1734 – Making Content more accessible with Disctopia’s Patrick Hill

Josh (00:00:05) - Hey there, thoughtful listener. Would you like consistent and predictable sales activity with no spam and no ads? I'll teach you step by step how to do this, particularly if you're an agency owner, consultant, coach, or B2B service provider. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create more than $10 million in revenue. Just head to up my influence and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. You can even chat with me live and I'll see and reply to your messages. Also, don't forget the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for guests. Go to up my influence and click on podcast. We'd love to have you. With us. Right now it's Patrick Hill. Patrick, you are the founder and CEO of dystopia. You're found on the web@dystopia.com. That's C topia. Patrick, thanks so much for joining us.

Patrick (00:01:14) - Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Josh (00:01:16) - Absolutely. Yeah. Give us an overview of what dystopia is.

Patrick (00:01:20) - Dystopia is a platform where content owners can actually get full transparency of their data, and if they choose to, they can monetize that data.

Patrick (00:01:29) - So we give them a full transparency picture, and we kind of give them not just data, but pure information on how they can monetize or better grow their audience from a holistic standpoint and not just from a one, two, three, four, five download standpoint.

Josh (00:01:45) - Yeah. Okay. So specifically tell me how this works and what kind of content we're talking about.

Patrick (00:01:51) - Well, right now we're definitely focused on audio and video content. And we're definitely talking about looking at true plays. And we've coined that term called a true play. IAB standard is 60s counts as a play or download. We believe that if your audience is more engaged beyond that we give you that data. So whether they that 15%, 50% or 75% or more, we believe that those engagements count differently. And we give you that data separated out between what's a regular play and engaged play or true plays, what we call it. We believe that true plays give you more insight. If you're an internal company, you want to know who's more engaged and what's going on internally.

Patrick (00:02:35) - And if you're an external network, you want to know where you're engaged audience is coming from, because we believe that you should monetize that audience a little differently than your basic audience.

Josh (00:02:48) - Well with that data, how would you be able to better monetize that?

Patrick (00:02:51) - Well great question. So for average, most podcasters or most content owners based on streams alone, they get about a thousand streams. That's how they charge. So they'll come to you and say, hey Josh, I have 1000 engaged plays. I want to charge you $1,000 per month. You, as Josh would say, yeah, sure, I'll give you $1,000. But what we do is we kind of break that up so that they can say, hey, 20% of my audience is regular downloads. So we'll take, you know, one buck for that one. But 80% of my audience is highly engaged, meaning they're listening from beginning to end. And we want to charge around four bucks for that. So instead of getting that basic, you know, $1,000 just for one play, $1 out, you can actually increase your revenue by going to about 4500, which is actually breaking down your audience as a royalty method.

Patrick (00:03:43) - We do not break down our audience. We kind of just ship it out. One play equals one pay, where we have to get past the basic CPM, which is a pure impression. We actually actually get down to the nitty gritty of data. We have the capability and tools to do that, but no one slicing and dicing the data that way so that you can actually charge more.

Josh (00:04:05) - Okay. So help me understand, like maybe an example of a client that you're working with. And if you could maybe just kind of break it down for me of like, how would they use it specifically? You know, if it might maybe a little bit medium sized company or like, how have they been able to implement it?

Patrick (00:04:20) - Are you familiar with the old school jet magazine? Yes, yes I.

Josh (00:04:24) - Am. Yes.

Patrick (00:04:25) - They are actually relaunching using our engagement model. We'll be relaunching in mid-November. So right around the time that everyone would be reintroduced to jet magazine. So in the old days, they would just say readership.

Patrick (00:04:38) - We have 10,000 readers now using our technology. They can say, you know what? Out of those 10,000 engagement points, 7500 of them are highly engaged. So when they talk to their advertising partners, they can actually increase their revenue by charging different tiers of their audience, traditional models. So in one bucket, we can actually break down the tiers of their audience so they can charge different models and different actually amounts for each tier of their audience. Hey, this person clicked our email. They listen to our podcast and open up our mobile app. They are highly engaged user of our content. Therefore, when they talk to their advertisers and their business partners, they can actually charge more for that bucket. Charge a different set for another bucket. And also it gives the advertisers true insight of what they're paying for. A lot of times, as you know, downloads a download as an advertiser, you're just paying one flat fee for one flat number, and you really don't know where those downloads are actually coming from.

Patrick (00:05:41) - You just know, hey, they're getting a lot. Their audience is big, but is their audience engaged? And that's where we try to slice and dice those numbers and give them to you.

Josh (00:05:51) - Well, here's the thing too. And I know this. You know this, right? So if you produce content, if you've got an audience and if you want to work with advertisers or if you want to advertise, it used to be a lot more of the Wild West today, especially when we're thinking about digital content or working with influencers, influencers of any kind, or if you've got platform of any kind, you work with advertisers. Advertisers are going to expect better data. If you can deliver them better data, they're much more likely to work with you. You should expect this from the brands, and I think that all of us who have paid for advertising before have been burned. You know, especially if you're talking about working with I don't want to use the word influencer, but it could be influencer content creators.

Josh (00:06:38) - Anyone's got an audience and you want to be a part of that. You know, there's nothing more frustrating than making a big spend and getting nothing, and they are not able to tell you why exactly. Yeah, this boy, this is going to help you. Content creators sell a lot more advertisers. This is going to be exceptionally valuable. So you know for sure that, in fact, you might I would imagine you're going to run into situations where advertisers might come across a content creator, and the content creator is like, wow, this is our rate. And the advertiser is just going to expect, Patrick, that they're going to be using a solution like what you provide so they can get, you know, more 2020 vision on what's going on.

Patrick (00:07:18) - Exactly, exactly. That's what we're actually trying to help both sides of the table here. We want content owners to get their fair value. We also want the advertiser sponsors to get their fair value, whatever that may be, or fall in line.

Patrick (00:07:31) - We want that to happen.

Josh (00:07:33) - I see that you recently announced that you are doing some stuff with SEMrush. You want to share a little bit about that?

Patrick (00:07:40) - Yeah. So what we've done is we've gotten on. So we do have a patent application now on our engagement patent and how we do Trueplay. So we partner with SEMrush to understand what keywords that are in transcriptions to increase your SEO in your website, to make sure that your podcast or your video, anything that you're distributing out on the stream side, matches the keywords that you're actually putting out on your website. So, for instance, if you have a hardware company and you write a blog about buckets and shovels, we want to make sure that those keywords are relevant on your website and relevant within your podcast. Transcription. A lot of times loss leaders do not do that, so they don't know how to manipulate those keywords that are coming from their transcript and then run those keywords in SEMrush, which shows you are your competitors. What are the trending keywords going on for this week, this month? So it actually can help you with podcast topics, podcast description, writing, so on and so forth.

Patrick (00:08:43) - As the world becomes more connected between web 2.0 and 3.0, we want to make sure that we're giving them all the tools that you can use for us keywords, insights, and keyword research. Now, with that being said, that integration allows you to get those keywords directly right in SEMrush. So from now you can actually upload your podcast directly in SEMrush, extract the keywords, and then hit another tab, put those keywords right into SEMrush, and SEMrush gives you all the data based on these keywords. You don't have to go from hosting platform wherever you're hosting that, do your data there, do your data mining there, and then open up another tab and go to SEMrush, paste it in and go from there. Our hosting platform is 100% integrated directly into SEMrush. One payment, one login, and you can do your podcast hosting and your keyword research all in one tool.

Josh (00:09:40) - Yeah. One of the applications I see that you've been moving into is education. Would you maybe maybe talk about that and or other enterprise applications where this is going to be pretty valuable?

Patrick (00:09:52) - Sure.

Patrick (00:09:53) - Education is key when it comes to actually communication. Just think about when Covid hit or snow days, how teachers get their lesson plans out going forward. We call it the death of the tribe word. When I was coming up, I had to do a tribe board. You know, I had to place all my pictures on one end, in the middle, on the end. But now kids can actually create podcasts about volcanoes, they can create podcasts about climate change and so on and so forth, and actually turn that in. And they learn communication skills, they learn audio editing skills, they learn tech skills. And the flip side is teachers now have a way to communicate quickly to their parent audience, their school audience and their administration very quickly through podcasting. And so that's what we're really trying to do. We're really trying to give education the tools that corporate America and the entertainment world has been using for the last decade, to disseminate communication faster and easier, because everybody's on the move. I hate parent newsletters because they're too long.

Patrick (00:10:56) - I don't read the whole newsletter. I try to find the nuggets or I try to ask my son like, hey, what's going on in school? But if the teacher will just send me a weekly 15 20 minute podcast, I'll definitely digest that one day while I'm at work, lunch, driving to work, or whatever. So we're just trying to change the way we communicate.

Josh (00:11:16) - Yeah. Excellent. So are you working with a school system? How are you able to implement? Because I'm wondering if a school system sounds great, but this seems. Well, they might be afraid that implementation is going to be a nightmare.

Patrick (00:11:30) - Well, that's the greatest thing about it. So schools that have signed up and we signed up a couple already, one of our PLC program and one who actually is a client. What we do is we actually shipped in mobile podcast kits, and they actually set up podcast kits in a room for students and for teachers. So essentially we give them a mobile podcast studio on campus or on site for anyone to record at any time.

Patrick (00:11:54) - Typically, they set it up in the library or the media center for students to access. And of course, every student gets a dystopia account and they can upload their content from there. It's easier than what it really sounds. We just have to get schools in there off cycle because, as you know, schools have a long billing cycle.

Josh (00:12:13) - Patrick. You know one thing too. I'm thinking of independent creators. Do you mind just talking a bit about pricing, both for kind of the independent and SMB audience, but then the larger applications like, you know, a larger enterprise company or school system, etcetera.

Patrick (00:12:28) - For the independent creators and content owners, we're very competitive. We actually give free 30 days. It's nine bucks for just audio. If you want to go up to video and integrate merch with that, it's 19 bucks a month. Cancel any time. But if you are actually a school system, definitely contact us. And if you're an enterprise company who essentially wants their own network, you essentially get your own Spotify and Netflix internal for your internal employees, then contact as soon as possible.

Patrick (00:12:59) - We integrate directly into Microsoft, Microsoft Teams and SharePoint, your intranet, and some people call it to help you disseminate information, podcasts, and videos across your organization.

Josh (00:13:12) - Awesome. All right Patrick, your website dystopia.com, who should be reaching out and connecting with you?

Patrick (00:13:20) - First and foremost, if you own content, you should reach out. I don't care if you own four podcast episodes, or you've got 2000 SEC documents which are actually working with a bank to convert their SEC documents, which are PDFs, into podcasts, we actually have PDF to podcast technology where corporations can upload multiple PDFs at once, and we convert them to podcast episodes so that everyone can listen to them. And it hits a lot of boxes, especially the Ada compliance box. Corporations are still trying to check to this day, so we check those boxes. So if you are a content owner and you want to get it out to as few as three people or as few as 3000 people in the world, you should contact us and let us know how we can help.

Josh (00:14:07) - Yeah. You know, I've always been bullish on, you know, for internal communications. What a huge opportunity it is to format your content in a YouTube type. You know, as long as you don't mind that also being well and you can even keep it private. It's just. Yeah. So you could choose whether you want to keep that internal. And people need to have private access to that. But in terms of distribution, how wonderful would that be if I could just use my regular podcast app to subscribe to a private feed that only pertains to me? Like what a huge opportunity. Internal communications people, please go to where your employers are. Don't employees are don't make them have to log in. And then they got to go into their intranet. And then they got to do this. And then and then they have to stream on a webpage on their phone that's, you know, go to where they are, make it insanely easy for them, and your consumption rate is going to go through the roof.

Josh (00:15:03) - And sounds like Patrick, you can assist with that, which that in and of itself is an exceptionally valuable skill to have a conversation about exactly.

Patrick (00:15:12) - And we're definitely helping organizations do that. Like I said, we're helping a local bank here convert their processes and procedures from PDFs to podcasts, just to make sure that one did you really assimilate the information? And, you know, we can tell that based on the data, the engagement data. Did you listen to the whole podcast? Did you watch the whole video? They'll know that data instantly in their dashboard.

Josh (00:15:38) - Awesome. All right. Patrick Gill, thank you so much for joining us. Founder and CEO of dystopia, found on the web@dystopia.com. Patrick, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit up my influence slash guest. If you're a listener, I'd love to shout out your business to our whole audience for free.

Josh (00:16:12) - You can do that by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or join our Listener Facebook group. Just search for the Thoughtful Entrepreneur and Facebook. I'd love, even if you just stopped by to say hi. I'd love to meet you. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful entrepreneurs. Hit subscribe so that tomorrow morning. That's right. Seven days a week you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed. I promise to bring positivity and inspiration to you for around 15 minutes each day. Thanks for listening and thank you for being a part of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur movement.