Should I host my podcast on Substack?
Welcome to the softer cast, a podcast for small business owners and creatives who want tender podcast advice without any tech bro bullshit. I'm Amelia Frooby, and I'm the founder of softer Sounds, a feminist podcast studio for women and non binary entrepreneurs. On this show, I answer your questions about podcasting. Things like, should I put my show on YouTube? Can I just record it on Zoom?
Amelia Hruby:How much do editors really cost? And how many downloads should my podcast be getting? Yeah, I'll even answer that question. Every episode of the softer cast is really practical, a little magical, and less than 10 minutes long. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the show and share it with your podcast bestie.
Amelia Hruby:Then head to the show notes to check out our free resources. No matter where you're at in your podcasting journey, we're here to support you. Join us on the softer side of podcasting. Hello, and welcome to the softer cast, a show where we take a tender approach to the technical parts of podcasting. I'm Amelia Froomey.
Amelia Hruby:I am the founder of Softer Sounds Podcast Studio. And on this show, I answer your questions about podcasting without any of the podcast tech bro bullshit that you may or may not have encountered in your podcast journey. If you're not familiar with softer sounds, we are an editing and production studio that supports women and non binary business owners, artists, creators, and writers in developing and producing purposeful, powerful shows. We have an amazing roster of clients working in so many creative industries, and we would love to add you to the list if you're looking for your own producer. We also offer courses for launching and growing your show, and I have a few 1 on 1 advising spots open each month.
Amelia Hruby:So you can learn all about those at softer sounds dot studio, and thank you so much for tuning in to the show today. In this episode, I am going to talk about a question that I have been getting from everyone. Well, maybe not everyone, but I have gotten this question no fewer than 4 times in the past 2 weeks when I'm recording this, which for someone who mostly just, like, hangs out at home and edits in the quiet of my studio, that's a lot of times to get a question. So I've gotten this question from many people, but I'll tell you the version of it that I got from our friend and client, Nicole. Nicole asks, should I host my podcast on Substack or with a more traditional podcast hosting website?
Amelia Hruby:I love this question, and we are going to dive into it right about now. So when we're considering the question, should I host my podcast on Substack? Or if you already have a show, the question, should I move my podcast to Substack? I think there are a few primary considerations. But before I dive into that, I just wanna answer the question, what is Substack?
Amelia Hruby:Maybe you pressed play on this episode with a whole lot of curiosity, and you need me to get back to basics. So let me tell you about Substack. Substack is primarily a platform for creating a newsletter and growing a subscription based audience, which can be paid or free. So in the past few years, they have really grown a platform of writers, podcasters, and video creators who are sending out email updates about their work, whether that be writing, podcast, or video, and inviting people to subscribe, and then most often upgrade to be paid subscribers and support their work in a paid capacity. So they started as newsletter focused and writer first, and then in the past few years, they added free podcast hosting as part of their services.
Amelia Hruby:So, again, they prioritize email, but podcasting is an option. They will host your podcast RSS feed for free. That's what a podcast hosting platform is. It hosts your show's RSS feed. And then you can host your show on Substack for free and submit it to Apple and Spotify and all the listening platforms, or not.
Amelia Hruby:You can just host it there, and they'll give you a little Substack website where people can go and listen and subscribe to get email updates about the show. So that's what Substack is, and I think I've been getting this question a lot for a few reasons. 1, Substack is free, and not all hosting platforms are free, as I'm gonna talk about in a moment. And 2, Substack offers podcasting, but it's not primarily a podcast platform. So when you're thinking about hosting your show, it's, like, not the first option that comes up.
Amelia Hruby:But if you know that it does podcasts and that it's free, it may seem really appealing. So now let's actually try to answer this question, should I host my podcast on Substack? When I consider this question, I'm thinking about 5 ish primary things. So let's get into them. 1st is cost.
Amelia Hruby:Historically, podcast hosting platforms have cost money, typically, 5 to $15 a month. And it's not a huge expense, but you have to pay for this as long as you want your show to be online. If you quit paying, your show will be taken down. So it is a long term commitment to be paying this much money in perpetuity for your show to stay online. And many people don't wanna commit to a show long term, or they don't wanna commit to that long term.
Amelia Hruby:And so they're looking for a free podcast hosting option. Now, there are 3 podcast hosting platforms out there that I'm aware of that have free options for hosting your show without, like, limits that make their free plan basically not useful to you. Like, some of them offer a free plan that only have your episodes up for 30 days. And I'm like, well, that's not really a thing anyone needs. So 3 podcast hosting platforms that have free plans that I think are robust enough to use in the long term.
Amelia Hruby:So those platforms are Acast, Spotify, and Substack. So of these 3, I'd say Acast is the most traditional podcast hosting platform. Spotify offers free podcast hosting as a way to boost and benefit podcast listening on their app, which you might have heard of. And then Substack also offers free podcast hosting. So when we're considering cost, I think that Substack can be a great fit for anyone who doesn't want to have to pay for hosting for their show or who doesn't have a budget to pay for hosting for their show.
Amelia Hruby:It's a good option for that. The second thing I'm considering when asking this question, should I host my show on Substack, is email functionality. So when we're looking at Substack, because it's an email first platform, it's good to think about the relationship between your podcast episodes and your email list. If you're starting from scratch and you have no podcast and no email list, then I think that Substack could be a great way to begin podcasting and collecting email addresses at the same time. I'm always telling podcasters that creating an email list is a good way to grow your show, and Substack can really integrate this for you from the beginning.
Amelia Hruby:So instead of having to have podcast hosting platform where you post your episodes and an email platform where you email them out each week or month or whatever, however often you're emailing them, like, on Substack, you can do both at the same time. And I think that if you're getting started and that's a priority for you, Substack might be a great fit. But if you're not starting from scratch and you already have an email list on another platform, then I think we have more to consider. Do you want another email list? Would you want to move your existing email list to Substack?
Amelia Hruby:Do you like the idea of email and podcast being integrated for you, or do you want separate spaces for email and for podcasting? And do you have any interest in sending emails for all of your episodes? You can host your show on Substack without sending emails, but it is an email first platform. So, like, even when you go to post an episode, you kind of have to write an email that may end up being a blog post if you don't send it out to your list. So there's just some nuance here to think about the relationship between email and your podcast as you're deciding if you want to host your show on Substack.
Amelia Hruby:My third consideration for the question, should I host my podcast on Substack is ads. So Substack's podcast hosting is free, but the features are rudimentary, I think, as a result of it being free. So there are no dynamic ads on Substack, which means that if you are a business owner who might want to use dynamic ads, which I always recommend for business owners, then you won't want to host your show on Substack. But let me back up a second. What even is a dynamic ad?
Amelia Hruby:So a dynamic ad is an ad for your show, you know, typically a little snippet of audio and some accompanying text that can be dropped into and out of your episode just with the help of your podcast hosting platform. So let's say I run a yoga studio, and I've got an amazing podcast. And I want people who listen to my podcast to know that I have a yoga teacher training coming up in 6 weeks. With dynamic ad placement, I can create one audio clip that can go at the beginning of every single episode of my show and one little sentence that can be dropped at the end of every single one of my show notes. And I can upload that to my podcast hosting platform one time, and it can be inserted in front of every episode.
Amelia Hruby:So if you are a long time podcaster and you are interested in or want to be using dynamic ads, then you should not host your show with Substack because they don't have that functionality. And Spotify doesn't either. To get dynamic ad functionality, you're probably, at least as far as I've seen, gonna have to pay for a podcast host. But the idea there is that if you're using ads, you should be seeing some return on those, hopefully, making some money, and then you'd have the money to pay for a podcast host. So that is definitely kind of like a make or break consideration for some of my clients.
Amelia Hruby:If we're doing dynamic ads, we are not on Substack. But if you have a show where you have no interest in running ads, you're not gonna do that, or where you only want to do embedded ads, because we can still embed ads in the audio itself. They just can't be changed in and out with ease. If that's you, then Substack could be a good fit. My 4th consideration for the question, should I host my show on Substack, is whether or not you want to have paid episodes in your feed.
Amelia Hruby:So if you want to have a listener supported show where some of your episodes are free to the public and some of your episodes are only for paid subscribers, then Substack is an incredibly streamlined way to do this. You can currently have paid subscriber feeds that you set up through Apple Podcasts or through Spotify, or I've also seen that Buzzsprout offers this functionality, but Apple and Buzzsprout particularly take quite a substantial cut, I think up to 30% of the paid subscriber dues, like the amount people are paying. But on Substack, it's, 1, super easy to set up paid episodes. And you can have them drop right in the same feed as your regular episodes so that people who love and listen to your show will get notified, like, hey, you should upgrade to hear this whole thing. And they only take a 10% cut of whatever you charge.
Amelia Hruby:So I think that their rates are lower than some of the standards for paid feeds. And in my experience, setting up a paid feed there is very easy. And while Substack's podcast features are rudimentary when it comes to ads or dynamic insertion, they're pretty great when it comes to previews for paid episodes. So it's incredibly easy to just upload an audio preview so that on your feed for your free subscribers, they can hear all the episodes, including previews of the paid ones. And I've had quite a few clients where we're really using those previews to offer some good cliffhangers that are getting people to upgrade to paid.
Amelia Hruby:So I think that if you're interested in your show being listener supported through paid episodes, then Sub Stack could be a great place for you to host your show. Okay. My 5th and final consideration when I'm thinking about the question, should I host my podcast on Substack, is about listener engagement and commenting. I think that one of the benefits of podcasting is that in a world of social media apps where people are commenting and responding and even critiquing and lambasting things you post as soon as you post them, With podcasting, you could actually create a nice little garden for yourself where people have to take the time to listen and then move to other platforms to respond. So if somebody listens to an episode and they love it, they're gonna have to go email you about it.
Amelia Hruby:If they listen to an episode and they hate it, they're gonna have to go find your email address and write an email and put in a lot of effort to tell you that. And I have found that for many of my clients, it's actually like a benefit of their podcast. Like, they prefer the slower, slightly removed space of podcasting to share some of the more vulnerable things they wanna talk about rather than just, like, putting it up on social media where everybody can, like, comment, engage immediately. If you host your show on Substack, you can create a post for each episode that people can comment on. And you may be starting a podcast because you don't want comments, but if you like podcasting but you wish it were more interactive, you might love the fact that you can have comments for each episode.
Amelia Hruby:And people can go to those pages and comment and interact with each other and interact with you and kind of make your show feel more like a community engagement space. I have done this personally for a private podcast that I host, and I love it. It's one of my favorite things to upload the episodes with the emails and the posts, and then have these comment threads where people are responding and telling me what they think and answering questions and getting to know each other. Like, I really love that. It's something that I really love that for my private feed.
Amelia Hruby:And then for my public feed, honestly, I have no interest in comments all the time. Like, for that show, I'm not trying to host, like, a free community on top of my free episodes. The episodes are out there, and if people want to comment and engage, they can come into the paid spaces where I am engaging and moderating, etcetera. So this is my 5th and final consideration when I'm thinking about, should I host my show on Substack, is do you want more listener engagement? And would you be interested in hosting comment threads for 1 or many or all of your episodes?
Amelia Hruby:Because Substack can do that. And if you want that, then Substack might be a great fit for you. So just to quickly recap, when we're answering the question, should I host my podcast on Substack or should I move my podcast on Substack? I'm typically considering these 5 ish things. The first is cost.
Amelia Hruby:Do you have money to spend hosting your show, or do you need a free podcast hosting platform? That's the first thing I'm considering because Substack is free, so it's a good option if you need a free option. The second thing I'm considering is email functionality. What's the relationship you want between your podcast episodes and your email list? Do you already have a list?
Amelia Hruby:Are you going to start a list? How do you want these two things to be related or integrated? Substack is an email first platform. So if you really want to be sending emails at the same time that you share new episodes, it could be a great fit for you. My third consideration is ads.
Amelia Hruby:If you are a business owner who uses or wants to use dynamic ads to advertise timely things happening in your business, then you will not want to host your show on Substack. It does not offer any ad functionality at current. But if you don't have ads or you only use embedded ads, which are put into the audio of the episode and don't need that dynamic insertion functionality, then Substack could be a good fit for you. My 4th consideration is if you want paid episodes or if you want certain episodes to only be available to paid subscribers and to get financial support from your listeners by offering these paid perks. Substack offers an extremely streamlined way to monetize your show by offering paid episodes, and its rates for doing that are relatively lower than most of the other industry options for this feature.
Amelia Hruby:And, finally, my 5th consideration for should I move my podcast to substack is commenting and list is listener engagement and commenting. So if you wish your show had more listener engagement, it could be a great option for you to host your show on Substack and publish a post for each episode that listeners can comment on. Spotify has integrated some commenting functionality, but that will only be catching your Spotify listeners. So if you have a Substack account that's doing this, it can be a great way to make your show feel more community oriented. If you do not wanna host a free community space in addition to your public podcast, then you probably don't want to go to Substack or you at least don't want to turn comments on on your Substack posts because people might show up there and start commenting, and you may have just accidentally started a free online community that now you get to moderate and host, which, you know, we don't wanna do that by accident.
Amelia Hruby:So those are the things I'm thinking about when a client or a potential client or just a friend asks me, should I host my podcast on Substack? In the past, when I talked about podcast hosting, I was like, I don't know. You can pick whichever one you like because they're all roughly the same, And that's not true anymore. So we have different options depending on the features that you need. And so I think anyone listening should start there.
Amelia Hruby:What are the features that you want? What's the budget that you have? What's most important to you? And then you can kind of walk through these five considerations to decide if Substack is right for you. And if you do decide, I'd love to know, are you hosting your show on Substack?
Amelia Hruby:Are you not? You can send me a message at the speak pipe link in the show notes, or you can shoot me an email. I would love to hear where you've landed on this question of substack. And if you have other questions, please also share those in those ways so I can answer them on a future episode. Thanks so much for listening to what may be the longest episode of the softer cast I have ever created, but I think that it's really juicy.
Amelia Hruby:Honestly, this is like a free little class that we just got on how to make this decision, and I hope it helped you. And I hope to hear from you soon. Until next time, I will see you on the softer side of podcasting. Thanks so much for listening to the Softercast. If you enjoyed this episode, please send it to your podcast bestie.
Amelia Hruby:And after you do that, go ahead and drop us 5 stars on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. If you'd like to submit a question, head to speakpipe.com/softercast to record a message or email us at hi at softer sounds dot studio. And last but not least, we made some awesome free things for you. Head to the show notes to download our free podcast launch toolkit or our 3 step podcast audit. No matter where you're at in your podcasting journey, we're here to support you.
Amelia Hruby:Thanks again for tuning in and joining us on the softer side of podcasting.