How to monetize your podcast
Introduction
We will be listing the common methods that your podcast is able to make income through your podcast and brand. Before we get onto the list, one must know making money doing podcasts is a long and treacherous journey. You must be mentally ready to not make income for a while. A good first step would be creating an active community, a loyal fan base and strong brand awareness. We highly recommend engaging with your audience outside of your podcast. Now let's go through the list of money makers for your podcast!
1. Sponsorships
Finding a sponsor within your relevant niche will help you create many opportunities in generating income. Sponsorships will pay you depending on your Clicks Per Mille (Mille is thousand in Latin). Pricing the ad can depend on where you place it within your podcast. Many times you can charge more for mid-rolls as the audience is already captivated versus pre-roll and post-roll.
Addressing the elephant in the room, having a small audience would make it more difficult to land a sponsorship as opposed to having a developed community.
2. Direct support (Donations, premium content, merchandise, etc)
If you believe you can provide high quality and unique content that your audience wants, you can place a price tag on it. These content can range from downloadable content, bonus or early access episodes and more. Other times, many fans would be willing to donate to their favorite content creator to keep receiving more content. The most common method is through Patreon but other options like Paypal, Stripe or GoFundMe are also great.
3. Affiliate sales
Affiliate sales involve selling products or services but through a link. When your listeners click the link and purchase the product or service, you earn a commission from the sale.
Try to promote products and services that you believe in and reflect your brand. This would build trust and credibility with your listeners.
4. Monetization websites
Websites like Youtube pay their creators through ads throughout the video. However, your podcast is audio-only and makes it difficult for you to garner ads. Softwares like Podofly (product under Castofly) will automatically convert your podcast audio into a video with visuals that range from text, images and gifs. This frees up the workload of video editing while also helping you provide passive income.
Podofly - https://podofly.webflow.io/
Castofly - https://castofly.net/
5. Others (Courses, IRL events, consulting services, etc)
There are countless ways to generate income from your podcast. Sometimes it will just happen unexpectedly, so try your best and enjoy the journey of creating your podcast.
