Re: customized podcast feed

OK, so I've been working on this for a little while now.

I produce a podcast (all the video, some of the audio and all of the RSS) for a client.

He feels he has enough listeners to start offering a "Premium" RSS feed for paying customers.

We will continue to release material for free, through the standard RSS feed, but need a way to push premium for-pay content to an (initially) smaller audience.

None of the premium RSS content is live yet, but the free podcast can be found at www.birddogsforever.com

So, we have a shopping cart on the website that will process credit card payments. Once the charge is authorized, the customer gets an automated email letting them know that their "Private RSS Feed address" will be emailed to them within 24 hours.

That's the end of the automated process, and the rest is all manual (hence the 24-hour disclaimer).

So, we then get an email with the customer's contact information showing that they've paid for the premium feed. The next step is to head on over to FeedBurner. Currently on the Bird Dogs Forever (BDF) website there's a bdf.xml (the free feed) and a bdfpremium.xml (the paid feed.) iTunes lists the free feed and does NOT list the paid feed. The paid feed is linked to FeedBurner.

I'm using FeedBurner to protect the paid feed. The idea came to me when I was thinking about how to provide paid customers access to the premium feed, NOT have it password-protected but still allow me to "turn it off" for an INDIVIDUAL paid subscriber (say if, after a year they don't renew their paid subscription).

What FeedBurner allows, is to create a bunch of "children" feeds from an original "parent" feed. So, I put the bdfpremium.xml file on the podcast website, then create a new feed in FeedBurner that points to that premiumbdf.xml file. Whenever new items are added to the "parent" feed, the "child" feed at FeedBurner will update (within 30 minutes or immediately with a ping.)

Following me?

OK, so I'll keep that 1st child FeedBurner feed for myself and name it something like "BDF Premium Jon Miller" (this is only visible to the owner of the FeedBurner account). When I get notice that I have a paid subscriber, then I create another child that points to the SAME bdfpremium.xml file, and FeedBurner will append the address of that feed with a random 4 letters. This is cool. So, you give that feed the name of the paid subscriber like, "BDF Premium Joe Smith" but then send Joe an email with the address of the feed that FeedBurner created earlier (the address with have those 4 letters on the end of it.)

If the subscriber is using iTunes, then you just give them directions on how to subscribe to that RSS feed by going to "Advanced" in iTunes and typing that new address into the "Subscribe to Podcast" field. Or, you could work out a 1-click URL for the Mac and a seperate one for the PC.

Boom, they've got their premium content.

And, if there's ever a problem with their "account" then you just delete their individual "child" feed and it won't affect the other premium subscribers. Also, FeedBurner will give you stats to show if any of the "child" feeds are being distributed to more than a few people so you can see if that certain "child" feed is being shared by too many friends or family of the original subscriber!

I have to say, so far it seems pretty bulletproof, the simple drawback being that it's not automated. We don't know what the limit is for how many feeds you can publish through FeedBurner, but if you have a ton, then you should be able to work out a compensation deal with feedBurner.

I think that's it. This is much harder to explain than to do! I can have a new "child" feed emailed to the paid subscriber within a couple of minutes of getting an email from the shopping cart.

Let me know if anyone has any questions.

Jon (email is in my profile)

(I also produce Beyond the Movement, the Pilates Podcast www.thepilatespodcast.com and
The Rest of Everest Video Podcast at www.therestofeverest.com)