AP 0553: How Much Do I Charge for Podcast Sponsorships?

AskPat 553 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, hey! What's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 553 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I'm happy to serve you in these episodes, and I'm happy that you're here. ‘Cause I'm here to serve you and help you in your online business journey.

All right, here's today's question from Richard.

Richard: Hello, Pat. My name is Richard. First of all, I want to thank you for all the content that you've provided us all. And also for answering a previous question that I had. The answer that you had provided me was outstanding and worked extremely well for me. So I have another question. And that is, I now have a podcast. And the reception of my podcast has been extremely good. So far, I've only launched three interviews. I have a fourth in the can, and I have about six months of interviews already lined up. My question is, I'd like to monetize my podcasts. And I was wondering, a couple, three—actually, three questions. One, how much can I charge to monetize, or how much can I charge per ad? The second thing is, why do you voice all of the ads on your podcasts? And the third thing is, I was wondering if it's possible to perhaps have you send me a template of the contract that you give to your sponsors. Anyways, I look forward to your answer, and thank you so much.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Richard. What's up? Good to hear from you again. I hope all is well. Congrats on the new podcasts and everything that you have going on. And I'm glad that the last answer I gave you for your previous question was great. Hopefully I can do even better this time around. That's why I'm here.

So, to answer your questions, 'cause I know you asked three—and there's actually another element to all this too, which is, how else can you monetize your podcasts? I think that's important to talk about. So we'll get to the ads in a second. Advertising is one way to generate an income from your show. Another way is to sell your own stuff, of course. Or promote products as an affiliate on there as well. Of course, you want to be honest about that. You can't … Here's one rule, for legal reasons. Obviously, I'm not a lawyer, but this is what I know. You can't have a promotion for something that is an affiliate relationship and call it a sponsor. So I can't say Bluehost is a sponsor of this episode, because they're not. That's completely different than me saying they're an affiliate. And of course with an affiliate, you have to say, “Well, I'm getting paid for this, and I get a commission,” and all those sorts of things. But anyway. Getting off track here. That's another way that you can generate an income online. So promoting your products and your affiliate relationships that you have where you earn a commission through your podcasts as well. Finally, there's another tool, or a service out there, or a pretty cool product that's called Patreon: P-A-T-R-E-O-N. And I'm actually going to look this up on Google right now, because I interviewed the founder of Patreon. Smart Passive Income. So I'm just getting the episode number live for you right now. So this episode is episode 188. You can check that out at smartpassiveincome.com/session188. I interviewed two people. I interview a guy named Jack Conte, who is the founder of Patreon. And I interview one of his users, Tom Merritt, who is a user who's doing very well on this platform. And what this platform allows you to do is to allow people who listen to your show to pledge, essentially, to pay you every time you come out with a new episode. So it could be a dollar, for example. Like, “Hey, Richard, I'm going to pay you five dollars every time you come out with a new episode.” And that's a way for a fan to feel like they're contributing. And it's a way for them to feel like … You know, it's a very PBS-style sort of reach-out. But it feels good. And in this Episode 188 of the Smart Passive Income podcast, I go over why this works and how to do it in a non-sleazy way. And there are people out there who have podcasts. Podcasting is a great medium to take advantage of Patreon, for sure. I mean, people are making thousands of dollars per episode by having individuals each pay 1 to 5 to 10, sometimes 20 dollars per episode that comes out. It's pretty amazing. It's pretty amazing. So you can go ahead and check that out. Again, that's smartpassiveincome.com/session188. For Patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com. Very unique way to have your supporters show their appreciation. So, it's pretty cool.

Now, to get to your advertising questions. How much can you charge per ad? Well, it all depends on a few things. One, there's the industry standard, which is per thousand downloads. So per thousand downloads. From John Lee Dumas, and a lot of his work with sponsors, the typical rate will be anywhere between $30 and $45 per thousand downloads. So for … You can essentially assume that for every thousand downloads, you can get up to $45. And so, when you have a show that's 100,000 downloads, I mean, that's $4,500. Which is pretty significant. So it can definitely add up. But there are a lot of other factors involved too. You might be able to make actually more by having other parts to go along with the read that you do. And of course, there's also the pre-roll. There's the mid-roll, and then there's the post-roll. For the Smart Passive Income podcast, I only do it at the end, so that's the post-roll. And because of that, I don't make as much money as I could. Because the pre-roll in the beginning of the episode, and especially mid-rolls, those you could charge a lot more for. But they're a little more interruptive, and I don't want to do that to my audience on Smart Passive Income. So that's why I don't choose to do that. But I still generate a significant amount of money by having post-rolls at the end where I read the ad myself. And I'll get into why I do that in a second.

But in terms of what else you could add, you can add a sponsor logo on your show notes. You could add a sponsor to, or the sponsor on your resource page, which is what I do. And I can charge and command a little bit more money when I work directly with companies in that way. Now, there are companies out there where you can have another sort of third-party company help manage these relationships and help actually find you sponsors. One is called Midroll; that's the company I use for AskPat to help find sponsors. That's Midroll.com. You could sign up there and they'll find advertisers for your podcasts. You might have to have a minimum number of downloads before you can begin working with them, though. That's the only downside. I believe the minimum is anywhere between 40,000 and 50,000 downloads a month. But you might want to check it out just in case. And of course, they take a cut, and because of that, the CPMs or cost per thousand downloads is going to be a lot less. But you could charge that much. And the last part of that is just, How well can you negotiate? So if you're working directly, not through a third-party company, but if you're working directly, you might be able to command a little bit more. If you are good at what you do and sell, and you really show that this audience that you have is one that is worth getting in front of, and so on and so forth. So that's that money part.

Why do I voice my own ads? I voice my own ads because I know when I do it myself, it's going to sound more real, it's going to be different in every episode. Plus, it's just coming from me, the host. And it just doesn't have people tune out. It's going to convert better. And making my advertisers happy is something that's important to me too. Because I want to continue working with them; because when I do that, they continue to pay me. And so that's really important, because the payments from the advertisers help pay for the people who help put this show together, and my income, and all that sort of stuff. So I do it this way. I read off like I did in the beginning here when I talked about Pipedrive. I read off a sort of a bullet-point list that comes from the company. This one, Pipedrive, actually comes from Midroll, because I'm using Midroll for AskPat to help me find these companies. And so they give me a script and I read off of it, and I make sure to hit the main points that they want me to hit. Some are required, you know, some of the ones that involve text, I have to say, “Standard text messaging rates apply,” and all that stuff. But yeah, I just put my own voice into it, because it's just a continuation of the podcast. And I feel that these advertisers that do come on AskPat, they are helpful. So they can serve my audience. And because of that, I feel it's right that my voice is in there. And it's just weird if somebody else pops their audio in your podcast. I mean, that's possible. But I prefer to read it off. I think it's going to do much better all around. It's just a better experience for everybody.

And finally, in terms of a template. I can't share my own particular template, because that came specifically from my attorney and my business, and there's certain things that go on there. But there are templates that you could download online. I believe John Lee Dumas might have some that might be available too. But it doesn't have to be too complicated. But mine has, because I work with a lawyer who has my back in all way, shape, and form, it's pages and pages and pages long. And there's a lot of unique stuff in there that's there for me and my business and my particular situation. So I would recommend that you either find a template and you see if that works for you. Or if possible, find a professional that can help create one that's unique for you and your business too, if you can't find one that seems to work as a template elsewhere. So, I apologize I can't share that with you. But thank you for asking, and hopefully that answer works for you.

Richard, thank you so much for the question. I appreciate it, and I wish you all the best with your podcasts. And yeah, man, awesome. Good luck. For those of you who are listening, guess what? Richard gets an AskPat t-shirt because his question was featured here in the show. And you could get an AskPat t-shirt too. All you have to do is go to askpat.com and ask me your question. It could be about anything related to business, social media, start-ups, books, anything related to online business. I'm here to help you. And I answer them five days a week here on the show.

So thank you, then, so much for listening in. I appreciate you. And as always, I love to end with a quote. And today's quote comes from Maya Angelou. And she says, “We may encounter many defeats. But we must not be defeated.” So true. Cheers, take care, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Thanks. Bye.