Let's Talk Early Years: podcast, events, and tickets in one place

Melonie Karriem already had the audience. A podcast, a calendar of conferences and community gatherings, a newsletter, and a professional network across early years education. Those pieces sat in different tools. Someone who wanted the latest episode, the next event, and a ticket had to assemble that path themselves.

https://letstalkearlyyears.com

The challenge

The useful product was not another brochure. It had to do three jobs without feeling like three separate sites:

• Publish episodes, events, and writing without a developer on every update
• Show what is coming up, and sell the ticket on the same page
• Keep YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts as the places people already listen

The audience is early years educators, leaders, and specialists. They arrive from a podcast app, a newsletter, or a social post. The site has to recognise that and still give them one next step.

What we built

The podcast, on the platforms people already use

Episodes are grouped by season on the site. Play starts from YouTube, on the page. The same episode is one click away on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. The site does not pretend to replace those apps. It sends people to the one they already use, and it keeps the catalogue in one place.

https://letstalkearlyyears.com/podcast

Events with a real ticket, not a PDF

Conferences, accredited training, and community events share one calendar. On an event page the buyer chooses how many tickets they need. Pack pricing is applied as they go: a six-pack and a twelve-pack sit next to a single ticket, and the mix updates before payment. Name and email stay on the booking. Payment itself happens on Stripe Checkout. If they cancel, they come back to the same tickets. They can join the newsletter from the booking form.

https://letstalkearlyyears.com/events

A practice, not only a media library

Speaking, roundtables, workshops, masterclasses, resources, and partnerships sit on the same site as the podcast and the events. The blog and the newsletter give the community somewhere to read between gatherings.

Integrations

The build is the join between the tools the practice already runs.

YouTube

Each episode carries a YouTube video id and plays in the page. The channel stays linked from the episode list and the footer, so a new upload and the site catalogue point at the same place.

Spotify and Apple Podcasts

Listen badges on the podcast page go straight to the show on Spotify and on Apple Podcasts. Distribution stays where the listeners are. The site is the index.

Contentful

Events, articles, partner marks, and images publish from Contentful. Covers and logos are served from Contentful's image CDN. Rich text from the CMS renders on the page. A new event, a new post, or a new partner does not need a code release.

Stripe and event ticketing

Ticket offers load for the event: remaining places, early-bird and full-price tiers, and multi-ticket packs. The page shows the pack mix and the total, then hands payment to Stripe's hosted checkout. The buyer never types a card number on the marketing site.

Newsletter

A subscribe form lives on the site. Ticket checkout can add the buyer to the same list. Newsletter issue artwork, including MailerLite campaign headers, is kept in the content library with the rest of the publishing.

Public channels

Instagram, LinkedIn, and the YouTube channel are linked from the footer, so the platform and the social accounts point at each other.

Outcome

The commercial takeaway: when a practice already has an audience on YouTube and a calendar of paid events, the useful build is the layer that joins content, distribution, and checkout.