12 simple ways to make money from your podcast.

Once you begin building an audience for your podcast you are faced with the question – how can I make money from this? You have a group of listeners, a great concept, and dedicate a chunk of your weekly time to this hobby. This is why we have put together a list of ideas to help you out. Below are 13 great ways to make money from your podcast.

Find Advertisers

Once you have an audience, advertisers are a great way to start monetising your podcast. The best way to approach this is by marketing brands that have something in common with your audience. For example, if you run a technology based podcast, try and find companies within this field. It means that your listeners are more likely to buy what you’re selling.

An easy way to approach this is by contacting companies that connect you to advertisers directly. A great example is Midroll. They specialise in connecting both sides. The company understands the benefits to both parties and makes it an easy, stress-free process.

Find Sponsors

Sponsors are another way to make money from your podcast. They will help fund your show. However, keep in mind that the sponsors represent your podcast as well. So when choosing, make sure the sponsored message reflects your own beliefs and those of your show.

Crowdfund

Your listeners understand that creating a brilliant podcast takes time and effort. It’s a hobby but studio time, research and finding guests for your show means you have to spend. There’s never any harm in asking your audience to help out.

The idea of crowdfunding is received small donations from a large group of people. Go Fund Me is a good platform to crowdfund. The set up is simple and the platform has a large reach. This could be a useful place for you to start. Don’t be shy and ask your listeners to help if they can!

Sell some branded merchandise

You have an idea, a following, and a great show. Once you have this all hooked in, mix things up and create some branded merchandise. This can end up being a fun activity because it will give you a chance to be creative and then get rewarded for it.

The Guilty Feminist merchandise is a great example of what you could do. They use their most famous slogan on a number of different items such as mugs, aprons and notebooks.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is when you get a commission by referring listeners from your platform to another brand. For example, it could be giving your audience a referral code and say ‘sign up with the code and get $5 off!’. Once they sign up, you will also gain a profit for referring customers to the brand. It’s a win-win situation for all parties involved!

If you wanna learn more, read this guide to gain a better understand of how to use affiliate marketing to make money from your blog.

Sell tickets to live shows

This is becoming an increasingly popular way to monetise podcasts. As audiences grow, podcasters have begun renting out theatres and doing live shows. They are still recorded and posted but there is the added element of a live audience. Selling out those theatre seats can be a good way for you to make money from your podcast.

Create premium content

This creates a level of exclusivity for your listeners. Give your super fans some extra perks. This could be a number of things:

• Extra interviews
• Behind the scenes
• Free events
• Discounts on merchandise

By having listeners pay a small members fee, you could give them loads of cool perks in return. Those are only a few ideas of what you could offer your audience.

Use Youtube

Youtube is a great platform to use if you want to make money from your podcast. Joe Rogan, who runs one of the most popular podcasts, uses Youtube as a secondary streaming platform for his audience. It allows listeners to see a behind the scenes by viewing the show. This seems to be a very popular method amongst listeners. The more people watch the Youtube videos, the more you’ll earn from the podcast.

Coaching and consulting

This will depend on what time of podcast you’re running. However, it could be a very effective method. Say you’re running a fitness podcast. You could offer coaching sessions to listeners who are willing and able to pay for it. Also, you could run consultations. So imagine you want to make a meal plan guide for your listeners. You could book them in for a 30 minute consultation to see how it’s working out and give them your own advice. This is only one example. There are endless possibilities on extra services you could offer to monetise your podcast.

Write books

This can be a big task so if you decide to do it, keep that in mind. However, it is very rewarding. It can be an amazing creative outlet and may allow you to explain yourself better than you can in your podcasts. This will give you a chance to dive deeper into the topics you discuss on your show. If the book sells well, this can be a huge opportunity to make money from your podcast. This is one of the harder and more time consuming tips but trust me, it will be worth it.

Sell online courses

Take your expertise and use it! This is another tip which does take time, but if you nail it, you’ll be able to profit from your online courses. The best thing to do is relate this back to your podcast. If your listeners are already extremely interested in what you’re talking about, chances are, they’ll want to take an online course you’ve built. The reason behind this is because it’s all gonna be your content. A podcast is the audio version of content that you are creating. So take these ideas, and turn it into an experience that your audience can learn from.

Create your own community platform

Finally, this is an all-round solution to monetise your podcast. You can build an app for your community of listeners and have everything in one place. This would be a space for you to post your shows as well as selling online courses, selling merchandise and even posting sponsored content. All in all, this will allow you to combine a number of the methods about with the bonus of having all of it in one place.