How to use ShowTaxi, step by step: Create offers
Think of offers you create as the different ways you can control how you give your podcast episodes to your listeners. With different offers, you can control different options: how you charge for a particular monthly subscription, how that subscription is protected, how often the subscriber can access the feed, change IP addresses and access the enclosures, what PayPal account their subscription fees are paid through and more. Let's create an offer, and we'll show you what we mean.
PayPal account - email address
Remember, it's better to have a PayPal micropayment account if your monthly subscription fee is less than $12, and a regular PayPal account if it's more than $12. When creating an offer, choose whatever PayPal account you've entered that is appropriate.
You can always add, delete or edit PayPal accounts via the Manage PayPal Accounts menu item.
Description
This is not the description of your podcast, it's a short, sentence-length description of this particular subscription offer. In this example, it's Monthly subscription for David Lawrence Unplugged - choose one that's similarly explanatory. You might want to create offers that include free trials, initial charges but free follow up episodes - so say so in your description.
Free trial
If you want to offer a free trial to your podcast, you can easily do so. You can offer a 7-day, 15-day or 30-day free trial. In this example, there is no free trial - and that's the fourth option at the top of the free trial drop down menu.
Monthly price
This is where you set your monthly recurring fee for listeners to receive your podcast episodes. It doesn't matter how many episodes you produce in a month. This is simply the monthly fee that you want to charge. In this example, we've chosen $7.00 US. Please use US dollars only - podcasters outside the US can use the ShowTaxi system, but please note that they should charge the current rate in US dollars, not their native currency.
Access to feed
Several items on this screen will determine how tight or loose your restrictions are on your listener's behaviors with your podcast. The first of these is how often you will allow your listeners to check the feed for new episodes in any 24 hour period. In this case, we've chosen 26 - to allow for one check per hour, and a couple of restarts of their podcatching software. If they go over that limit, they'll receive the notice audio instead of the podcast episode. The default notice audio makes it clear that this is one of the things that can stop the podcast from being properly downloaded.
Access to enclosures
You want people downloading your podcast episodes, not continually streaming them from your server, so you want to limit the number of times they can access your enclosures. In this case, we've chosen 14 - to let them listen to the podcast a number of times, but not so many that your bandwidth may suffer.
IP address change
This is where people who share your podcast subscription URLs against your wishes are usually snared. We've set this example at 2, which means if the podcast is accessed from more than 2 IP addresses in a single day, only the last two will be allowed to download the enclosures. This allows for a home and work computer, a change in a dynamic IP address and more. You might want to allow for some moderate sharing, or you might want to only allow one IP address at a time.
Return URL
If you've designed a custom page on your podcast's website for your subscribers to return to once they've paid for their subscriptions, place that full URL in this text box. Do make sure that if you use this option, that you provide complete instructions about how to place and use the subscription URL. Most podcasters use the ShowTaxi default page - and they do so by leaving this slot blank.
Cancel URL
Like the Return URL, if you choose to, you can create a custom page for when a potential subscriber cancels their transaction, or a current subscriber cancels a subscription. Most podcasters use the ShowTaxi default page - and they do so by leaving this slot blank.
Once you've filled all this in, click on the Submit button to add this offer to your list of offers for this particular channel. You can create as many offers as you like. We've just got one on our list.
Get HTML
This is it - the goal you've been working towards for lo these many minutes - the actual HTML code that you can place on your website to allow subscribers to actually pay for and receive your podcast.
Click on your newly created offer in the list. You'll see a summary page of the offer's source, price, restrictions and so on. In the Actions list at the bottom of the page, click on Get HTML code for this offer, and you'll be presented with HTML code for two things: the actual subscription form that you place in the HTML code of your website, and a snippet of code if you want to allow people easy access to cancelling their subscription.
The button banner you see is there as a default - if you're comfortable customizing HTML forms, you can change the image to one of your own, but if you change the HTML code we give you here, we can't guarantee that you'll get paid or that we can properly support you. All you really need to do is copy and paste that code into your HTML pages, wherever you want people to be able to subscribe to your podcast.
We recommend having it available on every page that references your podcast - you can never give potential subscribers too many opportunities to purchase your podcast.