The idea being is that you can do everything
from the place where you're listening and you're
not having to be directed as we've talked in
other things about you go to the Patreon or you
go to the link that they say that then your affiliate
link it's putting it all in the place where somebody
can very easily get to it while they're listening
to the show that's the goal very very good Welcome
to Fanzone, your bite -sized guide to getting
the most out of the TrueFans podcast app. In
each episode, we'll discuss an aspect of the
app and hopefully answer any questions you may
have about it. Plus, when you listen to Fanzone
in TrueFans, you can earn as you listen and
use your earnings to support your favourite podcasters.
I'm Clare Waite Brown, independent podcaster
and all -round podcast enthusiast. And I'm Sam
Sethi, the CEO and founder of TrueFans. We are
going to talk today about the final three tabs
on the show screen. So this is a podcast level.
We're talking about the whole show. The final
three tabs, we've got events, blog and merch.
Now, I know what those words mean, obviously,
but what do they mean in my TrueFans podcast
app? OK, so one of the things that TrueFans
wants to be is a destination portal for creators,
not just a podcasting app. So the idea is that
you can drive fans from anywhere to this page.
And yes, they can see what episodes you've published.
But we wanted to add more function to this page.
So events is a great way. You can have offline
events, real world events or online events. So
you might have a live event online and you can
publish the event date, time, location, if it's
a paid for event or if it's free. And again,
this gives your fans the chance to either see
a live event online with you. And when we bring
the live chat in, maybe comment in live real
time with you. Equally, it may be that you've
decided to do a meetup somewhere, or if you're
a comedy podcaster, maybe you've got a club that
you want to do a real live event to. So again,
if they're on this page, they can see the event,
they can indicate that they're coming to the
event. And also at the same time, if it's a paid
for item, they can pay it from their wallet directly
in sats or fiat. And then, yes, that money goes
directly into the creator's wallet. And we're
seeing a lot more of these podcast events, individual
podcasts taking part in them. So as a listener,
this is a really cool way to see if your favourite
show is doing an event that you could go to in
real life. Yes. And one of the things that's
really exciting about this is we have submitted
this as a extension tag to the RSS feed. So the
idea is that hosts in the future will also allow
you to create events in your host. But at the
moment, you can only do this in your creator's
admin dashboard on TrueFans. Okay. Blog and merch.
I'm assuming then that you can publish blogs
on this page and you can sell merchandise. Is
that what we're talking about? Yes, so blogs
are active. So in your creator's admin dashboard
in TrueFans, you can go to the blog tab, you
can write a blog post. And what's exciting about
that is the blog post also tells you who read
your blog post and also how long they read your
blog post. So how far down the page they go.
So you get metrics back from your fans. The fan
can also heart that blog post so they can leave
it with a payment or no payment. And they can
also leave a super comment. So again, we've taken
the technology that we use for podcasting and
applied it to blogging. So people can give you
a small micropayment. I use it now with Podnews
Weekly. Buzzsprout, who is our host for Podnews
Weekly, they have a service called Co -host and
it produces our transcripts and our show titles,
but it also produces a blog post of the episode.
from the audio and I copy and paste that into
my creator's dashboard to create a blog post
that is complementary to the episode that we
just listened to. Yeah. So that one's live. Is
merch live? Merch is not live. That's coming
very, very shortly. So the idea, again, is that
you'll be able to upload images of mugs, caps,
whatever it is you want, and you'll be able to
display a merchant store and you'll be able to
buy those things using your wallet. both in sats
or fiat. And we are in the process of working
on that one. Okay, brilliant. This is something
we've talked about generally and... The idea
being is that you can do everything from the
place where you're listening and you're not having
to be directed as we've talked in other things
about you go to the Patreon or you go to the
link that they say that's then your affiliate
link. It's putting it all in a place where somebody
can very easily get to it while they're listening
to the show. That's the goal. Very, very good.
That's the goal. Yes, you can support the show
just as like you would with Buy Me A Coffee or
Patreon, but you can do it directly in TrueFans.
You can have events, blogs, merch. The other
thing we are bringing out is a masked domain.
So the idea is that eventually you'll be able
to personalize that domain to one of your own
domains. So instead of it saying TrueFans slash
name of podcast, it will have a domain that is
yours. And so you can direct your fans to that
URL and they will just land on your podcast page,
which is actually your podcast portal rather
than just a podcast page. Brilliant. So it sounds
like we've got a few things to talk about in
the Creators Series, or the Creators Dashboard
Series of Fanzone. So we will be explaining a
lot more about these features very shortly. And
also you talked about not going to Patreon, and
then we're going to talk about funding in the
next episode of Fanzone. So thank you very much
for that, Sam, and I'll see you shortly. Bye.
Thanks so much for listening. There are lots
more episodes of Fanzone for you to get stuck
into and that show you how to make the most of
the fab features that this forward -looking podcast
app has to offer podcast listeners and creators
alike. We'd love to hear from you. You can send
us a comment on True ans. More about that in
the Fan Zone episode on comments or email support
@truefans .fm.