Fan donations just got MUCH more powerful with our new Reward Levels feature!

Now, with Reward Levels, fans can “unlock” various Reward Levels you create for them…making fan donations a lot more fun and enticing!

What Makes Us Different?

This is worth explaining a bit first…before we dive into how this new feature works.

We’re not gonna lie. We’re taking a big risk here, as this fan support pattern is very different from the myriads of other fan support platforms.

At PodInbox, every design decision we make is through the lens of how fans engage with their favorite podcasters. With this perspective, we often try to consider if there are better ways for fans and podcasters to exchange value for value.

With other fan support platforms, we believe they are way too transactional. The transaction pattern is basically no different than an ecommerce shop. You create several products at a set price. The buyer comes to your page to browse those products. The buyer buys a product at your set price.

There’s no fun in this. It’s just basic ecommerce. And there are plenty of platforms you can create this shopping experience with…using platforms like WordPress, WooCommerce, Shopify, Squarespace, and other creator economy platforms.

How Our Reward Levels Work

Our new Reward Levels work way differently. Fans “unlock” the various Rewards Levels you create, based on each fan’s cumulative donations. This is a VERY important distinction. We designed our rewards system this way to encourage fan loyalty…to encourage superfans to keep supporting monetarily…to give fans MORE value the more consistently they give over time.

We sometimes use the word “gamification” to describe our overall monetization platform. It’s not the perfect word. But, it does capture the essence of “fun” we want you and your fans to have with all our monetization features. We encourage fans to support their favorite podcasters in the spirit of fun and appreciation…not shopping.

Creating Your First Reward Level

Alright, now let’s dive into how you actually use this feature!

First, you’ll need to activate monetization for your PodInbox page. So if you haven’t done so, navigate to the Monetization screen on your PodInbox dashboard, and connect your Stripe account.

Once Monetization is active, you can go to your PodInbox Show page and see your Reward Level 1 by default.

This default reward is to help get your fans donating and active on your leaderboard…which is why we set this reward amount at $1.

You can create as many Rewards Levels as you want. For all Reward Levels, you can customize the Reward Description, Unlocked Description, and Minimum Amount.

First, the Minimum Amount is what a fan needs to reach based on the fan’s total donations.

Once the fan reaches the Minimum Amount, the fan will unlock that reward and receive the Unlocked Description. This Unlocked Description is simply a text field, but can represent any prize or reward you’re willing to give your fans. Use your imagination and creativity!

Some ideas for unlocked rewards could be:

• A shout-out on your podcast
• Access to your weekly newsletter
• A 1-on-1 Zoom call
• Access to your online community
• Your private RSS feed
• A 1-hour coaching session

…and the list goes on.

Once a fan unlocks a reward, they will always be able to access that unlocked reward on their PodInbox dashboard. Even when you archive a reward, fans who’ve earned that reward will still be able to access it. For that reason, rewards cannot be deleted, only archived, so that new fans can no longer unlock them going forward.

You can always create a reward with the exact same Minumum Amount as an archived reward, but you can’t have 2 active rewards with the same Minimum Amount.

For our in-depth guide on our new Reward Levels feature, we created an entire section in our knowledgebase titled: Reward Levels. Check it out for more details!

We can’t wait to see all the creative ways you implement Reward Levels to engage your podcast fans!