Announcements

New updates and improvements to podinbox

  1. You Can Now Customize the Order of Your Fan Page Tabs

    New Feature

    With our latest update, you can now customize the order of the tabs on your fan page.

    Fanlist - Blog Posts

    As a reminder, we have tabs for all our core features, including: inbox, tips, perks, and members.

    So, let’s say you want to prioritize receiving tips on your fan page. You can now have your tips tab appear as the first tab on your fan page.

    You can even turn off all the other features and only use your fan page to receive tips.

    Before this update, we required you to use our “inbox”…but now, you can even turn off your inbox if it's not relevant to you and your show.

    This gives you much more flexibility to decide how to best engage your fans!

     

    So, to customize your fan page tabs…

    1.     Login to your Fanlist dashboard
    2. Click “page settings” on the main menu
    3. Here, simply drag and drop the various features to your desired order

    Any feature that’s toggled on will appear on your fan page.

    That’s it.

    Just a simple update to help you customize Fanlist to fit your needs.

     

     

  2. Updated Page Settings

    Improvement

    With our newest release, we've updated our "page settings" to make it easier and more intuitive to customize your fan page.

    The main thing we did was reorganize all the many features toggles that used to appear on the "features" tab. As our features grew, this page became a complex collection of too many features toggles.

    Now, it's a lot simpler!

    Looking at the "features" tab in page settings, you now only see our core features. Here you can toggle on and off the corresponding core feature on your fan page.

    Fanlist___Dashboard

    A related new update here is you can now turn off your Inbox. For users who don't want fans to leave messages, you can now turn off the Inbox tab on your fan page entirely. This is a good option for users who only need Fanlist's monetization features, like tips, perks, and subscriptions.

    Finally, for all those other features toggles and settings that used to appear in the "features" tab. We've relocated those toggles within the corresponding core feature.

    For example, the "inboxes" you used to manage here under page settings...you can now manage them in the "settings" tab under the "Inbox" section.

    Fanlist___Dashboard

     

  3. Fanlist Now Supports Paid Podcast Subscriptions!

    New Feature
    Announcement

    Now, Fanlist lets you easily create and sell a paid podcast!

    With our new "memberships" feature, you can now easily sell your paid podcast episodes. Fans can subscribe to your paid content right on your fan page.

    It's super easy to set up. We host your paid podcast feed and manage your podcast subscriptions...you focus on creating paid content and earning money! 

    To get started, just login to your Fanlist account and...

    1. Setup Your Membership

    Customize your subscription price. We support monthly, yearly, and one-time price options!

    2. Customize Your Paid Podcast

    We recommend creating a slightly different podcast name for your paid podcast. Consider adding "Plus" to differentiate from your free podcast, like..."True Crime Plus". 

    3. Upload Your Bonus Episodes

    Not sure what makes good "bonus" content? Check out our 10 Bonus Episode Ideas. Remember, your superfans want more of your content and want to support your show. 

    That's it! Your fans can immediately start subscribing to your paid show!

  4. ALL Pro Features Are Now Free!

    Announcement

    We’re excited to announce that ALL our Pro features are now FREE!

    Yes, you heard that right. Our FREE Fanlist accounts now include ALL our Pro Features. And now, we've eliminated our paid plans!

    This was not an easy decision for us, as this means we're giving up all our subscription revenue for our existing paid plans.

     

    Why Did We Do This?

    Well, this decision began with a simple thought: we wanted ALL our users to experience the FULL benefits of our most powerful features. It just didn't seem right to hide our best features behind a paywall. 

    For example, one of our most loved Pro features is letting creators view their "fan list". With this feature, your fan page essentially becomes an organic lead capture tool. With another Pro feature, you can one-click connect your Mailchimp account to automatically sync your fan list to Mailchimp.

    Now, everyone enjoys these features, and more, for free!

     

    So Then...How Does Fanlist Make Money?

    Now, we ONLY earn money when you earn money using Fanlist. This fully aligns us with your success, and we're pretty excited about that!

    So, if you use our monetization features, like accepting tips, selling perks, and selling subscriptions to your premium podcast...then we take a modest 7% transaction fee on your fan payments.

    We looked across the industry of similar tools, and we determined that 7% is lower than 90% of comparable tools and enough to keep our services sustainable.

     

    We Love This! How Do We Support You?

    We appreciate you using Fanlist! We know fan engagement is a long-term strategy, which is why we wanted to give away our best features for free!

    To best support us...keep engaging your fans on your Fanlist fan page and leverage our monetization features 😀. We're confident that when you succeed as a creator, we'll succeed with you!

    Also, now that Fanlist is free...tell a fellow creator about it! Every creator needs a fan page, and the more creators we can get to use Fanlist, the better we can make the platform for everyone!

  5. PodInbox is Now...Fanlist!

    New Feature
    Announcement

    We’re excited to announce our new brand name: Fanlist.

    And…our new URL is fanlist.com.

    Fanlist Logo Red Black

    At the heart of our new name are the “fans“, and our new brand reflects our commitment to help creators and podcasters connect with their fans.

    When we first launched PodInbox, it was a pretty simple idea. To make it easy for podcasters to receive audio messages from fans. But since our launch, we’ve expanded our features to do much more than being a simple “inbox” for podcasters.

    Today, we provide a robust fan page for creators, letting creators receive messages, sell perks, receive tips, host a chat room, sell subscriptions to their premium content, and more. And, at the heart of all our features…is our commitment to help creators connect with their fans and to grow their fan list.

    Having a vibrant, growing fan list is at the core of every creator’s goal, so we wanted “Fanlist” to be at the core of our name and brand.

     

    What Will I Need to Do?

    We recommend you start promoting your new fan page URL and update any old links.

    So, if your fan page was:

    podinbox.com/mypodcast

    Your new fan page URL is now:

    fanlist.com/mypodcast

    That said, even if you don’t update your old links, we will automatically redirect any traffic to your old fan page URL at podinbox.com…to your new fan page at fanlist.com.

    So, there’s nothing to worry about, even if you don’t update your old links!

  6. Feature Your Sponsors on Your Fan Page!

    New Feature
    Announcement

    Do you work with sponsors?

    If so, you can now feature your sponsors on your fan page!

    Here’s how our new “Sponsors Widget” looks on your fan page…

     

    Website - Fan Page Mockup (8)

     

    Bundle This With Your Sponsors Package

    One common tactic podcasters use to sell more sponsorships is to “bundle” their various audience channels.

    For example, don’t just sell your podcast audience…bundle in your newsletter, social media, and PodInbox fan page to entice your dream sponsor. Sponsors want to get in front of your audience...everywhere your fans engage with you.

     

    A Versatile Sponsor Widget

    Our Sponsors Widget can also support audio. Just drop an ad-read into your Sponsor Widget, and quickly create an audio-rich ad unit.

    Website Images

    Have multiple sponsors. No problem. Add as many Sponsors as you need, and simply toggle them on or off when you want to feature them.

    We also let you choose whether to display multiple sponsors inside a carousel...or displayed as a stacked list right on your fan page.

     

    Useful for Fans

    Make it easy for fans to find the brands you promote by featuring them on your fan page.

    As your fans engage with you on your fan page, use it as the perfect opportunity to highlight your sponsors. Also, be sure to include your referral links to get credit for any click-throughs.

     

    We hope you enjoy this new little feature!

    It’s yet another way we’re making our fan pages a bit more useful for our community of podcast creators.

  7. Now…You Can Receive Typed Messages on Your Fan Page

    New Feature
    Announcement

    Most of you are already using PodInbox to receive Audio Messages from fans. Now, it’s just as easy to also receive typed messages!

    We realize, not all your fans are comfortable recording audio messages…so we wanted to help engage them as well!

     

    Website - Fan Page Mockup (7)

     

    How to Use

    To accept typed messages in your inbox, just login to your dashboard, and in your inbox settings, simply toggle on “Allow text messages”. That’s it! Now, fans visiting your fan page will also have the option to submit a text message.

     

    Why Use This

    Many of the top podcasters know the power of fan engagement. When you ask them to take an action...like, asking questions for an AMA episode, or sharing their story...you're building a deeper bond with your audience and creating superfans.

    This new feature simply lets you engage with more of your fans! And when they engage, we help you build your audience email list.

     

    Spam Protection Included

    You might be thinking, will this potentially introduce spam?

    We agree. Since text messages are a lot easier to create than audio messages, we also built a couple of features to prevent spam.

    Now, we set a limit of 2 messages per day a fan can post on a fan page. In the future, we may allow you, the fan page owner, to customize the daily message limit. But for now, we think this limit will protect you against potential spam, while giving fans ample opportunity to engage with you and your show!

     

    PS…next up, we’re building a feature that will appeal to podcasters working with sponsors. Stay tuned!

  8. New Fan Page Design...Now With Tabs!

    New Feature
    Announcement

    It’s here…our newly redesigned fan pages!

    TLDR, your fan page is now organized into tabs.

    Also with this new update, we’ve enhanced our tips feature.

     

    Inbox Tab

    This is where your fans can leave audio messages.

    Fan Page - Inbox

     

    The one NEW element on this tab is the Welcome Message. Login to your dashboard to customize your fan page welcome message.

    Currently, we only support audio input from fans. But due to overwhelming feedback…we’ll soon let you receive text based messages too. Stay tuned!

     

    Tips Tab

    This is where fans can give you monetary tips.

    Fan Page - Tips

     

    Under “Recent Tips”, you’ll see all your fan tips. This is a great way to provide some “social proof” and encourage other fans to give generously.

    Now…fans can also leave a message with their tip, and you can simply reply to tips inline!

    Additionally, you’ll be able to see your “Top Supporters” here. With this simple leaderboard, your fans will donate and compete to become your top super fan!

     

    Perks Tab

    This is where fans can view and purchase all your active perks.

    Fan Page - Perks

     

    Be creative! Give you fans an opportunity to buy perks…like episode shoutouts, online workshops, Zoom calls, etc. The possibilities are endless.

    With this redesign, you’ll have an entire page to showcase all your fan perks! Stay tuned as we enhance perks even more later this year.

     

    Fan Page Settings

    With this redesign, we now offer more ways to customize your fan page.

    Dashboard - Settings

     

    Simply navigate to the new menu option, “Page Settings”, in your dashboard.

    And don’t worry, whatever features you had before, we preserved your existing setting. For those of you who not yet using our monetization features…you’ll have all the monetization options toggled off by default.

     

    We hope you enjoy our new redesign with our much-improved tip features!

    It’s our first step in making our fan pages much more powerful, intuitive, and engaging!

     

  9. New Custom Theme Color for your Fan Page

    New Feature
    Announcement

    Now, you can define a custom theme color for your fan page! This lets you control the color of your fan page buttons, link colors, header banner background color…just to name a few things!

    Website - Fan Page Mockup

     

    To customize your fan page theme color, simply login to your PodInbox dashboard, click “fan page” on the main menu, and under the details tab…just select your custom color and click “save”. That’s it!

    Along with this change, we’ve also made some design tweaks to the main header area of the fan page, to streamline things a bit.

    We’ll be releasing more design changes to the fan page this month! Specifically, we’ll be splitting some of our core fan page features out into separate tabs…giving you more control of which features you want to enable on your fan page!

    We’re taking time now to make these design changes because we’ve added a LOT of features to our fan pages, compared to when we first began.

    Also, we have plans, coming soon this year, to release even more exciting features to engage your fans in interesting ways.

    So stay tuned and happy podcasting!

  10. Faster Page Loads!

    Improvement
    Announcement

    Happy new year podcasters!

    Just a quick update. Over the past 2 months, we've been busy improving the overall speed and reliability of our entire platform. Most noticeably, you'll find your public-facing fan page is a LOT snappier and your dashboard inbox now loads a lot faster.

    Those of you with more fan messages will really notice these improvements!

    We decided to invest in performance improvements to really get our platform in a great place for 2023! We've got a ton of features and updates planned for this year...to help podcasters and creators connect with fans better, and monetize their work.

    We're building exciting things to support your journey as creators.

    Stay tuned!