Podcasts have grown significantly in the last few years, gaining millions of listeners around the world. Thanks to the ...
Podcasts have grown significantly in the last few years, gaining millions of listeners around the world. Thanks to the growth of this industry, companies, and brands are more and more interested in advertising in podcasts.
One of the most common questions you'll find on any podcast forum is how to earn money making podcasts. In this blog post we will explain to you different ways to monetize your podcast and why you don’t need thousands of listeners:
Memberships
Podcasts allow you to establish a more intimate relationship with your followers than you would have through any other media. Over time, you've created your own community and while it may seem like no one would want to pay to be members, yet quite the opposite is true. Your most loyal listeners will be more than happy to support you by paying for their membership, acknowledging all the work you've put into the podcast, and allowing you to keep creating more.
Platforms like Steady take care of technology, accounting, payment processing, and whatever else you need. This leaves you more time to do what you're really passionate about.
One popular reward that podcasters offer their members is exclusive episodes or pre-releases. With Steady's audio RSS feed, you can make individual episodes available to all members, or only to members of certain plans. If you host your podcast on Podigee, you can easily use Podigee’s new feature instead of the Steady feature. Here’s how to do that.
Other podcasters invite their members to events, send gifts, talk to them...and many more possibilities.
Want to read more about Steady and its main features? Find out more here.
Advertisements & Sponsorships
One of the most common ways to earn money with podcasts is to leverage the reach through advertisements. There is a lot of interest in podcast advertising these days.
Here are some of the reasons:
What types of advertising can you have in your podcast?
While there are many different types, we are going to highlight the most common ones.
Host-read: Your listeners are there for you. They like your content, your voice, and the way you express yourself. You are advertising with your own voice and personality. The more the ad resembles you, the more likely it is that listeners will interact and search for the brand you mentioned.You can quote the ad in two ways:
Both are common, so it's up to you and your advertiser to choose one format or the other.
Affiliations: With affiliations, you will not earn money for just mentioning the brand, but for each purchase made by your listeners through the affiliate link or code provided by the brands. You can mention the affiliate link in your episodes, show notes, social media, or on your own website.
Sponsorships: You name your sponsor usually at the beginning of each episode or directly after the intro ("Podcast X is presented by Y").
It's important that the brand you are promoting is in line with the content you are posting. For example, if you talk about computers and promote a pet food brand, it will not have much impact and listeners might not be interested.
Something to keep in mind is that advertisements and sponsorships will change over time depending on the deals with the brands.
The traditional way is to add the audio clip of the ad along with the rest of the episode. All in one file. This is known as “baked-in ads”.
However, if you decide to change your sponsor or ad in the future, you will need to edit and re-upload all the episodes with the new ad or sponsor. In the long run, it takes hours of tedious work. And let’s be honest: who wants that?
Don't worry. The solution already exists and it's called "Dynamic Ad Insertion".
With DAI you can add, replace or remove ads in your episodes at any time without the need to manually edit and re-upload the entire episode. Just upload the ad and place it at the exact position that you want.
As an example: You have a sponsor for a Christmas campaign and when it's over, there's no point in having that sponsor in your episodes anymore. With DAI, you simply remove it with a few clicks and that's it! Do you already have a new sponsor waiting? Change the ad without any manual editing of the audio files.
Imagine you have an episode about the best graphic cards on market and there is a company interested in sponsoring it. You can add the audio file in that particular episode.
If you are interested in learning more about DAI, check out The Podigee Dynamic Ad Server. Find out more here!
Merchandising
Once you have a loyal audience, you can start thinking about selling merchandising related to your podcast content.
Just imagine you repeat a specific, fun or catchy phrase in your podcast and your listeners start repeating it as a running joke. This might be a good merchandising move, as it is coming straight from your audience.
Private Content & Online Training
If you are an expert on a specific topic or field, you can offer your wisdom through a podcast. For example, you are a marketing expert and prepare trainings about “becoming a pro in marketing” with a 10-episode series explaining the “latest marketing trends that will boost your company revenue.”
Anyone interested in buying the course will have to pay in order to receive an individual link with a login to listen to your podcast.
You can create private podcasts with Podigee today. Check it out here.
Of course, there might be other ways to monetize your podcast, so feel free to experiment with different approaches. Keep up the hard work and the success will come!
If you haven't tried Podigee yet, start now with our 14-day free trial!
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