243 | How to Monetize Any Podcast (Even With a Small Audience)

If you have a podcast you've probably wondered how can I monetize my podcast in this episode I'm going to show you why asking that question is actually keeping you from making money and I'm going to give you a better question to ask instead and that question is going to give you what you really want for your podcast to not only generate enough money to pay for itself but to pay you to and then some this is grow the show the podcast that grows your podcast my name is Cav Michael I am your podcast growth coach and since 2020 I've held hundreds of podcasters shift this mindset and once they did their shows finally started making money even with small audiences so if you've been waiting around to have 10,000 listeners or for sponsors to get you paid you're going to want to hear this let's dive in okay so one of the biggest questions that I get from podcasters is how do I monetize and what I usually say to that is that is a horrible question and then the person gets slightly offended for a minute and I say stick with me for a second so back in 2019 I attended the unleashed the power within seminar with Tony Robbins and it was this crazy four day event and one of the things that I took away and has stuck with me to this day was when Tony Robbins said if you want better answers in your life ask better questions and I think of that every single time a podcaster asks me how do I monetize because that is a very difficult question to answer and it's difficult to answer because at what moment does your podcast go from not being monetized to being monetized when does the switch flip and when I press podcasters then I say at what moment is your podcast monetize some of them say when I make money from the show when I get paid because of podcasting others say when the podcast is generating enough money on its own for me to do it full time and when I speak to business owners even though their podcast brings themselves to their product or service a lot of times what they mean is that the podcast is selling ads so the advertisements that the podcast sells pays for production and here in lies the problem with this question how do I monetize my podcast because in order to get a good answer you need to understand what specifically what tangible event are you asking to make happen are you asking for you to just make money in any way are you asking to get sponsors are you asking to build an income from the show specifically if so what is that income so here you see there's so many questions behind the question how do I monetize my podcast that that's why it's been so hard for you to answer but I'll take it a step further because in order for you to easily answer the question how do I monetize my podcast you need to understand how podcast audiences are actually monetized and a lot of people think that it's just sponsors when they think about podcast monetization they just automatically think oh my show is sponsored by better help or something like that but in actuality there are several different ways a podcast can be monetized and on top of that and here's the key this is what you want to understand every single strategy to monetize a podcast boils up to one thing there is only one way to monetize a podcast now I have been growing and monetizing podcasts for the last eight years I've worked directly with over 500 shows there have been more than 120,000 podcasters who have come through the grow the show sphere and so I've interacted with a lot of shows and I can tell you that there is one singular way to monetize a podcast so what is that way what is the one way to monetize a podcast well you see monetization is not about sponsors it's not about show size it's not about waiting for the 10,000 downloads magic threshold it's you getting paid because your podcast exists but your podcast is not what pays you this is the key so when I talk to podcasters and I'm like okay at what moment does your podcast get monetized a lot of them will say well when I get paid so really what they're saying is I want to get paid to podcast I'm like okay cool me too I get it but the question is who is paying you to podcast and this is usually the part where you know the podcast with the entrepreneur kind of they look up they're like hmm that's a good question and what happens is usually these people will say my podcast is monetized when I get paid by my sponsor and I'm like okay cool I get that but let me ask you this why are they paying you they're like well so I mentioned their products and services on my show I'm like okay so they're not sponsors they are not paying you so that your show exists your sponsors don't care if your show exists they do not care if your show lives or dies they don't care if you run out of money and you give up podcasting it does not affect their business what does affect their business is if people buy their stuff so sponsors are simply paying you in advance so that your listeners pay them so for most of you when you're saying how do I monetize my podcast what many of you are actually asking is at what audience size can I get a sponsor to pay me so that is a better question to ask because it's more tangible and specific now a lot of you think that you need to have 10,000 people in your audience because there's a lot of articles on Google if you google how do I monetize a podcast there's a lot of articles that say you really need 10,000 downloads in order to monetize significantly while that's fine as a benchmark it's not true you do not need 10,000 downloads per episode to monetize a podcast I have never gotten a podcast episode of my own that's gotten more than 10,000 views oh my god the grow the show guy hasn't gotten more than 10,000 views no my shows have been unbelievably niche my first show was about the city of Philadelphia and my second show is for podcasters there are not a lot of podcasters the shows that I work on and the shows that I help get hundreds of thousands millions of downloads but mine are very very nice shows and podcasting has generated millions of dollars for me in my career so what does this mean to you well you do not have to wait until you have 10,000 subscribers all that needs to happen is you need to have a sponsor believe that if they give you money you have an audience that will give them money ah but here's the thing the next thing that you think is oh but I'm not sure if my audience will give my sponsors money aha that's the key and within that little thought is the answer to how do I monetize my podcast what is the single way to monetize my podcast because if you think about other ways to monetize a podcast if you think about other ways that you get paid in order to podcast it's not just sponsors paying you in advance you also can have affiliate relationships where you tell your listeners about a product and if and only if they buy it you get a little commission now it looks a lot like sponsorship it looks the same but sponsors pay you in advance affiliates pay you only after your audience buys but here's the key in both cases your audience is buying something from a company and then that company is giving you a cut of what they bought but the third way and what I generally recommend for most people and the way that is way simpler and makes you way more money that you get to keep is very simply your audience pays you we skip the middleman now this is when you're an entrepreneur and you have a product service that could be a course membership my filly show is heavily monetized with live events which by the way you can double dip because you can sell sponsorships to the event and then sell sponsorships to the episode but there's um there's many different ways to get your audience and your listeners to pay you so that you don't have to go through the trouble of finding closing and keeping sponsors happy because that's the other thing that if you don't have sponsors yes I know it is fun to think about a scenario where you just get the podcast I just read books and I interview smart people and my sponsors pay me but that's not how it actually works if you have a podcast that has tens of thousands of listeners because yes if you want to make a full-time income where you're making several thousand dollars a month in profit then you're gonna need way more than 10,000 listeners you are probably going to need upwards of 50 to 100k or more for a regular normal audience if you've got a really high paying niche show sure you could make it work like I used to know somebody who had a show for fishermen and he had an affiliate deal with a boat retailer so if one of his audience members bought a boat he made like 10 grand or something like that so still you got to get you know make 12 boat sales a year but this dream of you being a podcaster and just spending your time having amazing conversations and sponsors just pay me to have those conversations it's not that common because in actuality what your building is an advertising company because you are going to probably have to talk to 100 different sponsors a year or more because you know for every 10 sponsors that you speak with 10 to 20 percent of them are actually going to do a deal with you and on top of that you are going to have to keep them happy so if you accept a sponsor's money and then you run your ads and your audience does not buy from those sponsors guess who is not going to be your sponsor anymore because they're like we threw this money down the drain now I often get a question when I explain this people are like yes Kevin but what about when I interview guests and I charge my guests to be on the show isn't that a way of monetizing that isn't getting my listeners to buy something and I say no that's a form of sponsorship where your guests are paying you in advance to have you on the show so that your listeners buy their stuff so you may notice a theme here with every single possible monetization path that there is it is this simple you have a podcast if you listen to what we talk about here I grow the show that podcast has listenership the way that you make money from your podcast the only way to monetize a podcast is by getting your listeners to buy something that is it it is simply influencing purchase decisions in a way where you get a cut from those purchase decisions it does not matter whether you are getting paid in advance from sponsors so that you influence your audience to buy their stuff or you influence your audience in advance to buy stuff from a company and then they give you a commission which is affiliates or you create a product or service that you sell them which I call direct monetization that takes creating building designing and fulfilling a product or service so that can be a lot of work but it is where the most money is in my opinion monetizing your guests doing live events and your audience buying tickets selling the merch selling books it's all the same thing folks every single form of monetization is you get your listeners to buy stuff and you get a cut of those things so with that in mind what would be a better question to ask because like I said at the beginning when you ask yourself how do I monetize this podcast monetize is an abstract word that doesn't mean anything a better question to ask is how do I set something up where I influence this audience to buy something and I profit when they buy that thing that's it now now that we've established a better question to ask if you want to make money from your podcast you still might not know the answer to that you still might not know what can I influence my listenership to buy so that I profit from them buying that thing you may not know the answer and if that's the case then you shouldn't try yet because here's what's important understand number one if you don't understand your audience well enough where you can answer that question and you can say oh I know that my audience buys these things then you don't have a good enough understanding of your audience to build a business around you need to understand your audience that well on top of that if your audience is not growing I also don't recommend that you try to monetize because if you don't know how to grow your show then you have a finite list of people who are listening to your show and when you try to monetize them you will say hey you should buy this thing and some of them will buy that thing but the problem is next month you have not grown your audience at all so you say hey you should buy this thing and they're like we already did I know that I don't want to do it I know that I don't want to do it and I already bought this thing and you're like crap how am I going to make any more money what you need is you need more listeners to be entering the fold so that when you say hey will you buy this thing they're like oh I do want to buy this thing and they do that's why I don't even care about monetization strategy until you have a regular steady inflow of people into your audience because until that is the case monetization is just going to be a one-shot thing it's going to happen once and that's it or you're going to have to come up with new products or service every single month because you're like well what about this thing you want to buy this thing oh sure I'll buy that thing what about this thing you want to buy this thing and no I don't want to buy this thing so you got to completely all the time be coming up with different things for this finite audience to buy or you can learn how to actually grow your audience so that you can just keep saying the same thing all the time there's always new people hearing the message so you're always making money from the show and this is the recommendation I recommend you pick one thing to monetize with after your show is growing and again if your show is not growing I know you want to see the plan I know you want to know what the future looks like how am I going to monetize this thing but here's the thing if you get good at growing your audience where new people are entering the fold on a regular basis that means that you have a great show and what happens when you have a great show is this people tell you how to monetize them so you will get comments on youtube that says do you offer coaching or they may not ask that directly but they might ask questions like how do I blank or they might say do you have any recommendations for xy and z that's the ticket so if you are a fitness person and people are asking you what supplements do you recommend bang that's an opportunity for an affiliate deal or let's say that you were a business show and people say what conferences do you recommend we attend bang get a sponsorship from a conference if you have a how to show here's how to do something you will get people who reach out and say can I just pay you to do this for me bam you can launch a product a service something like that so in summary what to take away from this piece number one how do I monetize a podcast there is only one way to monetize a podcast and that is by getting your audience to buy something that is it full stop and then the second thing is okay I don't know what to offer them they will tell you or if you really can't wait for them to tell you you can just ask them hey what products or services do you pay for are you happy about them what do you wish existed so my hope is that this episode helps you answer that pesky question of how do I monetize this and hopefully help you see that it's actually the question itself that's keeping you stuck because while sure you can come up with a bunch of different ways to monetize your podcasts it really just comes down to one way getting your listeners to buy something and making profit off of the thing that you sell them whether you want to offer them a product of service and you want to build a company takes a lot of work but you can make a lot of money or if you just want to chill out and spend your time podcasting and pitching sponsors and then have your sponsors pay you that's cool too just know you are going to have to work to get sponsors it is not it will be work it is a full-time job to sell out sponsorships on a podcast and you're going to have two customers because now you're going to have to keep your listeners happy and you're going to have to keep your sponsors happy and those two parties don't always want the same things so my hope is that this episode gave you some clarity so that you can ultimately grow and monetize your show to your heart's content my name is Kev Michael I am your podcast growth coach and I'll see you in the next one