How To Make Money From Podcasts

You have a passion for podcasting, sure, but passion alone doesn’t pay the bills. Are you wondering how to make money from podcasts? There are many monetisation opportunities that you can tap into to make your podcast profitable. Read this guide to learn what you can do.

Monetising your podcast is easier than you’d think and if it’s done properly it can turn your passion into a career.

Merchandise

Making dedicated merchandise is a great way to increase income. You could make t-shirts, mugs, hoodies, posters, key rings, badges – anything relevant to the theme of your podcast. For example, if your podcast is about cocktail making, create a dedicated glassware range or a cocktail making kit. Or if it’s about sport, create your own kit. Clothing lines are a great way of getting free advertising too as your audience will wear it out in public and people will be curious to know more.

Events

While podcasts are hosted online, everyone loves a live recording of a show they’ve been listening to for a while. So if you are wondering how to make money from podcasts, it does not have to be only through online products and services. Bring your podcast to the offline world!

Rosie and Chris Ramsey recently set a world record for the biggest live audience for a podcast, selling out arenas up and down the country. A live recording on tour could really boost your podcast’s profitability and grow your audience.

Plus, your fans will be excited to know that you’re making the effort to go to their hometown and the excitement is the same as any band can create if done right.

Exclusive Online Content

Patreon and other subscription services are great way to increase revenue. This can be done from your very first episode too. So many sucessful podcasters have learnt that their audience are passionate about supporting their favourites and even a little fee goes a long way when the audience join in theire hundreds and thousands.

Keep all subscriptions affordable and tiered at levels that suit everyone’s budgets. Also keep the titles of each level on brand with the theme of your podcast, also don’t give away too much. Spread out the content you can provide.

A great example it Two Shot Podcast’s Patreon, they base each level on where you can buy a drink. For each level they have a clear definition of what the audience will get in return for each fee that they compare to everyday spending their audience would actually purchase. It’s fun, clear and appears to be a reasonable return on investment for their audience.

Sponsorships

An obvious answer to how to make money from podcasts is to get your podcast sponsored. You can set up sponsorship packages that cover a series, an episode or even just an ad.

Make sure your packages clearly explain the return on investment to the brands. For example, a series sponsor will pay more as theyre exclusively a headline sponsor. This package could prevent you from featuring any other adverts during the episodes of that series and ultimately reduce your opportunity for monetisation. The bigger cost must factor that in and you will have to explain that to the brand in a way that higlights the benefits to them.

Hot tip: we recommend ads in the middle of an episode as most ads are skipped at the beginning and people will simply skip to the next episode if you put it at the end. It’s also more effective if the presenter delivers the adverts, rather than have a random ad in the middle which is quite jarring for listeners. It is more effective if the host of their favourite podcast presents the advert, they will be more liklely to invest in the sponsor’s offering.

Learn about your audience. Find out their age, gender, interests and use this to pitch to the right brands for them. It offers you and the brand the best opportunity to work well with each other and you will both gain from these insights.

It is important to be responsible with the brands you work for and research them because you don’t want to lose the trust of your audience for a quick buck! Only promote products that you genuinely believe in and ones you know your audience will love!

Monetise Your Social Media

Work hard to increase your social media presence when you start your podcast, because you can use that in several ways to calm down your concerns about how to make money from podcasts. When your following reaches the levels required to activate social media ads, it’s well worth switching them on. Also keep an eye out on the creator pages for each social media platform to keep up to date with all possible monetisation options.

Besides earning money through ads through the platform, you can also do sponsored posts on your social media if you have a good following.

There you go! It’s always good to monestise from the earliest point in your podcast journey. But if you didn’t think about monetisation from day one, don’t worry you can start promoting at any time. It’s good to focus on creating good content and establishing a good audience for it. It’s not too late to use this guide to generating income from your podcast.

Let us help you!

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