Ask IH: Critique my first side-project!
I'm building PodLink. A super simple way to share a podcast link regardless of the recipient's preferred podcast player. I built this to scratch an itch and learn some new technologies. So I'm not too worried about it being that successful, but I thought I'd monetize it with aliased shareable URLs. I'd love any feedback you have about the monetization or concept!
Hey man I am new to developing and I am curios how did you get all of those podcasts. Are you using some APIs or? If so can you link them I am working on project based around podcasts.
Peace!
My project is 100% dependent on the iTunes Search API. Every time you visit one of my URLs, I fetch the details straight from iTunes.
Thank you very much <3
Looks neat @nathang! The customized links are already a good way to monitize, but i would add another "tier/package" to have a custom domain link.
This way Courtland could shoutout to podcast.indiehackers.com and arrive at his Pod.link page. Some bigger podcasts probably want it on their own domain and maybe some other customize options for the page itself.
That sounds pretty interesting. I was imagining my target market to be podcasters that couldn't set up their own site (otherwise, they'd just set up their own page like indiehackers.com/podcast) But maybe there's more potential there than I originally thought.
Some people/companies would definitely set it up themselves. But if you could create a great landing page with the correct links to the platfoms, maybe also the latests episodes etc. People could decide just to give you some money instead of spending the hours on it.
You can add few examples on what a customized link would look like.
Love the clean design @nathang ! I found the IH in a second https://pod.link/1206165808 and am a fan of using a custom short link (I use yourlink .to for most of mine). Do you have a marketing plan for getting this shown to podcasters?
My only thoughts would be around the wording "Customize this URL". I get the idea after I click it but I wonder if you removed the button from here and could have wording down the bottom centre of the screen saying something like "Do you own this podcast? Make this page your own with a custom URL that you can share (includes custom link to leave review on iTunes)". You could shorten but something that makes someone think, yes, that's nice to have one place to send people then, oh yes, one place that could get me more reviews = higher ranking = higher growth/revenue.
Hope this helps.
Don't have a marketing plan just yet. Probably just asking for feedback in podcaster watering holes or maybe advertising on some podcasts if I can make that worthwhile.
Yeah, I need to figure out better positioning for my upsell. The only other place I've seen this model is on SongLink
I hadn't considered a reviews link, but you're now the 2nd person to mention it. And I'd wager the podcasters willing to pay for this are exactly the kind of people who care about reviews. I'll have to figure out how to link straight to the "write a review" screen in iTunes.
I just checked out SongLink and saw their Buy tab. Could you allow podcasters to set up their own Buy tab for products/services/their website/recommended books? This could be either part of the paid add-on or the book recommendations could perhaps be linked through to Amazon. You could also add a Sponsor tab that has small bios and links to their latest sponsor (all under the paid plan). Ok, enough ideas...
I hadn't considered a Store tab, but that reminded me of Rivyt, which gives your Youtube channel a custom domain and they also layer a Products section on top. This might be worth looking into for a v2.
I only mention the reviews as I listen to plenty of podcasts and most seem ok with saying "subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts" but most have more of a push when asking for reviews. You could ask @csallen about what they used for their link - https://www.indiehackers.com/review
Can you explain how you monetized this? I like this simple and passive method. What service did you use and how does the customizing URLs work?
The business model is literally just charging $10/yr for an easy-to-read out-loud URL. You can visit pod.link/cortex as an example.
The technology underneath it is Plasso subscriptions (w/ Stripe under the hood) and asking them to fill out some fields when they start their subscription. When a new order comes in, I have to manually add a new redirect in my webapp. Would be cool if it was more automated, but I don't have the experience to build that just yet.
Ah ok cool. What are you using to host your webapp? I'd like to apply this idea to something - not sure what yet. And if you don't mind me asking, have you gotten a lot of interest from people buying your URLs? Who would be the customer - the podcast owners that stumble across your site?
The front-end is a Node.js app written with Nuxt.js hosted on Heroku, and I also have some APIs
Even though the domain is live, I haven't promoted this at all yet. Still need to figure out a marketing plan. But yes, the target market is podcasters.
Played a podcast just to try your app, but ended up listening it till the end.. Talking about your application, I would say that I really liked the simple design you have. Also, I found that some podcasts have html tags in their descriptions but your app is showing text. And that's mostly it, I really liked it!
Oh, is my description displaying the HTML? I haven't come across that before. Can you send me an example?
Cool. A lot of podcasts I listen to will ask for a subscribe or a review, and they'll always do it by saying "go to your favourite podcast client and find us there".
If you made your URLs more readable instead of numbers, you could try to get those hosts onboard by letting them say "just go to pod dot link slash this american life to leave us a review".
Yeah, I think I need some help pitching that readable URL feature. Not sure that I'm really explaining it well as-is.
I'm curious what you mean by putting a subscribe button on the page. What would that do that all the app links aren't currently doing?
Yeah, but I didn't see that just by looking at the site. Maybe make the call to action on the podcast page bigger and more actionable. "Own this podcast? Click here for URL you can read out to your listeners."
Ignore the point about the Subscribe button, I skimmed the podcast page way too fast and misunderstood. My bad.