One of the most common questions I’ve been getting asked by people visiting the studio is this: Can I make money doing a podcast? The answer is yes! There are several ways to monetize your podcast. Not all of them may apply to you, but there’s probably a model that will work for you. Keep in mind, most of these require you to establish a bit of a listener base first, so its important to start with consistent and quality content.
Traditional Sponsorship.
You can think of this a lot like a television or radio add. Interested advertisers offer an up front payment for you to run their add at some point (usually before or during) in your podcast. These ads are valuable to the sponsors because podcasts are usually topical and have a very targeted audience. If your podcast is about hockey, a sporting goods store can be sure that their ads are reaching the right audience. Other sponsors may pay on a CPM, or “cost-per-thousand” basis. Rather than an up front payment, you would earn anywhere from $15 to $25 per 1,000 downloads of your podcast, depending on the ad length and placement. One more model would be referral based, where a sponsor pays out a pre-determined amount for every sale of their product or service that comes with your referral code attached. Joe Rogan made $25 off of me when I signed up for Ting.
Sell your own product or service.
If you have a product or service to offer, a podcast might be a good way to market it. One of my favorite podcasts is about the music recording business, and the hosts both have specific services that they offer. One has a service called Filepass, a tool for sharing audio mixes with clients and collecting revision notes on the songs. Their podcast isn’t specifically about this Filepass service, but the vast majority of the listeners see value in it because they are active in the recording industry that could make use of the service. They made $70 off me for a year subscription. The other host of the podcast is an audio mastering engineer, and while the podcast isn’t specifically about mastering, I’m sure he’s gotten quite a few jobs offered from people who listen to the podcast.
Affiliate Marketing
Generating sales of someone else’s product or service can also generate revenue for your podcast. It’s fairly easy to become an amazon affiliate and generate affiliate links that can be put in your show notes or youtube video description. I get asked a lot about what I use to record with in the studio, so I have amazon affiliate links in my show notes for all of the equipment I use in the studio. If someone clicks the link and buys the product, I get a cut. If you have a guest on your podcast that offers a product or service, you could work out an offer where you get paid a commission for generating sales for that guest based off of their podcast appearance. Both parties benefit! Your guest reached a targeted audience that is interested in their product, and you make some cash on the side.
There’s A LOT more to talk about when it comes to monetizing your podcast. Reach out to us today to schedule a visit to the studio and we can go more in depth on this, or any other questions you might have!