How to Create Podcast Bonus Content

Picture it: You’ve launched your podcast, published some episodes, and gotten good reviews or positive feedback from your audience. What could be better? When your audience wants to support you, reward them with some podcast bonus content. We’ll discuss what to make, how to deliver it, and how to make your podcast bonus content as effective as possible. 

The Medium and The Message 

Like ad fitness and brand suitability, the best bonus content complements the podcast it supports. When brainstorming, stay consistent while building on the podcast’s existing material. If you have a tennis podcast, don’t reward your supporters with a 45-minute lecture about coal mining. Not only do you want to keep your topic in mind, but you also need to consider your show’s:

• Value proposition
• Ideal audience
• Tone or mood

Once you have those nailed down, consider the medium you want to use for your bonus content. This will affect your podcast workflow in the future. In the meantime, let’s look at different podcast bonus content types. 

Audio Bonus Content

This differs from early access to episodes. Your bonus content audio won’t be available anywhere else; it’s only available to your show’s supporters. Some may be material you recorded for an episode but couldn’t use. Other options are material recorded specifically as bonus content. Let’s look at some options and how to make them most effective. 

Outtakes or “Bloopers”

This kind of bonus content audio is the easiest to come by. Every podcast recording has moments where someone stumbles over their speech or says something odd. But, if you’ve ever watched movie blooper reels, you know that a long string of mistakes followed by “sorry, let me try again” isn’t wildly interesting. 

But you may find some gems. Once, my husband walked in while I was recording an episode of ADWIT to tell me that dinner was ready. My co-host, Sarah, asked what’s on the menu. Instead of hitting “stop,” I handed over the mic and let him tell her what he’d cooked and how. She was so excited about my husband’s cooking that she proceeded to share every detail of her recipe for crispy jacket potatoes. Is this relevant to a podcast about writing techniques for audio drama podcasts? No. Is it valuable, funny, and rewarding? In hindsight, yes. So, I’ll save that audio for bonus content.

Don’t forget to maintain your audience’s expectations. Use the same standards and editing clean-up (such as noise reduction, volume leveling, etc.) that you would use for your podcast’s published audio. Yes, Hollywood movie blooper reels often have the bare minimum of clean-up. But you want your supporters to understand your podcast bonus content, so make sure it’s clear. 

If your show is “clean,” don’t use explicit material when you pick deleted audio. Though they happen frequently and may be funny at the moment, an expletive in the middle of a kids’ podcast isn’t funny enough to be worth using in bonus content for supporters. 

Extras

Whether this audio comes from your usual recording sessions or you write and record it separately, extras enhance the audience’s understanding of your podcast’s topic. Think about how a movie’s “DVD extras” or “Blu-ray extras” are material from the movie that’s been cut for time. They may shift focus from the main plot but also help the audience understand the story and characters. 

For example, the end-of-season episodes in David Tennant Does a Podcast With… are montage episodes. They include interview material outside the interview’s throughline. For example, in Tennant’s interview with James Corden, they talked about Corden’s past television shows. But, the Season 1 montage episode includes how James Corden feels about Oasis’ album “Be Here Now” and why. Corden’s feelings about a pop album from 1997 would be superfluous to the casual listener. But, to an audience emotionally invested in the podcast’s conversations, Corden’s capsule album review is a pleasant surprise.

Not only do montage episodes of guest extras make great bonus content, behind-the-scenes material showing how you make your podcast can be valuable to your audience. Does your podcast have terrific original music, or meditative sound beds? These can make good podcast bonus content, too. 

Printables

What aspect of your podcast’s topic benefits from written descriptions and pictures? Can you type it up, create some images in Canva, and save it as a PDF? Whether you call it a printable, a template, or a PDF, these resources are simple to make and share. 

Recipes, workout routines, coloring pages, knitting techniques, vintage maps, or articles you used for research make good podcast bonus content.

As printable bonus content, I created a written and illustrated guide to how I plan an audio drama story arc for a season. After saving this as a PDF, I gave it away as a reward to participants in our audience survey.

These PDFs are simple to share, so make sure your podcast’s name and URL are visible in the document. If someone gets supporter’s remorse and tries to repurpose your PDF, make sure the recipient knows who made it. Canva can help you watermark your images for no additional cost.

Whatever you do, make sure the information on that PDF is something you’ve created, bought the license to share, or is in the public domain. Don’t copy and paste other people’s material into your podcast bonus content. It’s one thing to share your grandmother’s recipe for fig bars and another to copy a Martha Stewart recipe. At worst, you’ll get a cease and desist order, and at best, you’ll ruin your reputation. 

Tangible Bonuses

Tactile objects can feel like special gifts. This podcast bonus content option doesn’t have to be complex. Never underestimate the good feeling of real mail from a real person. 

Now that we’re deep in the digital age, personal mail you can hold in your hand feels special. Handwritten thank-you notes, postcards, and letters are all simple ways to show gratitude for your audience’s support.  You can also send the same bonus content resources you’d use for the printable PDFs mentioned earlier. Print them on quality paper that feels good to touch, and include a personal note to say thanks. 

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When I started supporting Long Cat Media on Ko-Fi, I received a theatrical program for their podcast, The Ballad of Anne and Mary, and a copy of Chart Toppers magazine, a satire of British pop music fan magazines from the 1980s. The former enhanced my experience of listening to their musical, and the latter gave me a nostalgic twinge. These also showed the quality of their non-audio work, which made me more likely to buy their posters or tote bags.

Enclose an introductory note with tangible materials. Particularly if you produce a true crime podcast, mailing printed research materials without an introductory note could scare your supporters. And, you don’t want to send anything much heavier than a standard letter, as it can get expensive. This brings us to the key challenge of podcast bonus content…

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Delivery Methods

Remember how I said earlier that the medium you choose for your bonus content will affect your production workflow? I wasn’t kidding. 

Let’s say you have a crowdfunding campaign for your podcast, in which everyone who pledges $20 gets bonus content. If that bonus content costs you more than $20 to make and deliver, you may as well not have bothered. Once you know how much it will cost (not just money, but also time) to make and deliver the bonus content, figure out how much your audience should pledge to get it. 

Make sure you can get the bonus content to them in a timely fashion. If enough time passes, not only will your supporters feel ignored, but by the time they receive it, your supporters might not care. 

Here are some strategies for delivering your podcast bonus content. 

Delivering Audio Privately

A simple method is to use a private RSS feed for your supporters. Publish the bonus content to the private RSS feed, and send them the RSS feed URL. You may want to include a brief explanation, so they know how to use that RSS feed with their favorite podcast listening app. 

Another delivery method favored by many podcasters is to embed a podcast player in a password-protected page of your podcast website. Check the knowledge base or support documents of your website platform to learn how to password-protect a page. Then, embed the episode’s player in the page, and set the password. Share the web page’s URL and password with your supporters, so they can listen to the bonus content. 

You could also upload bonus content to YouTube and set the video as unlisted. This way, only people with the video’s link can open it. Then, email the YouTube link to your bonus content to your supporters. This doesn’t prevent the supporter from sharing your link with non-supporters, but it’s a straightforward option for you and your audience. 

Delivering PDFs or Printables

While this may seem too obvious to include, my experience with podcasting has taught me that nothing is completely self-explanatory for everyone. 

Like the aforementioned password-protected page for audio bonus content, you can save a document as a PDF, make it a page on your podcast website, and set up password protection. You can also save the PDF document in Google Drive, and make it only shareable to certain email addresses. Or, you could simply email it.

Delivering Tangible Rewards

Again, don’t make physical rewards significantly heavier than typical mail unless you have to. Murphy’s Law dictates you’ll suddenly learn that you have fifty fans living in remote locations on the opposite side of the planet.  And, if you’re making bonus content for a true-crime, mystery, or horror podcast, don’t make the envelope or packaging too authentic. The last thing you need is for your audience to complain that they never received their podcast extras because you stamped it all over with “WARNING: CRIME SCENE EVIDENCE” or something along those lines.  Let your podcast bonus content travel incognito and surprise your supporters when they get it. 

Above all, don’t make podcast bonus content you can’t deliver! In the early days of crowdfunding, blue-sky thinking would take the reins and invent unrealistic stretch goals for high-dollar-value pledges. To make $100 pledges seem more realistic, some creators would promise exorbitant rewards for huge pledges. One creator offered, “Pledge $10,000, and I’ll have dinner with you and paint your portrait.” Rewards like this take time and effort that can take you away from your podcast workflow. Extraordinary rewards won’t help you make more episodes of your regular podcast, let alone bonus content.

Again, bonus content that complements your show, enhances the audience’s understanding of your topic, and isn’t expensive or difficult to deliver will make your podcast’s bonus content reward your audience. 

How to Make Your Bonus Content Go Further

Once you’ve produced your podcast’s bonus content and are ready to send it, ask the recipient to post on social media that they got it and tag your podcast. This confirms that they received it and makes your supporters’ social media followers and friends wonder what the mysterious reward is and how they got it. Turn that supporter reward into future promotion. 

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Bonus Content is a Return on Your Supporter’s Investment

Think of your audience as a fairy godparent, making it easier for you to make your show. They’re doing it because they want more of your ideas. So, share the concepts, methods, or stories that only the most devoted fans of your show will enjoy. 

When you plan to create your podcast bonus content, don’t start what you can’t finish.  Instead, keep delivery methods in mind as you plan your campaign. This way, you won’t have to change tactics after your campaign is underway. 

Have you ever created bonus content for your podcast? Have you ever signed up to recieve bonus content from another? We’d love to hear your stories, lessons, and opinions on bonus content in the IndiePod Community!