There are many ways to make money while podcasting. I talk about some ways to make money, what to expect, and some ways to market your show.

Welcome to the Podcast Answers Podcast. If you have never joined us before, we help

people start and grow their podcasts answering questions about podcasting along the way.

And so if you have any questions that you want answered, please comment right here in

the video where you're watching or go to podcastanswers.com slash contact and you can ask me a question

about podcasting. I love talking about podcasting. I love that's why I started this podcast and

I love just being able to talk to people about that. So without further ado, let's get into

our topic today, which is how to make money at your podcast. And what I'm going to say

is going to sound a little bit controversial right now, but there is no money in podcasting.

Yes, you can get paid, but if you do that, it's going to come later. Do it for fun now.

Don't stress out about growing so big to get your sponsors. Start your podcast, start it

small. Even for me, this podcast started small and I've been doing podcasts since 2007. And

I just started this one and it's still, I mean, it's growing, but it's definitely not

numbers to get sponsors right now. So don't stress out about getting so big that you need

to get sponsors. I mean, you're not Joe Rogan, right? I mean, even he was famous for something

else first, you know, as the famous Doc Rock said on the flow podcast, you know, Joe Rogan,

you are not Joe Rogan and he was even famous for something earlier before he did his Joe

Rogan experience podcast. So yes, there is money in podcasting and we're going to talk

about how you can make some money, but you're not going to get rich at podcasting, especially

right out of the gate, especially as you start your podcast right now, you are not going

to get rich at that. So now what you first thing you need to come down and decide is

what is the point of your podcast? What is the purpose of your podcast? Is it to have

fun? Is it to make money? Is it to drive people to buy your products? All of those things

are good and all of those things can be purposes for your podcast and they can all, it can

all be, all of those purposes can be why you're podcasting, but you need to sit down and decide

what is the purpose of your podcast. And for me, it's a little bit of having, having fun.

I love podcasting. I love being able to get out there and talk about the things that I

love to talk about. And so for me, it's, it's, it's having fun. For me, it's hopefully at

some point I can make money. I do release episodes of these early, a week early for everybody.

And so you can become a plus member and you know, do that in Apple podcasts or in buy

me a coffee and you can get those episodes that I make of this podcast early. And that

makes me a little bit of money. It also, for me, the other last thing that I'm hoping

for is to drive people to buy my products. And while I don't actually have a product

per se, I do help people along the way. I'm available for one-on-one consulting and that

does come at a cost. So it is a product. And that's the goal of this podcast. This is one

of the goals of this podcast is to help drive people towards my one-on-one podcast consulting

as well as, you know, just giving away some free information because I like giving my

information away free. But I also know that some people aren't going to be the ones that

sit down and listen to a hundred podcast episodes or a hundred YouTube videos. They're going

to want to just ask somebody point blank. Here's, here's what I want to do. Can you

help me do it? And I'm available for that podcastasters.com slash contact. But you need

to decide what the, what's the purpose of your podcast is. And, and so one of the things

to, so then if you do decide you want to get sponsors, one thing to note that usually you

have to have around 1000 downloads per episode before you can even get ads from ad agencies.

So a lot of podcasts hosts are willing to add, you know, adds the advertisements into

your podcast, but usually the cost, you either need to have a thousand downloads per episode

or the cost is based on 1000 downloads per episode. And that's usually like $25 per,

you know, 25, 23, that's kind of the going rate right now per 1000 downloads episodes.

So you may not be making a lot of money off of your show unless you have tens of thousands

of listeners, which you could just right at first, you're not going to have that. And

so you don't, don't expect to get ad agencies right at first. So, but there are some ways

to go about getting some money and getting some sponsors for your show. One of the best

things that you can do is do a trade. If you know of somebody who has like a business,

but it doesn't have unnecessarily a budget or there's, you know, a small bit, small business,

but want to do some advertising, you can do a trade. You run an ad for them and their

business in your podcast in exchange for some promotion in their, in their business, you

know, for your podcast. So for instance, we, you know, you can go to your local barber

or local, whatever, somebody that, you know, that you, you know, you go to their shop,

you experience their shop, you buy things from them and see if they're willing to do

a trade with you. That may be putting up a poster in your, in their shop for your podcast

in exchange for a 10 second ad or this episode is sponsored by XYZ. That's probably one of

the best ways, especially if you don't have a big marketing budget, they don't have a

big marketing budget. And that's a good way to exchange and get some ads. If you have

ads in your podcast, that's kind of proof of social, social proof, excuse me, which

basically means that people are going to hear ads in your podcast and those are, they're

going to be more willing to, to invest in your podcast because if you don't have any

podcasts with advertising in them, they're going to say, Hey, you know, how much is your,

how much is your podcast? You know, how much do I cost me to advertise? How many other

businesses, what, you know, what, how much, how much have they paid? Things like that.

And you're going to say, I don't have any people that, that have paid. I don't have

any podcasts advertisers. And so if you can do the trade like this, that's going to help

you because you're going to be able to say, no, hey, look, no, this person's sponsored.

They don't have to tell them it was a, it was a exchange for, for them. You can just

say, no, this person wasn't advertiser on our podcast. The other thing that you can

do is go to local businesses that you know and ask them to support you. This works especially

well. Again, if you know the people that are running the businesses, but up even that,

if you know people that have small, medium sized businesses that are local to your area,

you can go to them and say, Hey, I have this podcast on whatever. And I think that you'd

be a great fit. And here's why. Now, again, you're not going to want to maybe necessarily

advertise in have, they're not going to want to advertise with you. If it's you're completely

different fit lows, let's say you're talking about a barbershop topics and you go to a

shop that sells bananas, they're probably not going to want to advertise with you.

But if it's just a generic podcast or a podcast that could be about any topics, it's really

easy to go in and I could even with this podcast go to someone local and say, Hey, I'm trying

to help people, especially local people, start podcasts. And I would love to get your business

and I would love to be able to advertise for you and your barbershop and you can then get

some more people coming in from that. People will hear it. It doesn't have to be a very

expensive ad slot. I mean, you can start making money, $5 a month, $10 a month, whatever you

can make and you can say, you know, or per episode. So let's say you do four episodes

a month and you're charging $5 an episode. That's 20 bucks that you're making right

there that you didn't have before. Now it's not going to pay your mortgage and podcasting

for the most people isn't going to pay their mortgage, but it could allow them to invest

in new equipment. It could allow them to have date money to go on a date with their spouse

or significant other. So those are a couple of different ways on how you can get sponsors

to your show. And other ways that you can make money on your show that don't include

sponsors and advertisements or is what's called value for value. And this is something

in the podcasting 2.0 EgoSphere where people say, I'm willing to give you back this much

value because I'm getting this much value out of your show. And that could come into

the buy me a coffee. I mean, that's what I'm doing essentially with buy me a coffee. People

are saying, you know, people can say, I want to sponsor you. I mean, I do have levels per

month that they can pay, but people can also go in there, buy me a coffee.com slash podcast

answers. And they can say, I want to sponsor you. I want to give you support, you know,

$40 a support or $100 of support or $300 of support, whatever they think that my podcast

is worth to them. They can go and give that money back to me. That's value for value again.

They're getting value out of the content that you're producing with your podcast. And then

they want to put it back in. They want to give that value back. And if you limit that

to say you have to pay $5 a month and then you get early episodes, which again, not a

bad thing. I'm doing that, right? I'm doing that. But don't value for value in and of

itself is not limited. You need to have a way for people to give however much they want.

And so again, buy me a coffee is good at that because yes, I do have levels, you know, $5

whatever, you know, a month or going up from there. But buy me a coffee also allows you

to say, I just want to spend $100 on this producer, on this content producer. And so

you're not limiting it because it may be worth $100. Your episode may be worth $100

to them. You may have given them this huge, great idea. And if you're saying, you know,

you can come in here and just become a $5 a month sponsor, you're limiting it yourself.

People will give you money for what they feel your show is worth. And value for value is

not necessarily just money. That can include time, talent or treasure. So people may give

back to your show. They may, if they're great at artists, you know, become if they're an

artist, a digital artist, they may create you digital art. And I've had that happen for

my show, one of my shows that I've had before, someone came in and said, Hey, I'm an artist

that I want to do some cover art. And they did. And to this day, there's a derivative

of that, that artwork that's still on that podcast. And there's so people can come in

with their talent, because you know, they may be good at doing voiceovers, they may be

good at creating something that you didn't even know you needed. And they want to give

that back to you. Or they're also people may have their time, you know, they may volunteer

to to count your episodes or organize your episodes or something that necessarily is

just something anyone can do, but they're willing to spend that that time, they're willing

to give their time back to you because they feel like what you have given them is a great

deal. So don't don't count out value for value and like booster grams and booster grams are

something with streaming streaming Satoshi's new podcast apps can do that, you know, where

they can, as they're listening, they can give small amounts of Satoshi back to Bitcoin back

to you, as well as sending a message and boosting again, however much they want to get a message

back to you. And I've seen it, lots of people who have never had any engagement on their

show. All of a sudden, people are sending in multiple booster grams per week, just because

they want to get their, their, their content heard, they want to get their comment heard.

And so they send these booster grams in, and they're showing value, they're doing actually

value for value in two different ways because they're not only giving their treasure to you,

but they're also giving their time and commenting back to the show. They're actually giving

you value to make for your show. So it's great because that, that system allows them to listen

to something you said, whether they agree or not, give you money back and then actually

be part of the show again and give you more content to put on your show.

Now, again, we talked about having to have lots of episodes, you know, don't stress out

about the amount of people that are listening to your show. But if you do want to grow your

show, some of the ways that you can do that are buying ads on, you know, Facebook or Instagram

or Twitter or wherever. Now you can limit those to a certain area and that will give

you some, some people that'll get people that click like on your Facebook. So you see more

of your things may not be the best investment, but it does allow people to see you and you

can target those and it's fairly cheap to do that. You can target those ads based on

what you want. So you can say people who, you know, for me, I could say people who like

podcasts, people who are into digital producing things, people who are, you know, I could

limit it to people who are, you know, 20 to 40 or, you know, so I'm not getting people

that are younger like in high school. If I wanted to, I mean, I do, I want to help people

no matter what their age is, but you can limit that to be whatever you want it to. Now some

other ways to do this is to get your promotion to increase your listeners and followers are

getting business cards. Business cards are super cheap. I mean, you can get 100 business

cards for $20 on Canva and it's super simple to design a business card on Canva. I've done

that and so you can get 100 business cards for $20, not again, not a lot and you can

go around and put them in all your local shops. So, you know, I've been in Jimmy John's and

there's a Bolton board in Jimmy John's and there's a Bolton board in your local coffee

shop and there's a Bolton board in a lot of different places that people are exchanging

their business cards. This is a great idea, especially to get people local to know your

content. Now, again, that's not necessarily going to be global, but I've passed out business

cards lots of different places. I've been driving and I pass out business cards when

I go to a rest stop or wherever there's a place for me to put a business card. I go

ahead and do that because it is something that people want to see. I mean, people, you

never know where you might come up with new listeners at. And so, you can put things on

the, some of the things that I like on the back of the business card is a QR code to

either the website link or a specific episode. If you have an episode that has like a really

huge guest on it, you can have a QR code that goes right to that episode. You can, you know,

you want to do that. You want to put a link on it to your website. You may want to put

your cover art too, so people know what they're looking at and it might be good to have like

a play pause button around it. So, it kind of looks like a iPod or a podcast player of

some sort. And then your show description. So, when they're looking at it, they're going

to go, oh, that's the cover art for when I, when I search for this podcast. So, it's

going to be a show name, your cover art in a little bit of your description. And if your

description is written right, people are going to know what your podcast is about. And then,

you may want to also put logos to some podcast apps like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube,

if you're doing video on YouTube, things like that, because that way when people see it,

they know, oh, it's a podcast. And that's why I would also do something with like a play

pause button around your cover art, just to kind of make it a little bit more descriptive

that that is a podcast and that is something that they can listen to. Now, one of the other

ways that you can do this too, to help grow your show is becoming a member of Facebook

groups that deal with topics that you cover. Now, you have to be a little bit careful with

this because you can't just go in and promote your content. Like, you can't become a group,

you know, join a group of podcasts people, in my case, and just start promoting your

content. Hey, I do this podcast episode, come listen to my podcast. People are going to

ban you from their podcast groups because they don't like spam. But one of the ways

that you can do that is be helpful. Go in there, start answering people's questions,

you know, and this doesn't have to be on podcasts. I mean, just that's what I'm thinking of because

this is a podcast app or podcast about podcasting. But you can go in there and you can be super

helpful. And just if people have questions about a product or something, just be super

helpful about it. Be helpful, be helpful, be helpful, be helpful. And then maybe you

have an episode on a specific topic that they're asking. So once you've established yourself

as somebody who's helpful in that group, so you don't get kicked out right away, then

maybe you can start like gently promoting things. And when I mean that, you can say

things like, Hey, you know, this is a great question. Here's, you know, here's the answer

to your question. But if you want to hear more about that, I have a full episode of a podcast

about that and link directly to that, that episode. And that people are going to be more

likely to let that go because you're not necessarily going to be self promoting. I mean, yes, you

are promoting your thing, but you're also being super helpful. You've, you have a track record

of being helpful in that group. And then you, you are going in and answering a specific

question. You're not going to go in and just say randomly, Hey, I have a podcast about

podcasting, but you're asked, you're answering a specific question in that group. And then

maybe linking to your content because you can say, Hey, I've answered this question,

but I have a better, a more fuller episode on that that you can go out and listen to

right away. So guys, I hope that you really find that helpful. If you did, go ahead and

make sure you like and subscribe to our podcast. We're on all the podcasts players as well

as YouTube and a lot of social medias. So if you're on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,

we're on all of those places. Just look at that podcast answers is our name for almost

everything besides Twitter on Twitter. It's podcast answers one just because they didn't

have that, but I hope that you find this episode super helpful. If you have any questions about

this again, I am available for one-on-one consulting and I would love to answer your

questions about podcasting. You can ask a question at podcast answers.com slash contact.

And again, we love to get you in and we'd love to answer your questions as well as I'm

available for one-on-one consulting and can help you personally do this thing. So thanks