Can Podcasters Get Paid For Their Attention?

If you've ever snail-mailed a friend, you've paid to get someone's attention. In the future would you allow your listeners to pay you to get your attention, podcaster? Spoiler alert: you probably already do. More often than not, podcast tech always seems to be looking for a way to get podcasters paid. And many podcasters are keen to try out new monetization options. But the idea of monetizing a podcasters attention, if you will, tends to be a pretty polarizing topic. If you see this as an additional revenue stream, it's a positive thing. Yet if see this as just one more consequence of late-stage capitalism that further divides the world into the haves and the have nots, it's a negative thing. I think both are valid positions. It's an ethical conundrum, to be sure. But one we're already wading into. Most social sites have some sort of a badge or icon identifying the special-ness of a select group of users and marking them as "better" than the rest, giving their posts and even direct messages extra heft.  More specific to podcasting, listener-support services like Patreon, http://buymeacoffee.com/evoterra (BuyMeACoffee), and myriad other similar services are used by podcasters allow for special tiers, some of which give members-only rights to those who pay enough. Like a members-only message board or assigning priority status to messages sent from members who pay for the privilege.  Seen in that light, allowing someone to boost a voicemail message to the top of a queue with a contribution of funds doesn't seem all that nefarious. But I am not naive. I know that there are huge opportunities for abuse and asshattery. My hope is that the developers that implement services like this are taking that into consideration and working to shut down as much as they can.  Yet even with the risks and uncertainty, I think the idea of listeners paying for a podcaster's attention is a space worth keeping our eye on. ----- Links Getting more than 10K downloads per episode? Talk to https://evoterra.link/gumball (Gumball.fm)!  https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/giving-your-podcasts-listeners-a-public-voice-with-podinbox (Giving Your Podcast's Listeners A Public Voice With PodInbox ) Over 100K active podcasters trust https://evoterra.link/buzz (Buzzsprout). Serious about podcasting? Join the https://evoterra.link/app (Advancing Podcasting Community) today!

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