Episode 136
How do podcasters make money from their shows
Joe Rogan's $250 million Spotify deal and Smartless' $100 million Sirius XM contract aren't just industry anomalies - they're proof of podcasting's massive revenue potential. In fact, the podcasting industry is now a 7.2 billion dollar industry and counting.
I know you can look at those numbers and think, “Yeah, but that’s only for the really big shows”. But the reality is, there’s money to be made as an independent creator with a small listenership. You’ve just got to be willing to put in the work and get creative. After producing hundreds of podcasts with independent creators, I've identified which approaches deliver results for shows of all sizes.
In this episode, I break down what we’ve found to be the best ways to monetise your podcast.
CHAPTER MARKERS
00:00 Introduction: The Big Money in Podcasting
00:31 Making Money Without Millions of Listeners
01:54 Sponsorships: The Bread and Butter
03:14 Memberships: Crowdsourcing Your Show
04:10 Selling Your Knowledge and IP
05:45 Live Experiences: Engaging Your Audience
07:07 Products and Merchandising
08:28 YouTube: Expanding Your Reach
09:30 Podcast Networks: Joining Forces
10:24 Affiliate Marketing: Easy Income
11:17 Conclusion: Start Small, Think Big
BAMBY MEDIA LINKS:
Podcast Monetisation Mini-Course
GEAR WE USE HERE AT BAMBY MEDIA:
Aputure Amaran 200d LED Video Light
Pre-Amp/Mixers we recommend
Transcript
A quarter of a billion dollars.
Speaker:That is what Spotify paid Joe Rogan in 2024, and he's not alone in that either.
Speaker:We also have Smartless who landed a $100 million deal with Sirius XM
Speaker:and Alex Cooper who has a podcast.
Speaker:Call her daddy, which secured $60 million from Spotify.
Speaker:Wows, there is some big money in podcasting and you
Speaker:are not getting any of it.
Speaker:Is that right?
Speaker:You're not getting any of it.
Speaker:Here's the thing though, you don't need millions of listeners to make
Speaker:some actual real money from podcasting.
Speaker:Those three shows, they have huge listenerships.
Speaker:It makes sense that they would have big.
Speaker:Money involved that they would have advertisers like banging down the door.
Speaker:Please, I wanna be featured on your show, but you don't have to compete with that.
Speaker:You don't have to even come close to those numbers to actually make
Speaker:some real money from your podcast.
Speaker:Today, I'm gonna go through a bunch of different ways that you
Speaker:can make money from your podcast.
Speaker:This is gonna be more like a brief overview.
Speaker:I'm not gonna go.
Speaker:Nitty gritty onto all of these things because we do have a podcast monetization
Speaker:mini course that you can purchase that will give you the full, detailed
Speaker:instructions, including pitch decks, what a rate card should look like,
Speaker:what rates you could potentially be charging, how to work with sponsors,
Speaker:how to get monetization other ways.
Speaker:It's a really solid mini course.
Speaker:So if you are interested in doing that, click on the link purchase that it's
Speaker:ready to go whenever you are, and you can start learning and making money from that.
Speaker:But if you just wanna know a little bit, let's just get straight into the different
Speaker:ways that you can monetize your podcast.
Speaker:Obviously number one is sponsorships.
Speaker:This is kind of the bread and butter for a lot of the bigger shows.
Speaker:Even with as little as 10,000 downloads per episode, you could
Speaker:be earning a a decent chunk.
Speaker:Now, if you are looking at me going, oh my God, 10,000 downloads per
Speaker:episode, and you're saying like.
Speaker:Even with like, that's nowhere near a number I'm at, don't worry,
Speaker:because even if your downloads are a lot less, you can still be
Speaker:gaining sponsorship for your show.
Speaker:In fact, we have had a lot of success with smaller shows that
Speaker:have nowhere near those numbers.
Speaker:The target is to make sure that you are chasing aligned sponsors.
Speaker:The sponsors that would be interested in your niche.
Speaker:One of the keys to sponsorship is to make sure that you are actually
Speaker:niched enough that your content is good enough so that if a sponsor is
Speaker:interested and they listen to your stuff.
Speaker:It has to be good enough.
Speaker:It has to be like, cool.
Speaker:I wanna be associated with that show.
Speaker:And so if your quality isn't quite there yet, don't go chasing sponsors.
Speaker:Get a better show first.
Speaker:And then once you have a good quality show, even if it's small, you've got good
Speaker:audio quality, you know your niche, it's targeted, then you can chase sponsors.
Speaker:And we will go into that in the course that I have mentioned
Speaker:at the top of the episode.
Speaker:The second way is.
Speaker:Memberships, and this is kind of like crowdsourcing your show.
Speaker:So you can use platforms like Patreon to create kind of this community around
Speaker:your show where they support you.
Speaker:And instead of getting a sponsor, basically the person
Speaker:listening is your sponsor.
Speaker:They give you a couple of dollars, you know, you can set the prices, and then
Speaker:from there they are helping the show.
Speaker:By contributing some money every month.
Speaker:You can also subscribe, like using Apple Podcasts for example.
Speaker:You know, you can set up like a tier that's kind of like a private show
Speaker:where they don't get access to it unless they're subscribed to it.
Speaker:You would've seen those.
Speaker:Wondery does that too.
Speaker:Lots of podcasts do that.
Speaker:Where to get ad free content, they have to pay money, et cetera.
Speaker:So that's kind of like crowdsourcing it's members, it's community building.
Speaker:That's another way that you can actually make money from your podcast.
Speaker:The number three way is actually selling your knowledge like your ip.
Speaker:Now, there's a few ways that you can do that, and it depends on the content
Speaker:of your podcast, but you will see there are plenty of people that have
Speaker:courses, uh, workshops, consulting off the back of their podcast, and I mean,
Speaker:I just did it in the beginning of this.
Speaker:Episode that's leveraging the podcast into some form of payment.
Speaker:And I'm very specific with that.
Speaker:With this episode, it makes sense for me to sp spook that thing
Speaker:because it directly relates.
Speaker:So if you've got something that you can sell that is a course, that is
Speaker:a program, something that relates to the topic that you are sharing on.
Speaker:Then you can absolutely monetize that way.
Speaker:And in fact, it's a really great way to do it because you are
Speaker:not relying on sponsorships.
Speaker:You're not relying on like having to put ads in your show that you
Speaker:potentially don't wanna put in.
Speaker:You're not having to, like with Patreon for example, you might
Speaker:have to add extra tears and then give more to the members that are.
Speaker:Subscribing, you know, it can be a little bit more detailed, more
Speaker:involved if you're doing it that way.
Speaker:Whereas if you've got courses, programs, digital products, you
Speaker:know, spreadsheets, templates, all these things, you can sell that way.
Speaker:And even consulting Consulting's a pretty quick way to actually make some
Speaker:income off of your podcast as well.
Speaker:We'll go into that in more detail in the course.
Speaker:There's a lot of different ways you can do it and there's a lot of different
Speaker:software tools that you can use to actually facilitate that stuff as well.
Speaker:Number four is the live experience.
Speaker:I've seen a lot of podcasters do this, and let's use Smartless as the example here.
Speaker:They did a live show, which I watched, and I just flip and
Speaker:loved it, where they toured.
Speaker:The US went to a bunch of locations and they had.
Speaker:A live recording of their show.
Speaker:So it was Jason Bateman, will Annette and Sean Hayes, and then they had
Speaker:guests like surprise guests come on and do a live taping of their podcast.
Speaker:They also leveraged that further by then having, you know, a
Speaker:video production company come in.
Speaker:Film the whole thing.
Speaker:Make it like a documentary that's a step further.
Speaker:You know, you might not be at that level, but being able to put on a
Speaker:show of your podcast that's a live experience is a very cool way to
Speaker:engage with your community, get people involved, get people through the door.
Speaker:It's a scary way to do it, you know?
Speaker:You have to sell tickets, you have to book a venue.
Speaker:Is anyone gonna come?
Speaker:Oh my gosh.
Speaker:Chris Williamson did it just recently, modern Wisdom.
Speaker:He did a live like tour and it was just him solo with a microphone.
Speaker:That's a lot of pressure.
Speaker:If you're not a standup comedian and you're just there with a
Speaker:microphone talking about stuff, that can be a lot of pressure.
Speaker:But it is certainly a way that you can make money from your
Speaker:podcast by doing a live experience.
Speaker:Number five is products.
Speaker:So this is more suited to, well, I mean, anyone can do it.
Speaker:This could be branded merch, this could be digital products.
Speaker:Your podcast can serve as kind of a landing zone.
Speaker:For things that you are offering, we could use Ali Abdal as the example on this one.
Speaker:If you don't know Ali Abdal, go check him out.
Speaker:He's on YouTube, but he actually launched a actual physical product,
Speaker:which was a mechanical keyboard, and that was off the back of his
Speaker:YouTube channel, his content creation.
Speaker:He wanted to do this product and then he could sell it.
Speaker:Based on the influence that he was able to tap into from his YouTube channel
Speaker:and his podcast and things like that.
Speaker:So if you are a show that is maybe more of a comedy podcast and you, you're not gonna
Speaker:like sell courses and programs and things like that, you could do actual merch.
Speaker:Lots of people do merch, something that is kind of cool to wear and
Speaker:maybe it's a hoodie or it's a cap.
Speaker:It's definitely cool if it's the kind of merch that someone can put
Speaker:on and they're walking around town and they're, you know, it's free
Speaker:advertising for you at this point.
Speaker:So the product play is, is a really good one.
Speaker:It's a low barrier to entry.
Speaker:It is.
Speaker:It does cost you a little bit of money upfront to do, and there are certain
Speaker:providers that are better than others to facilitate those things as well.
Speaker:Number six is YouTube.
Speaker:So if you are a podcaster and you're not on video yet, it could be
Speaker:something that you could potentially do to monetize your podcast.
Speaker:There's a few ways you can monetize on YouTube.
Speaker:The one that everyone knows is.
Speaker:Through ads like Google Ad Sense where once you reach a certain threshold,
Speaker:which is a thousand subscribers and 4,000 watch hours, within 365 days,
Speaker:you can start monetizing off of your podcast, off of your channel.
Speaker:That's one way to do it on YouTube, but there are other ways that
Speaker:you can do it on YouTube as well, which I'm not gonna go into here.
Speaker:But do know that YouTube could be a great strategy for you to monetize?
Speaker:It's a bit of setup.
Speaker:You need to film, obviously, your videos.
Speaker:They need to be high quality, they need to be useful.
Speaker:They need to be great for you to get to a point where you have enough
Speaker:subscribers and you have enough watch hours is gonna take some work.
Speaker:But that is certainly a way that you can monetize your podcast.
Speaker:Number seven, you can actually look at podcast networks as
Speaker:a way to monetize your show.
Speaker:Podcast networks are like a conglomerate of shows that are all under an umbrella.
Speaker:So for us here at Bambi Media, we have the Bambi Network.
Speaker:We have a network of shows that based on kind of their downloads, we can
Speaker:look at trying to find them sponsors.
Speaker:It's easier for advertisers as well because they will come
Speaker:to a network saying, I need.
Speaker:This kind of thing.
Speaker:Have you got shows in this market and then it's a way to sell for you
Speaker:to get onto a network can be tricky.
Speaker:Uh, there are plenty of independent networks for you to get onto big ones
Speaker:like SiriusXM, you would have to be at a very high level to be even considered,
Speaker:but it is a way that you can monetize and there are certainly networks that take
Speaker:on smaller shows with smaller downloads.
Speaker:And the last way I'm gonna tell you today is affiliate marketing.
Speaker:This is certainly a fun way to grow a little bit of income
Speaker:from your podcast as well.
Speaker:If you don't know what affiliate marketing is, it basically means we have a big
Speaker:list of gear that we actually use in our podcast, in our videos as well.
Speaker:Every time someone clicks on one of those affiliate links to go and purchase
Speaker:that thing, that takes them to Amazon.
Speaker:Amazon then gives us a very small commission on any purchase that was made.
Speaker:There's not really big money in that to begin with, but it's certainly
Speaker:a way that if you are talking about products and services and software
Speaker:and there are affiliate programs that you can join, then why not?
Speaker:It's an easy way.
Speaker:You just need an affiliate link.
Speaker:You need to be approved by a partner program, and you can start to be monetized
Speaker:pretty quickly through affiliate linking.
Speaker:But here's the secret, okay?
Speaker:You don't need to be doing all of these things at once.
Speaker:In fact, I would not recommend trying to do all these things at once.
Speaker:It's too much.
Speaker:Just pick one thing that you think that you could really go all in on.
Speaker:Try it.
Speaker:Try it for six months.
Speaker:See how it goes.
Speaker:Reach out to people.
Speaker:Set up a good system.
Speaker:Set up a process for how you're going to implement this monetization
Speaker:strategy, and then test it and research it and follow how it performs.
Speaker:And then if it's not something that you like doing, it's not resonating, then
Speaker:you can move on to the next thing, to the next strategy, all while making
Speaker:sure that the content that you're delivering is worthy of monetization.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:That's the biggest key to this whole thing is your content, if you
Speaker:like, be critical with yourself.
Speaker:Criticize yourself a bit.
Speaker:Listen and watch back the content that you're delivering.
Speaker:Is it worthy of monetization?
Speaker:If it's not, you got some work to do before you can get to this step,
Speaker:which is monetizing your podcast.
Speaker:And as I wrap this up, I want you to remember Joe Rogan, call her Daddy
Speaker:Smartlist, Chris Williamson, Ali Abdull, all these people that are
Speaker:making big money off of brand deals, sponsorships, podcasting in general.
Speaker:They didn't start with a $250 million deal.
Speaker:They started with a microphone and a passion.
Speaker:To have a conversation, whether that's conversation with another person or
Speaker:conversation like I'm having right now where you are not responding to
Speaker:me and I'm just talking to a camera.
Speaker:That's it.
Speaker:That's where everybody starts in podcasting.
Speaker:The difference between where you are now and where you want to be
Speaker:might just be a strategic move.
Speaker:So go and check out my monetizing mini course.
Speaker:If you wanna learn more, if you wanna get the pitch decks and the
Speaker:rate cards and the what it means to work with sponsors and how to put
Speaker:together an ad, how do you make an ad?
Speaker:How do you put music with a voiceover?
Speaker:What should you say in your ad? How long should they be like we go through
Speaker:all of that in the mini course.
Speaker:If not, this is all you needed.
Speaker:I'm so happy to have helped you and thank you for listening, watching,
Speaker:and I hope you have a great day.
