Podcasting 2.0: I am really cheap and sent you 12 cents

Even when I mean well, I suck at Value for Value

A few weeks ago I was listening to the Podnews Weekly Review and I wanted to send the guys a comment with some sats attached….

TANGENT #1: Is that a boostagram? Is a boostagram something else? Blubrry says “A boostagram is a feature that allows listeners to send messages to podcast creators along with their monetary support (usually in the form of small cryptocurrency payments).” So I guess it was a boostagram

TANGENT #2: I’m in the top 2% of the people in the world who understand any of this value 4 value stuff. The people in the 1% know wayyyyy more about it than I do, but if I am confused at this, imagine how confused the other 98% are.

….where were we? Ah yes, I was listening to Sam and James and wanted to comment and send them some sats. How many sats should I send? I dunno. I picked 200.

Is 200 a lot of sats? Do you know? How does anyone know?

I even commented that I hoped I wasn’t being cheap.

As James read my comment, he lovingly observed that 200 is not a good boost.

I MEANT WELL.

As I write this on Sunday night, 200 sats is around 12 cents. Oops.

I listen to various Value 4 Value shows and along the way I have picked up a few Sat Amounts that seem to be socially acceptable:

2222 is a row of ducks. Look at the 2s. See how it looks like a row of ducks? Anyway, I hear this one a lot and it seems like you won’t be picked up in teh school yard if you send 2222 sats which is…. $1.44. Not a lot of money, but socially acceptable.

I felt guilty and sent Sam and James what I called “Double Ducks” which is 4444. I don’t know if I made up the term, if I heard it somewhere else, or if anyone uses it, but I like the sound of Double Ducks. I hope Sam and James enjoy splitting their $2.87

Some other numbers which seem socially acceptable.

1776 for a patriotic boost of $1.15

2112 for Rush Fans. $1.37

1701 for Star Trek fans. $1.10

and 5150 for Van Haleners. $3.35 you high roller.

I had some more problems with V4V this weekend. I actually remembered to listen to James and Sam on TrueFans so I streamed some sats their way and did a double ducks.

On Saturday, I was on the beach and actually remembered that I wanted to support Adam Curry and Dave Jones for their great work on the Podcast Index. The problem was that I didn’t have any service on the beach, so I couldn’t stream the show or even download it on a 2.0 app. So there I was, a listener kinda understanding this, wanting to do it, remembering to do it, and I still couldn’t do it.

TANGENT #3: What I don’t know is - say I had used Fountain and had pre-downloaded the show. Had I streamed it I would have sent it some amount of sats per minute (20 or 30, some number like that…….

TANGENT #4: …is 20 or 30 sats a minute GOOD? I don’t know. How much is that in real money again? This is one of the issues. I have no idea how much I am paying. Imagine getting in a taxi and the meter was in sats. Hey, we’re almost home but we owe 50,000 sats. Is that a lot? I don’t know. And as I mentioned in Tangent 2, I feel like I know way more about this than 98% of the population but I DON’T KNOW.

Let’s do some math. Let’s use 20 sats. Let’s make a show 60 minutes. So that’s 1200 sats. Which is 77 cents. Is sending someone 77 cents for a one hour show GOOD? I guess it is if a thousand of us do it. I know I wouldn’t mind making $770 an hour.

BACK TO TANGENT #3: …so had I streamed it, it would have sent Adam and Dave 20 sats a minute. But what if I had downloaded it and listened to it off-line, does the app sync up at some point and send them what I would have sent them? I don’t know.

I could look this up, but 98% of the population is not going to do that. V4V has issues man. I love the idea, and if I can’t figure this out, good luck getting a civilian to do any of this.

Tangents over.

On Sunday I remembered I wanted to support Adam and Dave so I streamed 1 second of the show on Fountain and sent them a Boostagram comment with Double Ducks.

What we need is a big red button that says DONATE or SUPPORT or something and we need all this to work in US Dollars.

As I have said before…

Let’s let Apple take their 30% cut and let’s add a big easy button on Apple Podcasts that allows me to use Apple Pay and all my connected credit cards.

As a creator 70% of anything is better than 100% of nothing.

This is all too hard. Apple, come save the day. You can even take 30%.