What is Hybrid Podcasting?

Hybrid Podcasting is Castos' way to help creators monetize or create private communities around their podcast by providing an easy way to publish both public and private content to the same podcast.

Hybrid Podcasting takes your traditional public podcast and traditional private podcast and puts it together, creating any easier workflow by allowing you the manage just one podcast for both sets of subscribers.

What can I do with a Hybrid Podcast to monetize it?

With a Hybrid Podcast, you can enable Castos Ads to automatically insert dynamic ads to your publicly available episodes. You can also offer some or all of the following benefits to your subscribers who purchase a subscription to your podcast for added benefits:

• Ad-Free listening — No pre-roll or post-roll ads, just the episode
• Exclusive access to premium or bonus episodes — Create episodes specifically for your private subscribers
• Early episode access — Private subscribers can listen to your episodes before public release
• Archive episode access — Episode's that you no longer want available to your public subscribers but still want your paid subscribers to have access to
• Apple Podcasts Subscriptions — If you're part of the Apple Podcasters Program, sell subscriptions directly on Apple Podcasts

How do RSS feeds work with a Hybrid Podcast?

Your hybrid podcast will have the following RSS feeds available:

• Public RSS feed which you will distribute to podcast directories and apps like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, etc. When you have Castos Ads enabled, the episodes in this feed will always be served dynamic ads.
• Generic Private RSS feed which will be the same as your public RSS feed but contains a uuid (unique identifier) at the end indicating it's a private RSS feed. Please note that this private RSS feed cannot be revoked, so once it's shared it cannot be unshared. (This feed is typically used for one-time purchases or private communities where individual subscriber feeds are not needed and their access to the podcast is for the life of the podcast) If you have Castos Ads enabled, this feed will not contain ads if you've set up Ad Free benefits in your Hybrid Podcast Settings.
• Individual Subscriber RSS feeds are feeds that are unique to a private subscriber and can be revoked. These feeds are typically used with subscription based subscribers where they are granted access to the podcast upon purchasing a subscription and then upon cancelling, access to the podcast is revoked. If you have Castos Ads enabled, this feed will not contain ads if you've set up Ad-Free benefits in your Hybrid Podcast Settings.

How do I set an episode for a specific RSS feed?

For Hybrid podcasts, you'll see a new option in the episode editor for an episode's Audience. You can read more about that here: Set or Update an episode's audience.

Does it cost extra to use a Hybrid podcast?

Choosing a Hybrid podcast type is included on all Castos plans. The only extra costs associated with Hybrid podcasts is, like with a traditional Private podcast, the number of individual Private Subscribers allotted to each plan. Once you exceed the plan's allotment, you'll automatically be bumped up to the next hosting plan until you reach the Pro plan which allows for 500 individual Private Subscribers. After the Pro plan allotment is exceeded, you'll be charged an additional $50/month for an additional 500 Private Subscribers allotment.

If I sell subscriptions to my exclusive content, does Castos take a cut?

Nope 👍

I don't have exclusive content yet but may want to offer it in the future, can I still use a Hybrid podcast for just a public podcast?

Yes, if you want to set up your podcast for potential exclusive or premium content, you can create a Hybrid podcast and only use the public RSS feed for distribution. You will set the episode's audience to "Both" unless you know for sure you won't want future private subscribers to have access to the publicly available episodes. When you're ready to start offering subscriber benefits, you can set those in your Hybrid Podcast Settings and begin selling subscriptions.

I have an existing Public podcast and want to start providing exclusive content, what do I do?

1. You'll need to switch your Public podcast's visibility from Public to Hybrid, and select the subscriber benefits you'd like to provide.
2. All the existing episodes will be set for the public RSS feed only. If you'd like to open up the episode's to the private RSS feed, you'll need to update each episode's Audience.
3. Continue publishing episodes as you normally would, but set your desired audience moving forward.

I have an existing Private podcast and want to start providing public content but keep my Private Subscribers, what do I do?

1. You'll need to switch your Private podcast's visibility from Private to Hybrid, and select the subscriber benefits you'd like to provide.
2. All the existing episodes will be set for the private RSS feed only. If you'd like to open up the episode's to the public RSS feed, you'll need to update each episode's Audience.
3. Continue publishing episodes as you normally would, but set your desired audience moving forward.
4. Distribute your public RSS feed to podcast directories

I have both a Public and Private podcast that I manage separately but would like to combine to make my workflow easier, what do I do?

1. You'll need to switch your Private podcast's visibility from Private to Hybrid, and select the subscriber benefits you'd like to provide.
2. All the existing episodes will be set for the private RSS feed only. If you'd like to open up the episode's to the public RSS feed, you'll need to update each episode's Audience.
3. You'll need to move the public episodes to the hybrid podcast (see: Move episodes from one podcast to another) and update the Audience from "Both" to "Public Feed Only" if you want to keep those episode's separate from your Private Feed. (The Audience setting will appear when you select a receiving show that has the Hybrid podcast type set)
4. Redirect your now previous Public podcast's RSS feed to the new Hybrid Podcast's RSS feed so that directories can automatically update the feed for your show and continue to ingest your latest public episodes.

How can I accept subscriptions and add/remove private subscribers automatically?

You can use Stripe to accept subscriptions/payments and use our integration to automatically add and remove private subscribers. For other merchants, we provide integrations for Zapier and Kit so you can look in to those to help automate the process.