TRANSCRIPT Become a Podmaster S2E5 – Cash In on Podcasting: Insider Tips from Top Earners!

[00:00:00] Hendrik Baird: A friend told me that his dog retrieved a ball from over a mile away. I don’t know. Seems a bit far fetched.

Ethan has left the building!

Today we’re talking about money. Money, money, money. 

[00:00:25] Ethan Baird: Monetizing a podcast. Big question. 

[00:00:28] Hendrik Baird: Big question. Many answers. We spoke to several people in the podcasting industry and we’ve got some very specific strategies. But before we get to those strategies, it’s crucial to understand the goals of podcast monetization.

Are you looking to generate a supplementary income? Are you looking to cover production costs? Or are you looking at turning podcasting into a full time business venture? It’s only once you have clarified your objectives ,that you will be guided in your monetization efforts. 

[00:00:59] Ethan Baird: And then you’ve got to look at all the different options when it comes to monetization, because podcast monetization goes far beyond traditional advertising.

There’s sponsorships, donations, merchandise, membership, affiliate marketing, live events, and so much more. There are a whole bunch of options and they all have like unique benefits and considerations that you’ll have to think about based on your own podcast and its audience and its niche. 

[00:01:21] Hendrik Baird: We’ve spoken about this at length in other episodes: audience engagement, it is key to a successful monetization strategy; and you’ve got to get a loyal listener base, you have to consistently deliver high quality content, you’ve got to foster that community through interaction on social media, and by giving it , feedback to your listeners or your listeners giving feedback to you, and you’ve also got to know who your audience is. You’ve got to know their demographics and their preferences. 

[00:01:51] Ethan Baird: Ultimately you also have to create valuable content, especially if you’re trying to monetize it, especially if you’re doing a business podcast. A valuable content is like that complete foundation of successful monetization. You’ve got to explore ways to create content that resonates with your audience, addresses their pain points, provides actionable insights and encourages listener loyalty.

It’s super important to be authentic, demonstrate your expertise and tell the story to attract and retain a listenership. 

[00:02:16] Hendrik Baird: Ah, that’s very important. Tell the story. Skip the ads. Tell the story. Monetizing a podcast, of course, raises some ethical considerations, especially when you’re dealing with sensitive topics or vulnerable audiences.

Take, um, Nicole’s podcast about true crime. That’s very sensitive and she’s gotta be very careful when she talks about, you know, give me some money so I can keep on doing this. And therefore, you have to maintain transparency. You have to be transparent. You have to have integrity and you’ve gotta have respect for your listeners so that you can get their trust.

There are many ethical dilemmas, uh, when it comes to monetizing a podcast. You’ve got a commercial interest, which you’ve got a balance with your audience needs;, and you shouldn’t mislead them or have these intrusive ads. There’s nothing worse for me. Like I’m really engaged with a piece of content and suddenly an ad pops up and I can’t wait desperately for it to click the skip button.

[00:03:15] Ethan Baird: And ultimately this is a long term play, so you’ve got to develop a diverse monetization strategy that has multiple revenue streams and evolves with industry trends. You’ve got to use your audience, get the feedback from them, use the analytics, so you can then optimize the performance of your monetization over time.

There’s also a bunch of other things that you have to think about, such as strategic partnerships, your continuous innovation on the podcast and the long term audience growth, so that you can really get those monetization calls. 

[00:03:44] Hendrik Baird: Over the course of the past few months, Ethan and I have been talking to a great many people and, uh, today we are going to ask them about their monetization challenges, their successes, their methods and so on.

Let’s start with Diogen and he’ll talk about the initial challenges and strategies of monetizing a podcast. 

[00:04:05] Diogen Ntirandekura: My name is Diogenes Ntirandekura. I am the host of the podcast called Consulting Lifestyle. Initially, I started it without a real monetization strategy or business strategy. It was really more about learning and, uh, learning and teaching. It was really just that. Let’s say the biggest challenge was to, uh, mix, uh, working on, uh, on projects for clients and then planning, editing and working on the podcast and then having a family life. I think that was, maybe it was a time organizing my, uh, my time around that. Um, and the consistency, the other parts, uh, would be, uh, now, now it has changed, but, uh, would have been like the monetization really gave a business role to that podcast.

[00:04:51] Ethan Baird: I like that we started with this clip right off the top, because it’s important to know that this is not an easy journey. There will definitely be challenges along the way, and it’s not a fast journey either. But yeah, ultimately, I think it’s given us some insights into the challenges faced by podcasters across the board, not just Diogen, in terms of balancing your various aspects of your life, while trying to get this monetization up and running. It generally just comes back down to strategic planning, time management, to start achieving those goals. 

[00:05:17] Hendrik Baird: Mariette has a wellness focused platform and she’s got a subscription based access for professionals. So let’s find out how she does it. 

[00:05:27] Mariette Snyman: Hi, I’m Mariette Snyman. My podcast series is called Calm, Clear and Helpful.

I’m on my way to making a good living out of it. Let me explain to you, then I will have to explain to you how my platform works. I have readers and listeners who come to the platform for information on various aspects of wellness, and then I have the experts I interview. So, I basically have two audiences in air commas. I have a worldwide audience who come for the information and they have free access and then I have the wellness professionals who co create this content with me and they pay a fee for exposure on my podcast series.

It helps them because it gets them more clients, especially now that we can do online therapy and coaching, et cetera. Uh, they find it very valuable if they offer training to colleagues. That’s something I find people really like doing, is to explain what the training will consist of in a podcast within a wider context and then, uh, offering that to people who would be interested in training. Or some of them have enough clients, but they just want to create general awareness of a specific theme or topic, especially when it’s concerned with mental health. And two other topics I found that are really gaining a lot of traction at this stage in terms of creating awareness are aging well. And the other one is managing menopause. 

It’s a little tricky sometimes to navigate these two audiences in e-commerce. I have to think about who I am dealing with at which stage. And then for instance, I have separate newsletters for each of them.

And then we come to monetizing. I’ve been going now for two and a half years and it has taken me more than two years to get that ball rolling, where professionals approach me and specifically ask to be featured on the podcast and are willing to pay for it. 

[00:07:35] Ethan Baird: I think this is a great example of, uh, also diversifying your monetization.

She has two distinct audiences, in fact, you’ve got the general readers and the listeners seeking the wellness information, and wellness professionals seeking exposure. So she’s monetizing in multiple different ways. 

[00:07:52] Hendrik Baird: And she’s also got a long term strategy. She did say that it took her over two years to establish this monetization model where professionals approach her and pay her to be featured on the podcast. And I wonder what long term strategies you can implement to gradually build monetization opportunities and attract clients to your business or sponsors to come and support your podcast. 

[00:08:16] Natalie King: So my name is Natalie and I’m the introverts coach, but more to the point, I’m actually a business coach.

At the moment, we’re looking at creating a Patreon page and a subscription. So the way that we want to monetize it is you can subscribe to our podcast and we’ll have extras. So with guests, some guests have given us amazing tips and advice and, and what, what I call gold nuggets. So those we will keep for the subscriptions so that you get those extras.

Lenka and I will most probably do a couple of extra episodes just for the subscriptions and we might even bring in guests to do maybe 15 or 20 minutes extra for the subscription. So that’s the way that we look at it. It’s mostly via subscription service, um, to start with, we haven’t looked at, um, ads or product or anything, but that is something that we have vaguely discussed, you know, the usual mugs or something that people can have, but it’s mostly, we want to create a subscription service that people get these nuggets of gold that guests give us and they’ll get some on the free bits, but then you get those extras. So if we have a guest who will, let’s say, talk for an hour, give us great stuff and then we’ll say, can you stay an extra 10 minutes? This is for our subscription members. And then really get some, some of the juicy stuff. Because it is about, we do want the information to go out there. But we also do think it’s, you know, get that extra for subscription. And if you can’t afford it or don’t want a subscription, you still get some good, good value.

[00:10:11] Ethan Baird: I love that we’re talking about Natalie now, because we’re going to be talking about Patreon, which is probably the most famous monetization platform for creators, and especially a lot of podcasters have been able to make an actual full time living purely on the Patreon. 

[00:10:27] Hendrik Baird: I think two, two important points to mention here, Ethan.

The first is that Natalie uses a subscription based monetization program. So that’s what you can do on Patreon. Now, you, you, you get people to subscribe and every month it takes five dollars or whatever off their credit card. It’s some money that disappears without you knowing it. Uh, you know, as a subscriber, uh, and it’s money that comes into her account that helps her grow. To keep the podcast going, there are obviously advantages and also some challenges when you’re working with a podcast or with a subscription based model. And I wonder just how podcasters can effectively market and attract subscribers to their Patreon page. 

[00:11:09] Ethan Baird: So I’m subscribed to two Patreons actually because I love those two podcasts and genuinely what happened for me was that I listened to all 150 episodes of this podcast and I’m like I need more. I’m out of episodes. And then I started paying attention to the fact that they were advertising their page in every episode. And they’re like, Oh, if you subscribe, you get one additional episode per week. And the content is a little bit different to what you would expect from the main feed.

And I think that really underpins the idea that subscription based monetization requires you to give something more to your audience, unless they’re truly a patron in the classical sense where they just love your art and want to give you money. I think nowadays people want a little bit more than that.

So just know that if you’re going to go with the subscription model, it’s going to require more work on your part to make it actually valuable enough for the audience to want to pay for it. 

[00:12:00] Hendrik Baird: And I think Natalie mentioned that, while she’s focusing on providing the content, she is also providing extra value to the subscribers, um, because she also aims to continue offering valuable content to non subscribers.

So you’ve got to balance that free and paid content and strike that balance between providing exclusive content to the subscribers and ensuring that your non subscribers still receive valuable content, so you can maintain that audience engagement and growth. 

[00:12:28] Ethan Baird: Yeah. Nobody wants to feel like they’re listening to the crappy version of the podcast and the real version you have to pay for.

[00:12:33] Hendrik Baird: Nicole also talks about Patreon and here she shares her experiences, uh, how to monetize a podcast using this model. 

[00:12:44] Nicole Engelbrecht: Hi, I’m Nicole Engelbrecht. I am the creator and host of the True Crime South Africa podcast. So Patreon is basically a subscriber platform. So essentially it’s a platform that content creators use to get their really engaged followers to essentially pay them money either each month or once off on an annual subscription for access to exclusive content that’s not available in normal feeds.

And that’s used obviously quite a lot by podcasters and various other types of content creators as well. Um, it’s an American platform, so they do work in dollars and, and some other currencies as well, but not in rands at the moment. And I think I knew that, um, you know, other podcasters across the world used Patreon, but I wasn’t sure what the uptake would be in South Africa.

So I didn’t have high hopes for it. Because of the nature of my content, I was quite hesitant in doing something like that, you know, in monetizing my particular podcast at all, because essentially I’m monetizing people’s stories of tragedy. Um, you know, so that was quite a difficult thing for me to do, but I had to come to sort of the understanding that what I was doing was helping, because it was bringing in leads on cold cases, it was raising awareness, um, you know, it really was doing something good, and my time had to be paid for. So Patreon was one of the first ways that I decided to try and monetize the podcast.

And yeah, like I said, didn’t have terribly high hopes for it. Also didn’t want to overcommit myself. So in the beginning, I knew that I would not have time to do exclusive content. So I said to my listeners, I’m going to be opening a Patreon for the podcast, but all I can offer you at the moment is the knowledge that you’re helping to grow the podcast and a shout out on the podcast each week. And just with those, you know, with those sort of two so called benefits, I got, I got up to 200 Patreons. I started releasing an exclusive episode each week and it’s, it’s grown, sure, exponentially. It’s like, it’s just exploded. Um, and it is now apparently the largest source of income that I have from the podcast.

And I think that was interesting for a few reasons for me, you know, it’s not just South Africans there, but the largest majority of them are South African. I thought that maybe South Africans would have less interest in something like that. Um, you know, that it wouldn’t be a really big thing for South African listeners, but they’ve really been engaged.

Um, and it’s been, it’s something I would definitely recommend doing for, for any podcaster. And start whenever you want to, but don’t overcommit yourself, you know, I’d really recommend doing what I did. Um, and build it slowly. Then when you’ve got time, start offering, um, exclusive content where you can. And build it from there.

[00:16:01] Ethan Baird: It just all keeps coming back down to community, doesn’t it? 

[00:16:04] Hendrik Baird: It’s all about community and engagement. 

[00:16:07] Ethan Baird: Yeah, Nicole has built up a community of people that love and support her, and she has been able to give something valuable to that community that she can then monetize. 

[00:16:16] Hendrik Baird: It’ll take some experimentation and maybe even asking direct questions, sending out questionnaires and, you know, talking to your audience and getting their feedback and finding out.

Now here’s an interesting avenue of monetizing a podcast. Sam has different ways of doing it. 

[00:16:34] Sam Mitchell: Hello everyone. My name is Sam Mitchell and I run the podcast Autism Rocks and Rolls. Through the money I’ve gotten, through our events and through these speaking engagements, that’s our way of making money, but we also make money through sponsorships.

I mean, anyone’s open to sponsor the podcast. I’m not nitpicky. I mean, I have a tattoo parlor who sponsored it, for crying out loud. That’s saying non-pickiness right there. Chocolate shop, Farm Bureau, banks. People out of state, I have someone in Canada actually sponsoring me. So this is definitely growing.

[00:17:10] Ethan Baird: I think there’s all points to the fact that diversifying your income is a really solid strategy. Um, it protects you in the long term. Uh, it just gives you more opportunities in general. 

[00:17:19] Hendrik Baird: Yeah. And I mean, it’s something like events, you know, podcasting events, live events, not really something in this country, in the U S certainly it’s a big thing.

People go to that and they, you know, you can make quite a bit of decent money. So your books, um, branded material, t-shirts, all that sort of stuff, get speaking engagements and then, of course, sponsorships. So, um, attracting sponsors. Also, I think Sam’s experience demonstrates the potential for getting these sponsors from various industries and from various areas.

And certainly a strategy that we should emulate. Carey Green, on the other hand, targets his ideal customer. 

[00:17:54] Carey Green: Yeah, well, I think if we start in reverse order, uh, what you get from it is an opportunity to engage with your ideal clients in a way that you may be able to make a sale from that. Now, obviously applying all the good principles of salesmanship is a part of that, you know, having a good relationship with the person, having a desire for an ongoing relationship rather than a one time conversion.

All of that’s kind of, uh, unspoken under the surface, but as you’re able to set up appointments like that to do a podcast interview or conversation with those people, you’re building a rapport with them and you’re building an engaging sort of an environment where they relax, they let their defenses down, they see you as a peer rather than someone who’s trying to sell them something, because you’re not you’re you’re wanting to extract value from them for your podcast audience. And so they’re able to benefit just from the relationship themselves and then you got an opportunity when it’s all over to inquire about their business, how things are going for them, especially in the areas that they may have mentioned during the conversation where they have struggles. And you can strategically design questions that you’re going to ask them in the interview that will kind of reveal some of those things too.

[00:19:12] Hendrik Baird: Yeah, I think a podcast is a great way to engage with your potential clients hey? You can build rapport and trust. And I think Carey emphasized that, uh, building rapport with the potential client is truly important. That’s the first step, you know, before you can even start talking business with them is, is have a relationship, uh, in some way, and then he’s, he’s strategic questioning also, you know, he designs these questions in the interview to reveal the struggles that the, the client has, and once you can know what the, the pain points are, you can start providing value in, in, in terms of solutions. And by giving that value to your client, you will already start earning their trust and they know that you, you can do what you say you do, and before long they will become paying clients. 

[00:20:01] Ethan Baird: One of the questions we always get is how am I going to get ads in my podcast?

And this is why I was really excited to speak to Christian Swain from Pantheon. Because they run a podcast network and selling ads on podcasts is a large part of the monetization that their podcasts use. So in this clip, you’ll actually see how many listeners you even need in the first place to get an ad on your podcast.

[00:20:24] Christian Swain: Yeah, I’m Christian Swain. I am the CEO, I’m president of Pantheon Media. We are a podcast company that focuses on music related podcast shows. Let me first say that, uh, you know, we do have multiple buckets for, um, for our shows out there. We monetize, we make soup to nuts. Uh, we, we can, you know, we can develop a podcast from a concept, uh, and, uh, produce it, uh, uh, distribute it, uh, monetize, uh, monetize it.

We don’t personally do a lot of marketing ourselves at this point in, uh, in our business, uh. We may in the future, but right now, if you think about it, most people are marketing themselves, so it’s really dependent on them, uh, to do most of the marketing. But, uh, that being said, on the monetization side of things, uh, that is a big factor to join, uh, a network.

You’re a larger pool, uh, it’s like buying insurance. Uh, you know, the more people you have in your pool, uh, the cheaper the insurance is. Um, and so, uh, that’s the case with advertisers in the sense that, you know, they’re actively looking for 10, 20, 30, 000 monthly downloads and really 30 is kind of like the key, uh, for getting attention and getting the advertising, uh, aggregators, the agencies to pay attention to you. Uh, and so that’s hard to do on your own, but, uh, as a network, uh, which does, you know, over 500, 000, uh, monthly downloads, that’s an upsell that you can go to the advertiser. Um, so a lot of times we get approached by, um, a company. Um, you know, they’re asking for some demographic information. Can you give me some stuff? And so, you know, we do, but the next topic is always, well, why don’t we talk to them about upselling the network, which will give them a much larger number of impressions than with a single show. So we usually end up with the, uh, the advertiser or agency and, uh, explain that, you know, with a single show, you’re getting 10, 000, 20, 000 monthly downloads, but with the network, you can get uh, or 500, 000 impressions for, for ads, uh, out there, it’s a, a win win for everybody. 

[00:22:52] Hendrik Baird: And this also goes to the point you raised earlier about selling your audience. That’s exactly what you’re doing here. If you’ve built up a big enough audience for a potential advertiser to put ads in your podcast, then you are selling your audience to that advertiser. And you’ve also got to think about, you know, how ethical that is. And, and does it align with your audience’s needs?

So what did we learn today? We learned that you have to explore various avenues of monetization. You have to think of things like sponsorships, or subscription services, you know, like a Patreon, advertising, events, merchandise. There are different ways and you must find probably more than one, but the ones that work the best for you.

And of course, it’s got to align with your audience. No use advertising something that your audience will never buy. You’ve got to find the synergy there, I think. 

[00:23:43] Ethan Baird: Yeah, and I think ultimately it comes back to building community engagement. You’re not going to be able to monetize your podcast until you have a community.

So foster a strong sense of community among your listeners through engagement strategies, such as listener feedback, social media interaction, and giving them exclusive content. If you have a loyal and engaged audience, they’ll be much more likely to support you directly through your podcast subscription model donations or merchandise.

[00:24:08] Hendrik Baird: That’s right. And ethics play a big role here. You have to be transparent. You have to have integrity in your monetization practices. What is more important, making money or having the listeners trust you and have them satisfied? Short term gain, long term engagement. I think we know clearly which one wins.

[00:24:25] Ethan Baird: If you put an ad for a Bitcoin scam in your podcast and a bunch of people fall for that scam, it’s on you. 

[00:24:31] Hendrik Baird: It’s on you. That’s on you. And then of course, long term sustainability. It’s not just a get rich scheme here. It’s a long term strategy that you’ve got to think of. Um, and therefore you have to diversify your monetization strategies and also continually assess which ones work the best and, you know, grow that and then slowly start scaling up.

And for newbie podcasters, start by focusing on high quality content. I can’t stress that enough. Make sure your content is beautiful, engaging, entertaining, and start building up a loyal listener base, and the money will flow eventually. Right, and if you want to start a podcast, of course, you can come to us.

Ethan and I will gladly help you from, um, figuring out your why to how to monetize the whole thing. And, uh, we call that the Podmaster Startup Program. You can read all about it on our website, Baird.Media.