How to do value4value and earn Bitcoin from your podcast

Want to earn Bitcoin, automatically, as your listeners enjoy your podcast? How about getting tips or even messages from your audience, all paying you Bitcoin?

There are emerging podcast apps out there that can be configured, by a listener, to send you Bitcoin as they listen. It’s free to set yourself up to receive them, too - and by doing it, you’ll reward podcast app developers and the open podcast ecosystem.

Listeners can automatically send you a small amount of Bitcoin every minute they listen. They can give you a “boost” - a tip - if they like what they’re hearing and want to reward you for the value they get from your podcast. Or they can send a “boostagram”, a tip with a message attached, to give you great, positive feedback.

Below, learn how much we’ve earnt by doing this.

Here’s how to get your podcast earning cryptocurrency. Now: it’s very early days, and it isn’t anywhere near as simple as you’d expect it to be. That’s what you get with the bleeding edge. But it’s worth persevering.

Any questions about the below? Come and ask in the PodcastIndex Social group, a system that’ll remind you of Twitter. That’s full of people who can help you.

Enabling your podcast

Before we begin: what will you earn?

With this system, you’ll earn real Bitcoin, not some sort of strange coin or token that you’ve never heard of.

Because one Bitcoin is worth many thousands of dollars - $55,840 when we last updated this - you’ll use satoshis, normally shortened to “sats”.

Just like a cent is a small fraction of a dollar, so a satoshi is a small fraction of a Bitcoin. A very small fraction - one sat is 100 millionth of a Bitcoin.

You can transfer Bitcoins to your own local currency whenever you want (if you want): your local currency is called fiat money, in case you see that word somewhere. Or you can keep your earnings in Bitcoin, where it may increase in value (or, who knows, may not).

This guide is going to assume that you are hosting with a normal podcast host (and not hosting yourself), so you’re unable to edit the raw RSS feed.

1. Make sure your podcast is in the Podcast Index

Search for your podcast at the Podcast Index to see - use the search at the top of the homepage.

Not there? Search for your podcast here in Podnews, and look at your podcast’s page. We’ll automatically add your show into the Podcast Index if you’re not there. Wait fifteen minutes, and look again in the Podcast Index.

2. Register with PodcasterWallet.

Click the ⚡ lightning bolt in your podcast’s page in the Podcast Index. This will take you to the Podcaster Wallet.

Enter the exact email address that’s in your RSS feed, and claim your podcast here.

The Podcaster Wallet lets you tell the Podcast Index where to pay your cryptocurrency. It lets podcast apps see your payment details, assuming you’re unable to add it into the RSS feed yourself.

Use Anchor? They don’t put your email address in your RSS feed by default. Here’s how to fix that.

3. Enter a custom node for your podcast in PodcasterWallet.

A 'node’ is the crypto equivalent of your bank account details. You can run your own node, if you’ve got good internet, want to spend some money on hardware, and want quite a steep learning curve. But you don’t have to: so here, we’ll use another service.

We’re going to use one on a service called Satoshis.Stream, which starts 03c457fafbc8b… - you’ll find it on the Satoshis.Stream website.

Who pays? Satoshis.Stream will take a fee of 3% of any crypto you earn. They’ll also give 1% to the Podcast Index: a total of 4% of fees. That’s all automatic, and is a similar fee to a credit card.

4. Download Telegram Messenger

To control Satoshis.Stream, you will use a chat program called Telegram to work. It’s a fully-featured and private messager which some of your friends are already using. It’s free, for whatever system you use: download it from their website.

5. Start to register your podcast with Satoshis.Stream

You do this in Telegram. Start a conversation with @satoshisstreambot, and type…

/claim https://your.rss/feed

That’ll take you through the claim process.

6. Add a code in one of your recent shownotes

Satoshis.Stream needs to know you control your RSS feed. It’ll give you a short claim code to put into a recent podcast’s shownotes. Put it in, wait a little bit, and try the /claim command again.

They also have a support group, again on Telegram, to help you if you’ve any queries.

7. You’re done!

Listeners enjoying your show on a variety of value-for-value enabled podcast apps will now have the ability to automatically give you cryptocurrency every time they listen; to 'boost’ (tip) you extra cryptocurrency, or to send you a 'boostagram’ - a message with a tip.

The Satoshis.Stream bot will automatically tell you, every day, how many sats you’ve earnt. (Don’t panic, you can turn that off if you want to).

You can also use the bot to get 'boostagrams’ - messages listeners send with their boosts. This isn’t turned on by default: you want to use the command /messagesub.

8. Got multiple podcasts?

Set them all the same way. Satoshi.Streams deals well with multiple shows, and will help you through that process.

Listening to a podcast

There are a few podcast apps that support value4value listening.

If you’re looking for a normal podcast app to use, we’d recommend Fountain, which is available for iOS or Android. It’s a simple and pretty-looking app that takes you through the process of sending sats to the podcasts you listen to.

At the time of writing, you can also choose from Breez, Podfriend, Curiocaster and the Podstation extension; this page contains all the latest value-enabled podcast apps.

Getting hold of your money

You’re being paid crypto on something called the Lightning Network. This is a super-quick crypto network built on top of Bitcoin.

You shouldn’t use Satoshis.Stream as a long-term place to store your crypto. Instead, you should withdraw it to a wallet that you own.

You could download The Wallet of Satoshi or Muun let you receive Lightning payments, and also send them to a full Bitcoin account. Some parts of the world have access to Strike, which’ll do the same thing, too.

Request payment

The way you get paid on The Lightning Network is to make an 'invoice’, which is just what you’d expect it is - a document that asks for money and gives payment instructions.

Go to the Satoshis.Streams bot on Telegram, type /withdraw, and it’ll tell you how many sat you have.

In The Wallet of Satoshi or Muun, hit the 'receive’ button, add the amount you’d like to request in sat, and then tap the QR code to copy the long random bit of text it gives you. That’s the invoice.

Paste that long random bit of text into the Satoshis.Streams bot. You should notice your cryptocurrency goes instantly from Satoshis.Streams to your own wallet.

Satoshis.Streams also has an /autowithdraw command, which can be set up to automatically withdraw your crypto every six hours. We’d probably recommend you turn that on.

How much can you earn?

In the week ending November 14, Podnews earnt 42,160 sats, which at the time of writing is US $23.67. That’s the equivalent of $1,250 or so in a year, which might also be the equivalent of a plane ticket and a nice stay in a hotel, or dinner and food for you and all your mates.

Or, you might keep that Bitcoin, and assume it goes up in value. In 2020, Bitcoin’s value increased by 224%, so if it does that again, so will the satoshis that you’ve earnt.

Because Podnews is only a three minute podcast, we don’t get as much automatically-streaming sats as others, either, and are rather more reliant on boosts and boostagrams: one reason why you’ll see us mention boostagrams most Mondays.