AP 0914: When Should I Monetize My Podcast? Where Do I Find Sponsors?

AskPat 914 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 914 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week.

We have a great question coming in today from Denaye, let's get right to it, here she is.

Denaye Barahona: Hi, Pat, thanks for taking my question. My name is Denaye Barahona and I have a blog and podcast called Simple Families. I just launched my podcast about two weeks ago and I've quickly moved up. I'm right now sitting at number four in the Kids and Family Category, which is growing much faster than I anticipated. I wanted to hear from you about monetizing a podcast. At what point, with how much traffic should I try to start seeking out sponsorships? Also, I'm curious where to find sponsorships. I know with a blog it's much easier to join ad networks and it's a little bit more straightforward that way, but I'm not sure how much to charge or even how to go about getting sponsors for a podcast. Your help would be very much appreciated. Thank you.

Pat Flynn: Hey Denaye, thank you so much for your question, and first of all, congrats on your show. It's cool to see shows in different niches do well, especially in Kids and Family, which is really important to me. SimpleFamilies.com is your website, just go there if you want to check out her stuff.

Thank you for the question because I think monetizing your podcast is really important. A lot of people create a podcast as just a side hobby and that's cool, and even if your podcast is a side thing I still think you should be generating an income from it. There's many different ways to do it, which I'll talk about in just a minute, and it's not like selling out or anything like that. You deserve to get paid for this free content you're creating on a show that's giving you massive exposure, helping you build amazing relationships with your audience. There are people out there who want to help you and there are, like I said, many different ways to start a podcast. Some people start it for launching their business, that's how they get initial exposure, and then they begin monetizing it with a plan in mind in terms of a business or product that they want to offer or services that they want to offer, that kind of thing. There's many ways to go about it.

Here is the thing, seeking out sponsors in advertising, that's just one method to do it. You can start fairly early on, although I will say for those of you just starting your podcast now, especially the new students who are in Power-Up Podcasting, if you're listening to this, it's my brand new course, you won't be able to do it very easily until you are about six to eight weeks in, because advertisers are going to want data from six weeks prior to see, “Okay, well, how many downloads does this show get?” That's what sponsors and advertisers want to know. How many people are going to be listening to the message that you're going to share related to their brand? It's not easy to do it right away, but you don't need absolutely large numbers to get started. This is sort of the myth, a lot of people think you need 50,000 downloads per month in order to even have advertisers look at you. Well, that's not the case because . . . It's the case if you want to work with certain companies that will be the middleman between advertisers and sponsors; they only want to work with people who have a lot of downloads, but you don't even need to use them, you don't need to share your profits with them.

What you could do is go directly to companies that you already work with and see if they have the opportunities to—or if they have interests in actually coming on and having the opportunity to come on your show in different ways. There's the pre-roll, which is before the episode, there's the mid-roll, which is during the middle of an episode, and a post-roll, which is during the end parts of the episode. You can also offer other things in addition to those spots on the show. For example, an email blast or a link on a website, a link in the show notes, all those kinds of things. There's a lot of things that you can add in terms of value you're offering to a sponsor beyond just the audio content itself, which will allow you to charge even more.

How much could you charge? Well, it's based on a CPM Model, which is a Cost Per Thousand Downloads Model, and that's what CPM stands for, the M is like the Roman Numeral for a thousand. You can get anywhere between $20 and 50$ CPM. Let's say you have a 1,000 downloads per episode and you're collecting $30 CPMs. For each episode that comes out you're making $30, now multiply that by 4 if you come out with an episode a week, well, then you have $120 as a result of just a 30 second to 60 seconds ad spot on your show. You charge higher CPM for more that you give them, less for the—it's based on a case by case basis too when you go about this way and you don't use a middleman. You very much can negotiate here and offer different things and to pull for a higher price if you'd like.

Again, the important part with advertising as well is not just the numbers that you have, but the targeted audience that you have. For me, if I were to advertise on the show I would much rather advertise to 1,000 highly-targeted people who I know will be perfect for my product versus a million people and just hope that randomly some of them are going to be interested in my stuff. You can pitch the targeting of your audience as well and the quality of those people who are listening not just the quantity. That's the first thing.

Now there are other ways to go about getting monetization on your show as well. It's not just through advertising and sponsorships, but you can actually sell your own products too. If you have your own coaching programs, your own information products, your own physical products, you can actually directly sell them on your show as well if you like. For example, how I've mentioned Power-Up Podcasting over the past few days here, PowerUpPodcasting.com is my brand new podcasting course if you want to start one. You could check it out at PowerUpPodcasting.com. See how easy that was?

Now many people take a little bit longer approach. You know, I know that I have an audience here who's followed me for a while in AskPat, I almost can tell that it's okay for me to share things every once in a while because I have sort of earned that, but over time you might want to actually develop a more automated approach to selling that isn't so direct. It allows you to sell things to people after a little bit of a conversation outside of your show. For example, collecting people's email addresses based on a topic and then having people receive a number of emails. In the meantime that leads into a pitch or a webinar registration, and then there's information there, and then a pitch. There's many different ways to go about selling your own products there as well.

One of my favorite ways to go about it is to actually invite students of my course on my show and have them talk about what they went through, and the struggle that they had and how much the course helped them. That will naturally come out in conversation, and it doesn't even become a pitch for the product as well, it just becomes a giant testimonial that's very honest. Actually if you listen to the recent episodes of Smart Passive Income this week, you'll know that three students of mine were featured in one single episode to talk about, not only the beginning journeys that they've had in their podcasting career and what it's done for them and the results that they've gotten already as brand new students, but they couldn't help but talk about the course and how much it's helped them. It's so much more valuable than me just going on saying, “Hey guys, this is how great my course is,” when you have your own students come on and invite them. I mean, they're going to be fired up, they're going to feel like it's an amazing opportunity and they're going to make you look good. Utilize that strategy if you have a podcast, it's an amazing way for your existing students to help you bring new customers in. Obviously get their permission to do that first, obviously.

You can also utilize affiliate marketing. In a similar way you're promoting products or services or tools or programs of some kind, but they're not ones that you create. That's the benefit, you actually don't have to spend the time—which it does take a lot of time to create products. You don't have to spend the time to create them. There are products out there in this world that exist, that your audience is likely already using or would love to use, and maybe you're using these as well and this is affiliate marketing, this is when you share or recommend a product and as a result, if people go through that link you will earn a commission.

Now you need to be upfront with affiliate links on your show, in your blog, whenever, you need to let people know that— especially if you're in the US—that is an affiliate link and you are compensated for that. There's no problem with that; I think honesty is always the best policy anyway. Plus, a lot of people will be like, “Oh, I can pay you back by going through your link, and it's at no extra cost to me.” I mean it becomes a no brainer for people if you've provided value.

Now one of my favorite tips for affiliate marketing with a podcast is to just talk about a process. Don't talk about the product itself, but talk about a process where that product was used and it just essentially becomes one of the steps of many, in an overall process to help some of your audience members achieve a certain goal that they want. It just becomes a very natural way, again, to promote another product that's not yours and you can generate quite a bit of commission through that. I mean affiliate marketing has been the number one thing I've done for the last eight years to help me generate an income. If you select a product that's great and you are working with a great company who you know is going to take care of that person once they click over, and then they are taking care of them from there, well then it's a win for everybody which is really cool.

Finally, there is a really cool model which I call the PBS Model. I talk all these monetization models more in-depth in my course Power-Up Podcasting, but I love this model specifically, although I don't do this right now, although I have had a lot of people ask me to go down this route. I interviewed a person named Jack Conte, who is the founder of Patreon, that is a tool that allows you to create and set-up a PBS Model, PBS Model, Public Broadcasting System Model. What is that model? That's one where it's funded by viewers like you, and that's where you collect money from your audience as a result of like a pledge or like, “Hey, I'm a fan of your show. I'd love to give you a dollar for every episode you come out with.” Now that might not seem like a lot, but what's really cool about this is it allows your audience to help pay you back. It doesn't cloud your show with advertisements or sponsorships or products, it really is just a way for your raving fans to pay you back in a quick and easy way. They may pledge, for example, $1 per episode that you come out with, and maybe you come out with 4 episodes a month, $4 a month from some of your biggest fans, which isn't much at all, and when you multiple that by a 1000 listeners, well then you're at $4,000 a month at that point, and it's recurring. It becomes an amazing way, like I said, for your audience to come together and feel like a part of the process, and you can thank them. You should if you go down that model, the tool to do that once again is Patreon, it's just really cool.

I actually interviewed another person on that same episode— we'll link to it in the Show Notes, I believe it was Episode 188, another person who is actually a podcaster who utilized that and he's making thousands of dollars through his episodes, for every episode that he comes out with, which is really awesome. Anyway, a lot of stuff to go in there and we're already at the ten-minute mark; I don't want to keep you because these AskPat episodes are short, but this is why I love podcasting, because of these opportunities that become available, not only to monetize but to build an amazing relationship with your audience.

As you can see by listening to AskPat or if you listen to SPI, it just becomes an amazing platform for so many opportunities that can come your way. I hope you will give podcasting a chance in your life, and I want to be that person who is the guide to help you along the way. If you're interested in starting podcast of your own, right now available through midnight, Monday the 24th, is my brand new course PowerUpPodcasting.com. It's not only going to help you learn how to launch and set it up with all the tags and all the equipment in editing software, I'm going to help you do that, and I'm going to make it really easy for you. I feel like that's my super power, but more than that I'm going to help you learn how to market and launch your show, and launch it the right way to get the most eyes and ears on it as possible. That's what my specialty is. Go ahead and go to poweruppodcasting.com, sign up there. There's also available, for those of you who just aren't into course work or feel like you're just too impatient for that, there's a two-day workshop happening at the end of September that I'm holding in San Diego for those of you who want the fast-track to that as well. Obviously it's a higher price point because it's two-day intensive, but I'm offering that for the first time. I'm interested to see how that goes. If there are still spots available, there might not be, it's only limited to fifty for this first time, but you can see that on the sales page as well at PowerUpPodcasting.com.

Anyway, thank you so much. Denaye, thank you so much for your question today. I appreciate you, I want to send you an AskPat teeshirt for having your question featured here on the show and good luck to you. Looking forward to hearing about your results. For those of you listening, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show as well, just head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask it right there on that page.

Cheers, thanks so much, I appreciate you and here's a quote to finish off the day by Mia Hamm, “Take your victories, whatever they may be, cherish them, use them, but don't settle for them.” All right, take care, and I'll see you next week in the next episode of AskPat. I appreciate you all. Bye.