How Do I Start Making Money From My Podcast?

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How do make money with my podcast?

Dear Annie,​

My co-host and I have over 250 podcast episodes. We realize that folks are thirsty for our content, but have yet to monetize our work. Not one brown penny in four years. Help us shift from a consistent hobby to consistent revenue!

Sincerely,

Penniless in Podcasting

Have a question? Ask Annie here.

Podcast Monetization Options

Dear Penniless,

The good news is that 250+ episodes over four years demonstrates real consistency that will help you begin to monetize this show.

I see two paths to monetization for you: sponsorship and listener support. You could eventually combine both to maximize revenue, but it’s probably best to start by focusing on one so you can make sure you’re as successful as possible.

Path 1: Sponsorship

Before we dive into more specifics about what you need to do to actually get sponsors, there are a few things you need to understand about how podcast ads are actually bought and sold:​

• Pricing: most ads sell on a CPM basis (cost per thousand downloads). These can range dramatically, from $8 CPM (for programmatically bought post-roll ads), to $55 CPM (for host-read mid-roll ads by a notable host). (More on these terms below.) Smaller shows with a deeply engaged niche audience sometimes negotiate a higher flat rate instead.

• Ad Type: Host-read ads (read by you, in your own voice) carry the most value because of the implied (or real) endorsement. Producer-read ads (produced by the podcast team, read by a third-party voice) are cheaper than host-reads, but still feel organic to the show and carry some “halo” effect. Supplied ads (produced by the advertiser, at 15s, 30s, 60s, etc) are the least expensive (and least effective), and are often bought programmatically.

• Delivery Mechanism: Dynamically inserted ads (DAI) swap in and out across your whole back catalog and run for a set period of time or until a set number of impressions are delivered. This technology is great because you can more easily track how many impressions have been delivered, can monetize a back catalog, and ads can be easily removed when a campaign ends. On the other hand, based-in ads (permanently embedded in the episode) are sold at a higher rate. Most sponsorship is done using dynamically inserted ads nowadays.

• Ad Placement: Pre-rolls (playing directly at the beginning of the episode) and mid-rolls (ads in the middle of the episode) are worth the most– mid-rolls especially, since they’re generally harder to skip. Post-rolls (ads running at the very end of episodes) are worth the least, and generally are not sellable at all, since most people have turned the episode off before they run.

​Before you approach any potential sponsors or podcast sales marketplaces, you’re going to want to do your homework: who is actually listening to your podcast? You’ll want to know the age, gender, household income, and location for your listeners.

Bonus points if you have even more details, such as their job titles or their purchasing intent (are they in the market for a new car? a mortgage? a new HR platform? a certification?).

A listener survey is a great way to gather this information about your audience, and will matter even more if you have a smaller audience. This is your proof of value to a potential sponsor.

If all of this seems overwhelming and you’re interested in outsourcing the management of your sponsorship, you could explore a more automatic, lower effort pathway by having ads automatically inserted into your show.

If you publish a video version of your show, YouTube’s Partner Program lets you earn ad revenue once you hit a certain threshold of subscribers and hours watched in the past year. You could also try hosting your podcast through Spotify for Creators and turn on advertising through their programmatic ad marketplace.

This allows you to generate revenue passively, without needing to communicate with sponsors yourself. The down side is these ads will all be supplied (provided by the advertiser), so listeners might get more quickly fatigued. You also won’t be able to choose sponsors you actually want to endorse. And these ads also typically sell for pretty low rates, so generating real revenue could be a challenge.

Another option could be to work with a sales rep agency (like Gumball or Acast), who will pitch your podcast directly to sponsors that could be a good fit. This means typically higher CPMs, but you will need to split that revenue with the agency.

No matter which direction you go down the sponsorship pathway, I’m going to give you one target number to work towards: 10,000 downloads per month. This isn’t a hard rule– a smaller, sharply niche audience can still land hefty sponsors if you can prove your audience is uniquely valuable to advertisers.

But generally, you’re going to need some decent reach before advertisers will be interested in working with you, and 10K/ month is the typical threshold before advertisers will take interest.

In general, put yourself in the shoes of the advertiser. Why would they buy ads on your podcast, as opposed to any other podcast out there? How can you make it easier for sponsors to buy your ads?
​

Path 2: Listener Support

Another route you could go down is the listener supported model. This model only really works if you ask yourself one question: what would your listeners actually pay for? Don’t build a paywall around content or perks you assume people might want.

Build it around what they’ve told you, directly or through their behaviour. For example, do listeners actually want ad-free content? If you don’t have that many sponsors yet, it might not be a perk that’s worth spending more for. Are your bonus episodes actually worth spending on? Or are they just more quickly produced, less produced episodes?

Getting your listeners involved is a great way to make them feel engaged enough to support you monetarily. You could try asking for their input on social media, running polls on Spotify (or other platforms), taking on-air call-ins, and crediting people by name on the show. The more people feel like part of your show, the more they’ll want to keep it running.

You also want to make sure you clearly communicate the value of your content to your audience, and tie it directly to their monetary donation. This is often more valuable than providing bonus content, ad-free content, or merch– people are willing to pay a small amount to support content that they really enjoy or feel is important.

Some options for platforms you can use to make it easier for your audience to support you financially:

• Patreon: the default choice, making it easy to provide ad-free or bonus episodes, with tiers for different levels of support.

• Supercast/ SupportingCast: built specifically for podcast subscriptions, allowing audiences to get bonus episodes directly on their preferred podcast platforms, rather than having to use a separate app just to listen to your show.

• Substack/ beehiiv: great option if you’re looking to pair the show with a newsletter or other content.

You’ve put a lot of work into the show already. Now it’s time to narrow your focus on turning it into content that someone– advertiser or listener– would be willing to pay for.

Good luck,

Annie