Today we’re talking about how to make money with your podcast. You’re not building this as a charity. Maybe you are, but if you want to make money off of your show, there are ways to do it.
MYTHS ABOUT HOW YOU MAKE MONEY
We will talk that about today, but there are some things that we need to get out of the way first. There are some myths that are out there. I think all of us have assumptions about what we can do once we start making content. I want to get some of these out of the way so that it’s easy for you guys when you move forward.
The first myth is that everyone can make money with advertising on their podcast. Now, there are a select few that can. Those are usually the top one hundred shows. The top couple hundred shows can obviously make money with advertising because they have enough subscribers and audience to support that because an advertising model needs a lot of listeners.
YOUR NUMBERS MAY NOT REACH THE REQUIREMENT
Unfortunately, the average podcast (especially new podcasts) only has somewhere around one hundred and eighty listeners. That’s not just new podcasts. That’s the average of all podcasts. Your show might be able to do better than that, but until you’re until the multi-thousand listener range, it’s probably not worth it for you.
Even after that, you’re probably not talking about a lot of money, so let’s take advertising off the table for you for now. It’s not probably the number one way to make money especially if you are in the knowledge business and you have information you can share. There are better ways for you to make money.
If all you’re doing is entertainment, then you’re looking to scale your audience, so that depends on which road you’re on. Most people listening to this are probably looking to build shows hopefully that are a knowledge-based business that they can make money off of. If you’re in the entertainment space, then we’re going to talk about audience growth and things like that.
YOU NEED LOTS OF LISTENERS FOR PATREON
The next myth that we’re gonna talk about is Patreon. The myth that we have is Patreon subscribers will help support my show. Again, this is a numbers game, you being able to find people that want to give you a dollar every month to listen to your show.
This is going to be a small number of people. It’s hard to scale something like that. Podcasting alone is a bit of a terrible discovery tool. Just because you put a podcast out there on a podcast player doesn’t mean people are going to find it.
They aren’t like YouTube or Google suggesting your show to tons of people. They generally only suggest the top couple hundred shows minus a few curated new and noteworthy that aren’t getting a ton of listenership. I’m just letting you know that that’s a bit of a road to hike up. Most people will have a smaller audience that is going to be harder to add up to a lot of Patreon support.
You might have a few people in your inner circle, your friends, and your family that want to help and support you. If you can make that work, great. If you’re going to do that, offering some other level of service that’s beyond the podcast, you offering some one-on-one time is probably going to be more useful in terms of building that.
YOU CAN’T ALWAYS MAKE MONEY WITH SPONSORS
That’s the second myth. The third is that you can find niche sponsors for your podcast. Sponsorships are great and they do work for podcasts, but what’s unfortunate again, given the size of audiences, even though you can find them, the question is will you be able to keep them? Without a large audience size, it’s going to be hard to deliver results for your sponsors.
Sponsors expect that you’re going to be able to deliver some kind of return on their investment, that they will be able to sell whatever they’re selling to your audience. If the audience isn’t big, then they’re not going to convert.
If they don’t have enough people converting and paying, why would they stick around and keep paying for ads on your show? It’s not a long-term game unless you have again, more audience.
SO HOW DO YOU MAKE MONEY?
That’s what we need to get off the table for right now. Then we can talk about the real ways to make money with the podcast, especially for those of you that are in the knowledge business. In other words, you have knowledge and experience that when you share with other people, you help them accomplish a goal.
If you can do that, you can make money through coaching, digital and other things, bringing people together. We’re going to talk about that today. If you’re strictly an entertainer, this may not be for you, but we’re going to go through these other ways to make money.
THE OVERVIEW
I’ll list them off for you first. Here are the seven most readily available ways to make money, especially when you’re starting podcasting. Number one is direct coaching, working with people in one-on-one fashions or in small groups.
Number two is a digital course. You take that knowledge and put it into something that can be monetized and purchased that’s in an organized fashion. Instead of just listening to you every week, people can quickly go through and accomplish a goal. Build some kind of digital course. It gives someone a quick win.
Number three is affiliate partnerships. That’s taking tools and resources that you use and offering them to people that you get a commission for that referral. Number four is events and masterminds, you gathering people together and them paying you to curate that experience.
Number five is online products and applications, you finding something to sell online that’s a physical product or a service product, or you’re developing some kind of software that people can use. Or is there something that you can offer every week or every month, whether that is an email or some kind of templates or resources that you can send that people would subscribe to get that every month or every week?
Maybe you’re sending them a curated box of products, or a monthly set of tools or templates. Getting someone to subscribe to something for a lower cost is realistic.
ADVERTISING WORKS BEST WITH YOUTUBE
And then last, you can figure out advertising. I would say that is a plan for the future, but I do want to mention if any of you guys are leaning towards advertising, what I forgot to mention before is that podcasting is great, but maybe YouTube should be your first preference if your goal is to make money advertising via your podcast.
I will find a way to make it a video-first-podcast from the beginning and make sure you’ve learned YouTube enough to try to get your shows to rank and do well on YouTube. Build for that platform first and then repurpose it into a podcast because YouTube is going to be a better discovery engine for your show to put some money behind, and they have a built-in advertising platform.
Maybe you need to be a YouTuber instead of a podcaster if advertising is your goal. I just want to throw that out there.
RELATED: Build your personal brand with the Content Marketing Starter Guide.
MAKE MONEY #1: ONE ON ONE TIME
Let’s talk about getting paid for your one-on-one time. It is the fastest way for any content creator and podcaster to make money, providing one-on-one time where you are serving your listeners in some way, using your zone of genius.
Take on work that your listeners prefer to outsource. It could be small work, or it could be you coaching them through something that they don’t know how to do. Figure that out. What is the quick win that you can get for them that you can just say, “Sign up for a one-hour call.”
It’s the fastest way you can build money through your show. Offer one-on-one calls. It could be a discovery call first, but then a follow-up call that could be an hour of your time to help them solve a problem.
It’s a great way to start building some rapport and some service with your listeners. Offer up your knowledge and expertise to solve that problem by providing consulting or coaching on a niche process or practice. Figure out something tangible to provide as a result.
WORK STRATEGY INTO TANGIBLE BENEFITS
What’s tough is to sell something like strategy. I’ve tried that. It’s not something people like to pay for. You can say, “Before this, you had nothing and after this, there’s something you have, something tangible.”
For example, in the coaching business for fitness, before we started, you had no meal plan. When we’re done, you have a physical meal plan you can follow. Or before we started, you had no exercise routine. When we finished, you have an actual checklist, a customized workout routine for you.
Create something physical, something tangible that they can have after that. Within that, you can build strategy and share those insights, but giving them something physical is what’s going to be helpful.
MORE DEMAND MEANS YOU MAKE MORE MONEY
Set low prices at first, and then as demand grows, let that drive your rates up after you can get some results or create some kind of multi-hour coaching program that’s eight hours or eight weeks to accomplish some bigger goal that is a set of steps that will take them from beginning to end, developing and reaching some determined destination.
Programs can then be complemented by resources that you develop and share on your coaching calls. The goal here is that you map out the steps. A lot of people want to get somewhere, but they don’t know the steps to get there. You’d say step one through eight are right here in order. You package that and you offer consistent support in that goal. That’s your one-on-one.
MAKE SURE YOU CAN SCALE
Right after that is leveling up to some kind of small group coaching. Hopefully, you have enough demand in your one-on-one coaching that it turns into something that has to be a small group coaching as it grows. When you’re doing that, you’re really talking about a consistent offering that is adapted to serve small groups at a lower cost.
The goal here is consistency. Once you’ve delivered results enough times to prove you have a system for that, and you can explain that system to people, then they’d be willing to join groups. Then you also get that community aspect built into your offerings. One key to that is getting out a bunch of powerful referrals and testimonials from the people you’ve worked with one-on-one.
That time you get back from doing small group coaching should free you up to focus on packaging, selling, and branding, which will be the next phase of scale for you in terms of monetization.
MAKE MONEY #2: CREATE A DIGITAL COURSE
The next thing we want to talk about is digital courses. This is not easy at all, but the point is to adapt your coaching program to work digitally. How do you go and replace that one-on-one teaching with video teaching? How do you replace live accountability with group accountability or digital accountability, and replace live discovery with worksheets and guided self-exploration?
Prioritize developing a strong email list for this tactic. Continue to have strong lead magnets, well-thought-out welcome email sequences, and a habit of sending out some kind of weekly communication that works along this way.
TURN YOUR ONE-ON-ONE INTO A COURSE
Grow your community and upsell them from the digital course. Ideally, you want to have something that can be turned on, that you don’t have to spend any time on that is helping you build and sell your one-on-one service later on.
A digital course, if you can build that, (and there are plenty of courses on how to build courses) is going to be an unlock for you overall.
MAKE MONEY #3: THE SECRET IS AFFILIATIONS
Next is affiliate partnerships. Affiliate partnerships are a bit of a no-brainer because usually if you’re teaching something, you already have resources you use all the time. People are going to always ask you those questions.
What equipment or tools do you use? Talk about what are you using in your processes to accomplish XYZ goal. Most of those products or programs or even events will pay you for referrals. They will pay you some kind of affiliate fees to send people, and you can get paid on a commission basis.
EVERYTHING YOU USE COULD BECOME A MONEY MAKER
Every time they pay for something, you get a percentage of that purchase. Review the tools that you’re using and that your competitors are using. Compare the tools and select the ones that you’d like the best and explain why. Offer that up to people that ask, and that can bring in some revenue for you.
It could be significant depending on what you’re talking about. As that grows, you can reach out to those stronger affiliates and develop relationships where you might become a top referrer and you can get a better deal than what is standard. Build out a resource page on your website to send people to that have those things listed so you don’t even have to be the person to mention it all the time.
MAKE MONEY #4: CREATE EVENTS AND MASTERMINDS
Another great way to monetize is to bring people together to events or masterminds. This is just you curating an experience of some sort. Figure out how you could provide more valuable in-person information. That might be you teaching on a niche topic in some kind of workshop environment or building a retreat that’s more vacation-like with knowledge-based service built-in.
It could be you gathering other people, gathering experts in a conference-style event. All this can be something that you can build by bringing people together. You are the curator of the experience. Along the way, in that experience and then beyond, you can offer some kind of accountability, some kind of hot seat, or coaching in those meetings.
Masterminds are a great format for that where every month you meet once or twice with the group of people. You bring in an expert, you talk about your goals. Hear people’s wins and losses, and you work together as a community to move and grow your businesses.
Nurturing the power of the community to support each other is a great tool that you can be the leader of. You can be the curator of it, and people will pay for that.
MAKE MONEY #5: CREATE SOMETHING THAT IS BUYABLE
The next thing to do is to offer online products and applications. One of the easy ways to do this is to create some kind of subscription product with a membership solving a simple problem with a digital resource that you create and offer over and over again at scale. Any kind of digital education product would work in this, some kind of templates or tools.
Next would be to write a book or create a software. These days there are plenty of people that could teach you how to write books. You can repurpose podcasts or courses in the books. Or if you want to, create software. There are freelance websites where you can tell people your idea, and they will build it for you.
You don’t have to be a technical building genius to figure this stuff out. You can outsource it as long as you tell people what it is, what simple problem you’re trying to solve, and how you think it should be solved. Offer that software or that tool at a very low price and it can be sold forever.
SOLVE PROBLEMS FOR PEOPLE
The other way to do it is to “productize” whatever you have as a template, a checklist, or a framework. “Productize” it for digital download and purchase. Solve a common problem with a low-cost solution. There might be people that have higher price ones. Do you have one that you can build that is simple, effective, and cheap?
That way people say, “You know what, I’m okay paying $20 to solve this problem and not have to spend the hour figuring it out. Online products and applications are a great Monetization tool for that. It’s realistic terms of people actually making money with it.
CREATE A VALUE LADDER TO MAKE MONEY
The goal is for you to do all these things as a checklist and build money over time so that you actually have a ladder of different products you are selling to people. You have your lead magnet that is free where you’re giving resources away. Then right above that, you’d have some kind of online product or application that’s between $5 and $50 and above.
Then you have some kind of digital course and it’s between $50 and $1000 dollars. Above that, you have some kind of coaching program that really teaches people one thing. That could be between $500 and $2,000. Above that, you have your signature coaching program. That is your most important thing, and that could be between $3,000 and $6,000.
Above that, you have a done for you service. That could be $10,000 or more because you’re actually taking things off of people’s plates.
This is a value ladder over time. You can Google “Value Ladder” and see how it’s been explained in other ways but from the beginning to the end, you come up with how people would engage with your business over time from an entry-level all the way to a fully done for you service.
This is a great way to think about a business plan or business model for your content creation, for your podcast, for what you’re trying to build as a knowledge business.
PEOPLE WILL PAY FOR SOMETHING THEY VALUE
Those are all the ideas for the day. What I’ll end with here is that all of this is a know-like-and-trust journey. None of this happens unless the people really think that you’re there for them and that you are providing enough knowledge and support that they are buying into your system.
Start within your immediate circles with the people who already know you. Build out your high-end coaching at a lower cost initially to test it and optimize. Solve small problems with a core audience. Create mid-cost solutions for that audience.
Then, quickly shift as it starts to get traction into the digital space and group coaching because then you can start to scale. There’s no point in selling really low-cost items to no people. You might have to start with the people that know you the best, and sell them something of value, work through that, and then build out your ladder, top to bottom and in between.
CONNECT WITH BRANDON
Instagram: @brandonbirkmeyer
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