AP 0188: What Is the Fastest Way to Monetize My Podcast?

AskPat 188 Episode Transcript

Pat: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 188 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me. As always, I'm here to help you by answering all of your online business questions, five days a week.

Awesome. Now, let's get to today's question from Mike.

Mike: Pat. Mike, and I need your help. Hey, I'm running out of money, and I do not want to get a job. I have not launched my podcast yet. I am wondering, what is the fastest way to monetize my podcast? I'm sure many people that you have inspired have the same question. I can't wait for your answer. I appreciate everything you do. I'm sure I'll learn a fun fact about you once I get featured on the show.

Pat: Hey, Mike. Thank you so much for the question. Random fun fact about me before I begin: I like to record these episodes with socks on. If I don't have socks, for some reason it just . . . I don't know. I'm not as creative without socks.

Anyway, let's get to your question, Mike. You are running out of money. You don't want to get a job. What is the fastest way to monetize your podcast? A lot of people ask this question. There might be some sort of time-based reason why they need money quickly. They always ask, “Well, what's the fastest way to monetize?”

What are the fastest ways to monetize, whether you have a podcast, or wherever you're at, in what stage of your life. Freelancing. Freelancing is a great way to go about it, because you can get paid right now, for services that you can provide for others who need those services. Mike, or anybody else out there who's looking to monetize fast, think of the skills that you have, and how you might be able to help others, who might need that skill.
For example, I've hired writers, and I've paid writers, freelancers, to help me do that sort of thing. I've paid people who have great voices to read my ebooks and create audio files for me. Those are types of things that you could offer. Just think of all the different kinds of skills that you have. If you need money now, selling your services, selling your abilities to those who don't have those abilities is a great way to go about it.

What does this look like? How does it actually work? You could post your skills for other people to hire on places like Craigslist. TaskRabbit is a good one. I've hired people to . . .  even stuff that's not online business related. You can go on TaskRabbit to help people move, or pick people's lunch up. All these types of things. Again, these are … You know, if you really need money, there are ways to make money. These are different places you could do that. Craigslist, TaskRabbit. If you're a writer, for example, ProBlogger Job Board is a good one. If you have a little bit of technical skills, maybe you're a designer, or you . . . Go to Elance.com. You'll be surprised of what you can actually purchase, or have somebody help you with. You can also offer those as your own services, if you have those skills as well. That's Elance.com. Also, oDesk.com.

Those are just a few of the many places you can go online to sort of do freelancing type stuff, and at least get a little bit of cash coming in so then you can put it into your business, or if you need to, just survive. Those are some things that you could do. Yes, it might not be what you want to do long-term, but for now if you are running out of money and you don't want a job, that's what you can do.

You can meet a lot of cool people. What's cool about freelancing, especially if you're working on your own skills, and improving what you're doing for others. What's cool is, you get to meet a lot of people, but also improve your skills, and even make connections that could help you move forward with your own business, with your own podcast, with your own blog. The more you get to know people, in and around the space that you're in, the more likely you are to meet that one person who you could potentially partner with, and things like that. Those will give you great opportunities down the road.

Another thing you could do specifically, Mike, for your podcast, are sponsorships. Yes, you might just be starting out your podcast, but I started a podcast with sponsors. It's a little bit difficult to do. You have to sort of negotiate a bit, and give some deals, and things like that. Yes, I did have an audience already. If you have an audience already. I don't know if you do or not Mike, but if you have an audience for example, on YouTube, or perhaps a blog, you have an email list, you have the ability with those assets to approach a potential sponsor for sponsorship opportunities in your podcast: pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll.

Again, great way to do it from the start if you have that audience. You can definitely negotiate your way through that. Over time of course, as your audience grows, you will be able to charge more. Typically sponsorships are done on a CPM, or cost per thousand. I don't know why it's cost per thousand, but it's an “M.” It's got to be the Roman numeral. Anyway. Yes, you could do that. You can get sponsors on, and as you grow, you can charge more per thousand listens to your download.

Part of your job is to, when you launch your podcast, if you haven't already, make a big deal out of it. Get everybody that you know, in your network, and in and around that space. Hopefully you've provided value to them, and they will help you out when you launch, so you can get those thousands of listeners in a short period of time. Of course, when you launch your podcast, you have that initial eight weeks in the “new and noteworthy,” which can help you as well. You've just got to be proactive with it. If you just sit around, and launch, and kind of hope things are going to happen … You know, this is not a, “If you build it, they will come” world. This is, you got to build it, and show people that it's worth coming to. That's how you succeed in this online business world.

Number three. One thing that you can do with your podcast, something that John Lee Dumas has been really good at, and a lot of people have been doing, whether you have a podcast or not . . . Here's this sort of business model. Think of a solution for your target audience. Something that you could build. You don't have to build it yet, that's the cool thing about this. Think of that solution. Maybe it's an online course, or some type of software, what have you. Think about that, and create a sales page for it. Actually create a sales page. You could use something like LeadPages to do that. Actually create that page as if you were going to sell it, because you are going to sell it.

What you're going to do, is you're going to do a webinar. On your podcast, when you first launch. Then you can also coincide that with some Facebook advertisements, or some other pay-per-click advertising, to get people on this live webinar with you. At which point, you are going to talk about these pains and problems that likely these people have in this particular market, and the solution that you're going to create.

You're going to be completely honest. You're not going to say, “Oh, here's a product. It's already built. Pay me, and you'll get it.” Then when they purchase, then they'll get a email from you saying, “Oh, it's actually not built yet, and we're working on it right now.” No. You don't want to do that. What you want to do, like what John Lee Dumas did when he created Podcaster' Paradise, and also did the same thing for WebinarOnFire.com, a product about how to create webinars. What you do is you sort of use this webinar to sell and validate that idea, and also give special opportunities and deals for people who come in early.

What's going to happen is you're going to have people pay you to create that product. If they really need that solution, they're going to pay for it, even before that product is built. What's cool is you'll be able to work with those people to create the product, or the solution, or the software, or the course, that they actually want. You can limit it, so that there's some scarcity involved too. That early-bird pricing, that opportunity to work with you really closely in the beginning, and to have it before anyone else, can be a great opportunity to get paid almost immediately up front, if the idea is good and you sell it well, for something that's not even built yet. That would be a great way to monetize, and get your foot in the door with something.

If it doesn't work out the first time . . . maybe you do a webinar, and you pitch a solution, and nobody actually pulls out their credit cards and buys. That's the important part about this. You need people to actually pay you. That is true validation. Yes, people can say, “Yeah, I'll buy it,” or, “That's a great idea. When you come out with it, yes, I'll buy it.” No. You want people to purchase this thing before it comes out, and then work with you to create it in the way that they want. That way, after it's done and complete, they're happy, they got the early-bird pricing. Then when you release it to the world, hopefully you'll have some people who are already customers spreading the word for you, but you would also have the perfect product for them as well.

Mike, I hope those ideas help you out as you move forward. Best of luck to you. Thank you so much for your question. An AskPat t-shirt is going to be headed your way.
For those of you listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com. Ask right there on that page, using the big button courtesy of SpeakPipe.com, which is helping me collect all these voicemails. These are great. I get a ton of voicemails every day. I just love listening to them. I'm going to do my best to answer as many as I can. Obviously there's more coming in than I can answer, but that's what makes it exciting.

Awesome. As always I like to end with a quote. Today's quote is from Stephen Covey, and he says, “Be patient with yourself. Self-growth is tender; it's holy ground. There's no greater investment.” Cheers. Thanks so much. I'll see you guys in the next episode of AskPat. Peace.