What's the best way to monetize my podcast?
Welcome to the softer cast, a podcast for small business owners and creatives who want tender podcast advice without any tech or bullshit. I'm Amelia Hruby, and I'm the founder of softer sounds, a feminist podcast studio for women and non binary entrepreneurs. On this show, I answer your questions about podcasting. Things like, should I put my show on YouTube? Can I just record it on Zoom?
Amelia Hruby:How much do editors really cost? And how many downloads should my podcast be getting? Yeah, I'll even answer that question. Every episode of the softer cast is really practical, a little magical, and less than 10 minutes long. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the show and share it with your podcast bestie.
Amelia Hruby:Then head to the show notes to check out our free resources. No matter where you're at in your podcasting journey, we're here to support you. Join us on the softer side of podcasting. Hello, and welcome to the softer cast. I'm your host, Amelia Froube.
Amelia Hruby:And on this show, I answer your questions about podcasting with my signature gentle, no nonsense approach. I always like to say that at Softer Sounds, we bring a tender approach to the technical skills of podcasting, and I think that that is especially apparent here on the softer cast. And maybe the best part of all of it is that we do it in these bite sized episodes where you can ask a specific question, get a quick practical answer, and then go about your podcasting. In today's episode, I am answering the age old question, which is really not that old because podcasts haven't been around for that long. But anyway, the question I get all the time, how do I monetize my podcast?
Amelia Hruby:Let's get into it. When we talk about podcast monetization, I think that there are 3 primary strategies. The first is ads and sponsorship. The second is listener support, and the third is direct sales. And I've organized those in order from what I think is, like, the most heard of approach to what I think is maybe the least utilized approach, And that's also the order of what I think works best for big shows to what I think works best for small shows.
Amelia Hruby:So if you're listening and you have fewer than a 1000 downloads per episode, make sure you stick around to the end because I think those strategies are gonna be what works best for you. But let's kick it off by talking about ads and sponsorship. So an ad or a sponsor for a podcast is going to be a business or person who is paying the podcast to feature their product, service, book, whatever it might be on the podcast. Now it may be that they are providing an ad that's getting dropped in at the beginning, middle, or end of the episode, or it may be that the host of that show is going to somehow, like, talk about or endorse the product or ad. But, basically, this sponsor or advertiser is paying to be featured on the show in some way.
Amelia Hruby:And this works best when you have a large audience because, typically, advertisers will pay more to get in front of more people. Now there are exceptions for this. If you have a smaller show with a super specific niche audience that is really aligned with certain businesses, you might be able to make great money pitching sponsorship or ad packages to those businesses. But on the whole, you know, when we're hearing Squarespace ads or Casper mattress ads on podcasts, that's all being negotiated through networks, and they are looking for somewhere between 10,000 a100000 downloads per month in order to place ads on your show. Our second method for podcast monetization is listener support.
Amelia Hruby:So this is the model for every show that has a Patreon. They're saying to their listeners, if you love this show, support us financially, typically through a monthly recurring payment. So you sign up for something like Patreon or another service, and the podcaster provides you with some type of additional value, and you provide them typically with, like, 5 to 10 to $25 a month. This is a great model for shows who don't wanna work with advertisers, but do have a really engaged loyal fan base. And it can work well really no matter your size, but it's about having those loyal fans.
Amelia Hruby:So in the last episode of the softer cast, I actually talked about how to create what I called, like, a stick aroundable show, like, a show that people wanna stick around for, that they never wanna miss an episode. If you're really good at that, listener support might be a great monetization model for you. And then our 3rd monetization model is direct sales. So I think that if you are a business owner that has a podcast, this is where you should be selling your offerings or services or products on your podcast. Too often, I find that business owners create podcasts and they do all these amazing interviews, and they don't actually talk about what they sell.
Amelia Hruby:But you can talk about it. And in fact, maybe you should talk about it so that listeners are getting to know what you offer and are making purchases from you. Now I work with clients to do this by talking about offerings in their intro, by creating ads that we're placing in the middle or at the beginning of every episode. We've also done things like create email sequences or lead magnets or private podcasts that are selling the offerings that we promote on the public podcast. So there are lots of different ways to do direct sales and to bring in these business marketing techniques.
Amelia Hruby:But I think that for a small show connected to a business, this is really the way you're gonna make the most money because you can launch a listener support platform, but you may only bring in, you know, 2 to 10% of your listener base, which, you know, if you've got 500 active listeners and you've brought in 10 of them to pay you a monthly amount, that's not nothing, but maybe after fees, it's really only, like, $60 a month for you to now manage this whole other thing when perhaps if you sold your product or your offering just to one listener every month, then you'd be making way more than that $60. So, again, I'm just kind of spitballing here. But to recap, I think the 3 primary podcast monetization methods are ads and sponsorship, listener support, and direct sales. And I breezed through all of that in under 5 minutes here, but if you wanna learn more about each of those techniques with some ideas about how to bring them to life and more information about how to determine if they're right for you, this is something that I cover in our DIY podcast marketing and monetization course.
Amelia Hruby:I've actually got a whole 30 minute lesson just on podcast monetization that breaks down these strategies with much more information about them and can really help you in figuring out what is the right monetization method for you. So if you're interested in that course, you can head to the link in the show notes. It only costs $66 and softer cast listeners can take $10 off with the code softer cast 10. That's softer cast 10. It's also in the show notes, so it's right there for you to add to cart.
Amelia Hruby:And I think that's it for this episode. So if you are on a podcast monetization journey, please accept all of my cheers of support. Please head to the show notes to learn more about our DIY podcast marketing and monetization course. And if you've got questions about the course, you can send them to my email inbox, or if you have questions you'd like me to answer on a future episode of this show, There's a link to a SpeakPipe voice message inbox in the show notes where you can send me a quick message, and I will answer it in an upcoming episode of the softer cast. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode.
Amelia Hruby:If you loved it, I would truly appreciate a 5 star rating and review so we can have a little more social proof about how great this free resource is and how much it supports your show. Until next time, I will see you on the softer side of podcasting. Thanks so much for listening to the softer cast. If you enjoyed this episode, please send it to your podcast bestie. And after you do that, go ahead and drop us 5 stars in Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Amelia Hruby:If you'd like to submit a question, head to speak And last but not least, we made some awesome free things for you. Head to the show notes to download our free podcast launch toolkit or our 3 step podcast audit. No matter where you're at in your podcasting journey, we're here to support you. Thanks again for tuning in and joining us on the softer side of podcasting.