show and then you could change it so that when people are listening, they're micropayments, which I was talking about last episode would go directly to her and any boost that they sent in would also go directly to her.
And she's had a really amazing experience this last two weeks where once again with Adam Curry he's always popping up, was doing this really cool thing with value for value music. And that's a little hint, a primer for next week's episode. She was receiving some of these messages in. And you can hear in that interview that she had with Cole, you know, her stories and as an artist and not about I earn this much money this week or I did this thing and then I got this amount note. They're all about how she did a concert and she she went to this and the kids at at her kind of concert at this performance she did knew the lyrics to a song.
They were singing it alone. You know what a what a rush, what an amazing feeling. That must be where people have listened to your music, learnt the words, and then physically show up to to a performance that you do. And so, yes, you know, v4 V can get you paid, but not all payments are equal as well. And she talks about how she has earned, you know, money from Spotify and from I can't remember how many other streaming services she's just put her music on a lot of them and she can earn money from that. But it doesn't have the same feeling of a boost, different message coming in with someone saying, I really like this song.
You know, this made my week. I preferred this one. This one was awesome in comparison to something like Spotify, which is just, you know, you maybe get 100,000 listens and a very, very small paycheque in the mail or, you know, I don't know how they actually do it. I probably imagine they send it to a bank account somewhere. So once again, the powerful bit, it's in the message, the value attached to it is very handy, It's very helpful. Money is a very useful thing, but the the way that it comes and is delivered to you, I would certainly prefer and I do prefer because I could have put advertising on any of my shows previously and earn money through that.
I won't because I don't like the way that that money is coming to me. I like the way that it's got a message attached. I like the way that someone is doing it voluntary. They don't have to do it. They just do it out of the kind of goodness and goodness of the heart and of, I suppose, a feeling of of value transfer. They got value from the show. They wanted to send it back to me. So I would just yet recommend checking that out America plus with Cole McCormick and had Ainsley Costello on and that was some from last week an app or service I want to highlight.
I've already talked about it but I'll I think they are pretty critical and not only for this function of of boosting and messages, but I'm actually starting to use it quite a bit in my everyday life for various things. So you do have to start with the desktop would just let you know that upfront. And because they don't have the functionality to start on your phone, absolutely integrating it into their own platform, as I mentioned with podcasts and podcast guru. But you can see, okay, this you do need to start from there. And I yeah, so there are multiple use cases for this and I utilise it for various things.
So as a tester for podcasting apps, for example, I, I use different wallets to try and tune in to see if, I guess to see if I don't want to have all my money in one place. I do want to be slightly careful about that. And so it is useful to, to be able to have a smaller wallet, which I can go, okay, this one is if I'm connecting to a new website, if I'm connecting to a new place, I I'm going to be careful with this, I suppose. And so not, not get too deep into the weeds and not have, you know, $300 sitting somewhere. So it is somewhere and I'm just connecting it randomly.
So I do like to separate it. And so I have three wallets for myself or three three ones that I use. One is kind of my own little personal savings. One, one is a joint one that I have with one and one is my tester wallet. And so they they vary from the amounts that I store in them and what I actually use them for. So another is I go to a local Bitcoin, meet up and there's a guy there who brings Beef skewers along and he does the value for value thing and he, he says, you know, just send me and how much you want. And, and this is a case where I'll be is really great because he puts in telegram chat, this is my lightning address I can just type that into I'll be it'll connect it and then I can just go Yeah I want to send him 21,000 sets.
You know about four or $5 worth or maybe even more. And that'll just instantly go, It's super, super quick. Um, as I mentioned, it's a place that I kind of store my earnings from some of the shows. I'm not comfortable, comfortable keeping large amounts on there. But yeah, up to a couple of hundred dollars. I'm kind of okay with that. And then there's another thing called NOSTR which you can integrate with directly from there. So I want to yeah, just want to say Albi is, is a really useful place, so get our bitcoin out. So it's an easy place to get started with all of the stuff.
I'm going to jump into the final section here. The value for value. And speaking of I'll be for this week, I'm going to send 15% to either it's going to be directly to the I suppose, like company account if they have one. If not, I'm going to send it to Moritz, who is one of the the guys who helped create it. And he's actually helped me a fair bit in the past with integrating it with things, with chatting with me, with letting me know how this all works. So I do want to thank him and the service that he's providing to the podcasting community by doing all of this.
And so, yeah, 15% of this week's episode is going to go to him. And finally, I'm going to give a recommendation to send in a boost. And now I can see actually here on the mastodon that Robert Sasuke has sent me in a boost. Yep, here we go. I just got it. And I've actually got to. He had to leave once when they weren't showing up as quickly as I wanted them to, but I can read them out now, so delayed Boostagram Lounge So I've got two here. One is from Chad F and he just said just got my podverse notification and then the the what's that?
The celebration emoji 3333 sent using pod verse. Thank you very much my friend and the other one that I have here and he was actually our mysterious streamer from there from the last episode. So a big thanks to Chad for listening in live. And then the other one that I got here was from Robert Sasuke, and he says, Hey Kyrin, thanks for your excellent podcast, ahi te mando un Boost. Greetings, Robert Suzuki, a thousand SATs and using podcast guru. So this is really awesome. We've got a couple of different apps showing up there and ahi te mando un Boost means like I'm sending you a boost here in Spanish because Robert Sasuke is from the Dominican Republic and he does a few shows in Spanish.
One is called Esto eS Podcast 2.0, I believe that's what it's still called. He has another one called Oh jeez, I'm going to have to look this up as well. So forgotten is showing times how embarrassing that was. More model. I'm just going to look this up. This will be the way of doing it. Ten Vito on Cafe, which is about personal development, psychology and mental health, and he's got another one here to Tech reflects your daily reflections about technology and its impact on human behaviour. Uh, man, he's got so many models solopreneur, which is I guess like the, uh, the way of being an, a solo entrepreneur and employment, though he negotiates online, which is like basically business online, and he's got another one about videos, He's got another one about, I guess this is looking about being a partner in a relationship with I'm guessing this is his fiancee or his wife or his partner.
And yeah, he's got a whole lot of shows. And I've actually learned a lot from him because I speak decent Spanish. And so listening into his shows has been great. So, yes, Robert, I do see that. Thank you very much for sending that in. And thank you, Chad and and Robert, for for doing that for for filling out my show so I didn't have to I'm still going to leave the section that I had there and for the the sad puppy. But I'll put a little message in saying but but wait till the end because it comes good. So. Oh, big episode as usual. Thank you, everyone, for joining in, for tuning in.
I hope this has helped you to learn more about what a boostagram is and and how it can help you for your for your own podcast or as a listener, what these things are that people are asking you to do. As I mentioned, you know, send in a boost for the next episode. I would really appreciate that. So I don't have to use the sad puppy. I only in there. Chapter art and yeah, all of this that you are helping to to send in is, you know, I'm basically sending all of this back out to other podcasters so I'm not accumulating a whole bunch myself at this stage.
But your messages are very, very, very much appreciated and yeah, I might clarify a little bit more about just how much this podcast cost to create, and maybe we can set a target for for this season or for the next season of, of how much it would be nice to get in So many lots of recommendations, lots of things to check out their links in the chapter art in the images. And so if you don't have a decent podcasting app, I would recommend going out to any of the what I ate that I listed. They're trying them out because they all have different features, different functionalities and but you know, they've all got the core aspect of one playing audio quite nicely and to of adding in features and showing that they're actually improving their app unlike something like Spotify or Apple which are very closed and if they do make improvements it's only to benefit themselves, not necessarily the listener or the podcast app themselves.
So lots of things to to talk about. I'm really excited to talk about value for value music next week. I've actually brought this forward a bit because I, I was planning on talking about it later, but there's been some really exciting developments and I want to highlight that a bit more. So that's going to be it for this week. Thank you very much for tuning in. And until the next one Chao for now, Kyrin out!
What is the clearest signal you can get in a spammy world. Welcome everyone to another episode of the Value for Value podcast. My name is Kyrin, host of the Mere Mortals podcast, but also this one from Diving deeper into the Value for Value World. This is the podcast for those digital content creators who want to learn more about how they can deeply connect with their audience and also receive support from them with a direct peer to peer payment rather than having to go through financial intermediaries, through doing things like the advertising model, through paywalls and all of those things, which I don't think helped contribute to the growth of the show and to forming a real deeper connection.
Now, I just want to reiterate, this is a live show that I do on Wednesday 10 a.m. UTC plus ten, which is the equivalent of on the Tuesday, Wednesday midnight at UTC zero. So just take off or add whatever timezone you're in from that midnight time and you will find if you could join me in live. I really do appreciate it. I know there's a couple of people listening in right now and so yeah, I would just recommend that. So let's get into the topic for this week's episode and this is Boostagrams messages with money. So last week we were talking about these streaming micropayments.
They actually work and this is kind of a continuation of this theme, which is, yeah, being able to actually get support directly from your audience. But this time it's going to be slightly different than the micropayments aspect and this is something that is called a boostagram So what is a boost? What is a boostagram? Well, this is something that you can do within your podcasting app if you have a decent one. And I would recommend that because if you're listening to this show, for example, you'll get things like transcripts. You get things like chapter out, you'll get things like links popping up on your screen, you get a better experience on these apps.
And you can also do something by helping support me directly in the show, which is called a boost and a boostagram. So this is usually a individual one off payment that is typically larger than something you will see with the micropayments. And it can occur usually due to a call to action from the host. So for example, myself saying, Hey, send in a boostagram if you want to just highlight something on the episode or if you want to, I guess treat it as kind of a comment. And some of these apps will show it as a comment that can be posted underneath the actual episode.
So if you go to Fountain, for example, in the activity tab, which is the first thing that pops up, you will see people that their comments, if you want to put it that way or that boostagrams that have come in. And the difference with this between something like a YouTube is that there is actual some money attached to it, a portion of Bitcoin. So the cool thing with this is it can be somewhat automated for recurring ones if, if you want to do this and I should just explain. So a boostagram is when it has an actual message attached to it so you can have your name and it says, you know this is from Harry and your comment your thing that you want to write and you can send that in and it will show up on the episode for, I think about half of the apps.
It shows up on the actual episode somewhere. And then for the rest of them, it's kind of hidden at the moment. It's kind of hidden Miss, which app you choose that does that. And you can also do it without sending a message, without sending your name in. If you want to, you can do this anonymously and you can just send in what is called a boost, which is just an individual tap of your phone. Oh, I really like what he said there. I'm just going to hit the button and send in and payment of money. Now, this can be automated, for example. And this could perhaps and I suppose I should just one back a bit.
If you look at something like the no agenda show, the way that they have done value for value over these past ten plus years is they've done it through the PayPal model, which allows for similar functionalities. You can send in money to the show and you can attach a message to that and you can have your name attached to that as well. And so they will do this and they'll call it out in the show. One of the great things with PayPal is you can automate it so you can have a monthly one coming in. So every month of the month there's a monthly donation to no agenda.
Here's $5 or $10 or whatever amount that it is that you choose. So this is kind of lacking a little bit, I would say, at the moment in the in the podcasting world. So there are a couple of ways this can be automated for recurring a support, even if you're irregular in listening. So this is just, hey, I don't know if I'm going to be able to get to this show this week or it's just easier for me. I don't want to continually having to do this Every time I press, I listen to the show. I would just rather know in my my mind, in my heart of hearts that I'm supporting by this way.
And so there is a a service called Oak, which is more of a Bitcoin thing. So you have to kind of be a bit onto the lingo and know how to do it. I suppose a bit more about the Bitcoin Lightning Network to be able to use that one. But if you type in Bitcoin, you should show that up and it will show you how to do that. And there is a very another very niche one called Cron. So this is being able to a cron job. I honestly have no idea how, how this works. It's a very programming thing. So if you're a programmer you can actually get into the weeds and do this and automate it yourself.
And one coming up is called Podfans, which is a a podcasting app. It's on the desktop at the moment. And one of the features they have in there is to be able to have a budget and this can go out through the month. You say I have a monthly budget and I want to spend only this amount. I have this. This is I suppose there's variations of this. You can have very different ways of doing this. But I think one of the ways that some might be doing it is that if you want to, every time an episode drops, you automatically automatically send in an amount to that show.
So a very similar concept that's going on there. Now, why is this important? Why are boostagrams critical? Why that? Why do they help? And this attached message can provide the show extra content and is valuable feedback as well. And it's kind of solving the black box problem for creators and for producers of of this content. So based on Graham, you want to help support the show. You send in a an amount of money and a message attached to that fits perfectly and with value for value because you get to choose the amount. And this is typically measured in Satoshis, which is a portion of Bitcoin.
As I mentioned in the previous episode on streaming of sets. Now let's get into the feedback loop and I suppose why this is important with value for value. So and why this is actually providing extra content and is helping out your your producer as you're, you know, helping out the show as you're doing it. Adam Curry likes to say and this is the host of the No Agenda show, the kind of create or the value for value model. He likes to say he has producers and these are people who are helping to produce the show. They are providing content, they are actually funding and supporting the show.
And so they're not just a listener, they are actually in a producer of the show. And if you go on to embed, you can actually see that people are listed as producers for this show. And so it's kind of is a legit claim to be able to make, which is what that services that website is used for. I believe it's to be able to show, yeah, I worked on this show, I helped contribute to this. So the feedback loop I suppose is the biggest portion of this and this is why this is important, why this ability to do this easily, quickly within your app is so cool. I mentioned Paypal before and you could just be going, Well, I could just do it like that.
And it's like, yeah, you can, you can do that. But it's an extra five steps. If you're listening on a podcast, you're a new listener and you hear someone say, Oh, go to PayPal, okay, got to find the link. Then you got to click on it, then you got to log in. And if you don't have one yet, you've got to sign in and you've got to choose the amount, then you've got to, yeah, there's an extra six steps and this is just trying to condense all of this down into maybe three steps or two steps or hopefully even one step in the future. So the feedback loop is, is critical in this.
And sorry, this is addressed mostly this section now to content creators, the people actually doing this, how, how can I incentivise my audience to, to send me an a boost and a boostagram and this is where you have to go. Okay. Well they need to know about the the benefits of this. They need to feel like they're actually doing something. And so the feedback loop is critical. If I send in something to a show, I kind of want to know that that show is actually receiving it, that it's actually going somewhere. And so the worst way for this is, is to ignore them.
So if you if you know that they're coming in, if you don't ask people to send them in, they're not going to do it. And the second worst way is to unintentionally not know about them. So this is going onto a little story I like to repeat every now and then. When I first started podcasting and was putting my show out, no one listening. And rightly so. Because rightly so. Because it wasn't a good product. I was testing the waters. I was doing something for the first time. As I started to get better, I was going, Oh, okay, I'd really like to connect with people and I would like to kind of let people know that I was doing a show but not, not do it in a spammy way.
And so one of the things I was doing was I would find new podcasts on Instagram. I would add them, I would listen to an episode or two. I would then leave them a comment or a review on Apple. And I would always give five stars because I was just like being positive. And I would say something nice that I enjoyed about the show. It's something that I thought was unique, something that I thought they did well, and then I'd reach out to them on Instagram afterwards with a with a direct message. And I usually do it as a as an audio, and probably only about half of them, I think, responded to me.
And this really was a feeling of, okay, well, I don't think, you know, all that effort I just put into was kind of worthless. Even if they saw it. I mean, if they just ignored it, then it's kind of like, well, I'm not going to put in more effort again, I'm not going to bother to to do this. And a very similar thing happened to me when boostagrams I found about them for the first time. I was like, Oh my God, this is so cool. Now, this was right around when they were first happening for the first time. And I'm talking in the kind of first, I don't know, 3 to 6 months, something like that.
And so not many shows were doing this because it was so new. But the ones that were I think I tried to go to almost every show. So it was only 500 to 1000 of them, something like that. And I would send them in a boost, a boostagram And what happened was a lot of shows actually didn't know that this was a functionality that you could see the messages that were popping up. And so I remember trying to send one into the What is Money Show, which is a Bitcoin podcast, and quite a few of them actually. And I remember listening to episodes afterwards to see, okay, did they acknowledge it?
Did they do that? Are they going to read out my message or anything like that? And they didn't. And that was, I think mostly because they didn't actually know that was a thing. It that those boosts coming in could be a boostagram and actually have a message attached. And so they were just assuming, okay this is just someone someone supporting the show who doesn't want or need or doesn't want or need any acknowledgement for doing that. They just enjoyed the show for its own sake, which is, you know, in an ideal world, well, not even in an ideal world it is. I think that some people do, but I think a lot of people like myself, they like to know that you at the very least receive the message that is seen.
I'm not going to put in, you know, write out a huge email to someone or and do something which is requiring a bunch of my time and energy just to have it just go into the into the black box, too. You don't know if it's been seen or not. I mean, hell, if you just look at the amount of messaging apps which now have a function which show that it's been a received and to read it so I'm thinking things like WhatsApp, I'm thinking things like Telegram, I'm thinking things like Facebook Messenger. You can see this is an important thing for people to do when it's when it comes to messaging.
And Instagram does the same thing. I'm not sure if Twitter and Twitter doesn't have that function, but you can you can see, okay, it's important for people to know if they're sending someone a message that is, one been received and two, that they can respond to it. If they choose to. And so if we're going into, I suppose, more of the feedback loop, you might say, okay, well that's, that's great client. But you know, DMS messages, emails, a lot of it spam, a lot of it's just kind of junk that people are sending in and they don't, they don't care.
And you're on the receiving end of this, you're just feeling like I'm just getting so much trash. Well, unlike direct messages or spam or things like this, the signal is way higher. No one can afford to spam with legit money. If you are sending in money to a show or to someone, you can't do that indefinitely and you can't do it at the scale of a automated bot. Just sending in these sorts of things and just going and sending it out to, you know, 100 different podcasters. I get emails like this all the time of, Hey, I've seen your show on Instagram or I've seen your podcast on YouTube or whatever, I can create shorts, I can do this for you, I can do that for you, and you can tell it's spam because they don't include your name at the top or they they type in hate me and models, which is obviously not my name.
And if you just look down below you, it's not too hard to find my name in there somewhere. So this is, I suppose, just the signal side of things. So once again, if you're the content creator, it's such a genuine feedback in comparison to the YouTube comments, which can be they can be good, but a lot of times they can be crap to the emails you get. Sometimes they can be good, but a lot of times it's crap when it comes to this. When money is attached, it is pretty much always good. And I don't mean good in the sense of you're going to get positive feedback.
I've seen boosts being sent in by people who were critical of who was saying that the audio was not great. How we got one just the other day saying the audio was a bit patchy and I mean that is just amazing feedback to receive and they can just be straight up hateful. But even then it's like, okay, well you're sending me money, so I'm kind of okay with this. So it's a very different experience from, I suppose, the typical ways that you will receive messages as a as a podcaster. And so you might be thinking, okay, well, how can I help to incentivise my audience to do this?
How can I make this easier? How can I close the feedback loop so that they know they are actually being received? And so here's a couple of suggestions of shows that you can maybe check out and see if you like, the way that they're doing this. And if you go back to season two, you probably see a lot of it in there because I talked about how they were doing this with their boost agram section. So I would definitely just recommend going to season two and checking that out. But a quick one here is you can do a quick acknowledgement like the flooding with Bitcoin people.
They just say thanks to, you know, memorials to Harry to John to use the for supporting the show this week. Just real quick brief one. They don't actually talk about the messages at all. I didn't particularly enjoy that one. I didn't find it incentivising. So I'm probably not going to send in another one to that show. I also just the show was not my cup of tea, so I probably wouldn't listen to it much more. Anyway, there's another one TFTC which used to be Tales from the Crypt. I actually have forgotten that. Change the name because that is trademarked.
And what they do is they read out the top five each week, which is something that you, you, you might have to do if you start getting a lot of messages in. And so yeah, they just do it. Top five here's this week and thank you they thank those five directly there is the ordering from small to the smallest the largest like on the America Plus podcast all of his ones when he gets them in, he reads them out from the smallest to largest. And Cole’s excitement goes from already pretty excited to very excited when he gets to the top one. So that's a nice way.
On my own show, for example, the mere mortals, we kind of just do it as they come in, so in a chronological format. So I guess that's incentivising to, to send one in earlier in a way. But we give big detailed answers to it. So we do like to respond to it and use it as content for our show. And so if someone sends in something, yeah, it's a it's a big message that we what we even if it's a small message, we try and drag it out into a larger theme, which is what we enjoy doing. Or you can mix it with the PayPal, like podcasting 2.0 where they have just a big section.
So I would just recommend your show format. Probably will have to change a little bit if you want to lean into this. I have seen shows where they get a lot of comments from people, a lot of boost agrams coming in and they don't even acknowledge it in their show itself. People are just content to say, you know, I'm going to just put this here. And the benefit is for myself. And knowing that I help contribute to the show, you don't need to receive that support, that that recognition that that's fine. I'm sure that works. I would just say if you want it to work the best, you do need to have a, a closing of that feedback loop so that people know, oh, hey, I'm not just sending money to nowhere and it's not doing anything.
So I would just definitely recommend that. Let's talk about the listener side of things so that you can help direct your listeners to or if you're just a listener yourself and wanting to know more, this is probably the easiest way to get started off this because you might be saying, okay, like, well, how do I do this? I've found out what a boostagram is, but you know, bitcoin's attached. It's kind of hard. It's difficult. So this is my my easiest steps that I would say at the moment. So the first thing to do is you're going to need to acquire some satoshis, which is a portion of Bitcoin.
Now, the easiest way that I would say to do this is a combination of either using if you're on the desktop of using Alby, which is a Chrome extension. So if you go to getalby dot com, it will get you through the process of how to download that extension. Most of us would probably download an extension before. So assuming you're capable of that and then within the actual extension itself there is a button which says you buy bitcoin, you can do that and then you can use a debit card to be able to do that. So that's a relatively easy way of of getting your first.
That's another way is probably if you're on your mobile is to use the Fountain app and this is where it's a podcasting app which pays you to listen to podcasts a very small amount. And so it's not like you're, you're going to acquire a whole ton unless you're and they cap it at a certain amount per day. I can't remember how much it is. I think it's a couple of hundred SATs. So over the course of a week of listening you might get $0.50 worth of, of, of money into your little fountain wallet there. But once again, this is an easy way where you don't have to do anything yourself.
You just have to listen to stuff and then you can pass that on if you choose to. And so this is getting to the next section, choosing where to boost from. At the moment, I believe there's about eight podcasting in 2.0 apps which can do this. So this would be fountain, it would be Castamatic, it would be podverse, it would be podcast guru on your phone, on the desktop. It would be curiocaster It would be pod fans, it would be podverse again because they've got a desktop version and there is another one holds, I should have brought this up, um, as I was doing this in freehand.
So let me just jump on to here quickly. Go down, down, down to here, go down to the filters, go down to value. And so the other one pod friend, of course, pod friend. I was just forgetting about that. You can also do it on Breeze on your on your mobile as well. So there we go. There's quite a few options there for you to to be able to do that and to send in some value. So you need to choose one of them. They all have different functionalities. As I mentioned, Fountain is probably my, my daily go to one that I use. I use pod verse pretty regularly as well.
And they all have different integrations. So Fountain has their own wallet set up. The thing with Alby, which is really cool, is they've had actually got a lot of integrations with these apps. So in particular with podcast Guru with Pod verse, and I'm not actually too sure about castamatic because I don't have an iPhone, so I'm not exactly sure how they they do it. But you can use this Alby thing, this Alby Alby thing, this I'll be wallet to be able to connect with them. So if you set it up on the desktop, then you can actually have this kind of integration with your mobile phone.
So you have some money sitting in there. Then you say, Oh cool, that money is now sitting on my podcast app. Once again, you probably only want to be using smallish amounts, which you would be okay losing. So I don't know, $20 worth, $40 worth, something like that. And then just topping that up as as you want a couple of other ways of doing this is on the podcast index website. So if you go to podcast index dot org and you choose a show that you like listening to, you'll see on your little browser extension, the the Alby a button will turn green on.
In my case, on if I'm using the brave browser and then I think it might turn blue if I'm using the chrome. And this is just a way of being able to do that of boosting directly from the from the desktop page itself and some future functionalities that I see coming. There's a service called Mash. I've been meaning to integrate it to my website for ages. I just haven't got around to it. It's a very, very similar concept where people, no matter what page they are on your website, they can help boost that in. So this is for the podcasters or content creators. If they want to do that.
There is a thing called the boost bot, which is okay, you can actually add functionalities to this because you can now have anyone who gets a boost message coming in. This message can be integrated to Mastodon, for example, and it will show up as a as a, as a post. I, for example, have these showing up on my telegram and on my desktop on discord, which is an easy way for me to collate them so I can actually see where all of the messages that I want to read out for the incoming week. And this is where I'd use a service like Satoshis Stream, which is really good for that Satoshis dot stream.
As I mentioned with the cron job, as I mentioned with the streaming of stats in in the previous episode, this doesn't have to just be done with Bitcoin. This can actually change two different currencies if there's development on this. So if you are an Ethereum developer, if you are on one of the other cryptocurrencies, you can actually do this yourself. Is it going to happen? I don't know. We've we've been doing this for a couple of years now and there hasn't been much interest from people trying to do that. So it seems like this is the way at the moment. And then if you want to go real crazy, go check out a show like Behind the Schemes where they have every time a boost comes in, they and of certain amounts they have it so that a audio and a jingle will play of, you know, a goat being slaughtered or a random noise popping up if you do the boob donation for example. 8008 there's all these kind of funny ways that you can really create a dynamic, interesting show if you want to do use this.
And once again, this is all being kind of connected with money. So it's kind of incentivising people to do certain actions, which is, you know, just the way the world works. If you're incentivised to do something, then then you're going to do it. So there's a lot of very, very cool things happening with with all of these boosts and boostagrams. And I would just say that just on a personal note, the first time that I got one in was it was kind of like a revelation to me because that one was just a signal of of recognition, I guess that someone was willing to value the show and actually do it with some money.
And it didn't even matter to me. The amount, to be honest. In the future it will. I want to be able to create a a lifestyle, an income from this. So yes, the amounts will now, but for me it's always been the most important thing is just okay people actually listening to the show and then valuing it and giving me feedback, which is just the black box of podcasting I mentioned right at the start, the first six months, the first year when you were just absolutely getting nothing. There's nothing in return that no one cares. And it's just it just feels so demoralising.
It's just really, really sucks. And so having this mechanism available and and being able to direct people to it, I feel is much more valuable than directing them to leave you an Apple review or leaving a comment on YouTube because one, all of those things can go away if, if you get, you know, deplatformed or even if there's just technical errors on a glitch and everything gets wiped. And this actually, you know, it does have some real life use case. It does have some real tangible, valuable money attached to it. And the other great things with two grams is, you know, people can choose whatever amount they want.
I talked about the boob on the men on this podcast. We've kind of cultivated or started one, which is the baby boost, the 3838. And this was because one had a baby recently. And so yeah, it's kind of just a way of someone being able to just send in a baby boost, you know, it's kind of funny. So very, very cool, very exciting. And I would just say, Bruce, two grams are, I believe, the the way the future there's so many other additional technical things behind the scenes that that really make them powerful. You know, they using Bitcoin, which I think is a really solid money and allows anyone to support you no matter where they are in the world in a easy, quick, cheap manner.
Um, because the thing with PayPal, for example, is they take a, you know, minimum, I think it's like minimum 50 cent fee. And so if someone wants to send you in $0.51, you know you're not getting any of that, you're getting $0.01, whereas if you're using boostagrams essentially all of it goes in plus all of the other additional benefits of being able to use splits and new hosting it yourself. So, so many benefits, so very, very cool on, on that aspect. I'm now going to go into my own boostagram Lounge and to be able to show you guys how all of this works.
So take it away. Adam Curry Welcome to the Value for Value Boostagram Lounge And of course the irony of this is that the very episode where I want to demonstrate how these boostagrams work, how you can complete the feedback loop. I get none in this week. Oh, the irony, The irony of it all. So if you want to see how it did work, go out to the any of the previous episodes and probably to future episodes because I'm going to use the most powerful tool that I had in this. I didn't want to do it this season. I was really hoping to avoid it, but I'm going to have to bring it out.
Indeed it is the sad puppy. If you're looking on your screen right now, there is a very, very sad puppy and that's because I didn't get any boost agrams in this week. So please, I would just recommend if you want to help support the show and if you do want to make it not as ironical for next week's episode, if you can send in a boost, I would really appreciate that. And look all of this as well as I was having some troubles with the set up that I have, I'm pretty sure that none came in, but I can't be 100% guaranteed. So once again, if there were any mistakes, if there was, if you did send something in and I didn't acknowledge it, please reach out to me in another manner and I will definitely come back and and acknowledge you for that once.
Because like I said, there's nothing more sucky than sending out a message and it just going nowhere. So, yeah, just, just reiterating that. So. All right. Well, we'll jump on to something a bit more fun, a bit more exciting rather than an empty boostagram lounge Let's get onto my tips section. So the most powerful bit in this is the actual connection. As I mentioned, the money is is great, but it's not the most powerful thing. And so I really my my tip for this week is to go check out the Cole McCormick interview that he had with Ainsley Costello on America Plus.
And Ainsley is an artist who a musician, I should say, who recently put up her music as anyone could, could download it for free, could listen to it for free if they wanted to. But if you wanted to help support her as well, she had a lightning address and attached to to that feed to that music so that if someone wanted to they and they wanted to play her music, you could include her into your show and then you could change it so that when people are listening, they're micropayments, which I was talking about last episode would go directly to her and any boost that they sent in would also go directly to her.
And she's had a really amazing experience this last two weeks where once again with Adam Curry he's always popping up, was doing this really cool thing with value for value music. And that's a little hint, a primer for next week's episode. She was receiving some of these messages in. And you can hear in that interview that she had with Cole, you know, her stories and as an artist and not about I earn this much money this week or I did this thing and then I got this amount note. They're all about how she did a concert and she she went to this and the kids at at her kind of concert at this performance she did knew the lyrics to a song.
They were singing it alone. You know what a what a rush, what an amazing feeling. That must be where people have listened to your music, learnt the words, and then physically show up to to a performance that you do. And so, yes, you know, v4 V can get you paid, but not all payments are equal as well. And she talks about how she has earned, you know, money from Spotify and from I can't remember how many other streaming services she's just put her music on a lot of them and she can earn money from that. But it doesn't have the same feeling of a boost, different message coming in with someone saying, I really like this song.
You know, this made my week. I preferred this one. This one was awesome in comparison to something like Spotify, which is just, you know, you maybe get 100,000 listens and a very, very small paycheque in the mail or, you know, I don't know how they actually do it. I probably imagine they send it to a bank account somewhere. So once again, the powerful bit, it's in the message, the value attached to it is very handy, It's very helpful. Money is a very useful thing, but the the way that it comes and is delivered to you, I would certainly prefer and I do prefer because I could have put advertising on any of my shows previously and earn money through that.
I won't because I don't like the way that that money is coming to me. I like the way that it's got a message attached. I like the way that someone is doing it voluntary. They don't have to do it. They just do it out of the kind of goodness and goodness of the heart and of, I suppose, a feeling of of value transfer. They got value from the show. They wanted to send it back to me. So I would just yet recommend checking that out America plus with Cole McCormick and had Ainsley Costello on and that was some from last week an app or service I want to highlight.
I've already talked about it but I'll I think they are pretty critical and not only for this function of of boosting and messages, but I'm actually starting to use it quite a bit in my everyday life for various things. So you do have to start with the desktop would just let you know that upfront. And because they don't have the functionality to start on your phone, absolutely integrating it into their own platform, as I mentioned with podcasts and podcast guru. But you can see, okay, this you do need to start from there. And I yeah, so there are multiple use cases for this and I utilise it for various things.
So as a tester for podcasting apps, for example, I, I use different wallets to try and tune in to see if, I guess to see if I don't want to have all my money in one place. I do want to be slightly careful about that. And so it is useful to, to be able to have a smaller wallet, which I can go, okay, this one is if I'm connecting to a new website, if I'm connecting to a new place, I I'm going to be careful with this, I suppose. And so not, not get too deep into the weeds and not have, you know, $300 sitting somewhere. So it is somewhere and I'm just connecting it randomly.
So I do like to separate it. And so I have three wallets for myself or three three ones that I use. One is kind of my own little personal savings. One, one is a joint one that I have with one and one is my tester wallet. And so they they vary from the amounts that I store in them and what I actually use them for. So another is I go to a local Bitcoin, meet up and there's a guy there who brings Beef skewers along and he does the value for value thing and he, he says, you know, just send me and how much you want. And, and this is a case where I'll be is really great because he puts in telegram chat, this is my lightning address I can just type that into I'll be it'll connect it and then I can just go Yeah I want to send him 21,000 sets.
You know about four or $5 worth or maybe even more. And that'll just instantly go, It's super, super quick. Um, as I mentioned, it's a place that I kind of store my earnings from some of the shows. I'm not comfortable, comfortable keeping large amounts on there. But yeah, up to a couple of hundred dollars. I'm kind of okay with that. And then there's another thing called NOSTR which you can integrate with directly from there. So I want to yeah, just want to say Albi is, is a really useful place, so get our bitcoin out. So it's an easy place to get started with all of the stuff.
I'm going to jump into the final section here. The value for value. And speaking of I'll be for this week, I'm going to send 15% to either it's going to be directly to the I suppose, like company account if they have one. If not, I'm going to send it to Moritz, who is one of the the guys who helped create it. And he's actually helped me a fair bit in the past with integrating it with things, with chatting with me, with letting me know how this all works. So I do want to thank him and the service that he's providing to the podcasting community by doing all of this.
And so, yeah, 15% of this week's episode is going to go to him. And finally, I'm going to give a recommendation to send in a boost. And now I can see actually here on the mastodon that Robert Sasuke has sent me in a boost. Yep, here we go. I just got it. And I've actually got to. He had to leave once when they weren't showing up as quickly as I wanted them to, but I can read them out now, so delayed Boostagram Lounge So I've got two here. One is from Chad F and he just said just got my podverse notification and then the the what's that?
The celebration emoji 3333 sent using pod verse. Thank you very much my friend and the other one that I have here and he was actually our mysterious streamer from there from the last episode. So a big thanks to Chad for listening in live. And then the other one that I got here was from Robert Sasuke, and he says, Hey Kyrin, thanks for your excellent podcast, ahi te mando un Boost. Greetings, Robert Suzuki, a thousand SATs and using podcast guru. So this is really awesome. We've got a couple of different apps showing up there and ahi te mando un Boost means like I'm sending you a boost here in Spanish because Robert Sasuke is from the Dominican Republic and he does a few shows in Spanish.
One is called Esto eS Podcast 2.0, I believe that's what it's still called. He has another one called Oh jeez, I'm going to have to look this up as well. So forgotten is showing times how embarrassing that was. More model. I'm just going to look this up. This will be the way of doing it. Ten Vito on Cafe, which is about personal development, psychology and mental health, and he's got another one here to Tech reflects your daily reflections about technology and its impact on human behaviour. Uh, man, he's got so many models solopreneur, which is I guess like the, uh, the way of being an, a solo entrepreneur and employment, though he negotiates online, which is like basically business online, and he's got another one about videos, He's got another one about, I guess this is looking about being a partner in a relationship with I'm guessing this is his fiancee or his wife or his partner.
And yeah, he's got a whole lot of shows. And I've actually learned a lot from him because I speak decent Spanish. And so listening into his shows has been great. So, yes, Robert, I do see that. Thank you very much for sending that in. And thank you, Chad and and Robert, for for doing that for for filling out my show so I didn't have to I'm still going to leave the section that I had there and for the the sad puppy. But I'll put a little message in saying but but wait till the end because it comes good. So. Oh, big episode as usual. Thank you, everyone, for joining in, for tuning in.
I hope this has helped you to learn more about what a boostagram is and and how it can help you for your for your own podcast or as a listener, what these things are that people are asking you to do. As I mentioned, you know, send in a boost for the next episode. I would really appreciate that. So I don't have to use the sad puppy. I only in there. Chapter art and yeah, all of this that you are helping to to send in is, you know, I'm basically sending all of this back out to other podcasters so I'm not accumulating a whole bunch myself at this stage.
But your messages are very, very, very much appreciated and yeah, I might clarify a little bit more about just how much this podcast cost to create, and maybe we can set a target for for this season or for the next season of, of how much it would be nice to get in So many lots of recommendations, lots of things to check out their links in the chapter art in the images. And so if you don't have a decent podcasting app, I would recommend going out to any of the what I ate that I listed. They're trying them out because they all have different features, different functionalities and but you know, they've all got the core aspect of one playing audio quite nicely and to of adding in features and showing that they're actually improving their app unlike something like Spotify or Apple which are very closed and if they do make improvements it's only to benefit themselves, not necessarily the listener or the podcast app themselves.
So lots of things to to talk about. I'm really excited to talk about value for value music next week. I've actually brought this forward a bit because I, I was planning on talking about it later, but there's been some really exciting developments and I want to highlight that a bit more. So that's going to be it for this week. Thank you very much for tuning in. And until the next one Chao for now, Kyrin out!
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