First, let me begin with the elephant in the room:
Yes, the podcast is coming back! After I spent two weeks knocked out by Covid, Martin dared to get sick and lose his voice. Jerk.
Given our 13-hour time difference, it’s tricky to find a time that works for both of us to record. Sorry it’s taking longer to get back to it than we’d like.
But hey: it’s a free podcast.
For now. Because…
Membership options are coming
We don’t earn a penny from the Brave New Word. It’s still a bit too niche for advertisers—plus, who the hell wants ads? Ugh.
But we want to keep doing it. It’s fun. In fact, we’d like to do more Brave New Word stuff.
To make that viable, we’re going to introduce some Membership Options this year. They’ll be the classic Patreon-style approach, with (at this stage) two tiers that will give you access to exclusive members-only content and bonus stuff.
I don’t want to give away too much yet, but a few things we’re looking at:
Copy Rescue: personalised help for one lucky subscriber on one tricky brief
Campaign Critiques: your BNW hosts critiquing a fresh, trendy campaign
Video Casts: same audio, but with video!
Online Meetups: join us for a live video group chat
…and more!
There’s a good chance we’ll be moving the Y-Fronts to a Members Only tier, too, and introducing a few other features around that.
We’re nothing if not realistic: Brave New Word won’t make us rich. But a few pounds/dollars a month from our listeners will help us get up early/stay up late, record more content, and dedicate time to making Brave New Word better.
I reckon that’s a win-win.
Of course, we are always open to your ideas, and we’d love to hear what you think about this idea. Reply to this email or send your thoughts and feelings to bravenewwordpodcast@gmail.com.
Free stuff is staying
Don’t worry: we’ll still be doing free fortnightly (ish…) episodes, just like we always have (er, until recently). If you don’t want to pay for a membership, you won’t notice much of a difference.
Well, you might notice a few locked posts that you can’t access.
Perhaps you’ll notice a sense of FOMO because you know that paid subscribers get a lot more stuff.
You might notice a few ads popping up.
And you might develop a little niggling feeling that you could be doing just a bit more to support a podcast that brings you enormous joy and substantial happiness.
But that’s your choice, pal, so it’s on you.
New look, same feel
Neither Martin nor I are designers. Everything you’ve seen so far from us has been the result of my trying my best with Canva. It’s done the job, I guess…
But we’re about to really take it up a notch. I managed to get my good friend/cycling partner and world-class designer Geoff Francis to come up with some much, much nicer branding for us.
It could even find its way into merch and other swag, so stay tuned for that.
That’s all for now! We’ll be back next week, pending any kind of apocalyptic interference.
Oh, and keep sending us your questions!
Hayden