My review of Acast

As you might know, my podcast “The Frug Life” is hosted by anchor or perhaps I should say, Spotify for Podcasters. I have mostly enjoyed the platform, but I have been pretty limited as far as ad revenue goes. So I have also been looking at other platforms to see how they compare.

Features

One of the platforms I have tried is Acast. I think the platform itself is pretty good. The feature I like best on it right now is I can add my intro and outro music automatically to the episode. In anchor, I still manually had to add the intro and outro clip to the in web editing tool. I think this feature is a great quality of life improvement from Anchor, and one they should think about adding.

I actually really like the Anchor editing tool, I don’t use it for serious editing, but rather to just string segments of the show together. Acast’s inability to do that is a negative mark, as I don’t know how I would do dynamic mid roll ad insertion without it. 

Dynamic Ads

Speaking of which, the monetisation bar for Acast is a bit high, its 5,000 listens a month.For a  long time Anchor didn’t have one at all, but now it is 100 Spotify listeners in a 60 day period? I think this is more obtainable. At the bottom of the post will be the exact wordage of the reply for Acast.

So unfortunately I would like to share more about Acasts ability to link sponsors with your podcast, I am not able to.

Other comments

I think there are quite a few features of Acast that are built around paying for a premium membership. It is a little annoying how all this stuff is behind a paywall, and in some ways another red mark to me. If your platform was really successful at helping podcasters make money, why would you need to charge them directly? Instead just take a cut of their ad revenue and their subscription revenue. So I think the business model also is a sign, you, the podcaster, are their primary revenue source. 

Conclusion

Ultimately, I don’t think I will move the Frug Life off my primary platform. If you want to hear my show on Acast it is, Ricky Ramble’s. I honestly don’t know how to describe this show, so maybe just give it a listen. 

https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/ricky-rambles-5263948

The Email

Hi there,

Thank you for your interest in joining the Acast Marketplace.

Considering your current audience size, we are unable to onboard your show to the Acast Marketplace at this time as you won’t see any payment until you have experienced more growth.

Podcasters usually see revenue consistently starting at 5,000 listens per month. However, you can re-apply to the marketplace once your audience reaches 2,000 monthly listens.

We also offer Acast+ as another option to help you monetize your show - this would likely be more suitable for you now. With Acast+ you can offer listeners exclusive bonus content like new episodes, early releases, and so much more. There are many ways to offer content that listeners would be willing to pay for.

If you have any questions, please reach out to support via the chat box, and the customer success team will be able to help you.

Thank you,

Acast Marketplace Team