5 Surprising Ways to Make Money from Your Podcast in 2024 | Ep 12

Ready to make money from your podcast? It's one of the first things people talk to me about when they launch a podcast, so I'm here to share the 5 surprising ways you can make money from your podcast and how it can be part of your long-term revenue stream in your business. 

The road to monetisation isn't an easy one, but there are more ways than just getting a sponsorship to bring in funds from your podcast, and I'll be talking about them today as well as the pros and cons that go with each so that you can decide how podcasting fits into your business model.

If you're a business owner with a podcast looking to unlock new revenue streams or a listener curious about the behind-the-scenes of podcasting success, this episode is a must-listen! 

Tune in to this episode of Big Vision Business Owners and discover the game-changing strategies that could redefine your podcasting journey. Subscribe, hit play, and let's explore the exciting world of podcast monetisation together!

Want to start a podcast? Download the FREE Podcast Starter Checklist, a 15-point guide created specifically for entrepreneurs, life coaches and course creators.

Music by Kadien: Instagram | Spotify | SoundCloud

Transcript

If they're listening, they're listening for a reason. And if you've designed your episodes well enough, then people are going to be listening because they're interested in the topics you talk about and therefore they're probably quite high on being potential customers in the future. Hello and welcome to the Big Vision Business Owners Podcast. This is the place for business owners that have a message that they want to share with the world. And we'll be talking on this podcast about how to get seen online, how to raise your visibility, and actually get your message out there so that you can have that impact on the world. We are all about creating a true connection with your audience, building a community around your podcast, what you do that feeds into your business that can lead to growth, leads, and more sales. And finally, we're all about changing the world, changing the way the world thinks by helping you to share your message so you can have that impact, leave that lasting legacy, and be part of greater change in the future. And I'm your host, Chantelle Dyson, who's here to do it with you along the way. I'll be sharing my expertise and experiences with being a Big Vision business owner, with being able to create content online, the clever way, which means not having to spend hours on your phone. And together we'll be looking at how we can raise your profile online to get your message seen and heard. And with that, let's get on with today's episode.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Big Vision Business Owners. And today we're talking about podcasting. For those of you that don't know, podcasting is my area of expertise. It comes from the fact that I am a sound engineer by trade. My degree, the thing that I spent three years doing, is sound in theaters. Predominantly, I spent three years learning while also working in the West End on shows like, "Oh, what were the best ones? Were the ones I was there for the most? The big ones were Billy Elliot, We Will Rock You, Phantom. When I say big ones, but big ones to me. I've worked on plenty of others: Matilda, Miss Saigon, Merrily We Roll Along, Les Mis. Actually, I was at Les Mis quite a lot as well, quite a lot more than I can sometimes remember. And even now, I still get text messages asking me to come back. It's wild. And I'll go into more stories on the theater world in another episode, but that's where my background in sound comes from. And people always go to me, "Oh, you did math, then you were life coaching, and now you're teaching people podcast." Actually, it's a really good combination of all the last three things I did. I sound engineered, so therefore have the background of audio technical equipment, etc. I then was a math teacher, so teaching by trade is probably my actual superpower, let's be honest. And thirdly, I was a life coach, and I predominantly worked with people that have a message to share with the world, which quite a lot of those people end up as life coaches and therapists, etc. So that's where I'm starting out in terms of working with it.

So a podcast is on the rise in terms of people's popularity of coming up with their own, and we're seeing a lot of trending changes with podcasting. So I use the term "vodcast" a lot. A lot of people don't really love that term, and that's okay. Podcasting is becoming vodcasting. You will notice if you're watching on YouTube or you're seeing a clip of this on my Instagram that I record a video episode for my podcast. And I did that as a result of 18 episodes into the Single Girl's Guide to Life, I realized I probably needed that to help me repurpose the content in the way that the algorithms were really favoring at the time, which was video content. And video content still remains one of the most effective ways to get yourself out there, be seen by people. We're also now seeing that it's still an early game to podcasting. People in this industry, life coaching, therapist, it feels like everybody's got a podcast sometimes. Well, let me tell you, I know plenty of businesses of that nature in the wellness space or wider that don't have a podcast. And even then, some people have started them and they're not getting past the first few episodes, which is common in the podcasting industry. I think one of the... there's a stat around three episodes and there's a stat around the 10-mark episodes. So many people give up because podcasting is a very long game. You do not see, unless you are a celebrity already, you do not see an immediate reward in terms of even downloads for your effort. But this can be a great thing because when you're a small business owner, solopreneur, and you're actually just starting, and you're not necessarily a presenter, you're not someone that's used to being on camera or talking naturally scripted but unscripted, then actually having people that don't see your first few episodes can just allow you to breathe. That it's only 10 downloads, not 10,000 downloads.

So podcasting is becoming a really popular thing. They're predicting that live podcasting, if you read the Spotify podcasters report, it tells you a bit like Pinterest does its predictions for the year ahead, and TikTok did a report on content. Spotify did one for the podcasters, and it looked at the fact that live podcasting is going to become a thing. And this is really interesting, right? Because that means that podcasting is becoming broadcasting, becoming live broadcasts, whether they're audio or video. Is podcasting taking over from television? Is that what's happening? Because one of my clients informed me that Channel 4 didn't commission anything new last year, and they're not planning to this year because the money's not there yet. We're seeing this shift to on-demand television. We're seeing this shift towards being able to broadcast your own, and people are bored of seeing these very well-polished, finished-off podcasts. Well, hello, welcome to my podcast. And having these broadcasted shows, as it were, that are unique to the person. You're not necessarily a veteran presenter. You're not somebody that's got an exact script. I'll tell you now exactly what I've got in front of me. I've got the five things that I want to cover today in the episode, maybe an idea for the title of this episode. I vaguely know what I need to talk about. What you're hearing now is totally unscripted, per se. And maybe you prefer that style. You don't want it to feel like someone stood there with a cue card or reading off of an auto cue. And you want that rough and ready feel. And from a business perspective, if that's the way it's going, then it's great to be at the early adopter stage or that first wave rather than being there when it really is more and more popular and oversaturated. There's an advantage to getting in there early. And I think 2024 is still early, and it's going to be the ones that do it well that stand out and that stick with it that are going to have the impact. If you can stick with it but iterate, you can't stick with it, see that you're only getting five downloads and do nothing about that. If you're only getting five downloads and that's not enough for you, which is perfectly fine, we need to do something about it, whether it's promotion, whether it's PR, whatever it could be. And that's what I teach in my Podcast of Prospects program. It's all about bringing leads in, having got you set up with your podcast, got you thinking about your content. And we do all like stage one is let's get it ready, uploaded, and let's get you recording episodes. Two, let's get you comfortable on camera doing it more loosely. And then three, let's get super strategic. Let's get people and eyes on this podcast so that's all part of that program. And one part of it when people are inquiring with me about podcasts is how am I going to make money from it?

Now, yes, this episode is about putting a podcast into your business model and being able to make money from it. And I'm going to talk about five ways that you can do it. And I'm going to talk about what that means for businesses, for life coaches, etc., because you'd have heard people talk about what you can do with a podcast. And I want to tell you upfront what the reality of those things is to see if it really does suit your business and which one of those fits best. And you'll work out which one I think is best as a result of that. And that's what I focus on when I work with people who want to launch a podcast. So let's go through these. I've got five. Let's go through these five things. And then we can look at the side of it that presents the pros and cons, the challenges. And I want you to be able to evaluate that and come to your own conclusions, which hopefully match mine from a business perspective. Other people, things are going to work for better or worse. But let's kick off with number one. So number one is sponsorship. Sponsorship is essentially an advert. This podcast is being sponsored by blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You would have heard it probably on your favorite podcast, the biggest ones that exist. For Dr. Rong and Chas feel better, live more. There was, and I can't remember the name of the brand, but there was a trainer or a shoe that he was associated with. Steven Bartlett springs to mind instantly that it is Hugh. Jetts had a couple of different ones. I believe he's had Blinkist, which is a reading book platform. He has also promoted, I'm sure of it, his own drinks on there as well. And you'll notice that Steven Bartlett, Hugh, I believe he's an investor in that, and he often talks about different things that he believes in or has even tried himself. So lots of people get sponsorship, and sponsorship is really nice if you've got these companies with mutual investments in one another, kind of thing. And there's a trade-off of both that it's something that the host is genuinely interested in or it very much fits with their brand. And the brand is obviously getting leverage from that person, that host putting it out there and endorsing it, essentially. But also that it's aligned with the program.

While I never achieved a sponsorship for the Single Girl's Guide to Life, given the clientele, I always thought, "Oh, how wonderful would it be to either get a dating app or you could go down the adult toy industries, how I'll phrase it." Now, the reason I couldn't do the latter was because as a teacher, realistically, that's probably going to... It's a really blurry line for that. So I never pursued that idea. But people go out and get sponsorship deals, even when they are a smaller brand. You do not have to be at the level of the names that I gave you before. However, this is the reality of sponsorship. Sponsors want to get their products and services out in front of people, so they target, at times, they target the right people with the right podcasts to make that association with on the basis that probably the audience that people that are watching are going to be interested in that product because they're a certain type of person. They like that person for a reason, and they're there in their numbers. It is the same as putting an advert on during X Factor on Prime Time television when it used to be at the program to watch every Saturday night. It was going to cost the most, but it was also going to get you the biggest exposure.

When you are starting a podcast, your numbers are generally, unless you already have a following, fairly low. That doesn't mean you can't chart quite well if you do enough good work with the community in the background, but big names are generally looking for a certain number of downloads per episode in the first week or if not the first 30 days. That, therefore, can make that quite challenging. That said, if you can find a smaller brand that doesn't have the budgets of these people, but maybe you can offer them what we call a baked-in ad. Some ads roll into an episode and change all the time; they're called Dynamic ads. So if you did happen to get sponsorship, you could literally run it and say, "Your sponsorship is from January to June of this year. It's going to be x amount of money, and for every episode that plays, there's a little intro readout by you talking about the product, saying how much you love it, and it goes from January to June. But once June is up and the contract is over, they're not giving you necessarily any more money unless they renew, and you'll do all the terms again. But then the advert disappears; that was it. They got the leverage of whatever downloads were got in 6 months. However, when you're starting out, you can offer what we call baked-in, so they're actually recorded into the episode and they never go, and that means that the company investing in you, who doesn't really know if you're going to be a success or not, is taking a little bit of risk. It means the sponsorship is lower, but it does mean you've got some sponsorship coming in, and it does mean that if you do get a popular show that does keep building and rising and they believe in what you're doing, then they get to be a baked-in ad that stays forever. And that's a way to negotiate sponsorship. So it's being well aware that numbers do matter for that one, and you've got to think about what type of situation you can offer. This comes down to reaching out to Brands, getting in with people that have the power to decide on those things, getting to those teams. You're going to be targeting a number of people and getting a lot of NOs in that scenario. But if you can find a nice fit small brand, maybe you know them personally, it might work.

The second way that you can make money from podcasting is through merchandising, selling products linked to the podcast, linked to you, linked to the brand, whatever way you've set up your podcast to fit. You can actually have products, just like if you went to a gig and you wanted to buy the T-shirt or you wanted to buy the hoodie. Extortionate prices for some of those things sometimes, but it's the same principle as that. This takes on another level because you have to decide what merchandise it is and why people would want that merchandise. Maybe it is for the super fans of the world. I'm thinking of who are the people that buy the merchandise at gigs, at concerts, and then from all the podcasts I know, who are the people that I think those pieces of merchandise are targeted at. I can say I've never bought merchandise from a podcast before, trying to think. I'm more likely to have been given promotional clothing and items as a way of them getting me to use it sometime or it's a reminder. If a pen is in your pencil case, it's just in your bag, and you see it, and you go, "Oh yeah, I remember that company." I remember that. So it's slightly different, but merchandise, therefore, means that you've got to think about how the merchandise is produced. You've got the outlet initially to think about. So if you are going to go down a T-shirts or hoodies route, one, I really hope that your podcast has an interesting name that people want to then have as a little icon in the top corner or plastered all over the back. So it's up to you. You could choose pens; you could choose notebooks. You could choose something that relates. But then you're having to sell something, and if you are a business that is selling products anyway and services, how much else do you want to have to sell? Unless you're going to advertise it, it's very unlikely that people are going to click on those links and buy them just like that. Merchandise is cool, but again, it really relies on a very, very strong community who want it. When I think of somebody like Lisa Johnson who, as far as I'm concerned, has a very strong community, good podcast to my understanding, I haven't seen merchandise. And when we're thinking about businesses and looking at ourselves and where we want to be in the future and what we want to do, I believe that if someone like Lisa Johnson thought that merchandise was a good idea, she'd have it. And I could be wrong; she might have it, but I don't know if it's the kind of thing she's pitched and just got naturally on her podcast or not. The only one that's really sticking out to me that has merchandise really specifically is Diary of a CEO. And even then, I, as a very big Derso fan, it often gets mentioned on these podcasts. I don't feel compelled to buy a hoodie with DOAC on it. So it's this balance of how do you create that Super Fan energy where like Taylor Swift, you're going to want to buy it, and you want the special editions. You've got to create a bit of a fandom sometimes, a real commitment to the brand, to the podcast, to have that interest. By all means, it can work; people will pay more for certain things, especially if they're exclusive. There's only one of these, only 10 of these, etc. But it's a whole different mechanism to think about.

Number three is kind of two versions; it's either a membership or a premium version of the podcast. A really good podcast that does this is called Multiamory, and they do this through Patreon. Initially, quite a lot of people do, but they actually offshored that to a Facebook community. And once you're in the community, you get to ask questions with other people that are clearly part of this world. Multiamory is all about different formats of relationships, and depending on each podcast, quite a lot of podcasts go down this model where they either offer extra content or extra opportunities to speak with the hosts or a community that goes alongside it. And that's great if you've got the time for it and you've got the community for it. So it doesn't need as much of a Super Fan D, but it does mean that this is suited for podcasts that offer a space for people where you're not already offering a free space. Many of us in business have free groups; I've got a free group you can join. It's called Big Vision Business Owners. It's for people to talk about having a big vision when you're starting small and trying to get it to that point and predominantly talking about mindset in business. But content strategy, obviously being a place for people to ask questions about that. Now if you're going to go down the paid group, you've got to make it significantly more valuable than a free group if you've got both. Or is it just going to saturate the market, and you've got to think what can I offer that is essentially like a one to many models because you're not teaching a course, it's different to having a one to many program, but it very much is working on the fact that they're supporting you. Maybe they're doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, like some people do it and form it as more of a donation, and here's something you get back for donating. But how much does the community run itself? How much work is it going to take at the first bit to get people interacting on in that community and asking questions, etc. So community building is an aspect to go down. What's nice about that is it's often like a monthly right. So you get that income on a monthly basis; it's recurring. And that's what attracts a lot of people in. So it's a case of thinking how can I make that work in my ecosystem without making it too much work? You're going to need some numbers to keep feeding that. So if you've got a following and you're bringing out a new podcast, that's cool. Let's utilize the email; let's get people in, and let's get people in a sort of a medium-paid membership where Community is needed. So if you're trying to connect people together, this can be a really nice way. The Single Girls Guide to Life used to have the Single Girls Club, which was an online membership that supported that.

Retention is quite an interesting one to have to tackle because you've got churn, which means how many people join, but then how long they stay for, how many people leave, and what's your percentages on that. So something to contemplate there if membership's there. Now number four is interesting, and I got one for this, and I don't think necessarily it was just the podcast, but the podcast helped the ecosystem for this. And this is speaking gigs and appearances, which a lot of people that I work with want to do. They're the kind of people that want to do a TED Talk one day. And being on a podcast is a really nice way to practice talking to being on a panel and you're talking live, filtering yourself, saying the right things at the right time and also then having the opportunity to practice storytelling and to think about structure and how I get people to think about things and consider what I'm saying. And that's the beautiful thing about podcasting in general; all of that is in the podcast project program. It's all in our presenting section, things about how we storytell impactfully and impact on people's lives to make them change the way the world thinks, literally.

But there are opportunities where having a podcast elevates your status as a speaker if you are somebody that is looking to go out there and talk on stages in groups on panels. Having the podcast there makes it so much easier for somebody to say yes, we want this person or even to find you themselves and go, I want that person at our event because they can see what you're like. If you're doing a video anyway, they can see what you're like on camera, or they can at least hear what you're like to talk to. And you can achieve this by actually going on other people's podcasts, doing an interview and showing that you can have a conversation because that's the biggest worry for people when they're booking people is that if they don't know or haven't seen that person themselves, how do they know that they're not going to be a load of rubbish the minute they step on stage? Whereas if you've got a podcast, and it's less direct, the other methods are more direct methods because you've got someone paying you to do something or you're selling something, membership or merchandise. This is the opportunity creating section of podcasting.

I got a number of invites to interviews they weren't necessarily paid but they were brilliant for backlinks and for raising my profile online creating a digital footprint. And while that may not lead to direct sales in terms of people becoming aware of it, it led to followers. PR is great. PR can really elevate your status.

The problem I had is that I got PR opportunities coming my way through my content, through the podcast early on. I didn't really know what to do with them, not going to lie, didn't know how to utilize them best or have things set up to get people into my world as a result of that exposure. But you can get a speaking gig from talking, and it gives people that confidence.

One of mine was speaking at a single Valentine's Day event, the idea of friendship and community, which worked really well for the single girls club. I was paid for it. I thought it was wild that you could get paid that amount of money for being on a panel which lasted maybe 30 minutes, and there were four of us plus a host. So how much am I talking for that time? Not loads, but it's these events, the budgets these people have.

Please don't downplay yourself if anybody, whether you've got a podcast or not, whether anybody comes to you and offers you a speaking gig, please don't downplay your fee. I went in high. Thankfully, my brother works in this industry, so he advised me to go in on something. They told me it was down at something, and he was like, go back to them and say this, and I did that. They were adamant on their price, and we evaluated it together. We were like, okay, that's fine, but I at least know I tried.

I have no doubt, well, I have no doubt that I couldn't have done any more without feeling like this was going to become a point of contention. So always realize that people have budgets and they should cover travel. And they should think about that for you. And if you're actually preparing a speech, all of the time that it takes you to prepare that needs to be factored in too. So a less direct way of making money from a podcast, but it is something you just can't predict when it's going to happen unless you Outreach to actually do a gig.

But generally, it's going to be coming into you. You can Outreach and use your podcast to support that, of course, you can. I'd love to talk at your event. I'd love to be on the stage. It's like you can find an agent if you want, but this is the way of doing it when you're on your own. And then we come to lastly. Lastly is selling your own products, which technically, you could call the membership. But when I spoke about the membership model using Patreon, etc., that's a different membership model to if you've got your own membership that's different to the podcast.

When I talk about Patreon, people are wanting to be part of your podcasting world. And Multiamory L, she had a Multiamory Facebook group, right? That's what that was. If I were to do it—I mean, I do. I have a big Vision business owner group, but I don't have it as a membership. I see that as a lead magnet to get people that are of that same value set, bit of market research as well when you've got your own membership.

So if I was going to have one, it'd be a Content creation club membership. I don't have an official one yet, but in my head, it was always like what an idea or a podcast membership where you monthly it gets you set up. To me, it doesn't quite work, but that's the kind of thing I'm talking about when you have your own products. And of course, you've got your coaching services, therapy services, whatever it might be, your programs to sell.

Your podcast is one a place to be able to promote your PO products to people because if they're listening, they're listening for a reason. And if you've designed your episodes well enough, then people are going to be listening because they're interested in the topics you talk about. And therefore, they're probably quite high on being potential customers in the future.

So therefore, talking about your products online, you don't even have to ask for direct sales. You're positioning your products, you're mentioning your services as you go, and getting people to become aware of the fact that they exist without it feeling salesy. The other thing is that all of your content, as many of you have heard from me before, all of your content for a podcast can be repurposed to raise your profile online and thus bring people into the world, get them to know you.

So if a lead comes in through networking or just through a lead magnet that isn't the podcast, while they're still early days in the phase of moving through to possibly become a customer at some point, the podcast is a really nice way for them to start to get to know you, to start to get to know your products, what you offer, what you are about, and allows them to make the decision as to whether they want to buy from you at some point.

And yes, you can do an episode literally talking about the benefits of what working with you is. And you wouldn't do it titled that. You talk about the transformation that the client is going to get from working with you. And you featured that in an episode whereby in the middle of it, you mention an offer very clearly and specifically, or you mention a challenge. And it all leads to all these different people being exposed to it because it's all well and good posting a post on Instagram, saying I'm doing a challenge next week. Well, out of your three, 400 followers, how many of those are actually active? How many of them actually see what you've posted?

So we've got to utilize email lists and how do we do that? Well, obviously, send an email. How many people open it or not? They send a second email. How many people open that or not? And the same is then the podcast. The podcast could be brand new people that aren't following you at all, or it's starting to just triangulate everything. It fits in with it all. Now, of course, with that one, it takes time. We're going to be looking at doing a podcast regularly and consistently. And sometimes you're going to be directly selling it, thinking about sign up to this, sign up to that. Here's the link to do this. And other times, you might have noticed it in this episode. You're going to be like name-dropping your products and services, talking about what it means to work with you, talking about what kind of people you want to work with, talking about what gets mentioned, what gets taught, what gets expected or delivered as a result in your products and services, as a result of working with you.

So none of those are wrong, but a number of them rely on high numbers for different reasons. Sponsorship requires high numbers because brands are looking for those clicks, those downloads, etc., even though micro-influencers, Nano-influencers are becoming better return on investments, actually. So that might be shifting tide. You might find there are more brands that are prepared to put a sponsorship on you even without superbly high numbers.

Merchandise, you want a superfan membership. You're going to need numbers, and you're going to think about churn, retention. So again, numbers need to be high. The other two methods, which are my preferred methods, don't rely on high numbers, which is why they're great, because you can start looking at them trying to create those opportunities now. But as a result, you're not going to see necessarily the money as instantly, and it's not as direct. So it's even harder to track because if someone started following you because of your podcast, that's fabulous. But six months later, they buy. Are they even going to remember that they found you through the podcast? And are you ever going to know that information? It's very hard to know exactly where people have come from for speaking gigs and for the podcast.

And therefore, it's not straightforward to track, but they are the things that you should be focusing on because when you come to me and say, I want to sponsor for my podcast, I'm like, we haven't even launched it. We don't even know what's really working. A lot of podcasters are very aware that six months is your minimum investment of time before you even start like working out what really works because unless you're releasing an episode every day, you're only going through it once a week. And so six months in is 26 episodes. But with every episode you release, you can always be moving people through to sell your own products.

And once you've made an episode, it's a bit of an investment in yourself and your business because it's an asset. Maybe this is going to create a list of trainings that are going to go out on an email one day. And people can—you can literally tell people what to listen to if they want to learn about podcasts. I can give them a list. If they want to learn about saving time on content creation, I can give them a list on XYZ. And suddenly, again, I've not directly sold a product. But if someone enters my email list, clicks through because they do want to start a podcast and they listen to three, and they're like, oh my God, I love this, and I know I need one, I know I want to get going. I'm going to download that course or hm, I think I can work it out from these episodes how to actually get it online and do that, but I think I need help planning it.

Hm, I'm going to book a strategy session. Well, I'm going to book a podcast of prospects, whatever it might be. So a podcast is an investment of time. There are a number of ways to make money. Some of them require numbers. Some of them require strategy. And I work on the strategy, organic, long-term gain. And if and when you hit the numbers, that's when you start bringing in potential sponsorships. And by all means, Outreach to people in the meantime because you never know what little brand might want that.

But to make it your main focus and think that's how you're going to get your money back on your podcast is a little bit of a naive assumption when most of you in business have plenty of things to keep promoting rather than a membership or your own merchandise and just to stick with getting known for what it is you do. So I hope that gives you an insight into how podcasting can fit into your business model, make you money, and allow you to have another income stream or a way of promoting your products and services in your business.

Until next time, everybody, keep changing the way the world thinks one podcast at a time.