How to Generate More Revenue from Your Podcast
How to Generate More Revenue from Your Podcast
Contributed ContentPodcasting has seen tremendous growth over the years and presents a huge opportunity to make a lot of money. In this article, we’ll go over some of the ways you can monetize your podcast to tap into the podcast audience.
There is one question that businesses with a podcast must ask themselves: Can you make money from a podcast in the first place?
For a variety of reasons, the answer is yes.
First of all, the podcast genre has a vast audience. According to Podcast Insights, more than half of the US population has listened to a podcast. On top of that, 22% of the population listens to podcasts weekly. That makes 62 million weekly listeners that could be listening to your podcast!
Also, podcast listeners are relatively affluent; an estimated 41% of monthly listeners make more than $75,000 per year, making podcasts the perfect medium to target high-value products or services. On top of that, 54% of podcast listeners are more inclined to purchase an advertised product in podcasts, a statistic that is unheard of in other forms of content.
What does this mean to you? It means that there is massive potential to generate revenue from your podcast.
The competition in the podcasting world is less intense than YouTube or blogs. To put this into context, there are 2 million blog posts written every day and 500 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. Compare those numbers with the fact that there are only 700,000 active podcasts, despite the growing percentage of people that have started listening to podcasts.
With low competition, a booming demand, and a huge opportunity to tap into an affluent audience, you can see why there’s a huge opportunity to make a killing from podcasting.
With all that said, how do you make money from podcasts? Use these 6 simple steps to generate revenue from your podcast.
1. Listen to Other Podcasts in Your Niche to Identify Potential Sponsorships
It’s no secret that the main driver of revenue for most podcasts are either sponsorships or affiliate marketing, but what do you do when you don’t have anything to affiliate, or if you’re not fully utilizing your ad slots?
A great way to look for more sponsorships or affiliate products is to listen to other podcasters in your niche and see what they are promoting in their podcast. Chances are, the companies that have purchased ad slots in their podcasts are more than likely looking for other similar podcasts to sponsor, which is where you come into play. Simply reach out to those companies and negotiate a deal with them.
2. Recommend Products or Services That You’re Already Using
Do you have a microphone that you swear by whenever someone asks you for a recommendation? Or, have you recently discovered a new web hosting platform saved you hundreds of dollars in fees? If you discovered products or services that you can stand by, it’s a great opportunity to affiliate those products.
With the proliferation of affiliate marketing, you’ll more than likely be able to find affiliate programs for the stuff that you’re already using, making it a low-hanging fruit to generate revenue for your podcast.
By recommending something you use, affiliating for products this way will naturally be much less intrusive and sound more like a recommendation from a friend. A great example of this would be this sponsored ad placement by LegalZoom on Tim Ferris's podcast page.
If you want to quickly identify affiliate programs for the things you can wholeheartedly recommend, try searching the keyword for the product or service followed by “affiliate program” or “become an affiliate” on Google.
3. Explore Working With Advertising Agencies and Networks
If you don’t have enough time to reach out to companies directly, exploring new opportunities via advertising agencies or networks might be the next best thing.
You may have to pay a commission from any deals that you book, but if that saves you time that you could otherwise use for more productive tasks, it may be well worth the cost.
Here are some networks you can try to source more advertising deals for your podcast:
Remember the value that advertising agencies and networks can provide your business.
4. Become an Affiliate for Your Guests’ Products
If you have a guest that drops a ton of value on your podcast, it’s fair that they get a shout out for their company throughout the podcast, so why not use this opportunity to become an affiliate for them?
This can be especially effective if you can work with your guests beforehand to create a special offer for your listeners. Even if it's just a personalized discount code, a little gesture goes a long way to attract listeners to check out the product or service if they want to learn more about what was discussed during the podcast.'
Most guests that go on podcasts are presumptively looking for more exposure for themselves or their business, so it makes sense that you get credited for any sales or leads that you send to your guests.
5. Repurpose Your Content on YouTube
A simple way that you can repurpose your content for more exposure would be to extract interesting clips and upload them to a secondary YouTube channel.
These clips can range anywhere between 3 to 6 minutes, and if you’ve covered several topics in your hour-long podcast, you can see how this can quickly add up to a ton of content that you can repurpose.
By uploading clips and titling them based on the topic at that moment, you’re opening the doors for new audiences to stumble upon those clips even if your podcast wasn’t necessarily focused on those minor topics.
Joe Rogan’s podcast is a prime example of this, garnering over 3 million subscribers on his secondary channel that consists only of just short, bite-sized clips.
When you consider the effort needed to repurpose content for YouTube, it doesn't take that much time at all. Which means even these clips attract just a handful of new listeners to your podcast, it would still be worthwhile, making it an excellent avenue for people to discover your podcast.
However, if your clips channel has grown tremendously, you can even use it as a second revenue stream by running ads on your videos.
6. Optimize Links for Affiliate Products
Once you’ve got the ball rolling for affiliating products on your podcast, things can quickly get out of hand if you’ve too many links included on your website or the podcast episode page.
Moreover, it can be tricky to serve the right links to listeners from different countries, especially if certain products that you’re recommending aren’t available in the listener’s region.
Fortunately, there are a few plugins and tools that can help alleviate this issue:
Geni.us: Geni.us is a fantastic plugin that automates localizing, tracking, and creating smart links to help capture commissions that might be lost if you’re getting clicks from outside the US.
Pretty Link Pro: Similar to Geni.us, Pretty Link allows you to quickly create affiliate links for keywords that are mentioning an affiliate product or service. There’s also a redirecting feature to serve the right marketplace for international audiences.
EasyAzon: If your podcast is hosted on WordPress, you can easily create links for any product that you mentioned on your WordPress posts, with added support for redirecting links for international traffic as well.
You’d be surprised at just how much revenue you’re leaving on the table if you’re not optimizing your links for international audiences.
Generate Revenue From Your Podcast
By now, you should be able to see just how easy it is to find new avenues to make money from your podcast. While you’d still need a decently sized audience to monetize your podcast, implementing these simple tips from the get-go would ensure that you’re not leaving any money on the table as you grow your podcast.
To reiterate, here are the tips we’ve covered to generate more revenue from your podcast:
- Listen to other podcasts in your niche for sponsorship opportunities
- Explore working with agencies or advertisement networks
- Become an affiliate for the products that you’re already using
- Become an affiliate for products or services offered by your guest
- Repurpose your content on YouTube
- Optimize your affiliate links
Launching a podcast can be one of the most rewarding endeavors, and by utilizing these simple strategies, you’ll be well on your way to earning more revenue with each of your podcast episodes.
Bernard Wong
Growth Hacker, HUSTLR