Luis Congdon

On this episode, I’m going to talk about how to monetize a podcast.

Hey, Thriving Launchers, today, I want to talk about how podcasters make money, how to monetize a podcast, and how to leverage your show for profits. Let’s start diving in.

There are a variety of ways people with podcasts are making money.

Luis Congdon

One of the ways that most people think of podcast making money is through sponsorships. A sponsor is like having some company on a radio show, or TV show pay money for commercial spots. That’s one of the first ways most people think about is a sponsor.

Somebody gives you money, and during the show, you make a little commercial or give them a little shout out. That’s one of the most common ways people think about profiting through a podcast.

Here is the deal.

Luis Congdon

Most of the time, most podcasters won’t land a sponsor. Most of the time, it’s going to make your show seem spammy.

That’s one of the reasons why we don’t tend to do very many commercials spots for companies because we don’t want to be shooting out the names of a bunch of random companies, and our income relying to come from companies paying us for commercial spots.

I think sponsorship is an okay way to make money. It’s fine if it works. If it’s something you want to do, it’s okay.

One of the challenges with landing a sponsor is you got to build up a particular type of audience, ideally, a larger audience. You can stay away from the size of the audience and still land a sponsor, but it’s a lot easier to have a sponsor when you have a big responsive show.

Then, you got to consider if you want to be shooting out the names of companies throughout your show. That’s up to you.

Luis Congdon

The other way on how to monetize a podcast is affiliate marketing. It’s very much like a sponsor, but this is maybe more of the show notes, more based on sales that people are getting because of your show.

You can look up on Thriving Launch more information about affiliates and how to utilize affiliates but very simply, an affiliate is somebody who has a product to sell or a service to sell, and when you refer them business, they give you a percentage of the sale. It’s all based on sales and transactions, and you get a percentage of that.

Using affiliate marketing is great. I think you should be doing it. It’s not going to be the best way and the most proficient way on how to monetize a podcast, but it works.

Luis Congdon

Another way that podcasters are making money is selling their own products or services through their show.

I think that is the number one way that we, podcasters should be making money.

You might be interested in having a podcast, a YouTube channel, a blog, or a vlog, or anything.

The number one way you should be bringing in income from your work is from selling your own products or services.

You get to keep 100% of the profits. You reap the benefits because it’s your product. Then, if somebody buys your product, now they are your customers, and you can sell them more products and services.

Generally speaking, if someone buys something of yours, and they’re pleased with it, they’re going to be happy to buy something else, and you can always tag on other services.

Luis Congdon

Somebody might buy our podcast course. From there, we offer podcast editing, show notes creation, artwork creation, and podcast website work. We have all these services that are complementary to each other so no matter where somebody tends to buy, we can offer them other services and a percentage of people do end up buying those other add-ons and services.

Luis Congdon

The other way on how to monetize a podcast is a little harder. It takes little bit more work, but it does work.

Luis Congdon

You can sell “behind the scenes, ” and you can sell the show notes.

For instance, I do an interview with a very well-known person, but we only release 15 minutes of it. If you want to get the rest of that interview, you can pay 799/month.

Whatever fee it might be, you can tell people, “You’ve only gotten the first 15 minutes Hey. If you want to get the rest of this 45-minute interview, click here.” Or “Go over to this website. Click on this one spot, and we’ll give you the full transcript. We’ll give you behind the scenes and some live video footage.” And that’s a one-time offer.

You can also do a subscription-based show. Some shows do this, and they do very well. You can say, “You can only listen to these seven episodes. We come out with one every month,” or something like that.

From there, you can say “If you want to listen to the weekly shows and get the show notes, you can pay a monthly service.” That’s another way on how to monetize a podcast.

There are a variety of other ways.

Luis Congdon

One of the other ways is people are selling spots on their show.

This is the least popular but I’ve seen it done, and I’ve seen some people make some decent money doing it. I think it’s a short-lived strategy, but you can try doing it if you want. I don’t recommend it unless you have a highly coveted show and people want to get on your show.

You can say, “If you want to get on the show sooner, we have a waiting list. It’s a yearlong or two years long. But if you want to get on the show sooner, you can pay $300,” or “You can pay $500” or something like that.

You can also say “If you want to come on the show, we are asking all our guests, at this current time, you can do this maybe during a launch of a book,” or something like that as well. You can say, “Anybody who comes on our show, we’re asking them to buy a hundred units of our books” or something like that. That’s something I’ve seen done. Again, it’s a very short-lived strategy, not the most popular, and you need to be very tactful with that.

Luis Congdon

Another strategy on how to monetize a podcast is producing shows for other people.

If you’re a podcaster, you can offer to make shows for other people, and that is a way that’s some people are doing some great revenue that way. I’ll host and produce the show for you, but it will be under your name. It’ll be your content and be about whatever you want the show to be about.

Luis Congdon

Another way people are making through podcasting is booking people on podcasts.

I host a Facebook group with over 2,000 podcasters, and quite often, people write me and ask me if I could help them get on shows. I used to do this for free, and I loved it. But then, I realized I was getting very busy, and needed to charge, so I started charging people to get on other podcasts. You can do that as well.

Luis Congdon

You can also, as a podcaster, charge people for podcast coaching. If you run a show and you know what you’re doing, you can charge to be a coach or a consultant for other people who want to have podcasts.

Now, this is just the beginning. Honestly, there are more ways on how to monetize a podcast, but this is an excellent introduction.

Luis Congdon

I believe that the top three ways you should start making money with your podcast right away are offering your own services or products, make either a little commercial spot on your show or throughout the show.

Start shooting out, “Hey. We’re listening to our interview right now with Luis Congdon, and I want to let you know that Luis offers podcast coaching,” or something like that.

Start throughout the interview mentioning what your services are. You can say, “We’re talking right now to Harville Hendrix, a 19-time Oprah guest. He’s done an incredible amount of publicity, and if you’d like to learn more about how to do publicity, you can go to thrivinglaunch.com, and we have a whole thing on publicity campaigns.”

Start letting people know what your services are through your podcast, make a little commercial spot, sell a digital product, sell a digital course. I think you need that you need to be doing that if you’re going to host a podcast, a YouTube channel, a vlog, or a blog.

Luis Congdon

The other way I think you should start doing it is through affiliates.

Find a few affiliates, go online, search for affiliates, and include some affiliates. Now, affiliates can be stuff from companies, and you can go to a bunch of places and sign up to be an affiliate. You can even find people, individuals like myself.

For example, I have a podcast course, and every once in a while, I allow people to sell my course. They take 50% of the sale for that. I pay very well for individuals who make sales of our podcast course, and that’s something you could try doing as well.

Also, what you can do is in your show notes, have a link to a book or to a product you like that’s relevant to your audience and the show.

Luis Congdon

Then, the third way I think you should start making money from your show is in your show notes, also have a link to your products or services.

People listen to your episode, and they hear about your services on the show, but the sale isn’t going to happen through the show. It’s going to happen through your website. In the show notes, include the link to the services or products you offer.

Those are my top three ways. I think there’s a lot more ways and you can experiment with those, but I think you should today, start acting out and working on those three different varieties of ways that I’ve suggested for you on how to monetize a podcast.

If you want to learn more about podcasting, go to Thriving Launch. We’ll see you over there in the show notes. We have some free training, a variety of training, and an incredible webinar that teaches you a lot more about this. We’ll see you over at Thriving Launch.