- So you want to know how to
make money with your podcast because let's face it, what's
the point of having a podcast without all that sweet pod-cash? (introbeat.wav) And don't just take my word for it, let the numbers speak for themselves. I've got three podcasts,
hundreds of episodes, tens of thousands of downloads, and I have made ZERO DOLLARS from any of them. So welcome to my video on how
to make money with podcasting, which is in all seriousness, the reason that I wanted
to make this video is because it is not something I typically talk about very much because when it comes to podcasting, if you're doing it at the level at which most of us are doing it, which we could call hobbyists
and advanced hobbyist, part-time, it's probably
not gonna be a significant source of your income. If any source at all, like I have literally never
made any money on my podcasts. If anything, I've lost
money because it costs money to produce them and to upload them and all that kind of stuff. I even made a course all about launching your own podcast that specifically does not
talk about monetization because I think that similarly
to starting a YouTube channel, if you get into podcasting
with the goal of making money and monetizing it, you're already setting
yourself up for failure because you're gonna need
to put in a lot of time, energy and effort to get to a point where you could even
possibly monetize at all. And if you're not doing it because it's something you care about and something you enjoy and you really like are having fun with, it's not something that's
going to be sustainable to the point where monetization
is even on the horizon. Now, of course, there
are always exceptions to what I'm saying, and I'm sure we can all
think of examples of people who make insane amounts
of money from podcasting or even just full-time middle-class
incomes from podcasting. But for the vast majority of us, that's really not going to be the case. However, that doesn't mean it's impossible to make money with your podcast. I do joke that I have not made any, but I've also not made a
tremendous effort to do so. And so I wanted to
share with you five ways that you can monetize your podcast while keeping your expectations
grounded in reality. Now the most obvious one is probably ads and a big question that people have when they start their podcast is how the heck do I put ads on it? And a lot of podcasting platforms kind of work the same as YouTube, where you can just add in
add space to your episode. So for example, something
like Buzzsprout or Anchor, they let you just add in segments
before or after episodes, and then they fill them with ads. So you don't get to choose
which ads are on your episodes, you don't get to have any say in that. You just get to say, "Hey, here's a spot "where you could put an ad." And then they, or another
third party company, they work with advertisers
to make those deals, place the ads on your content and then you get a share of the revenue. Very, very similarly to how YouTube works. So for example, here's my
Buzzsprout monetization page for my personal podcast. And you can see, I can add
in sponsor segments here. I could even work with
some affiliate stuff, we'll talk about that, and I
can even add links over here. So a lot of podcast hosts
do have built in options to help you monetize your show, but I don't know what the
actual income would be. And I'll be very transparent
here looking at my statistics and as I'm recording this, I'm in between seasons four
and five on my podcast, so I've taken a couple of weeks off, but here are my download numbers. The season four finale, which a finale episode or premiere episode are probably gonna get more
downloads the normal it's 510. My typical downloads, as you
can see are anywhere between, you know, 400 and 500, this
episode got 600 good for me. Remember when it comes to podcasting, your numbers are gonna
be significantly lower than something like YouTube, where if you get 28 downloads
in the first seven days, that your episode is up,
that puts you in the top 50%. And I've said this in a few other videos, but that's just 28, not 2,800 or 28,000, just 28 downloads puts you in the top 50%. However, advertisers don't
seem to be as impressed by that as the rest of us and
so those 28 downloads aren't gonna generate a ton of ad revenue, like literally at the end of the month, if you're doing 50 to 100
downloads per episode, you could probably have a
few dollars in ad revenue. Now, the second way you
can monetize your podcasts would be through sponsorships,
which are different than ads. At least how we're
talking about them here, because an ad, you don't really
have any say in what it is, you just give the ad space
and it gets filled up. Whereas a sponsorship, even if you are advertising something, you're working more
directly with that company or that brand and your
negotiating a deal on your own. So that could be something like
an ad read before your show or after your show, or you take a break in the middle and talk about your sponsor. It could include adding
in links and things to the show notes for your
episodes, how you set those up, there really depends on you, and in this case, you're going out there and you're the one building
the relationship with the brand and setting up the deal. In general, though, if you have no preexisting
relationship with a brand or a company and you approach
them for a sponsorship, they will probably give you a rate of somewhere between 20 and
$30 per 1,000 downloads. So just as an example,
right in the middle, say you have an episode
that gets 1,000 downloads in that first week and you get a sponsor, they would pay you $25. But in my case with
500 downloads per week, I would get somewhere between
15, maybe $20 per episode. And to me selling out my show
and my audience's attention and my relationship with
my audience for 15 or $20, just totally isn't worth it. Now you can negotiate
sponsorship deals on your own, so even if you do have a
relatively tiny audience, if it is a dedicated audience and you build a
relationship with the brand that actually values the
relationship with your audience, they could be willing to
pay more for a sponsorship because they know that even
though it's a small audience, it is a committed audience
and they value that, and they actually want to compensate you for access to that audience. Now it is your responsibility to protect the thing that you have built. So even if it's small audience, if you've built a strong
relationship with them, you can easily damage that or hurt it by doing too many sponsorships or bringing in things
that are totally unrelated and making yourself seem
a little untrustworthy, or a little insincere in authentic. So there's a very fine line to walk, but it is possible to find a brand that aligns with your values
and the topic of your show. That would actually be
good for your audience, and then you can be the
glue that connects those, and in some cases, brands
will pay a premium for that. And you could also go beyond that, I've known a few people who
have sold entire seasons of their podcasts to sponsors. So you could take a block
of 10 or 12 episodes, however long one of your seasons might be, and you could sell that
entire season to a sponsor, if you feel that you have found a sponsor that would be a good fit, and you could potentially
charge a higher premium for that because regardless of downloads, they're taking an entire
season like an entire chunk of your content there. Of course, that means if you're
in the middle of a season and another sponsor shows up, you can't really say yes to them because you're already being sponsored by these people over here. Now the third way to
monetize your podcast, kind of switches it up a little bit. So instead of going to
outside sources like brands and advertisers, now you're going directly to your audience and that's where you can
use something like Patrion, buy me a coffee, any of those, either donation or monthly
membership services. And that is where your audience
can support you directly. And in the world of podcasting, that can actually be a really strong thing because you can decide
what tiers you wanna offer. You could use Patreon just
basically as a tip jar and just say, "Hey, join it, you know, $1 a month or $5 a month and help support the show and that's it." But if you look at podcasts
who have success with Patreon, so this is one of my favorite podcasts, and I think one of the
most successful examples of podcasts on Patreon and
that's Talking Simpsons, where their entire full-time income for multiple people comes
directly from Patrion, so you can select tiers
and then you can decide what to offer, I mean, you
probably know how Patreon works, but in terms of podcasting, that means you can build a community, you can let that community
have input on show content, you can literally bring them into shows, if you want to, you can
release stuff early. In the most successful
podcasting Patreon pages that I have seen, are the ones that are
interactive like that. If you just do it as a tip jar, not that many people
are gonna be interested, but if you actually do
offer perks and things, then it does make sense that more people would wanna support you. And even though that's true, no matter what you're using
something like Patreon for, I think podcasting lends itself
to that a little bit better because it's just easier to
do, you know, special episodes, early episodes, additional content, photos, videos, that kind of stuff. Maybe you have a video only
version of your podcast, that's for your Patreon supporters. Everybody else gets
the audio only version, and that could be a huge incentive for people to sign up to your Patreon. It's important to keep in mind though that whatever you're
promising through Patreon, you have to deliver and so
that can be a lot more work. If you're saying every person who joins gets all these things, and
then every time someone joins, you have to spend hours
fulfilling their membership perks, that can be a significant
drain on your time and make it harder to actually
just keep producing the show that they wanted to
support in the first place. So you really have to remember
that something like Patreon, while you are building a community, you're monetizing off your audience, it can also then take your time in addition to the normal
time of producing your show. And of course you can combine
some of these ways as well. You can have sponsorships and Patreon, and the fourth way of monetizing your show is one that fits in kind of
no matter what you're doing. And that would be affiliate links depending on what your show is about, it may or may not make sense. I talk a lot about gear, so affiliate links are pretty natural because if I talk about
something like a camera lens or microphone, people wanna know about it, so I need to put a link to it. And if I'm putting a link to it, why not make it an affiliate link? I know sometimes people get really upset about seeing affiliate
links in descriptions. But to me, affiliate links
are kind of the best way to advertise because they
can be so unobtrusive, of course, you need to
disclose very clearly that they are affiliate links and follow whatever guidelines for whatever affiliate
program you're a part of. But beyond that, you
don't have to take time out of your video or
your podcast or whatever to talk about the affiliate links. You don't have to do
direct call to actions, they can just be there for
anybody who's interested. And then when people decide
that they wanna use them, they can use them. A lot of times, if you
use affiliate links, you will also find as people become bigger
supporters of what you do, they actually want to seek out your link to see whether you have an affiliate link for the product or
service they looking for, or even just the online retailer that they wanna shop through and they'll just click through
your link to get there. So that's an easy way
for people to support you without having to spend
any additional money. Just be sure that you are
following all the guidelines for whichever affiliate
program that you're a part of, and whether or not affiliate marketing is gonna be successful, really depends on the
content of your show. And if there's something
that lends itself naturally to being part of an affiliate program. And the fifth way of
monetizing your podcast, of course would be through merchandise that sweet, sweet merch. Now I'm not an expert
on merch as I have none, but it is an opportunity for you to let people support your show and monetize at the same time, since you are dealing
with physical products, a lot of the time with merch, unless it's like a digital
download or something that doesn't mean you have
storage and manufacturing and shipping and even if
you're using a third party, like a t-shirt company, where
when someone places the order, they just print it to
order and send it to them. Usually that company of course, will still take a cut of the purchase because they need to
support themselves as well. So finding prices that are
affordable to your audience, but also still worth it for
you can sometimes be tricky and then finding high quality merch, you don't wanna just
do the cheapest option, and then everyone buys your
shirt or your hat or whatever. And what they get is an
absolute piece of garbage that they never wanna wear 'cause that's not going
to make them happy, and that's going to reflect
very badly on you and your show. And also it's important
with merch to keep in mind that there is kind of an upper limit. You make a t-shirt and someone buys it, are they gonna buy five more T-shirts if you keep releasing them? Your most intense fans probably will, but the average casual person getting them to buy one piece of merch, might be a huge leap, and then getting them to
rebuy that or buy more, might be kind of difficult. So that means if you
have a small audience, once they've already bought
one thing, they might be done, and you might not be able
to get them to buy more. And of course there are other
ways to monetize your podcast. So if there's something I left out here, something that's been successful for you, then please feel free to
leave that in the comments and let us know what's working, 'cause it might be a really cool idea that could be really
helpful to a lot of people. And I know every time I brought up a monetization suggestion in this video, I also pointed out why it might not work or why it might not really
generate a lot of money. And that's really not to discourage you or to keep you down or anything like that, but it's to keep things realistic because you can read a news article about some company purchasing a podcast for tens of millions of dollars. You can read about how some celebrity makes hundreds of thousands
of dollars a month or more through their podcast. And then you start your podcast excited for that sweet revenue, and then there's none and
you might feel disappointed. And that's why I want to
remind you and everybody, that the reason you're
starting your podcast should not be to earn revenue, but it should be to share
something that you care about, something you're interested in, something you're passionate about with an audience that feels the same way. And if down the line
opportunities organically emerge that allow you to monetize
and earn an income or even a living off of
that, that's awesome. But if that's what you have in mind, when you're starting out, you are just setting
yourself up for failure. So please be sure that it's
the passion of the podcast that guides you and not just
the passion for the cashing. But I really do hope
this video was helpful. I'm a fan of podcasting, both as a listener and as a podcaster. And I feel like it's one of
the last places on the internet that's still kind of that
wild west of creativity and independence, and that's
really important to me, which is why I am so guarded
when it comes to monetization. And I wanna make sure that if people do choose to monetize their
shows that they do so correctly, in a way that's going to
keep the show sustainable and successful for them
and their audience. (outrobeat.wav)
