Welcome to Help Me Podcast, a show designed to help you
launch and grow your podcast. I am your host, Gino, and twice
a week, I will release a new episode with different tips and tricks
for launching and growing your podcast. From audio engineering to planning
intentionally to growth tactics, each episode will be a bite sized
tip to help you podcast.
Hey. Welcome back to help me. Podcast. This is episode 68,
and in today's episode, I want to talk about something that I heard
recently in the podcasting news realm.
So there's this comedian that I like and I listen to. His name is
Theo Vaughn, very popular comedian, very funny. And
he has a podcast called this past weekend. And it's a
very popular podcast, not just within the comedy world, but also just in
overall podcasts. I think he's like kind of around near number
five most popular. So it's a very big
podcast. And recently he had an episode come out this week
where he exploited a situation that has
been happening to him. And I guess based off of what
he said, he has a company called Cast
Media that helps him fill his ads
and then owes him the money for those ads based off of what
he said. Again, this is just his side of the story that they
haven't been paying him in a year or something like that.
So they basically just stole a bunch of money from him. And
he wasn't that upset about it. He was mostly
talking about this because I guess this Cast Media has been
doing this to a bunch of other people. And a bunch of other people don't
necessarily have the luxury to talk about that or to
exploit them on their show. But since Theo, he
also has his comedy and a bunch of other things. He kind of came forward
and talked about this, but it just
kind of got me thinking about how even a show that's very
independent and he makes his own stuff, but something like the
ad buys is something that he doesn't do and he doesn't sell ads and
doesn't do the ad placement or anything like that. And that's mostly how he makes
money with his podcast. He also has a merchandise line. It just kind of got
me thinking about the idea of getting paid ads
on your show and especially any of the popular ads that you
hear. I don't know. I think a lot of times some
podcasters who start out dream of that when they can
start making money and put these ads on their shows. But I don't
know, I guess I'm questioning whether
that should be a goal or not. It certainly isn't
fair the way that they place these ads
and the agencies that you need in order to be placing these ads.
I'm actually kind of going through something a little similar, not
necessarily as much fraud as what happened to Theo, but I do have a
client that hasn't been getting paid for ads recently on their
podcast. And we put ad markers in the show and the
people that we are associated with just haven't been filling the ads.
And it's kind of a sketchy thing. It's like,
well, we're doing this. We were told we were going to get paid for ads
and now we're not. But technically there's no ads on the show.
So it's like a weird situation of, yeah, I guess
you aren't stealing from me because you aren't putting any ads on, but you're also
not paying for the ads that we said that we were going to put
on. So now we're moving to a different agency and they want all these different
kinds of rules in order to just put these ads on. And
it's interesting the amount of effort, I guess that it is to
try to get paid for these ads. And at the end of the day, it's
like you're pushing products that maybe sometimes you don't have a say in
and it could be a product that you don't like or don't enjoy and
I don't know. It makes me ask, is there a better way to
monetize your podcast? Right? And there are certainly other ways to monetize your
podcast. You can do merch, you can have your own products, you can have your
own services, you can have your own communities. So
I don't really know what the conclusion of this podcast
is going to be. I think it's more so just kind of asking, is
the end goal really trying to get with
agencies that can fill ad spots on my show, to basically
exploit my show for its listeners, and is that
what I want to do to my listeners? And is that how I want to
make money with my listeners? And I think that there's just a better way
to be able to make money off of what you're
doing, but also not in such a crude
way of just forcing these ads of these large companies
down people's throats. And most of us might not even be in
a position where we even have enough listens to get to that point. But
I think there's other ways of doing it and
hey, I'll be honest, I haven't been successful in making
money in my podcast, so maybe I'm not the person to speak about this,
but I do think that it is worth discussing
and it is worth trying to think of a better way to
do things. And some things that I've thought about recently with
my own podcast is like, okay, sometimes just
brainstorming and spitballing here. Sometimes I have a podcast, I hit
record. You usually have a conversation beforehand with a guest
because my other podcast, working towards a purpose, is an interview style
podcast. I usually have a conversation before with the guest to kind of warm
up, see where they're at. We do the interview and then we usually have some
conversation afterwards and sometimes that conversation is really good afterwards
and sometimes after the quote
unquote record button is off, it loosens up the conversation a little
bit more and maybe some more conversation flows. I'm always recording it just
because I don't stop until the end, but I don't really do anything with it.
Maybe one way could be to start some sort of patreon or to start some
sort of fan group that gets more
access to certain parts of your podcast or maybe
they get access to the video parts of your podcast or something like
that. That in an ideal world it would be nice if you could offer more
value to your listeners in exchange for
some money or some subscription service or something like that. Because
at the end of the day, if you look at like paid ads, you're not
really offering any value to your listener by
forcing them to listen to a paid ad. It's like listening to a TV commercial.
You're not getting really any value out of listening to a commercial. It's kind of
just like, oh, we have to listen to this thing now and maybe you'll find
something you like, but chances are you're just going to be annoyed by it. So
I don't know, I think it's a bigger discussion as far as how can we
start making a living and making some money off of our podcast
without just selling to corporations that want
to utilize our listeners. Another idea would
be like a newsletter. Maybe you can start a newsletter for
your podcast and get your listeners to
transfer over to the newsletter. And maybe your newsletter you have some
local sponsors or something like that, something of benefit to your
community or to your niche. I don't know. Like I said, I don't have
really the answer for this. It's just hearing the story about Theo
has really questioned
why a lot of people are striving for that, right? Because he
got there, he's got the big ads on his show, he makes money on those
ads. But now someone stole all that money because the
organization that he was with, that he entrusted to
place the ads and pay him for the ads basically didn't do that.
And I don't know, it just makes me think about
is there a better way to do this or is there a better way to
monetize your podcast? And I guess it's going to be an ever growing question
and something that I'm just thinking about more often. I would love to
further this discussion with somebody. If you want to send me an
email, my email is always in the show notes. If you've
ever been able to successfully monetize your podcast without
selling big ads, drop me a line and tell me what
you did, and I could share that with the community and
we can all kind of reach for
maybe a little bit more ethical way to start getting
some money from your podcast, because I realize that money is important, and money
will keep you going. And we all need money to survive. So
hopefully there are some better ways out there than just
selling Squarespace ads. So thank you for listening.
I hope this maybe sparked a bigger conversation
and I will see you on the next episode. Thanks for tuning in.
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