Welcome back to Podcast Insider. I'm Mike Dell,
the VP of customer relations here at Blueberry.
And I'm Dave Clements from the support and
media team. Today, we're gonna be talking about
podcast monetization
because because that is something that is always
up for discussion no matter who you talk
to, and there's a lot of misinformation surrounding
it.
Yeah. There are a ton there there is
a ton of myths floating around about how
podcasters make money,
you know, kinda like you need to have
a huge
download
stat or the sponsorship's the only way. But
if you're not making money fast, you're doing
something wrong, you know, stuff like that.
Yeah. And today, we're gonna break down what
exactly works for independent podcasters based on what
we see every day in the space,
and how to approach them in a way
that makes sense for your show.
You're listening to Podcast Insider hosted by Mike
Dell, Dave Clements, and Mackenzie Bennett from the
Blueberry team, bringing you weekly insights, advice, and
insider tips and tricks to help you start,
grow, and thrive through podcasting
with all the support of your team here
at Blueberry Podcasting.
Welcome. Let's dive in. We'll start out with
the myth number one here. You need huge
downloads to make money,
and that's not always the case.
Yeah. It was kind of, like,
when when when I first got into podcasting,
that is
the thing that was, like, never
going to be achievable to me. It was
like, you need to have,
you know, hundreds of thousands of
downloads in order to
make money from it. And,
that's actually changed quite a bit.
And, you know, we'll talk a little bit
about,
programmatic advertising because that's kind of a good
way to
get started now in in
making money with your podcast,
because you can put ads in front of
your episodes,
and you can do that from day one.
And, sure, you may not make a ton
of money if you don't have a ton
of downloads,
but there can be some revenue
there.
Oh, yeah. For sure. And and, you know,
basically,
you know, it depends on your audience. It
depends on how focused they are. And, again,
this is, you know, just talking about advertising.
There's other ways of making money that we'll
talk about.
But,
you know, like,
I know of a particular
aviation podcast. They do not take ads. They
do not do anything of that sort.
But what they do do is they have
a value for value model,
which, you know, it's like Patreon or I
think they use Simplecast
or not Simplecast. I forget what it's called,
but it's a competitor to Patreon.
And
people support them because they like the content,
and they like the content without the advertising.
But,
you know, as as, is written in our
notes here, a focused audience of 500 loyal
listeners
can be more
valuable than 5,000
passive ones.
You know, kinda what works is,
you know, being in a niche that,
you know, you're one of few that are
are doing the type of content that you're
doing,
you know,
audience that trusts you. And,
you know, it just
you gotta
build the audience, and it doesn't have to
be huge. You just have to build it
in such a way that they trust you
or they wanna support you or you know,
there's lots of different ways of doing it.
Yeah.
Yeah. I guess, you know, we could move
on to our second myth, which is that
sponsorships are the only way to monetize. We've
already talked about two of them. Yeah. Exactly.
And, you know, I think a lot of
what we see in podcasting,
just because of the way that content is
consumed, I think a lot of us kind
of get the idea,
about sponsorships
through,
YouTube, honestly.
You know, we we I know Mike and
I watch a fair amount of YouTube between
the two of us. My main television.
Yeah. And we're always seeing, you know, like,
in video ads by those creators that are
like, you know, this episode is sponsored by
so and so. Here's the ad for it.
And so I think that we kind of
bring that into
what we assume
monetization is within podcasts.
But,
you you could do sponsorships where you actually
work with a company directly.
You can also do programmatic advertising, which is
not
sponsorship led.
But, again,
more ads for someone else's product.
But
one of my favorite ones is that value
for value or listener supported
model.
So you could do memberships,
donations,
premium content like Patreon. That's actually how,
we did
the D and D podcast I was doing.
We we started a Patreon where we gave
unedited,
sessions. So it'd be, you know, these two,
three, four hour long audio files, and people
loved them. So, you know, we started that
at, like, a dollar. And then we would
upgrade and do some other perks for, like,
5 or $10.
And that you know, our diehard fans, they
enjoyed it. And it was actually pretty successful,
you know, by our measurement.
Yeah. And some of these
imagine listening to five hour. But, you know,
people will Oh, yeah. Do things. You know?
Well, think of you like Twitch. You know?
A lot of the successful creators on Twitch
are playing video games for hours.
Yeah. And then, hey. You know, there there's
a there's generally you know, as as we
used to say, there's a butt for every
seat.
Yeah. You know, somebody's gonna like it.
Of course. And that that was a a
big surprise to us because,
you know, we were like,
well, we already have the raw audio, and
it gets assembled,
you know, after we record.
What if we gave that out? Would be
would people be interested in that? So we
gave that out at, like, $1. And,
I was actually really surprised at how many
people were like, yes. For a dollar a
month, I would love to have these unedited,
episodes where you got the goofs and you
got to see some of the behind the
scenes stuff. And
people really, really like that.
Right. Yeah. A couple other ways listed, and
there's other ones besides these as well. But,
affiliate marketing,
you know, I've I've seen that work really
well for some,
you know, some people. There's podcasts about podcasting,
which was a big while back. I don't
know if it's a big thing now. Yeah.
Of course, we're doing one. Right?
Right. Right.
But, you know, we could say, hey. You
know, buy this microphone and, you know, have
an affiliate link to the microphone at b
and h or something and, you know, maybe
make a little money doing that.
You know, that kind of affiliate marketing. You
know, selling our own services,
or selling your own services.
Now go ahead and talk about that one
too. Sorry.
No. I was gonna actually add on to
the affiliate marketing just to kind of plug
something that, as Blueberry customers, you may not
be aware of. So we have a partnership
with CodeADX,
and that's what they do is,
you can go through their platform
and sign up for affiliate
Mhmm. Codes and things like that for services
that you use
or or things like that. I just did
that recently
just as we were testing it out again,
after talking to the guy that runs Code
ADX,
at Podfest.
Yeah. So Yeah. That's a that you know,
that's a pretty underutilized.
We we are, working on reorganizing
things so that you guys can find that
stuff.
So but, yeah, that's, that's underutilized,
and, we'll we'll try to market that a
little better because that's a great way to
do it. You know, if you've got 30
people listening to you every episode,
but they're all really interested in a particular
subject and you find a product that really
fits that subject,
you might do pretty good with that. You
never know. But, you know,
another one is selling your own services.
You know, so if you're doing, you know,
your coaching, consulting, speaking, in our case, selling
podcast hosting,
you know, promote your own stuff.
That's another way of making money from a
podcast.
Go ahead.
Yeah. Sorry.
Yeah. Something else that, we see people do,
especially when they,
you know, get into like, if you're a
coach.
I know Mike talked about selling your own
services.
And even if it's not those one on
one things, you could do, like, paid courses
or digital products like PDFs.
Some of those are pretty low weight.
Yeah.
So they're, like, they're easy lifts. You know,
you can have those things and,
you know, either it's like, hey. For a
dollar, you can download PDF or you can
give it away for free, and that ties
into something else.
So that's something to consider.
And then finally,
events and community access.
If you are
again, I think this ties more into coaching,
but there are
there are creators who will do live shows
because their shows
are bigger.
And,
they'll they'll have, like, a you know, maybe
it's at Gen Con or at Podfest or
something like that. They'll have, like, some kind
of, like, paid event that you can go
to, hang out with
that podcaster or whatever.
I'm sorry. I keep going back to this
aviation show, but, they do two different things.
They do a fly in every year.
Yeah. And they pick an airport somewhere centrally
located, and, they encourage their listeners to fly
in,
or drive in or whatever.
And, you know, it's not a necessarily huge
moneymaker, but,
you know, there is some money to be
made with those kind of events.
Danny Pena,
I forget what his show he's a hall
of famer, but I forget what his show's
about. But it's most electronic stuff, and and
he puts on live events all over the
place and, you know, to come to those.
And Yeah. He does a pretty good job
with it.
Yeah. And I think a big takeaway for
this as well, I mean, really, just for
this entire
concept of monetization,
is
not to really get stuck in one
type
of income.
You know, maybe you do the
the listener supported stuff, but then maybe you
also
give away a course or a digital product
or something like that,
because it gives your audience options. And people
that wanna support you maybe, you know, maybe
they're not interested in the four hour
unedited version of your podcast,
but
they might be interested in, hey. Here's this
little ebook or something that I wrote. It's
a short story.
Here you go. It's $2.
You know?
Yep. And, well, let's go on a myth
number three here on our list.
Monetization
should happen immediately.
Oh, man.
That one that one, you know, it's kinda
sad. You know, when we've had,
you know, downturns in the economy,
I'll get somebody and say, hey. I need
to you know, I lost my podcast. Well,
it's not the time to start your podcast
because,
you know, you're not going to make money
immediately, generally. I mean, not that not that
it couldn't happen.
Right. It's highly unlikely.
Yeah. The odds aren't necessarily in your favor,
but you could you could, you know,
subvert those odds.
Yeah. Yeah. You know? And the thing is
is most people,
most podcasters,
and, you know, there are outliers and exceptions
to this, are not gonna get paid to
talk into the microphone.
That's that's not what you're getting paid for.
You're gonna get paid for marketing something to
your audience or selling something to your audience,
you know, that kind of thing
rather than, you know, I'm just getting paid
to talk into the microphone.
Ironically, Dave and I are getting paid to
talk into the microphone, but that's not Yeah.
This isn't all we do, though. Like No.
No. No. No. No. By the long shot,
This is a But but I think side
gig.
Yeah. This is almost like a perk of
the job is being able to, you know,
regularly do a podcast. Right. But I think
I think where this myth
I I wish we could just get rid
of it because
you have the the, like, you know, your
holy trinity of things you need to do
to really get the monetization train going, which
is consistent publishing,
having a clear message, and then having
good audience feedback and engagement. Not positive, but
also not fully negative,
because you have to build that value first,
and then the money comes in. And I
think,
I think
it's kind of the the age that we're
in is we're like, well, how can I
make money the fastest?
And we don't wanna put in the work.
And,
Yeah. It's a Put in the work. Yeah.
It's a it's a slog. I mean, you
know, building an audience
just by itself without worrying about money
Yeah. Is hard.
You know, you're you you know,
the competition isn't as
fierce as you might think,
because,
you know,
you know, like, I I watch a lot
of car YouTube, you know, a lot of
YouTubers that talk about cars.
But guess what? If I wanted to start
a YouTube channel about cars
and a podcast works the same way,
Yeah. There's a lot of competition,
but nobody does it like you do it.
Yeah. And some people will really gravitate
to you
versus
some other host. So, you know, it is
about the the work you put in. You
know? You put in,
you know, decent audio,
consistent publishing. You know? Be be clear
about what you're talking about, and
that usually works
over time. Yeah. Yeah. I was on Reddit
the other day. So if you're ever on
Reddit and you have a question in, like,
the podcasting subreddit, there are chances that you
will get some kind of comment from me
or Mike or Barry or someone on the
team,
because we're doing that now.
And I had somebody ask, well, how do
I how do I get this listener engagement?
And they hadn't even recorded their first episode
yet. And I was like,
you gotta put the content out first
because nobody wants to give you anything back
until you've earned it.
Yeah. It's you know, there's a lot of
things in podcasting that have to,
you have to actually have a podcast before
doing some of these things. Right. You know?
And then, you know, making any sort of
money from it is is one of them.
And and, yeah, on top of that, you
have to have the audience
already
Yeah. You know, for the most part.
It's another myth. I I hear this a
lot. Woah. Just put more ads in. I
I had one doing programmatic
that you know, our programmatic system works where
you have a pre roll and a post
roll.
And then you can also put up to
10
spots
inside your e each episode
for mid rolls.
And that, you know, that's all great, but
I never recommend more than one or two
in the mid rolls
at the most.
And Yeah. This person was complaining, well, I
I I wanna put four more in here.
You know? So they wanted 14 spots in
a thirty minute episode.
Oh, jeez. And I'm like,
dude, you you know, it's like watching you
know, if you ever watch Pluto TV, it's
the streaming
TV. Yeah. I mean, they have, you know,
two minutes of ads to every three minutes
of content. You don't want that in a
podcast.
You're gonna run your audience off.
Yeah. You know? Also, getting ads that have
nothing whatsoever to do with your subject matter
are not gonna work as well as ads
that are aligned with your subject matter.
Yep. You know? Just,
and even, you know, it's even better if
you use the product and endorse it yourself.
Mhmm. That's the best kind of advertising.
Yeah. I mean, those tend to pay better
anyway because they're,
like, you know, working with a sponsor.
But, yeah, I've I've seen people people do
that. There was there was one show.
I won't name names largely because I can't
I can't remember who it was. But you
would you would literally sit through,
like, anywhere from five to ten minutes of
ads
before the show really started. And it was,
like, gross. Like,
I don't mind ads. Like,
I would rather pay, yeah, I would rather
pay to not have ads. Like, I would
give a couple dollars for that. Yeah. But
One of the biggest podcasts out there would
do six minutes of ads prior to the
start of the show.
Yeah. I just
no. Thank you. I just wanna get in
and get out,
because we all got stuff to do with
our day. Even with a podcast, I don't
wanna sit there and listen to ads forever.
So, yeah, be very cognizant of
the kind of ads, you know. If it's
like a McDonald's ad in front of
your, you know, your pop culture podcast, which
is my my soup du jour,
Fine.
Whatever. But,
you know, try and be mindful
of of what it is. You don't want
a McDonald's ad in front of your,
you know, healthy lifestyle podcast. Your weight loss
podcast. Yeah. Yeah. And then to throw in
even more of them,
you know, you're gonna that's probably how you're
gonna lose your audience more than you'll actually
gain money.
So Yeah. You know, it's the same advice
I always give website
developers
about pop ups.
You know? Yeah. You're gonna
you know, pop ups, they they should be
but they work.
Well, yes. They work. You get 10
people a day sign up for your email
list on a pop up. Mhmm. But I
bet you there was 50 people there, and
40 of them said, screw this. I don't
even know who you. I'm not gonna give
you my email address.
You know? And, you know, same idea with
ads. You know? If you have relevant ads,
you know, and a whole bunch of them,
you know, eventually, people are just just saying,
I'm tired of hitting the fast forward button
Yeah. To get to the content. You know,
it's like in YouTube I've noticed on YouTube,
this is kind of
funny, I think,
is there's an ad
that's, you know, built right into the video,
so it's not one of their programmatic ads
from YouTube.
It's a it's an ad that, you know,
the host actually did.
And you go up to the scroll line,
and you'll see a little marker there. And
if you to that marker, it'll say skipped
over,
skipped over
I forget how they put it, but it's
basically well, everybody skips this section, so we'll
make a marker. Oh,
yeah. I know exactly what it is.
Yeah. I can't remember what it is. But
I'm Frequently,
frequently skipped content, I think, is what they
call it. Yeah. It's something like that, which
is funny.
Yeah. It's hilarious.
But, you know, it's just
you know,
people don't like ads that much.
You know, they'll they'll put up with relevant
ads. They'll put up with, you know, minimal
ads.
Mhmm. Yeah. Just more ads does not equal
more revenue.
It it actually equals less listeners.
Yeah. I I will I will say this.
If you are doing ads in your show,
and they're interesting, if you even if it's
like a, you know, a VPN ad, which
we see all the time over YouTube,
Sometimes,
there are some shows, and I'm talking podcasts.
I'm talking YouTube videos.
If they can do it
in a way that is entertaining,
I will sit there and I will listen
to the thirty seconds to minute and a
half
ad
because that's enjoyable, and it's still kind of
part of the content.
So there's maybe a way to kind of
subvert some expectations
when it comes to ads.
Right.
But,
alright. Let's go on to the
fifth thing on our list here,
the real monetization
formula for independent podcasters.
Like, we we know what we're doing here.
Oh, I hope so.
Yeah.
So, basically,
you know, successful independent podcasters usually follow, you
know, these these few things.
You know, define your clear audience.
You know, make sure you get to know
who your audience is or who you want
them to be, I guess, is is
another.
Build consistent
and valuable content. Again, make good content.
You know? And I'd you know, identify what
that audience
already spends their money on. It might be
a little harder to do. We have a
thing at Blueberry where you can set up
a
a survey,
and that'll tell you a little bit more
about your audience and you know, but you
gotta get them just to to fill it
out. So, you know, this is an audio
medium, so put the ask in the audio,
not a link in your show notes.
Yep.
And
and then, of course, you know, align the
monetization
with, you know, whatever need
that your audience comes up with.
Yeah. I think if, you know, going back
to what we talked about before, if if
you have a podcast where
some written content
would be the best way for your audience
to engage with you. Like, sure, they're listening
to you, but maybe you're an author, you're
a storyteller, something like that.
Having, like, an ebook or just a PDF
or, you know, some tips and trip
tips and tricks things,
you know,
that that will connect to that audience better
than having
minute and a half long ads for,
you know, whatever the most popular
mattress is.
Because in the early days of podcasting, I
know Mike probably remembers,
Casper mattresses were everywhere.
Like, everybody had a Casper
I have one. Sponsorship.
I never did. I wanted one,
but, just because I wanted a mattress.
Yeah.
But,
you know, people will get burned out on
the mismatched,
monetization
options, whether that's ads or if you're just
not offering,
quote, unquote, the right product.
It it just it needs to feel natural
and, like, you are choosing it.
Yeah. You know? Even even with programmatic advertising,
you can
trim down what categories,
that are being delivered to your show your
audience. So make sure you go through those
options. And
even if that means you only have one
category left, at least you know and you
can be confident
that your audience is getting something
that connects with your show. Right. You know,
just
podcast here's the beauty of podcasting.
It's not
just content. It's usually our relationship with your
listeners.
And that will, you know, by itself, create
some revenue opportunities.
You know, it's not about chasing trends or
copying shows. There's already a Joe Rogan podcast
out there. You don't need to copy Joe
Rogan. In fact, that probably won't work.
Right. You know, years ago, there was, John
Lee Dumas,
does a show still, E on Fire or
Entrepreneurs
on Fire or whatever he calls it.
And his formula is to ask the same
12 questions to to,
entrepreneurs, and it works for him.
But Mhmm. You know, we don't need 70
other whatever on fire podcasts.
Right. You know, it's just not gonna work.
So, you know, be yourself and create those
relationships,
and that's gonna help you grow your audience.
And the bigger the show, the easier it
is to monetize.
But that's not always,
you know, necessary
to bring in some money.
Yep.
So I guess we could wrap this up.
So if you take anything away from this
episode, you don't need to be huge to
monetize. You need to be intentional.
We definitely recommend that you focus on serving
your audience well.
And when you do that, the right revenue
opportunities are
gonna make sense. They're gonna show themselves
to you to put it in a
esoteric kind of way.
Right. And like I said, if you're not
sure where to start, look at what you're
already doing well,
you know, your expertise,
your niche, your community,
and that's your monetization
for,
foundation
rather than, you know, let's try something completely
new. You know? Just do what you do.
Yeah. Don't wanna blindside your audience.
Yeah.
So,
I I guess that's it. Thank you so
much for listening to Podcast Insider.
We will talk to you next week.
And, for the full show notes and, probably
some other stuff we didn't talk about here,
go over to podcastinsider.com.
Thanks for joining us. Come back next week.
And in the meantime, head to podcastinsider.com
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