Is Value for Value Dead

Welcome to Podcast Answers, the show where I help people start and grow their podcast, answering any questions about podcasting along the way. That's right, I'm here to help you start and grow your podcast. Today is going to be a little bit different. We normally talk basics and all sorts of things about podcasting, but this today is still is about podcasting, but it's more on the geeky side. That's right. We are going to be talking about value for value, what it is.

Is it dead? All sorts of things like that. But first, I want to remind you, I'm gonna

let you know that E cam is currently on sale for the month of July. And if you're not familiar with E cam, it's the live streaming software that I use to do this show. It is I if you don't know, I stream this show to YouTube live as we record, you don't have to stream, you can just do it live. You can just record and that's, that's great. But E cam is what I use for that. It allows you to do overlays and bring in comments that allows you to do all sorts of different things.

And so E cam is actually on sale for the month of July. So if you want to check it out, I would suggest going to podcastanswers.com/ecam. That's E C A M M with two M's. And it is a Mac software, but it is really, really great. So if you've not checked it out, definitely do that. It's again, podcastanswers.com/ecam, E C A M M. And it is they don't sponsor this

show. They don't do anything like that. But it's just that as an affiliate link, I am an affiliate with them just because I believe in E cam because it's such an amazing piece of software that you can use to create your podcast and to go live and do all of those things that you want to do with your podcast. So with that, though, what is value for value? Let's talk a little bit today about value

for value. And if you don't know what value for value is, it is, it's a, it's a topic. It's a idea that was coined by Adam Curry. Adam is one of the, I'm going to say the pod father. He's one of the creators of podcasting. I'm not going to give all credit to him. There was a collaboration with several people, but he did create help create podcasting. And, and he had this idea of value for value.

And essentially what that is, is I'm giving you value by producing this show, but by putting out this show, this podcast answer show, if you find value in it, you assign some sort of value and give that back. And that can be time that can be talent. And that can be treasure. So those three T's and start by, by treasure is going to be the easiest one. That's a sign of monetary value to that is, is this episode worth $5 to you? Is it worth

$10 for you? What about $500? And the idea is, I'm not going to tell you, yes, there's lots of different, lots of different platforms out there that you can use to monetize your podcast. And I'm not saying monetization. You can use Patreon, buy me a coffee, Apple podcasts, whatever to say, "Hey, give me 5, 10, $20 a month, whatever I want to support you." And that's great. Like I do that for this show. I have a buy me a coffee for this show. And it is one of the things that I like doing.

Like it allows you as a listener to give back to me. It's one of the ways to give back to me. But with value for value, it's an open-ended deal. Because what you find is if you give a tier level, so 5, 10, 15, 20, etc, etc. You're limiting the amount that people can give. You're saying, "I'm only going to allow you to give me $10 a month." You're limiting that. So with value for value, that's going to allow you to say, open-endedly, "This podcast

is worth $5 to me. $10, $20." There's an open-ended amount. And what you'll find is some people may only give $0.30, $1, whatever. But they may also give $300. And so you actually end up making more by not limiting it. And there's the other two T's in there are time and talent. Time being, you're going to give your time back to it. Whether it's talking about the podcast to people, or if it is telling people about the podcast, being your marketing department,

if you will. It's also putting in... It's time. Anything that you can give back to time is what it is. And so what talent is then is... Let's say you're a creative person that you can do art. You may be designing cover art for the episodes. You may be doing all sorts of different things for the episode. And then... So that's another way to give back your talent with that. So what value for value is and what a lot of people are

referring to when they say value for value is streaming Satoshi's. And so one of the things that has come up with Podcasting 2.0 is this idea of streaming Bitcoin. And it's a cool technology. It allows you to play the podcast. And as you're playing the podcast, it allows you to send small micropayments, which you can't do with things like Patreon or PayPal or Stripe or whatever.

You can't send sub pennies or pennies per minute because it just doesn't work out. But with Bitcoin and Satoshi specifically, you can stream small, small, small amounts of value back to the podcast or as you're listening or as you're going about and boosting. So that's what a lot of people are referring to as in... As value for value when they're talking about is value for value dead. And so what I've seen a lot lately is they...

People are saying is... I've seen several episodes. I've seen in and around podcasting. I've seen the future of podcasting episodes. They're all talking is value for value dead. And so I thought I'd weigh in a little bit on that today. So no, as a concept, value for value is not dead. Value for value as in time, talent, treasure is not dead. But there are issues right now with Bitcoin. And here are some of the issues that I see

about it. It's not... People are not so comfortable with Bitcoin yet. It's not... Yes, they are becoming more and more. I remember when I first heard Adam and Dave talk about the concept of streaming Bitcoin, I was a little bit hesitant. At that point, I said, "I don't know that I want anything to do with this." Now, I've played around with it because it's fun. And I don't necessarily have loads and loads and make loads and loads off of this podcast.

But I did make some. And so people are still starting to become comfortable with it. But they're not comfortable. It's not the same as having just pulling out your credit card, typing your credit card numbers in and donating to a show. It's also not that easy. So it's not even a comfortable level, but it's easy of use. Now, it is becoming more again. So

apps like TrueFans have allowed you to basically... They have an integration where you can say with Apple, you can just click and say you want to top up your wallet, and it'll take your US dollars or whatever dollars and convert them into Bitcoin and bring them in. But most apps are not that easy.

Now the other thing that I'm seeing issues with it are regulations. And I'm going to specifically say regulations in the US, because the US are starting to create regulations about Bitcoin and what it means to have a wallet where somebody else holds your wallet instead of yourself, because then you become a money transmitter. And that's a whole...

You need to have licenses and all sorts of things like that. So all of these services that have popped up around streaming Bitcoin and holding wallets and things are now starting to freak out a little bit because they can't be your wallet provider without having licenses and regulations. And so they're pulling back out of it. And one of the problems with that is, because it's a little bit hard to do, harder to do, it's not impossible to do it. But if you're

holding your own Bitcoin node, that's really geeky. And most people, that's not something that they even want to try. And so there are different services that you can use to hold your Bitcoin wallet. And again, I told you this, this episode is going to be really, really geeky. But one of the services is the service that was really easy to use, became the centralized service for most things.

The apps used it as their back end. A lot of the apps used it for their back end to send the money to and from where you as a listener could have a wallet and you as a podcaster could have a wallet. And it made it really super easy with really easy web calls to send this programmable money, these Bitcoins, these Satoshi's. And so because there's... We were relying on really almost one Albi service. Albi is the name of the service and they are getting worried because

of these regulations. They are pulling out of this, of doing these wallets. And so these hosted wallets. And so what it really comes down to is, is value for value dead? No. Time talent treasure, not dead. But the idea of streaming Satoshi's does have issues right now. And there are some things in the works and we'll see how that shakes out. But again, we're having to switch and we're having to move things. And again, this is

all what we're calling running with scissors. I mean, this is not mainstream again. This is a whole new concept is we're just getting people used to listening to podcasts now. I mean, podcasting has been around since 2005 and it's 2024 and people are just starting to get used to this being mainstream. And now we're throwing this idea of sending as we're listening, sending money back and support back to the podcaster, which I think is great.

I mean, if your podcasters are going to be able to make a living or not, maybe not even make a living, but have some money, they get some something back for doing this. So it's time, talent or treasure from the listeners. They're going to be more likely

to continue on in the future. And I would rather have listeners support my show again, because I think that when you have advertisers, people tune out to advertising and then you're tempted to add more and more advertisers to get more and more money. And so if you leave out those advertisers and you actually have your people support you, the people that are listening to you, it's more like you're gonna have a better

show. Your show quality is going to be better because you're less likely to just be tempted to keep adding on advertisers. So those are my thoughts. That's what I think about value for value. I think it's a great idea as an addition to things for those of us who are geeky and want to play with it. I think it's great to do it, but I'm not relying on that. I do have a buy me a coffee. And if you want to check that out, you can go to podcastanswers.com/buymeacoffee and you

can support this show there. You can support this show in a modern podcast app too. If you're listening to it on a modern podcasting app where you're streaming satoshis, you can listen to it and there you can support me there too. But again, if you're not comfortable with that, if you don't have that app, podcastanswers.com/buymeacoffee. If I've given you any value for this show, I ask that you assign a number back to that

and give it back to me. Well, again, that could be time, talent or treasure. Just assign a sign of value and get in and give that back to me. Show me your support. So that is a tough topic. It's a long topic. It's a geeky topic. And I think that we're all exciting. We're in an exciting time with this new podcasting 2.0 things where we're allowing lots of new features to come to podcasting that have not been there traditionally.

But some of the things I think are still developing. I think they're coming along. I think that they're going to be some awesome things in the future. But right now we're just trying to deal with lots and lots of new things. Bitcoin is new. Streaming Bitcoin is new. And so it's just going to take a little bit. Now, guys, this show is going to be off for a few weeks. I have a couple weeks of vacation

that I'm going to be I'm going to be traveling in and out. And so I will not be doing this show while I'm on the road. I'm not taking this show on the road. But if you if you so just know that I will be back when you see no episodes here in the next two weeks, I will be back. But if you need any podcasting consulting, I'm more than happy to do that. And you can

contact me by going to podcastanswers.com/contact. And I will that'll allow you to contact me and I can do a one on one session with you about podcasting about streaming and creating video with Ecamm. So guys, I just ask that you Yeah, you come back. Hold on. We will be back shortly. Thanks,

guys. Have a great week and keep podcasting. (upbeat music)