194 | How Small Podcasters Are Making Big Money in 2024

You don't need tens of thousands of dollars in order to make big money from a podcast, but there is one thing that you need in order to make big money from a small podcast. This is Grow the Show, the podcast that grows your podcast. My name is Kevin Schmidland, I am your podcast growth coach, and today I'm going to share with you the top way I have seen podcasts that have fewer than $5,000 per episode, make thousands of dollars per month without getting any sponsors. Now, I am in my fifth year of helping podcast grow, I've worked with big shows that make a lot of money, big shows that make no money, small shows that make no money, and small shows that make a lot of money. And you'd be surprised by how many big shows make no money, and you'd be even more surprised at how many small shows make a lot of money. It's not as correlated as you might think. So, what is the difference? In particular, what do the small shows do to make big money? Well, the first thing you need to understand is this, there is only one way to monetize a podcast. And yes, you might have heard of a bunch of ways to monetize a podcast, but the truth that I have found and that I believe is that the only way to monetize a podcast audience is by getting that audience to buy something. That is it. Full stop. Literally any podcast monetization technique that you heard of boils down somehow to your audience buying something. So, if you get a sponsor, that monetization strategy will only be successful long-term if your audience buys the sponsor's stuff. Same thing, there are some of you out there who are charging your guests to appear on your show. The reason those guests are paying you to appear on your show is so that your audience buys their thing. Literally every single strategy translates to you build an audience, you get that audience to buy something, and you get a cut of the revenue generator from them buying that thing, okay? So, in order to monetize any podcast, you need to get your audience to buy something. But there are tons of podcasts out there, and maybe yours is one of them, that are technically monetized. Maybe they've gotten one sponsorship. Maybe they've launched a $10 membership that has three members, you know, it's their mom and their two friends from college, but they are monetized. We're not talking about those. The question is how are those podcasts different than the podcasts that make the big money? Well, I'm going to tell you about two shows. Both shows have 2,000 downloads for episode or less and are making big money. One of those shows has a back end business, meaning that there is a company behind the podcast, but the other show does not. It's just one guy. Both shows, however, do the same thing to make big money. So, I'll tell you about the solar podcaster first. This podcaster has a fishing show, and the podcaster has a full-time job doing something else. So, he makes his fishing show part time. And that show gets about 1,000 downloads per episode, which most people think is small. In the grand scheme of things, it's way bigger relatively than people think, but either way, people think that is a small podcast, and it truthfully is way too small in order to make big money from regular sponsorships, right? But this podcaster does make big money. He has made more than a hundred thousand dollars in a year from his podcast without building a business around his podcast. So, how did he do it? Well, it's simple. He has one partnership with a boat dealership. People who fish need boats, right? Unless you're a fly fisherman, I guess. But people who fish on boats need boats. So, this podcaster has a deal with a boat dealership where anytime one of his listeners buys a boat from that dealership, he gets 10% of the sale. Now, I am not a boater. I had to look this up, but Google tells me that boats cost between 15,000 and $75,000 before you get into the luxury range. So, that means that if this podcaster makes 10% that he gets $15,000 to $75,000 per sale. So, it just takes one audience member, one listener, to buy a boat in order for him to make multiple thousand dollars. And so, if we average that together and we say his average commission over time is $4,500, then in order for him to make six figures per year, he only needs to have two sales come through per month. And I can hear you now, but Kevin, that's a lot of sales. If his audience is only a thousand downloads per episode. And yes, that is true. However, his audience isn't a thousand per episode. His downloads are a thousand per episode. There is a difference. His audience is probably closer to 10,000 or more. Because remember, the number of downloads per episode that you get is usually only 10 to 20% of your total audience size. And we want to track total audience size as we go. Okay, so that's show number one. It is a solo part-time podcaster. He gets a thousand downloads per episode about his hobby. And he makes up to six figures a year just by telling his listeners to buy their boats from this particular dealership. That's number one. But what about the show that has a backend business? Because I know a lot of you who pay attention to grow the show have businesses around your show. What does that one do that the other shows don't? Well, there's another podcaster who I work with who averages about 2000 downloads per episode. Still pretty good, pretty solid. And he's done that for a long time. But it's definitely not as big as some of the really big names that you would assume are making tons of money. This podcaster has a backend business around his show, meaning he has built a company around the show that offers a paid product. Now that product is related to investing. It is an annual membership and the membership costs about $8,000 ish per year. Now believe it or not, that podcaster gets about 12 new members every month from his podcast. Do you know what that means if you do some mental math? 12 times eight times 12 means that his business makes over a million dollars per year. And that business is largely driven by his podcast. Now his podcast is not the only thing that he does. He has other marketing tactics. He has people helping him with sales. There is a company surrounding this podcast. But the point is the podcast only does 2000 downloads per episode. And so if you're a business owner who's feeling bad about how many downloads your podcast has and you think it should grow, you might already have far more downloads per episode than you need in order to make big money. So having shared those two stories, do you notice what these two small podcasts have in common? One of them gets a thousand downloads per episode. It is a hobby show, done part time, and it makes six figures a year with affiliate revenue. The other one gets about 2000 downloads per episode and makes over seven figures per year by selling and fulfilling a high ticket membership. What do they both do? They sell something expensive. That is the secret and that is how small podcasts make big money. They make big money from their small podcast by selling something expensive. Now hold on, I can hear some of you now. That won't work for me. My audience doesn't have that kind of money. And I promise you, some of them do. My favorite example of people who sell expensive things to an audience that supposedly does not have a lot of money is influencers on Instagram. I know of several Instagrammers who have fairly decent audiences. It's not in the hundreds of thousands, maybe the thousands. And they are lifestyle influencers. They post about their life and they are making unbelievable amounts of money by selling something expensive. But their audience is people in their early 20s, which everybody assumes, oh, these people don't have any money. They're super young right there in college. And so you would think that these people can't sell something expensive to their audience. But I'm telling you now, there are tons of them who make big money by selling something to just 20 people. They just need 20 people out of their audience of several thousand to buy and they make several thousand dollars. And the most common example of that that I see is actually destination trips. So there's a bunch of Instagrammers who will put together a trip to, I don't know, Bali or Fiji or something like that. And they'll sell 20 spots on the trip and the trip will cost like 10, 15 grand. And some of them are making more than 50% commission on those things. So one weekend, they get to go to Fiji and they make 50, 60 grand just by hanging out with 20 of their audience members. Pretty cool, right? You would be floored at how many people in your audience that doesn't have money who do have money. And they're going to spend it anyway. So they might as well spend it with you. Now, if you are somebody who already tries to sell something expensive, but your audience isn't buying the thing like you're a business owner with a high ticket product or something like that, that is a different problem altogether. There's probably just a couple of tweaks that you need to make to get your podcast listeners to start buying your thing. And so if that's you, definitely check out the episode of Grow the Show. That's about the content driven business. And that should highlight what needs fixing there. But either way, no matter what kind of podcaster you are, the secret to making big money with a small podcast is by selling something expensive. So if you've never tried that, give it a thought, try and combat the fears that come up. And let me know once you start making big money from your small show, that is going to do it for this episode of Grow the Show. Now, I have a quick favorite ask you. If you've ever gotten any value from this podcast and you haven't already, please leave us a five star rating. And if you're feeling generous, a review in the app that you're using to hear my voice right now, it just takes a couple seconds, but it really goes a long way in helping us to share even more valuable growth and monetization tactics here on the show because it helps us land bigger guests. And it helps show the world that what we're doing here is actually valuable. So once again, if you've ever gotten any value from the show and you haven't already, please just take a moment, leave us a five star rating, maybe a brief review on what type of value you've gotten. And I will be eternally grateful. This episode was produced by me with post production by podcast boutique. And if you want your show to be post produced with quality really freaking fast. And if you want to save yourself and your team tons of time working on your podcast, you should chat with podcast boutique just head to podcast boutique.com or click the link in the show notes and set up time with them because I spent no time editing this episode and neither should you. All right, that's going to do it for Grow the Show. My name is Kevin Spitlin. I'll see you next time.