1. What is SecureRSS?
Do you use Patreon, Memberful or Supporting Cast to put exclusive content behind a paywall for your fans to support you. If you do, then you know you have to manage abd upload two RSS feeds, your public 'Open RSS feed' and your 'Private Paywall Feed'.
2. Equally your fans also have to run two accounts. Their favourite podcast app for your 'Open' RSS feed and their paywall account to buy the 'Private' RSS feed. What a pain in the proverbial and a total waste of time!!!
Have you heard of SecureRSS aka L.402 - probably not? It's a new secure payment protocol extension that can be used in your existing RSS feed.
3. No need for private feeds!
Yes that's right just one RSS feed for both freemium and premium content and it works with your favourite podcast apps. No need to upload a separate version of your podcast to those paywall member sites anymore.
Link: https://www.l402.org/
4. So how does it work?
You upload your audio as usual to your host. You then decide if the audio is going to free or premium. Maybe the whole podcast is premium, maybe just the back catalogue or perhaps early access to new episodes are premium?
The host then wraps your premium content inside a new podcast tag called "Paywall" - see image below. You choose the currency, amount and decide if its a purchase or rental.
Apps like TrueFans can then read your RSS feed and show a 'Play' button for the freemium content and a 'Buy' button for premium content. After the content has been paid then the button turns to 'Play'.
5. There is one more benefit to SecureRSS.
With an 'Open' RSS feed you can find the enclosure tag in the RSS feed and copy & paste the audio (MP3, AAC) file and play it back elsewhere. With a 'Secure' RSS feed you can also find the enclosure tag with the audio file but if you copy & paste that file it won't play as it is encrypted until it is paid for. i.e it is Secure.
6. Works today
TrueFans in conjunction with PodToo have already enabled support for SecureRSS. In the first example, PodToo created an audiobook called 'Three Little Sheep Dogs'. This has a price and all the audio files are encrypted and all the 'Play' buttons are disabled in TrueFans. After the fan buys the audiobook and only after the payment is confirmed by TrueFans with PodToo, the play buttons are enabled.
Link: https://lnkd.in/eDh-4bn6
TrueFans also uses SecureRSS when users want to buy a transcript for an episode. They click buy and based on the length of the audio the price is dispalyed. i.e the longer an episode the more it costs. Once the payment is confirmed by TrueFans the transcript is delivered.
SecureRSS works with music, online courses, audiobooks, tickets and merchandise, basically any content that needs a pre-payment and confirmation.
7. Live Demo
I will be demoing SecureRSS at the London Podcast Show.
Thursday 12:10 - Title: Podcasting 3.0
Sam Sethi :pc2red: ⁂
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