Your tip jar as your podcast's funding link
A listener is nearing the end of your episode on the walk home when you ask for value for value, as you always do. She'd happily send a few thousand sats. But she listens in Pocket Casts, which doesn't send sats, and the Lightning address you read out is gone before she can type it.
Add one line to your feed and the next episode goes differently. She taps the coin button in Pocket Casts and your tip page opens. She picks an amount, opens her wallet from the page and confirms. That button is the podcast funding tag, and your tip jar's link is all it needs.
Value for value, outside the apps
In Podcasting 2.0, value for value has meant apps that pay a show while you listen: a boost with a message, or sats streamed by the minute. Fewer people are sending them. The Podcast Index counts the payments it can see, through a voluntary 1% share that apps send it, so the real numbers may be higher. Its chart averaged 55 senders a day from late May to late June 2026, and 23 a day from mid-July to mid-August. In July, the CEO of TrueFans, one of the apps still sending them, said on Podnews Weekly Review that boosts and streamed sats were "down to pretty well zero".
The funding tag reaches further. Of the 4.7 million feeds the Podcast Index tracks, about 92,000 carry a funding tag and about 34,000 a value block. The Podcasting 2.0 site lists 26 podcast apps that show the funding tag and 15 that handle a value block, and Pocket Casts, Podcast Addict and AntennaPod are on the first list only. A funding link opens a web page, and a tip page takes payment from any Lightning wallet, so nobody has to change podcast apps to tip you.
The line in your feed
The tag carries a link and a label of up to 128 characters, which apps can show beside it. It can cover the whole show or a single episode, and a feed can carry more than one. This is the whole of it:
<podcast:funding url="YOUR-LINK">Tip the show in bitcoin</podcast:funding>
YOUR-LINK is your jar's short link, such as bitcointipjar.com/yourshow, with https:// in front. Use the short link rather than the long one with your wallet's address in it. Every app and directory copies your feed, and the short link keeps working if you change wallets.
If your host asks for a label, make it say what the link does, so the person who taps it already knows: Tip the show in bitcoin. Some apps print your label; others show a coin or a dollar sign that opens the link.
Where your host keeps the field
You don't have to write the XML. Most hosts have a field that writes it for you.
- Podhome. In your show settings, add the link and a description.
- RSS.com. In the Monetization tab, choose Activate under Donations and funding, paste the link and choose Enable donation. It also shows as a button on your RSS.com page.
- Buzzsprout. On the Monetization page, paste it into the show link tab. Buzzsprout writes the label itself, and adds the link to every episode's notes.
- Captivate. Under Promotion, open Marketing Links, then Monetization Links. Paste it as your Donation Link and save.
- Transistor. In the show's Settings, under Social Media, paste it as your Donation link. Transistor writes the label itself.
- Castos. In the podcast's settings, the Funding section takes a label and the link. Give apps at least a day to notice.
- Sovereign Feeds. In the editor's Funding tab, add a block with your phrase and the link.
- Your own feed. The line above, inside <channel>, with the podcast namespace declared.
Some hosts take a single funding link. If yours already points at Patreon or PayPal, choose which one goes there, and put the other in your show notes.
A tip page is not keysend
A tip page doesn't stream sats by the minute, and it doesn't split a payment among the people in your value block. Each tip is one payment, from the listener's wallet to the wallet behind your Lightning address, and it can carry their name.
So it needs a Lightning address. If your value block pays a node by keysend alone, get an address for the jar. Then check it on the wallet table: some wallets take tips but can't confirm them, and a page can only show Paid ✓ when the wallet confirms. To choose one, read which Lightning wallet your tip jar should use.
Keep your value block. Listeners in those apps can still boost, and listeners in Pocket Casts and the other apps that show the funding tag now have a button.
Show notes and video
The funding button lives inside the apps on that list, and Apple Podcasts and Spotify aren't on it. Show notes travel further: to your website, to every directory, to whoever finds episode 40 in two years. End every episode's notes with one line, such as "Tip the show in bitcoin at bitcointipjar.com/yourshow".
If you publish video, put the QR code on screen while you ask, and the link in the description. Someone watching on a TV can't tap a link, but they can point their phone at the screen. The QR code is on your jar's edit page, under Get more tips, as a PNG.
Setting it up
Paste your Lightning address at bitcointipjar.com and you have a tip page. Then claim a short link, like bitcointipjar.com/yourshow. It asks for an email, so it can send you the edit link you'll use to change the jar later. Paste the short link into your host's funding field and your show notes. The creators page shows the other places it goes: a bio, a button on your site, a stream overlay. The sats go straight to your wallet, with no account and no cut of your tips.
Sources: the Podcast Index's value-for-value stats, whose chart runs from 26 May to 13 August 2026 and counts only payments that carry the Index's voluntary 1% split, and its feed counts of 30 September 2026; the Podcasting 2.0 show notes for Episode 265, 17 July 2026, which quote the remark, and Podnews's page for the speaker's role; the funding tag and value tag specs, with their lists of apps and hosts, and the funding tag guide; the help pages of Podhome, RSS.com, Buzzsprout, Captivate (donation link and Podcasting 2.0), Transistor and Castos; and the Sovereign Feeds editor itself, as it has no help page on this. All read on 1 October 2026. Settings are theirs to move; if one has, look for a funding or donation link.