Morgan Franklin: One of my biggest pet peeves in the
podcasting community is how easy everyone wants you to think it
is to make money. There's a really big name content creator
that's launching a podcasting course right now, and I heard
them telling their audience that podcasting was the reason they
could stay at home, be a stay at home parent, and make multiple
seven figures. And while I don't doubt that this is true, I think
they're telling the truth, I do doubt the ease at which they are
trying to sell this course to you to achieve the same results.
The past few months, I've had multiple questions from
podcasters that are trying to monetize their podcast, but it
just feels like it's not going anywhere. And you know what? I
can relate to this. I really can it took me years to make money
off my podcast. In this episode, we're gonna talk about the five
reasons you still aren't making money with your podcast, how to
fix it, and what you need to know moving forward if you want
your podcast to be a sustainable source of income for you and
your brand. Hello and welcome to podcast for profit. My name is
Morgan Franklin. I'm a Podcast Producer, strategist and
educator. This podcast will help you create and grow a podcast
that cuts through the noise of social media and speaks directly
to your target audience. If you're ready to create a podcast
that will align you with the experts in your industry,
position yourself as a trusted leader and create another source
of revenue for your business, you're in the right place. The
unknown is scary, and you know what? It's especially scary if
you feel like you're constantly putting yourself out there, over
and over and over and still not seeing any results. That's
terrifying. I think about when I started my first podcast, and it
was a really vulnerable time for me. Specifically, starting a
podcast is always very vulnerable. But I was changing
my career completely. I was working with somebody that I had
literally just met, and I felt overwhelmed every single day, I
felt like I was constantly just swimming in the deep end of the
unknown waters. And while, in the beginning, that was really
fun and exciting, after a year, it started to feel really
exhausting. I was making progress on growing this
podcast, but it really wasn't where I wanted it to be, and
more importantly, to this conversation, it was nowhere
near the objective we had put forward for it, that it would be
a self sustaining entity, meaning that it would make as
much money as it spent. And I know I don't have to remind you
of this, but the cost of podcasting adds up, especially
if you're like us, and you are doing editing and equipment
upgrades and you have bills to pay, it gets more expensive
every month. And for us, we weren't getting any closer to
making money on these podcasts. It was giving me so much
anxiety, and I knew that I had to figure this out. But to be
honest with you, the pressure of trying to figure it out was
making it almost impossible to take action and understand what
I really needed to do. You know when that happens and you're in
the paralysis of trying to make a decision, and you know that
you have to start, but you don't know where or how. If I could go
back and give myself some advice. These are the five
things that I would tell myself to get out of my own way and
start making money with this podcast. One, what is the offer,
whether that's selling ad slots on your podcast to advertisers
trying to drive listeners to your email list to begin a sales
funnel or selling directly from your podcast with your own
products, you need to know what the offer is. What are you
trying to sell, and how will the buyer buy? A lot of times we get
so caught up in trying to be creative with our offer, that we
forget the importance of having just a simple objective. So the
first question is, what is the offer? What are you trying to
sell, and to whom? So let's say that you have a podcast about
quilting, and I'm sorry that I always bring up this example
about a podcast about quilting, I swear that I'm gonna move on
from this, but let's say that your offer is going to be that
you are selling a quilt pattern. You need a simple,
straightforward message and a clear offer. So let's say that
the pattern is for Christmas and it's being featured on an
episode about making quilts as gifts to give away for
Christmas. Now I might say something like, if you have a
list of people you want to make quilts for this Christmas, you
need to check out my newest pattern made specifically to
maximize your sewing time and get multiple quilts finished
before Christmas. This pattern is printable. Semi customizable.
It's $35 The link is in the episode description, and the
pattern is on my website. Enter website here. This is a very
clear offer to a very specific audience, hopefully the exact
same audience that's listening to your episode. You need an
offer that is going to answer the questions before they are
asked, tells the buyer what they're buying, why they should
buy, and where to buy, to speaking to the target audience.
We just talked about this a minute ago, but speak directly
to your target audience when you're selling from your
podcast, try to speak to one specific person. This seems so
simple, right? Like we know this. We know it's important to
know who you're talking to, but do we really know? Are we really
doing this when we pitch a product, or we're reading ad
copy from another company. Are we speaking to one listener, one
specific type of listener, I can say for most of us, the answer
to that question is no, and in full transparency, this is
something that I struggled with for years when I started
podcasting, and I still struggle with it, because I was scared. I
was scared if I spoke directly to one member of the audience, I
would alienate everybody else. And I think that we all get
afraid of this, whether it's podcasting or running a
business. It's scary to feel like you're putting all your
eggs in one basket for one specific listener or buyer. This
is the advice that I get from my mentors every single time that I
talk to them, especially today, especially when you're getting
ads from every single direction and every angle. If you are not
speaking directly to someone's problems or their goals or their
aspirations or their desires, you're not speaking to anybody
three telling the listener how to buy. I could make an entire
podcast episode on this, and maybe I will, but you need to
have a clear path to buying. What do I mean when I say that?
I mean you need links in every episode description, telling
people where to go. Make it so crystal clear where your
listener needs to go to buy the thing that you are talking
about. One of the hardest parts about selling on a podcast is
that people are usually listening while they're doing
something else, and they're not fully engaged with their phone,
like they're not looking at their phone. If that makes
sense, this is a problem for us, because if we're telling people
to go onto this website or look at something in the episode
description, or generally pointing them away from just
listening to this podcast they are not even looking in the
first place. So what do we need to do this is where follow up
pieces of content are going to be critical to the financial
success of your podcast. So let's run through this scenario
from earlier. Let's say that you have that quilt pattern that
you're telling your listeners where to go, and you link it in
the episode description. Perfect. People might shop from
the episode description. They might I mean, that happens, but
what if you also sent it in an email as the same day that you
released that episode? You had it on an Instagram story. You
talked about it on Tiktok. You feature it on LinkedIn with
information about your episode. What if it was also mentioned at
least three times in the blog post that you create on your
website that corresponds with this episode with the links?
Yes, that is what's going to sell the product that you are
talking about on your podcast. And I know that I say this on
every episode, but listeners and buyers need eight to 12 touch
points to buy. And if you were just giving them that one on
your podcast, good luck. That is very, very difficult. Think
about the last time that you just saw something one time and
then you went to buy it. And another thing is, please, please
check your links. Make sure that you have links everywhere. There
should never be a time that your listener is wondering how to buy
what you're selling. It's funny to me, because so many of the
podcasters that I do audits for the majority of you are doing a
much better job of promoting and linking your guests, then you
are your own products, in your own business, in your own
podcast. We can't just be showing up for our guests. We
have to show up for ourselves as well. Four call to action. You
need a call to action. You talking about what you do or
what your product is or just loosely throwing something out
there that is not enough. You giving away free information
isn't enough. You need to give me the offer, but also tell me
why I need to buy it today. And this can look like a lot of
different things. I think that we a lot of times, think about
just limited. Time discounts as being a call to action, whereas,
I'd argue, if you're looking for first time buyers or people that
would be purchasing from you for the first time, you don't have
to focus on having a discount code. It cheapens the brand. And
then they'll think that you do this all the time. Pick two to
four times a year that you want to run coupons and the rest of
the year, find calls to action that are driven by the person
that will be purchasing. And let me explain, for example, going
back to our Christmas quilt pattern, I could say something
about how you can complete one pattern per week, and if you
want to get four done by Christmas, you need to start
today. Let it correlate to the objective of what you are
selling. And what do I mean by that? That sounds so confusing.
For example, a call to action that I might use on an Instagram
template for podcasters might be something like buy this before
you make your next Instagram post. If you want to convert
followers into listeners, don't be afraid to sell with your
solution. Sell with the outcome of your product. That is such a
powerful call to action. Five, clarify your goals and desired
outcomes. If you don't know where you're going, any road
will get you there. This is probably the scariest one,
because it will involve you sitting down and being honest
with yourself and where you are. Do you want to make $50,000
through your podcast next year? Okay, great. That's doable. That
is so doable, but it's impossible without a plan. It's
impossible without everything we've talked about in this
episode. You need smart goals. And if you've never heard of
this, SMART goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant
and time bound. You need to know what you're trying to achieve to
make a plan to achieve it. And that sounds simple enough,
right? That sounds like something we can do, and it
absolutely is. My best advice for you, is to write everything
down on paper. Write down how many episodes you'll have next
year. So let's say, for example, that you have an episode every
week. That's going to be 52 episodes next year. Let's go
with the example from earlier that you want to make $50,000 in
the next year. That's about $1,000 per episode. Then from
there, we're going to break down how we can make this money. Do
we have ads or partnerships? Do we have any kind of affiliate
codes or promotional offers? What kind of products are we
selling? What does our business offer? And is there any other
option to make money, like Patreon or a subscriber only
component to your podcast, when we break it down and we have
this $1,000 per episode goal, how can we get it there? And not
only how can we get it there, but how can we keep it there and
be consistently bringing in $1,000 per episode? Because,
okay, it's great if we can just do it one time, but our final
objective is that we do it every single week. So what do we need
to do to make this happen consistently? Knowledge is
power. Knowledge is going to give you the confidence that you
need to achieve every single goal that you are totally
capable of. The unknown is what is scary. I said that in the
beginning of this episode because I wanted to bring you
here. I wanted to bring you to the place where you aren't in
the unknown, where you have the keys, where you have the
knowledge, where you have the power to take control of your
podcast and making money from your podcast. If you're
interested in working one on one with me, you can book an hour
strategy session on my website. It will be linked in the episode
description. Or you can email me at Morgan, at morganfranklin dot
media. I also have a template store with my most used
customizable templates, including the podcast media kit
that I have used to secure more than six figures in sponsorships
that link will be in the episode description or visit podcasts
with an S for profit.com and as always, I can't wait to listen
to your podcast. Hey, thank you so much for joining me on this
episode. If you enjoyed the podcast and you'd like to hear
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