Morgan Franklin: When Should You Monetize Your Podcast?
When should you monetize your podcast? When should you start or try starting to make money on your podcast? This is a question I get asked all the time, and if I’m being totally honest with you still takes me by surprise, because that’s like someone asking you when you should have a kid
It’s hard to answer
But, I think like deciding when you want to have a child there are two ultimate factors that play into the answer: and it’s when you want to and when you can.
In this episode we’re going to talk about the bare minimum of what you’ll need to monetize a podcast, the monetization options for beginners, intermediate and established podcasters and finally, the pros and cons of monetization and the biggest mistake podcasters make when they fly too close to the monetization sun
I’ve debated on whether or not I want to tell this story, because it’s always hard for me to judge another podcaster, especially a podcaster I looked up to for so long - so I’m going to tell you the story without the names and you might know who it is, you might not
You’ll never know
The year is 2017, I’m 24 years old
I'm putting every single bit of money and time and effort I have into working for myself and trying to operate a small business for the first time
There is a new podcaster who I love listening to
We have a very similar story of working corporate, and studying marketing and working for ourselves
I love her podcast
I never miss an episode
At this time it’s everything to me and it’s helping me navigate so many parts of business and life I’ve never experienced before, so of course when she offers a course - I’m right there at the launch webinar trying to figure out how I’m going to afford this $1,200 course
I end up going on a payment plan and paying off this course for an entire year
I know we’re going down a rabbit hole right now, but just come with me
The course was very mediocre
It did teach me a few things, and more than anything I think held me accountable to keep going in my business
It delivered, but not exactly the way it promised
As time went on, and this creator started adding on more courses, and digital products and books and sponsorships and affiliate codes and blah blah blah, I start listening less and less, then I start seeing more and more one star reviews on this person’s podcast saying they used to love their podcast but now it’s just one long ad and worst of all that her products are a scam
This is a review from 3 days before this recording: I used to love this podcast
The early episodes are good
But it's been so scripted for a long time now, and Jenna's courses/products are very scammy
Just go to Reddit or do a quick google search
The solo episodes feel like Jenna is reading an actual script word for word versus talking authentically like most podcasters do
I don't think she writes her own podcast outlines/scripts..
or if she does, she's not getting familiar enough with the script before recording to not sound like a robot - it’s hard to listen to
Yikes
Big yikes
Remember that thing I said earlier about flying too close to the sun? This was my favorite podcaster and now I don’t follow her podcast or any of her social media
When you aren’t focused on your audience, someone else will be and that’s why I wanted to share this cautionary tale, because having a podcast isn’t an easy, quick way to make money
Can you make money podcasting of course, you can make a lot of money podcasting, but you have to put your listeners first or you won’t have any listeners.
So let’s talk about the bare minimum of what you need and how you know it’s time to monetize your podcast
That’s what we’re all here for right? The answer is, when you have trust with your audience
That’s the “when you can” part of the two step equation
Some podcasters already have an audience before they start their show, and they’ve already built the trust and relationship with their audience, so they can easily monetize their podcast on day one.
The problem starts to creep in, like with the podcaster we talked about earlier where you have a disproportionate amount of selling to value, or selling to trust
That podcaster might have assumed that she had the relationship where she could sell blindly to her listeners and they wanted to buy, but she was incorrect.
There’s a customer journey model in marketing that’s centered around your listener or customer having to go through 3 phases with you and that’s knowing about you - finding you, finding out who you are, actually discovering your podcast
Liking you, listening to your podcast, getting to know your personality and story, liking you enough to come back to your podcast every week
And finally, trusting you, seeing you as an expert they trust and someone they want to invest their time, energy and money into
We need our listeners to know, like and trust us before we can ever make a sale, so I want you to think about that when you’re thinking about when you can monetize this podcast - how many people who listen to your podcast are at the like or trust phase of getting to know you?
A quick exercise that I think is very useful for you is to take a minute and think about the podcasts you’ve been influenced by, so like my story earlier, have you ever bought a digital course, or attended a workshop, or use someone's coupon code, or in any way spent money because a podcast host inspired you to do so.
Think about what journey you went on with that podcast host before you trusted them enough to buy from them
What did the journey of know, like, trust look like for you as a podcast listener and what did it take to convert you from a listener to a buyer?
Most of the time, the easiest way for me to judge other people's buying habits and consider how they buy on a more practical level is to think about myself as a buyer
I think if you can take a minute to write down any podcast you've ever bought anything from think about how long it took you to build trust with that podcast and host and what they've done to earn your trust through the value that they provide through that podcast it's going to give you a lot of clarity on what this journey of monetization will look like for you.
But what does podcast monetization really look like, especially at the different stages of your podcasting journey? Let's go ahead and break it down to beginner, intermediate, and experienced podcasters to talk about what the three different levels of podcast monetization look like for most of us
Starting with the beginning stages of monetization, again, this is all going to depend on what level of industry awareness, audience and trust you’ve already built with your brand or personal branding.
I’ve worked with podcasters that literally have no following at all and podcasters who are leaders in their industries with hundreds of thousands of followers
Technically, when they launch their first episode they’re both beginner podcasters, but they’re starting at different places in the listener journey.
So for this example, let’s say you have no following at all, or a very modest following of peers, you’re starting your podcast and you’re building it from the ground up
That’s where most of us start and it’s a great place to start.
Until you have at least 100 dedicated downloads to each new episode, so you’re getting 100 downloads on each new podcast in the span of a week, I wouldn’t worry about monetizing this podcast
For most of us, getting our first dedicated 100 listeners will be the hardest bridge to cross in listenership
So pour into your podcast
Look at what’s working, try to improve your research, and writing and recording, try to make sure every episode is better than the last
Focus on promoting your podcast and starting with the question of do people know your podcast? Because while you might feel like you’re screaming from the rooftops, getting your first organic 100 podcast listeners is going to take quite a bit of dedication and effort if you’re starting from nothing.
So let’s fast forward, let’s say you have 250 dedicated listeners on every episode, it’s been a few months or a year and you’re starting to gain some traction with downloads
This is a great time to start selling your own products, so talking about what you do, how people can work with you, give away freebies so people can get on your newsletter, and generally promoting yourself
Also, start reaching out to brands for affiliate programs and seeing what you can work out for smaller partnerships, maybe someone will send you a product in exchange for an ad, start where you are, but get started
I always encourage my podcasters at the beginning of their monetization journey to try out affiliate ads, because that will signal to other businesses that might be listening or interested in advertising with you that you do have ads, but it won’t require the threshold of thousands of weekly downloads like it would for a paid ad
Next, what about an intermediate podcaster, maybe someone getting between 500 - 10,000 downloads on new podcast episodes
So again, this is the first week the episode has launched in those 7 days, you’re getting that number of downloads
I’d continue with the self promotion, but I’d change a few things, make ads for yourself, have very clear calls to action whether that’s to book a service or buy a product, you better tell people exactly what it is and where they can buy
I’d be searching out industry specific partnerships
So, again, this will be personalized to each podcaster but I’d think about what industry I’m in and pursue those more niche businesses that could benefit from my audience
I have several podcasts about this and how to price your podcast ads, but this intermediate phase will be where you have to pursue the partnership
If you’re interested in hearing more about how to land these partnerships listen to episode 14, how to get your first podcast sponsor or episode 16 how to price podcast ads, they’ll both be listed in the show notes
Anything over 10,000 - 15,000 downloads per month, I’d recommend you have a pricing guide and start reaching out to brands that are working with podcasts
This can be done in a variety of different ways, and I’d be happy to make a podcast about the agencies, platforms and outreach methods I use to secure ads on my podcasts, but the biggest thing is you need to have a pricing guide for these brands to look at and established pricing
If you need a rate card to send out to businesses when they ask what your ad pricing is I have an absolutely incredible template that I’ve spent the past 5 years perfecting
I'll attach a link in the episode description
But the most important thing to remember when you’re thinking about when to monetize your podcast is that it is about the numbers, yes, but it’s also, more importantly, about the missiont
It’s about finding that balance between when you want to monetize and when you’re able to and understanding that if it’s done the wrong way it could cost you the most valuable resource of all, your listeners