Beehiiv's Ainsley Rossitto: From Inbox to Audience

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  0:00  
The podcast super friends: five podcast pros talking tech, promotion, marketing, ideas, and strategy.

Catherine O'Brien  0:11  
Okay, so so many podcasters get into podcasting because they love podcasts. They that's what they think they're going to do. They want to do a podcast and think it's going to be simple, and then they discover that they have to build an entire platform to go along with everything that they're doing in the pod world. Well, today we're going to talk about it. We are the podcast super friends. We're going to talk to a company that is doing something about that platform in the background to make it a little bit easier for podcasters. My name is Catherine O'Brien? I'm one of the podcast super friends. I'm tuning in right now from a secret location. Oh, let's drop down to Texas here, and we'll go around and introduce ourselves as the podcast super friends. Johnny, why don't you go next? Hi,

Matt Cundill  0:52  
I'm Johnny. Happy to be here, just in the nick of time. So, I'm Matt Cundill, currently in Gimli, Manitoba, home of Crown Royal, now 50% more in the United States.

Jon Gay  1:07  
Not touching that one. John Gay Jag Podcast Productions here in lovely Berkeley, Michigan, just outside Detroit.

Catherine O'Brien  1:15  
And as I mentioned, we're going to be talking today with our very special guest. That is Ainsley Rosito from Beehive, and Beehive has been leaning heavily into podcasting. Ainsley is the head of podcasts at Beehive, and so we're going to get to get all of her insights about what is going on in the world of podcasting through the lens of a company like Beehive. So, first of all, Ainsley, welcome to the podcast Super Friends. We're so excited to have you with us.

Ainsley Rossitto  1:38  
Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Catherine O'Brien  1:41  
We know that you have a lot of insights that you're going to share, and I was wondering if maybe we could just sort of kick off from start from the very beginning with my pet issues. See, this is what I get for by by being the hostess with the mostest today here on the podcast. Super friends is I can address my pet issues first, and that is that a lot of pod experts I think don't really talk a lot about the amount of time and effort that goes into audience building. That a lot of podcasters they love to focus on the technical aspects and making things sound great, but it's you could you can be podcasting to nobody if you don't build your audience. So from I know that one of the things that Beehive tries to solve is that component of audience building. So I'm wondering if you can kick us off here by starting to talk a little bit about the process of building an audience for your show, your email newsletter, anything that you're doing online.

Ainsley Rossitto  2:31  
Sure. I mean that's such a great point, and I think there's two sides to that coin. It's it's right. The actual podcasters themselves maybe not necessarily focusing on the growth, and they're just getting to the point where they've recorded a podcast. They're so excited to put it out in the world, and they hit publish, and they just hope that the audience is going to be there. And there's so much more to it. And then the other side of that coin is like, what is your actual distribution platform, and and what are the podcast apps kind of doing to help facilitate that growth to make sure that you know podcasters, as you mentioned, like we're scarce on time already, and we're spending so much effort and energy on editorial, on production, and like how can they help you know facilitate that? So on the Beehive side, you know one thing that we're doing is making sure that all of our podcast solutions feel really integrated with the rest of the Beehive product. So, if you know Beehive, like we came to fruition because we were a newsletter platform first, born out of of Morning Brew, and you know people were loving our newsletter product, and not surprisingly, they were saying, "Well, we are also podcasters. You know, it lends itself really organically to be a newsletter creator is also a podcaster. A podcaster also has a newsletter and and those sorts of things. And so when we launched that you know first feature for hosting, it caught on really quickly and and people you know we let the users really drive the product. And so a lot of people said, well, when I publish my podcast episode. The next thing I have to do is create a landing page for it, or I have to send out an email. And so, inherent in the platform, when you publish your episode on Beehive, we're automatically creating a landing page for you on your website that has an interactive transcript. It has all the deep links to Spotify, Apple, all of your your favorite platforms you can listen to. So you know where to send people, and they can kind of select where they follow the show. And there are automations, so every time a new episode goes live, an email goes out to your newsletter subscriber list. You set it, you forget it. There are just a lot of tools that we're trying to bake into this experience here that make podcasters' lives easier, rather than having to go push a bunch of buttons on seven different disparate tools, and then you know the same thing. When once your content's out there, you have to figure out how it's doing, and you got to go back to those tools and get all the analytics and and all that sort of thing. And we're trying to solve for that and in a one size kind of fits all podcast operating system.

Jon Gay  4:57  
I love that you're doing that, Ainsley. A few. Months ago on the show, Matt said that you should spend as much time promoting your show as you should on the recording and the production. And that statement haunts me in my dreams to this day because it is such a nightmare. Like you said, all the disparate tools to put it in here, put it in here, put it in here. So I love that you're doing that and trying to get it all in one place and distribute it that way.

Ainsley Rossitto  5:21  
Yeah, and I think there's you know when you put a podcast out there, you get this download or this view number back, and you really don't know who your audience is. And so when you pair it with something like a newsletter, you're actually getting those subscriber emails. You're actually starting kind of a dialog with them. And what better as a podcaster, than the ability to just ask your audience what they think about the episode or what they want to hear next, and and all of that to kind of drive your editorial. So not only is it it growth and engagement, it's also like helping you finesse your your core product if that is a podcast or if it's the newsletter and vice versa.

Matt Cundill  6:00  
So I've been podcasting for 10 years with an active podcast, and probably the thing that I have not mastered yet is doing a newsletter properly. As I joked about last time on the show, I've got a weekly newsletter that comes out monthly, and I just can't seem to get like I do all the little things to market the show. There are, you know, the videos are in the right place. I'm putting it in the right spots to hit the right people. But when it comes to the newsletter, because it is a little more time consuming than all the other stuff, I'm not, you know, taking that that the few hours that it does to really sort of sit down and crank it out. And I'm I'm not sure what the mental block is, other than it probably takes just a little bit longer and a little bit more organization to to put it out. But if you could just speak a moment just about about the value of a newsletter as opposed to me wasting my time on social media, which has an algorithm which is directly going to suppress the crap that I'm talking about instead of marketing to the people that I that are that have asked to be marketed to.

Ainsley Rossitto  7:02  
Sure, I mean, I think you you hit the nail on the head there in terms of it's the value of that audience. Like they're making intentional time to subscribe to your newsletter to check it out in their inbox when it hits. So that and broad strokes. But I want to react. I think it's just so in the Beehive ecosystem, we have about like 50% of our user base who are existing podcasters. They've imported their show into the platform, and then the other half are are net new creators that are starting a podcast. And it's so interesting, Matt, to hear you say like it's just it's such a lift for me to kind of figure out how to create my newsletter and publish that content because I do spend a lot of time talking to newsletter creators who are like I don't even know where to start on the podcast side of it and so it's really interesting to see like both sides of that equation because I think newsletters those who are established in the space they've done the hard part of creating kind of their editorial angle they have a point of view on a subject, and you know, yes, there is definitely a ramp up on the podcast side of getting your your microphones, your tech, like all of that, and in production. But I think on the newsletter side, if you're going the other way and you have a podcast and you want to create a newsletter, it's it's a little bit of like figuring out what are the other elements that your audience wants more of? Is there something hitting the cutting room floor that you can kind of send people to? And you know, what are those other? There are so many different ways you can take it editorially, but I think building consistency around you know when you're sending it out and what the value prop is of that newsletter for your audience is key. You know, it's a lot of the same practices of having a podcast. You you know, people are going to show up and expect kind of the similar value and quality every time they're listening or watching your show. And the same goes for newsletters.

Catherine O'Brien  8:57  
I'm I'm wondering too. Can you talk a little bit about? Let me start my question again here. I think sometimes podcasters didn't really think through all of the long playing, bigger picture, long game strategy of podcasting. Again, that they were focused on. They love podcasting. They want to do a podcast. And for anybody who's done any kind of business online, they know that email is key, and having an email list is key. And I think that, again, in my personal experience, I think a lot of podcasters were a little slow to the pickup of that part of doing business online, or having viewing their podcast really as a business entity is developing that email? Can you talk a little bit specifically? Maybe be an advocate for podcasters for to understand the importance of having an email list or an email presence.

Ainsley Rossitto  9:49  
Sure. I mean, number one is a it lets you kind of have some sort of ownership over your audience that's not you know gated by a third party platform like YouTube. Spotify, Apple, where they're consuming it. Number two, it's a another surface to revenue. You know, you mentioned people didn't think about kind of the longer term business elements of starting their podcast. You know, if you're reliant on a programmatic audio advertising solution, you know you have to build a little bit of scale with your audio before you're making significant revenue, but say you start a podcast and a newsletter at the same time, you can automatically from the jump start monetizing that newsletter, and you're still aggregating revenue for your brand for your show just off of a different surface, and it will scale at the same time your audio scales, and so you're you're diversifying your revenue opportunity. I think we've also seen a lot of changes, especially recently in the industry, where the definition of a view is changing. The definition of, you know, all of these kind of advertising based metrics are changing, which impact people's revenue. But one thing that's not going to change is you own your newsletter audience. You know how to access them, and you can monetize them, and they're they're kind of a more consistent avenue for you to you know have that revenue opportunity. And then the third thing I would say is you know your newsletter is just as valuable of a marketing channel, if not more, than social, than other podcasts where you're spreading your content by word of mouth or you know promo trades, all those sorts of things. There isn't like a silver bullet to I want to grow my podcast from one to a million downloads by the end of this week. I'm not going to say you should do it by social. You should do it by you know paid ad buys. You have to kind of be everywhere, and I think if the the last few years have told us anything, especially about how podcasts are now in streaming platforms and on all these video channels, and and so multi channel and multi surface, like you have to kind of have a little bit of a presence everywhere, and and email is you know a really important and tried and true marketing channel.

Johnny Podcasts  12:03  
Ainsley, you mentioned the hot button issue, video. That's the that's the flavor of the day. Is Beehive able to allow video podcast distribution?

Ainsley Rossitto  12:12  
Yeah, so it's one of the the two things we're working on right now. So peeling back the curtain a little bit, we are in development on two major features: monetization, which is going to come to market very soon in in early q4, likely, and video hosting and distribution across all the the core platforms: Apple, Spotify, and and YouTube. So yeah, we're we're working on you know we have podcast hosting right now. We know that we're short on a couple of features that will get us up to parity with some of these more enterprise solutions. And I think what you'll find with Beehive, you know, if you're a newsletter customer and and have been following our journey, is we like to create a suite of tools that kind of like expand and contract to support creators of various sizes and needs, and our podcast suite of tools that we have now and that's coming soon is is going to be no different. So, a long way to answer your question, but but video hosting is coming soon to the platform.

Johnny Podcasts  13:17  
That's amazing, and you're definitely ahead of your direct competition, who I don't know if we should name them or not, but I've steered some of my clients away from moving their podcasts over there just because a lot of these tools that you mentioned, Beehive is developing, they just don't really seem to care about. So I think that's awesome that Beehive is doing that. It sounds like you guys have three sort of core customers, and if I'm wrong on this, please tell me. It sounds like you have the people on Beehive that are just have these massive newsletters that you want to encourage to start podcasts to expand their audience. That's segment one. Segment two is people who have podcasts that you want them to branch out into the newsletter world, and Beehive is offering a really integrated solution for that. And then segment three is people who want to start creating content. Period. Now they can do two really like direct pieces of content, direct to audience podcasting and newsletters. Focusing on that, the second one: people with podcasts that want to branch into newsletters, which is probably the core of our audience. How would you recommend they go about it because I think there's a risk of cannibalizing your audience a little bit. Of oh man, I I already listen to Johnny's podcast every single week. Now I got to listen to his newsletter. Now I got to read his newsletter. Is his newsletter just going to be recycled content of his podcast? And then on the host side, is it wow? Now I have to become a newsletter writer, and now I have to write totally different. Like, what's how do how would you kind of encourage the podcaster to think about a newsletter?

Ainsley Rossitto  14:46  
Sure, I mean, I think you you want to make sure if you're starting a newsletter, if you're starting a podcast, no no matter what it is, is like you know what your why is and the the so what and so I think to your point about. Like, is my newsletter cannibalizing my podcast? I think that maybe a newsletter is ultimately something you need to spend a little bit more time sitting on and thinking about, like, what the content should be. Because if you're just regurgitating your podcasts, that's very different, right? You're you're just creating kind of like an accessible format, so someone can kind of take it on the go. So I do encourage people to kind of think about like what is the actual added value that someone's going to get from the actual newsletter product, even if it's extended interviews or a lot of people have subscription podcasts right now. And if you go to Beehive, we can actually gate your podcast content with a subscription only newsletter, and so you can break into behind the scenes things or bonus content or what. So I would think about like the differentiation and the so what always when you're starting something because yeah your time is valuable right we as we talked about at the top of this nobody has more time and they're like oh I have all this time to just create a bunch of newsletters and podcasts and things, but yeah, and and I think the other thing we create just I want to talk to the other customer group that you mentioned there of newsletter folks like trying to get into podcasting is one of the things that we have for Beehive is the ability to kind of automate turning your newsletter into a podcast. It's kind of a good foray to be able to see, like, is there an audience for me out there? Are other people discovering, you know, what does the size of that audience look like? So you can kind of get started there, and and yeah, I think it's it's no different with the newsletter side. Try things out, send your first email, see what the reaction is, and we have the ability to incorporate polls and surveys. Ask what people like. Ask what they don't like, and and all those sorts of things. And I think beyond the email and audio and video formats of podcasts and how they're engaging, like think about all the other surfaces people engage with podcasts, and also like brands and talent and people they like. They go to their favorite channels and they're just looking for that talent or that brand, and so email is kind of no different. You know, you want to be in a place where if people want to subscribe to your newsletter and that's their preferred engagement point, you know, so be it.

Johnny Podcasts  17:13  
Yeah, and I love I love the way that you explain that because I think how I would encourage people that listen to our advice and having you on is-we're not telling you to like just jump in and now on top of your podcast, every single episode now has to have a corresponding its own newsletter that's totally different from the episode. You can kind of slow roll your way into the writing side of things. I think writing is such a valuable tool, and it really helps your podcasting brain being able to write long form. But you don't have to do that with every episode. It can be one big piece that you're putting on. Like, here's my month long. Here's like my takeaway from all five episodes that we did this month. And if you want to pay me $1.99 a month to read that, great. And I think there's just a ton of opportunity that you can do with that. It doesn't have to be one episode a week along with one newsletter every single week, or vice versa.

Ainsley Rossitto  18:00  
Yeah, and I think that's such a great point. Is they can be totally different, and you know, if you have a seasonal podcast and you change the theme every month, like I love the idea of here's what we're going to talk about this month and some of the guests that we're going to have on, and like maybe reply to this email and tell us what you want to hear from next month, and you know, doing some of those aggregations or roundups. You know, not everybody as much as we think like our podcast listeners are always there and consume every episode. Sometimes they miss some things too, so it's okay to pull in aggregations, pull in you know other ways that you would curate the content you're already using and talk about it. I love that example you just pulled in.

Matt Cundill  18:40  
So I have a couple questions. I well, I wanted to talk just briefly about the cannibalization part because I think a great example of this is Pod News. I mean, I've spent half my summer reading it, and I've spent the other half listening to it, and I can't remember which day I did which, but I know I'm just engaged with it every day. But isn't that the

Ainsley Rossitto  19:01  
point?

Matt Cundill  19:02  
Yeah, I get. I guess it is the point, right? Some days I just, I just, I'm not just not in a position to listen. I you mentioned podcasting, and you have all the tools. You have like 301 redirects, and we can have enclosure tags because I've looked in this. We had a conversation, you know, before we put the show together today. But I just don't know in a newsletter world if somebody wanted to import their entire newsletter collection from a blog into Beehive. Is that possible?

Ainsley Rossitto  19:31  
Yeah, we we do a bunch of migrations on the daily over from different email service providers or you know other social platforms that have similar constructs to behive, like Substack and and things like that, we we can certainly you know handle migrations of other content aside from your podcast RSS feed. Yeah, and I I would say like that's our huge value proposition, right? Is like you're working with a. Email service provider, a podcast audio hosting service provider, a you know website host provider, and maybe someone else to host your gated podcast content. Take all four of those things and just put them in Beehive, and you're dealing with one a one stop shop.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  20:17  
All right,

Catherine O'Brien  20:19  
you know, sort of back way way back when in podcasting 1.0, I was really influenced by a blogger who had a lot of success relationship blog. She started podcasting, had a lot of success podcasting, and sort of with the with a very hushed tone, she confessed that her first podcast episodes were just her reading blog posts, like her most popular blog posts, and she thought, "Oh, everybody's going to eat me alive. They're just going to crucify me. And she discovered readers are readers and listeners are listeners, and there's little overlap. So she was able to sort of get away with that in in the first iteration of podcasting. But it was it left an impression on me that people like what they like. They want to consume the information in the way that they want to. So, sort of a maybe a little bit of a counterbalance to the cannibalization. I don't know why I can't say that word today. In welcome to the cannibal hour here at the podcast Super Friends, that it's not as big of a deal because people want they like what they like. They want to consume it the information the way that they want to consume

Ainsley Rossitto  21:26  
it. And I think it's also a discovery point too. Just to follow on to what you're saying, Catherine. Like we've we've seen this emergence of like podcasts now, where audio and video, and people were so worried. Like, are people only going to watch watch my podcast now. Is the audio going to be depreciated? I mean, people still publish their entire transcript on landing pages. Is is that going to be just the main engagement point that people have? But I think we're also finding like discovery happens in so many different ways, and YouTube has been amazing for podcast discovery, like whether you support video or not, and and that emergence, and so yeah, I think there, you know, there are pros and cons to to all of it, and and being everywhere. But I think, like, you know, Matt, whether you mention it or not, like it's a great example of you still got Pod News in front of you as many times as possible, whether you had time to to read it or listen

Catherine O'Brien  22:20  
to it. Answer. I want to. You mentioned a couple of things, Ainsley, about monetization, and I want to focus a little bit there for a minute. I think that we were talking about the the ability to create a membership program for your podcast and having people who are supporting you that way. Can you talk a little bit just about that as a strategy for podcasters? I think that there's a lot of people who, again, because of other models and other mediums, they they leaned towards the idea of ad revenue. Where podcasting, I think, probably benefits more from sponsorships or memberships, those kinds of things. So, can you go a little bit more deeply on talking about those kinds of tools at Beehive and people who are having success that way?

Ainsley Rossitto  23:00  
Sure. I mean, I think that the creators on Beehive who are using our our subscription tools, they're they're using them in so many different ways, right? They're either podcast only creators, and they have some value proposition of either exclusive episodes or ad free episodes, or just entirely have gated their content, and some of them are pairing it even with subscriber-only newsletters or subscriber-only content on their website. There are so many different ways, and I think you know with podcasts and other you know newsletters and things like that, your audience doesn't necessarily have to be huge for you to make money, you could have a highly targeted audience that is really valuable to sponsors. Like you're reaching, you know, all school superintendents, and then curriculum companies really find your audience, your you know, your newsletter list or your podcast really valuable as an advertising point, and or you know some sort of editorial content that you could help them sponsor and get out, but I think you know people have found more diverse ways to make their podcast or newsletter sustainable by setting up these subscription models because they know they have valuable content and they know people are interested in it, and so they just kind of figure out the best price point that's sustainable. Some people on our platform set up monthly, you know, subscriptions. Some set up like pay what you think this is worth. Some set up an annual subscription. There are so many different ways people are utilizing this feature. I would say best of all is Beehive does not take a revenue cut from your subscription earnings, whereas yeah, most most platforms I think these days are taking anywhere from eight to to 15% off the top. But yeah, so whatever revenue you earn, it stays in your pocket.

Catherine O'Brien  24:55  
Wow. Yeah, I

Johnny Podcasts  24:56  
was I was gonna ask that next because I I was looking earlier at the product update. That you guys released in April time. One of them was the monetization and platform fees. I mean, Patreon takes eight, Substack takes 10, Captivate takes 12, Buzzsprout takes 15. What was the thinking around that decision? Was that already the newsletter model? Is that you keep all of your monetization? Like, how does Beehive recap? Like, how do you guys make that money back?

Ainsley Rossitto  25:23  
How do you do it? No, I mean that's already that was already the newsletter subscription model, and so we follow that too as we introduced podcasts in into the ecosystem. But ultimately, like you're creating the content that's driving this revenue, and so you should keep that. You still have to pay like your Stripe processing fees, which is the same across all these other platforms for for the payment processing. But yeah, you keep those earnings.

Johnny Podcasts  25:49  
And then another kind of technical question, like peeling back the curtain, if you're allowed to, how difficult is it to like set up technically and build out, we can get your show onto Spotify. We can get your show onto Apple. We can get your show onto all these different platforms because I know Riverside just did it, but up until now, there really was like you know a handful of these hosting companies, and it seemed like that access to be able to get your podcast from this website to the world. How difficult was that?

Ainsley Rossitto  26:21  
Yeah, so I'm so glad you asked this question. And at the risk of like being long-winded, I I obviously spent a fair amount of time in my past experience distributing podcasts. Whether we were working with partners, I've worked with just about every hosting platform out there: Megaphone, Art 19, Omni, etc. etc. and you know a lot of them have different processes for how you actually get your RSS feed once it's hosted out to all the major platforms. So it was something that we really wanted to make sure was explicit and easy for customers, especially if it was their first time setting up a podcast, because RSS feeds are are kind of confusing to explain, let alone saying like you have to go submit it now here for indexing and and all those sorts of things. So we actually have a handy little distribution tab in the Beehive podcast dashboard where you can kind of one click either sync up if you have an existing Spotify for podcasters or Apple Podcast Connect, like some sort of existing account, you can sync it up so that way you know your metrics and and all of that are kind of combined in one central database. Or you can you know distribute out to new platforms. We have like one click options that bring you to the iHeart Podcast distribution or Amazon music and all those certain things, and of course, a lot of platforms eventually will index your show. But we want to give you the power to kind of do that in a in a faster means, and also manage your RSS feed on those platforms by hooking that up. It also helps us kind of keep a pulse check on like what the health is of all those distribution relationships for our creators and things too. We also have a sync option with YouTube. So if you use our landing page option, where it automatically generates that episodic page for you, it will pull in the corresponding YouTube videos, which is really cool. Again, like saves you that copy and paste of all the links, the deep links and and the video embed to have a web destination,

Johnny Podcasts  28:25  
and does it sync out to YouTube too? Like, is YouTube an added destination for publishing?

Ainsley Rossitto  28:30  
Not yet, but we plan to add that later this year.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  28:37  
We love that you are listening to the podcast Super Friends. You can watch the show on YouTube at Johnny Podcasts and at Sound Off Media.

Jon Gay  28:47  
Can I can I come back to one thing you said a moment ago, Ainsley, about the pay what you think this is worth? I I don't know if you have any data on this or any anecdotal evidence, but imposter syndrome is so big in podcasting, I wonder if you know of any stories of somebody says, "Hey, pay me what you think this content is worth, and they're pleasantly surprised by the results.

Ainsley Rossitto  29:10  
Yeah, I don't have any like hard monetary like data I can share on that, but I do know several creators that do it on the platform, and I think some of their content too is more mission driven, and so sometimes it's. I don't feel comfortable associating a price with this, but I know people think my work is important, and you know they've told me they would pay X, Y, Z, and so they are seeing significant support through that that channel and that opportunity. Awesome, yeah,

Catherine O'Brien  29:39  
yeah. There's, I think, your point about, sorry, Jag, Jag, your point about imposter syndrome amongst podcasters is really poignant, and then I just love the the fact that we all know that podcasting is a niche medium that attracts niche niche topics, but that can be. You can absolutely succeed in in those conditions because if you hit the right people, that's all you need to do to be successful for your show. That's great. Any other questions that we have about monetization?

Matt Cundill  30:10  
Yeah, a little bit. I have the opposite question that Johnny had. Johnny asked all about the podcast stuff and you know how we make how we connect on that and you know go from there. But I don't know anything really about newsletters. Even though I'm writing a newsletter, and I'm just trying, I I really don't. I mean, I'm I'm really just copying everybody else's, and I'm wondering what support you have inside to to help someone who I really don't know what I'm doing.

Ainsley Rossitto  30:35  
Absolutely. So so Beehive makes this very easy for for newsletter creators. We have a whole ad network, and so what you can do is you decide, of course, how many ads you want to put into your newsletter, where you want those ads to be, what format you want them to be, and you'll get an email with available offers in the ad network, and you can self select the ads available to you, and it's a matter of just kind of copying and pasting in that creative. If you have you know spots in your newsletter that lend themselves to include images, or if it's just text, it could be you know presented by, brought to you by, all those sorts of things. But we make it really easy for you to plug and play and opt into ads that way, or we have a fully programmatic automated ad solution where you could say, "I want ads to go here. I don't care what you fill it with. But similar on the podcast side, you'd set up, you know, category exclusions or sponsors you'd like to work with, and and all of that sort of thing. So our ad network team is out there doing the hard work of of selling those ads for you to fill. And if you do have direct sales or sponsorships, very similar again to like how the podcast ad waterfall works, you can certainly go ahead and self-insert those into your newsletters and and you know manage them independently.

Matt Cundill  31:53  
I think the best thing about Beehive and why I like it is that I can have my domain and I can still be on the free tier, so I'm at SoundingOff news, and that's my blog. That's where it's at, and it's free. And now I just want to learn more.

Catherine O'Brien  32:11  
And my favorite thing is not only the dazzling content that Matt puts out, but that it is a weekly email that comes out monthly. That is just perfect for me. That's great.

Johnny Podcasts  32:22  
I have one more question on the monetization, Catherine, if that's okay. And and Ainsley, this could be a short answer. This this may not be in your area of expertise, but you mentioned that like YouTube as a destination is going is like in progress. That's that's going to be a feature, which I think is a huge selling point for Beehive. Do you have any thoughts on YouTube's announcement that they're changing the way that they view, they count a view? So before it was like a certain amount of seconds. Now it's 1/10 of one frame of one. If you click on that video, it doesn't matter if you go, oh, clicked on it by accident. Goodbye. That's counting as a view. That then, once it's a destination, that needs to be put into the dashboard that the host is seeing as a view. Then there's the monetization and the ads that were in there. Who gets paid? Like, how much is that paying out? Do you guys have any thoughts on on that specific announcement that they made?

Ainsley Rossitto  33:15  
Yeah, I mean, I think broadly, my my thought on this YouTube view change is like it goes to the overall ethos of like why I think it's really important for all podcasters to have a newsletter. That platform, YouTube, Spotify, Apple, any of these like primary listening or consumption platforms can make these changes, which can impact the numbers that you're ultimately selling against, whether it's a CPM or its views or those sorts of things. But the newsletter subscriber base is gonna stay constant, and as you build that, the value of it is always gonna be a number that you can kind of sell against, and you know know and have like a highly valuable relationship with. So, so yeah, I mean, I think is YouTube going to be the only one who's going to change their measurement? No, like it's going to happen. It's going to continue to change, and we've seen that across you know many platforms over time. Like Spotify's definition of a play versus an IAB download versus you know everybody has different measurement. Hopefully, at some point, like we as an industry will tackle this and come together. One,

Johnny Podcasts  34:23  
this is what a play is. This is what a listen is. They had that

Jon Gay  34:28  
top secret conference a few weeks ago that they they put out the we we want this to be our new metric. I'm not sure where that's gone. So yeah, so it's

Matt Cundill  34:37  
online. You can look it up. But what what's the most important metric though for newsletters?

Catherine O'Brien  34:43  
Oh, great!

Ainsley Rossitto  34:45  
Yeah, I mean, I think it all depends on your goal, right? So it could be if growth is your goal, it could be the subscriber number. If engagement is your goal, it could be the open rate or the click through rate. Or if there are particular things you're trying to drive engagement to. In your newsletter, it can be engagement with that particular thing, and then you know if revenue is ultimately the goal, right? We're looking at another set of metrics there in terms of earnings and and the you know CPMS associated with your ads. So I mean, you look at the newsletter stack and and performance in a very similar way to to podcasts, but it's always going to drill down to like what your ultimate show goal, your email goal is going to be, and that might change. Right.

Catherine O'Brien  35:29  
Sorry, I didn't mean to step on you there. Can you talk a little bit about from the advertisers' point of view? How do they like being in this network that is able to sort of connect with all different kinds of platforms and people who are doing different different creators doing different things. Do you have anything to share about from there, the advertiser's perspective?

Ainsley Rossitto  35:49  
Yeah, I mean, from the advertiser side, we're obviously not doing work with advertisers yet for for podcast ads, but on the newsletter side, we have quite a few like high quality and notable brands that we're working with and pulling in, and you know a lot of renewals and a lot of folks that are are really like working with us on a repeated basis. We also have had a lot of people come in that are you know podcast brands that are looking to buy newsletter ad inventory because it's a great growth channel for them to get visibility among particular targeted audiences, like you can buy newsletter ads in the same way you can buy podcast ads, like zeroing in on a target audience or a certain you know demographic segment or those sorts of things.

Catherine O'Brien  36:36  
I I ask that because, and I love what you're just saying right there about the from the a podcaster's perspective, because I think again for the for a long time there were people were focusing on sort of presumed best practices as opposed to hard data on what moves the needles for audience growth or those building your audience getting the kind of results that you want for your podcast, and so it's very interesting to me, the idea that your your podcast could be advertising and having sort of more direct results that you can measure besides just sort of thinking like, okay, that went well. You could actually see the actual metrics of who's clicking, who's clicking through, who's opening that kind of thing. I think would be is going to be helpful down the line.

Ainsley Rossitto  37:20  
Definitely, and and there's another feature within the Beehive newsletter side of the house. That's another opportunity to to make money called our recommendations tool. And so, you know, unlike other newsletter platforms where any you should also subscribe to these, you actually control that on Beehive, and so you can set up. You know, these are the three publications I'd also like to recommend. Or you can earn money based on other newsletters looking to grow, and that they feel like you're the right target audience for them, and you can recommend them. And any conversions, you know, you get paid on. And so there are so many other ways to kind of diversify your revenue, even if you're not looking to do like brand-based advertising when you have that newsletter surface.

Catherine O'Brien  38:06  
That's great.

Johnny Podcasts  38:06  
And then the next logical step is now offering like I have my newsletter, but Jag has his podcast. I can buy ad space on Jag's podcast to promote my newsletter all within the Beehive ecosystem.

Catherine O'Brien  38:22  
I wouldn't charge you for that. That's funny. All right. Well, let's turn a little bit to you know one of the warm fuzzy things about podcasting is a sense of community that people have with their with podcasts that they listen to that they're really dedicated that that are in their top eight of the the podcasts that they're spending every single week with or consuming every episode. I know that Beehive has

Jon Gay  38:46  
top

Catherine O'Brien  38:46  
eight. I know that Beehive has some really built-in nice community tools. Can you talk a little bit about the idea of fostering community and what podcasters should know about that?

Ainsley Rossitto  38:58  
Sure. Yeah. So we launched Community back with our summer release event earlier this summer, and essentially it's a great place to create a hub for audience discourse and also integrate anything else you host on Beehive. So you can automatically publish your podcast episodes to your community, and you know it's a great place to say like I want to talk about this part and also invite everybody to that discussion. You could also include it as you know part of your your subscription offering, access to the community. So many different ways you can use it, but you can kind of again repurpose, but also facilitate further dialog and discussion. I think it's it's also a great place to do things like say you have a community of podcasters across the nation, and you want to create focused channels talking about monetization or how you're using your newsletter or even regional channels and chapters and things like that. You could just imagine it being like a hub for engagement and and kind of taking all. Things off the page of your newsletter to have that extra level of engagement, or you know, pulling in your podcast to you know see what people are actually reacting to. I think on the podcast side, there are so many limited social engagement tools. It's like you publish a clip to Instagram and then you're looking at the comments, but nobody's really connecting with each other there, or you know, having a thorough thread that you can actually like discuss and connect with each other on, and so we're trying to create a place to to do that and also make it kind of really integrated with the rest of the Beehive product stack.

Catherine O'Brien  40:34  
I would I would say I always hear that community community building is extremely rewarding, but it is time-consuming and it is energy-consuming. That's the real the real rub there. Matt, were you going to say something?

Matt Cundill  40:47  
I think we talked a little bit about podcast hosting, but one thing we didn't mention is is the cost.

Ainsley Rossitto  40:54  
Sure. So Beehive is a SaaS platform, software as a as a service. So it's priced primarily on your newsletter subscriber list, and dependent on the the size of that podcast hosting, largely kind of comes along as part of the package. So, you know, Matt, I think you mentioned you're on the free tier. You can certainly set up a podcast and host it. If you had multiple podcasts, you would have to upgrade. I think to what's our max tier, and enterprise just gets unlimited. So we're pretty gracious in terms of the amount of content we let you host, and and those sorts of things. And right now, again, our pricing is largely based on the size of your your newsletter list, and podcasting comes along with

Matt Cundill  41:38  
it. Yeah, we do talk a lot about you know you know, building a community, and I think Catherine may want to just go back one more time if if you're going to talk a little bit more about community. But I have people who who who know that this is the key to success with a podcast, and a few people have said I'd like to go and be a part of this newsletter because you know I I think they believe it's going to bring them closer to you know, to getting more newsletter subscribers or more more podcast people. So, as of today, if I'm to go and move my podcast to Beehive and Habit hosted there, I should do that because why?

Ainsley Rossitto  42:15  
Yes, I mean I think you should do it because if you're a creator who's dealing with seven different tools to get your content out there. It's gonna a consolidate that stack and let you work from one place and manage your audience in one place. It's gonna solve a lot of time for you and and make it so you're not managing your website here, publishing your podcast here, looking at analytics here, here, and here. It's all gonna be in kind of one central hub for you. I would say that's the the biggest value prop is you're creating kind of a whole operating system for your brand, not just your podcast. Think bigger, right? Like think about all the things that you need and the components and and how and where you're managing those and and put them all in one.

Matt Cundill  42:58  
Yeah, as I'm thinking about this now, I have a podcast that faded a couple years ago, and they were they had great numbers and were doing very well. But in the end, they thought the podcasting just took too long, and instead they are monetizing with a newsletter instead. And you know, if it had been there two years ago, I think they would have found a way to embrace both.

Ainsley Rossitto  43:20  
Definitely.

Catherine O'Brien  43:23  
Any community questions, Jag or Johnny?

Johnny Podcasts  43:27  
I'm not so well versed on the community side of things, so it's just fascinating to learn about. I think, as far as what I've seen on the internet, Beehive seems to be the one that's doing this the best, like pulling all of these pieces together. Like you have Facebook pages, and then Substack doesn't really have a community aspect of it, but Beehive and then Riverside has sort of like the hosting and recording. You're pulling everything in there. I guess it's one question would be like pro like you've already released all these amazing things. Is like what's even further on the horizon? Like what more does Beehive want to do? Are we just focusing? Because there's, you know, companies run the risk of trying to do too much and trying to be just okay at everything rather than being great at a couple of things.

Ainsley Rossitto  44:11  
Right? Do

Johnny Podcasts  44:11  
you have any thoughts there?

Ainsley Rossitto  44:12  
Yeah, I mean, right now, I I feel like and and Beehive's whole thing has always been let's respond to what customers want, whether it's on a feature level of, you know, I was I was really amazed when I started here three months ago of like how fast we actually develop things. Like a customer can ask for something on a Monday and it's done by a Wednesday, and it's a significant feature, and and we've launched it. And I think we have our our big sort of six in terms of the pillars of the product, and right now we're really just kind of refining those based on user feedback and making them as best as they can be. Obviously, there's two big things missing in the podcast, you know, product: the monetization and the video element. But yes, they're on the way, and you know, I think as we we do that, we're you know going to be doing user testing and. A lot of iteration on the products and making sure they continue to stay integrated with each other too, and so I think we'll we'll continue to make the product as as best as it can be and refine it, and then see you know what else is on the horizon that our users are are really interested in for features that that make sense within that you know integrated stack and and also just our operating model.

Johnny Podcasts  45:25  
One thing that you touched on earlier too was that really stuck out to me was the newsletter creator can sort of have their their newsletter post turned into a podcast automatically. Could you touch on a little more what that looks like from a user perspective? Let's just pretend that I have this big newsletter. I don't want to host a podcast. It sounds like there's a way to sort of automate that.

Ainsley Rossitto  45:46  
Yeah, there is a tool that utilizes AI to turn it into a podcast episode that you can distribute. Some of the newsletter creators on our platform are actually using it as like an accessibility feature, or they're including it as like you know, you open up the email. You don't want to read this, or you don't have time to read this right now. You can click to listen here. So that's a whole different intent, I think. But I I do think it's a good opportunity for people to figure out if there is an appetite for listening, which is a good you know entry point and proof of concept before you start a whole original podcast if you have that already established newsletter audience,

Johnny Podcasts  46:25  
and does that get created as its own feed? Like, if I had the Johnny Podcasts newsletter, there's not just the click to listen here within Beehive. There's a whole feed on Spotify that someone who has no clue who I am could find that there and go, "Oh, wow! There's all of these newsletter posts as its own podcast on Spotify or App or wherever.

Ainsley Rossitto  46:44  
You don't necessarily have to distribute it widely, but it does generate an RSS feed. You could,

Johnny Podcasts  46:50  
you could, okay,

Catherine O'Brien  46:50  
okay, interesting.

Ainsley Rossitto  46:53  
The other really cool thing we have within Beehive that I wanted to make sure I brought up is our MCP because I think getting started is kind of intimidating too. You know, there's the migration element if you're bringing things over, and our team has some white glove service to be able to help you import content of any sort, whether it be newsletter or podcast or or what. But we also release an MCP that is very cool in terms of it plugs into all the data available into your account, so you can ask it questions about your podcast performance, and you know what are my best performing episodes. If I were to create a digital product, you know what is some content you recommend that I kind of pull from to inspire that, and so it's just part of kind of making it easier for people to you know you bring all this content in. You have all this data available to you now. What do you do with it? And this is kind of a thought partner to help you work through the data available, the content you have, and figure out other ways to package it and distribute it. So it's a way to think through kind of community, digital products, some of the other activations on the Beehive, you know, ecosystem. If you wanted to take full advantage of of our product set,

Catherine O'Brien  48:06  
and does Beehive currently or plan to support digital products? Or

Ainsley Rossitto  48:11  
we currently support digital products.

Catherine O'Brien  48:12  
Oh, that's great. And what about like lead magnets for the email side? If you wanted to do like a freebie, a list, or you know, some sort of minimal thing is-is that something that you can do as well?

Ainsley Rossitto  48:24  
Yeah, I mean, you can kind of flexibly use some of the content in terms of setting up like a survey page, for example, that says like fill out your name, email, et cetera, and then you can attach an automation to it, and the automation can include like that PDF lead magnet, or a link out to gated content, or a not publicly available web page, and and do all sorts of things like that. We try and kind of just give you the tools, and you can kind of figure out ways to pull them together to use for the means that you you know want to activate them with.

Catherine O'Brien  48:59  
What's going to work best for your the audience that you currently have. Exactly,

Ainsley Rossitto  49:03  
exactly.

Catherine O'Brien  49:04  
Very cool. Well, one of the other things, the reason that this a kernel behind this entire conversation was we all all of us here, veterans of the podcasting world, we have seen big companies come in do things with podcasting, and I'm gonna. My words. These are my word choice. Sort of dropped the podcasting ball, and so I was really excited. Great. I didn't say that Johnny podcasted. Yeah, yeah. That's that's exactly who I was thinking of. You know, big players come in and then they leave, and then I saw Beehive coming in, and they were like, not only were we crushing it in the email game, we're helping people build their newsletters. We're helping them develop this, and now we're going in big on podcasting. Can you just give us a little bit of like optimistic looking into the future? What is so great about podcasting? What do you see coming down the pike from your from the chair that you're sitting in there, Ainsley in San Francisco?

Ainsley Rossitto  49:58  
Yeah, I I mean I think. It is such an exciting time. Even before I got over to Beehive a couple months ago for podcasting, I mean, podcasts are everywhere. They're in the mainstream award shows now. We're seeing them on streaming platforms. We're seeing major brands. Everybody wants a podcast, which I know can be an annoyance to people who were first to the industry and veterans and things. But it's also so cool to see us being treated as kind of a first-class medium and surface that everybody wants to be a part of, and it really, to me, is like we're here to stay. And I know there's been a lot of at times podcasting even feels so fragile and so spread thin, but I think that it's proven that there's space for everybody. And I think Beehive's Beehive's emergence and investment in podcasting tools is also showing like we're here to support creators that maybe don't necessarily have a massive network behind them and still want to put out a great quality product and maximize their revenue and growth potential off of it. And so I'm excited by all of that momentum and the continued you know investment in moving the industry forward for everybody, I think podcasting has always been so accessible to creators of all shapes and sizes, and we want to sustain that.

Jon Gay  51:09  
I love that you're taking care of the folks that are going to the second half of podcast moving in September, not just the big ballers who are going to the first two days.

Ainsley Rossitto  51:16  
I'll be at the second half.

Matt Cundill  51:17  
Yeah, actually, if you can talk about your panel,

Ainsley Rossitto  51:20  
I'm doing two panels. Very excited. One of them is is largely about what we've talked about today, like how to scale your podcast across different platforms, whether it be newsletter, web, video, etc. And then one of them is how to grow your podcast to a million downloads. And that panel will be interesting because we're we're talking a lot about content through the lens of made for kids content, which can also be tricky because monetization restrictions there are even harder, and so it's it becomes that much more interesting to pair a kids podcast with a newsletter that's specifically to a parent audience that you can monetize versus you know, audio that kids are consuming and might not be an ad-friendly medium, and those sorts of things. And so, excited to to be there. And we're going to be setting up some time to have office hours with folks too. If you want to chat about your podcast newsletter strategy, I'm available, and we'll be there to have conversations.

Matt Cundill  52:21  
Can we sign up now for that,

Ainsley Rossitto  52:24  
or very soon? Very soon. More info coming soon. Matt and

Jon Gay  52:27  
I will see you in New York.

Catherine O'Brien  52:28  
All right, I can't wait. Ainsley, I'm sure you can just slip their names on the top of the list there. Just you know, just as a favorite of them. Absolutely, be great.

Matt Cundill  52:35  
You're the first person to be hired as head of podcasting for Beehive, and so you come in, and you're you mentioned you're going to have all the toys, you know, in the box, as it were, that that you know maybe that the Art Nineteens and the Omnis and the megaphones already have. So that's a big list, and I I can just imagine you've got like a room full of tech people building this out. What is on their to-do list for the next two or three releases? Can you,

Ainsley Rossitto  53:08  
yeah,

Matt Cundill  53:08  
slide me a little secret?

Ainsley Rossitto  53:10  
I mean, I'll note that we we have first off some incredibly talented engineers, and we'll shout out Jacob Wolf, who has been core to building the the hosting platform we have today and some of the upcoming innovations, but we touched upon it a lot here. Monetization is is coming up very soon, and in terms of having a programmatic ad solution, the ability to insert ad breaks into your episodes, and a direct campaign manager, and all the analytics that kind of come with that. I'll say those are are probably our next big releases coming before the end of the year.

Matt Cundill  53:47  
Good, I'm excited. The thing I, you know, when when you say this and you say campaign manager, it's like I'd have to learn like a third dashboard. So if I integrated some stuff into BI, that's the stuff that keeps me away from making that jump. Oh, I gotta manage a third dashboard.

Ainsley Rossitto  54:02  
Well, the good thing is, if you don't sell direct podcast ads, you don't have to learn it, and it won't impact you. But if you want to turn on programmatic ads, you can still set them and forget them, and you know automatically insert you know that that fill throughout your podcast. So you can kind of expand and contract the product as you go. And once we have that, maybe we can get you in the beta tests, so you can give us some feedback on the product too.

Johnny Podcasts  54:26  
If I know anything about Matt, he loves being a beta

Catherine O'Brien  54:29  
test. I love it. All right, exactly. Yeah, I like I like how Ainsley's not letting any of your objections slide by. She's doing a great job of conquering all your your objections there-that's excellent. Oh, I'm

Matt Cundill  54:43  
thinking about one. I'm thinking about moving a podcast in there.

Catherine O'Brien  54:47  
Stand by. Interesting. All right. Interesting. Stay stay tuned here at the Podcast Super Fans to find out how that goes. Well, Ainsley, I think this has been really informational for our audience as well as for us. This has been awesome and. I appreciate your view of the future for podcasting in general. So we're going to go back around the horn here and sign off. Jag, why don't you start?

Jon Gay  55:08  
Sure, John Gay, Jag Podcast Productions, Berkeley, Michigan. Come say hi in New York if you're a podcast movement. I list that at the last minutes ago.

Matt Cundill  55:16  
Matt Cundill, the Sound Off Podcast Network, Gimli, Manitoba.

Johnny Podcasts  55:21  
Ainsley, thanks for coming on. Congratulations on your new role. Three months is-it's probably still very scary and figuring everything out. But thank you for taking the time and jumping on and telling us everything. This was this was really helpful today. I'm Johnny. You can check out Podcast Engine AI if you want to. We talked about it on the last episode, so go check it out.

Catherine O'Brien  55:39  
Excellent, Ainsley. Why don't you can you drop a link for us? Just explain where people can find out more about Beehive. If you people who are hearing this and they want everything you've been talking about, where can they go?

Ainsley Rossitto  55:49  
Absolutely, you can go as simple as going to Beehive.com.

Catherine O'Brien  55:55  
There it all is, Ainsley. Again, thank you so much for being here on the podcast, Super Friends. My name is Catherine O'Brien, and we'll see you next time.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  56:03  
Thanks for listening. For show notes, transcripts, and the video version of this episode, check out the podcast Super Friends at SoundOff Network.