AP 0350: How Did You First Make Money with Your Podcast?

AskPat 350 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What's, up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 350 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. And if you're listening today, the day that this particular episode goes live, I just want to wish a happy Memorial Day to all of you out there and a special thanks goes out to anybody who's served in the military or is serving in the military, or who is a family member of somebody who has served or is serving. Thank you so much for what you do. We appreciate you so much.

Now, before we get into today's question from Nicole, I do want to thank today's sponsor, which is FreshBooks.com. FreshBooks is an awesome company that's helping all of the people out there who are starting small businesses organize their finances and do it right, and the correct way, from the start—unlike how I did when I first started tracking on Excel, and then by the time tax season came around, it was a complete mess. So I got involved with FreshBooks.com a way long time ago, and it's been serving me very well. And I recommend you get on FreshBooks.com, because it can help you organize your finances, help you keep track of everything. Also help you with invoicing and all that good stuff so that you can focus more on your business. So, check it out; go to GetFreshBooks.com and enter AskPat in the “How did you hear about us?” section. Again, that's GetFreshBooks.com and enter AskPat.

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

Nicole: Hey, Pat. It's Nicole Jolie, and I met you last year at #SMMW14; we have a picture together, actually. And I wanted to say first, congratulations on all your success, and secondly, my website is LoveRadianceSkincare.com. And I'm asking you a question regarding how to make money with a podcast that would be more directed towards athletes who are aging but really want to get back into shape. And I'm just curious as to how, when you started, did you make your first money on your podcast? And I should probably ask some of the other podcasters as well the same question. But I was listening to your podcast and wanting to know your thoughts, so thank you so much, and I wish you the best of success, and hopefully I'll hear my question on your show. Bye.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Nicole. Thank you so much for the question. It's great to hear from you. I had to go and visit your website to see your face so I could remember who you were. And I do remember speaking with you at Social Media Marketing World, so thank you for calling in. I really appreciate it.

Now to answer your question, how did I first make money in my podcast? Well, with anybody, the number one way that people are genuinely thinking about how to make money with their podcast is to get downloads so they can then have sponsors on their show. It's obviously a very popular way to do it. If you listen to a lot of podcasts, including AskPat, and many of the top podcasts out there on the web right now, you'll hear sponsors sometimes in the beginning and the end of the show. Sometimes in the middle of the show. On Smart Passive Income, I just have it at the end of the show and I forfeit a little bit of profits there, but I don't want to, for that particular episode, ruin the sort of first minute or two of the episode with—not necessarily ruin, but I just want to get right into the content for that particular episode.

The cool thing about doing a podcast is, it's your show. You can do whatever you want. And so getting those downloads and then having sponsors come on to pay you money to have you either read a script of talk about your experience with a particular product, that's a great way to go about it. There's a lot of great articles out there about how to monetize with sponsorships. I might recommend listening to episode 97 of the Smart Passive Income Podcast, that's where … Oh wait, 97 or 96? One of those. That's where I interview John Lee Dumas, who was on my show talking about how he monetized his podcasts with sponsorships. And that was actually the very first Smart Passive Income podcast episode in any podcast that I had ever done before that had a sponsor on board. And ever since then, it's been doing very well. If you read my monthly income report from April, you will have seen that I made over $18,000 just from sponsorships on the podcast.

So, it's been going very well, but I will say I've been getting a lot of downloads, almost to the tune of a million downloads a month in total. When you start out, you're not going to make that much, but the cool thing is you can get sponsors after you have a few weeks of episodes and some sort of baseline number of downloads to share with potential sponsors, because they pay per thousand downloads typically. That's the industry standard, and it's anywhere between … it depends on where you have their sponsor script or call to action in your show. The price will vary depending on that, but John Lee Dumas has, from Entrepreneur on Fire, has said it to be anywhere between $30 and $43 per thousand downloads. So keep working on getting those downloads. But that's not just the only way to monetize your podcast. There's a lot of different ways to go about it.

Now, one of the most and probably the best and highest-recommended way, at least coming from me, is to indirectly sell on your podcast. Now, I don't want you to go on your podcast and say, “Hey guys, buy this!” That's never a good thing to do, because people are listening and typically they're listening on the go, so they're not going to really have a chance to take the action that, whatever it is you want them to do, right then and there. So by indirect, I mean you are either going to mention a resource or perhaps a webinar or something else that you have going on that people then sign up for. That then they will get into a sales funnel of some kind. And I mean, honestly the best way to go about it is to just give incredible, massive value on your podcast. So much that they keep listening to your show, they keep hearing that call to action to follow you on all the social media platforms. But more importantly, get on your email list. Because once you get people on your email list, that's when you can then put them through a funnel to not only build a bigger and deeper relationship with them, but to have them take your recommendations for products that you could potentially earn a commission for. Or if you have any of your own products to sell, that's where they would get the direct call to action to go and purchase those, especially if there's some sort of deal that's going on or some sort of seasonal promotion, for example. Things like that go a very long way. Seems like you're in the retail or skincare type space, and that can go very well.

And so that's probably the top recommended way, at least for me, because it's not … Not that direct selling is bad, but I like the idea of building and serving an audience first in using these methods that we have to connect with our audience. Social media, email, podcasting, blogging, video—to really build that rapport, and really increase the trust factor there, so that they know they can trust you and then they're going to be interested in what you have to offer, sort of naturally. That's the natural conclusion of building a strong relationship with somebody online and giving them so much value. The law of reciprocity comes into play, and they're going to look for ways to pay you back. And so those are really important things to keep in mind. And those are traditionally the ways that I would recommend making money on your podcast. So sponsorships, and then indirect selling through, just again, building a relationship and understanding what it is that your audience needs, and finding that solution and sharing it with them.

A little bit more direct approach would be to get them on a webinar, for example, or have them purchase a book that you have to sell, that then leads them into up-sells or bigger items or higher-priced items and things like that. But if you want to go back to how I first made money on my podcast—it was likely … I went 97 episodes without a sponsor, so it wasn't that. But I know that there are people who had listened to my podcast, who have purchased products that I've recommended through my affiliate link. I don't know and I can't track a lot of those things, although I do track some of it. But it's hard when you listen, or when people are listening to your podcast, but I'm 100% sure that people who I'd built a relationship with through my podcast have gone to my Resources page, have gone to my Getting Started page, who have gotten much value from what I've had to share with them. Have gone ahead and took initiative to purchase something that I've recommended or purchase something that I have as well.

So, Nicole I hope that helps you. Now there are other ways and other things beyond just products you can sell or put people into a funnel that leads to those things. You could perhaps do coaching or consulting, or things like that. So those are obviously things that you could … A podcast is a great way to build that relationship where people would want more, and want hand-holding. And if you sell the ability to have access to you, you can hold people's hand through certain processes and get paid for coaching and things like that. Consultations, whatever service-based visits that you have, there's a lot of ways to go about it. But I think podcasting is definitely a great first step in building that relationship that then leads to all those other things. So it's just essentially, a platform for then building your business off of. And a lot of times you might not know what those products will be, well, talk to your audience. Have them send questions over SpeakPipe.com. Have them send you emails. Even in your email autoresponder. I do this. Ask a question. Ask, “What are you struggling with?” in your email autoresponder. You're going to get countless number of emails back, replies from people who are telling you exactly what they need. And you can base a lot of your products, a lot of your blog posts, a lot of your upcoming podcast episodes, a lot of your guests who come on your show who you interview. You can base a lot of those things on the feedback that you get from your audience from that one simple question: “What are you struggling with?” or, “What can I help you with?” or, “What do you feel is missing that I can then add to, to help you out?”

So, Nicole, thank you so much for the question. This has been great. I really appreciate it, and an AskPat t-shirt is headed your way for having your question featured here on the show. For those of you listening, if you have a question you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask me right there on that page.

I also want to thank FreshBooks.com for being the simplest, easiest-to-use cloud accounting solution that's helping all of us—over 3 million small businesses actually keep track of our finances with professional, quick invoicing, in case you end up doing any coaching or consulting and things like that. FreshBooks makes it super easy to collect those payments. They also have an award-winning mobile app to help you check that status of your business on the go as well. And like I said, come tax season it makes it really easy to print out reports or send PDF reports to those who take care of your taxes if it's not yourself. So go to GetFreshBooks.com and enter “AskPat” in the “How did you hear about us?” section to get a 30-day free trial. Again, GetFreshBooks.com and enter “AskPat.”

And as always, I'd like to end with a quote. And today's quote is from somebody who's unknown actually, and that is, “To get something you never had, you have to do something you never did”. Keep pushing yourself. Take care, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Thanks.