Ads are the best-known way to monetize your podcast. They work well for some established shows, but they can be time-consuming, distracting and unpredictable.

Thankfully, there’s an increasingly popular alternative to podcast advertising: You can convert your listeners into paid subscribers. You get a sustainable, recurring source of revenue (that can exceed advertising income!), and provide more value for your biggest fans.

“Podcasters in China can make over $8m a year with just 250 thousand listeners [via audience support]. In contrast, Serial, America’s most popular podcast ever, made about $500k in ad revenue in its first year.”

– Andrew Wilkinson, Howard Stern is Getting Ripped…

You’ve got scripting, interviewing, recording and editing down to a science. Thousands of listeners are eagerly awaiting the next episode of your show. You’ve put years of blood, sweat and tears into building a successful podcast.

There’s just one nagging question that keeps you up at night: How is this going to pay your rent?

The good news? You’ve done the hard part: It’s harder to create something so good that people choose to consume it regularly than it is to persuade a percentage of them to pay for it.

The bad news? There’s no one tried and true method of podcast monetization. After doing a bit of research and talking to a few friends with successful podcasts of their own, you’ve narrowed it down to two possibilities: you can either start putting ads on your show, or you can paywall it. …

These are notes on ideas and concepts I found interesting — not a comprehensive summary of the book. Buy the book →

Unlike Sapiens and (to a lesser extend) Homo Deus, 21 Lessons feels like a collection of good essays with only a handful of truly insightful passages. Those sections that did jump out did make me think enough to go circle back for some notes, though.

The nuggets that interest you may be different to those that stuck out to me, but here’s a few passages that were insightful to me (emphasis mine):

Liberty

At present we are not doing much in the way of research into human consciousness and ways to develop it. We are researching and developing human abilities mainly according to the immediate needs of the economic and political system, rather than according to our own long-term needs as conscious beings. …

These are my notes on ideas and concepts I found interesting — not a comprehensive summary of the book. Buy the book →

Why thinking in bets can help us make better decisions

Life is Poker, not Chess

The decisions we make in our lives (business, saving and spending, health and lifestyle, relationships, parenting, etc) involve luck, uncertainty, risk, and occasional deception — prominent elements in poker.

Unlike poker, chess contains no hidden information and very little luck.

We get intro trouble when we treat life decisions as if they were chess decisions instead of poker decisions.

Everything is a bet

Jobs and relocation decisions are bets. Sales negotiations and contracts are bets. Buying a house is a bet. …

These are notes on ideas and concepts I found interesting — not a comprehensive summary of the book. Buy the book →

What are habits?

A habit is just a choice that we deliberately made at some point (how to eat, how often to drink, when to go for a jog, etc), and then stop thinking about, but continue doing — often every day.

Put another way, a habit is a formula our brain automatically follows. When I see CUE, I will do ROUTINE in order to get REWARD.

By understanding how it happens, you can rebuild those patterns in whichever way you choose. …

Back in March we launched the new Flow, which earned #1 on Product Hunt — the world’s most popular new product community. Getting to #1 contributed to an already successful launch, put Flow on a lot of people’s radars, and drove a huge number of new users into the app.

We’d hoped to reach #1, but didn’t exactly expect it. We knew luck would play a huge part, but also did a number of things that gave us a leg up. The single most important one? We successfully avoided alienating absolutely everyone around us.

More on that in a second. First, a trip down memory lane. …

These are my notes on ideas and concepts I found interesting — not a comprehensive summary of the book. Buy the book →

What is the 80/20 Principle?

The 80/20 principle (aka the Pareto principle) states that 80% of the results come from 20% of the causes. A few things are important; most are not.

Thinking 80/20

80/20 thinking requires, and with practice enables, us to spot the few really important things that are happening, and ignore the most unimportant things. It teaches us to see the woods for the trees.

80/20 thinking is reflective, unconventional, hedonistic, strategic, and nonlinear; in that it combines extreme ambition (in the sense of wanting to change things for the better) with a relaxed and confident manner. …

These are my notes on ideas and concepts I found interesting — not a comprehensive summary of the book. Buy the book →

What are Sticky Ideas?

The ideas most of us traffic in every day are interesting, but not sensational. Truthful, but not mind-blowing. Important, but not ‘life or death’.

So which ideas stick? Ideas that are (1) understandable, (2) memorable, and (3) effective in changing thought or behaviour.

The Six Principles of Stickiness: The SUCCESs Template

Almost all sticky ideas share the same six principles:

I. Simple

To strip an idea down to its core, you must first know what to exclude.

II. Unexpected

Violate people’s expectations. Engage people’s curiosity over a long period of time by systematically ‘opening gaps’ in their knowledge — and then filling those gaps. …