Morgan Franklin: How hard do you think it'll be to make $10,000
podcasting? Seriously, if I sat down with you right now and
said, Give me a plan for how you're going to make $10,000
with your podcast, how hard do you think that that would be for
some of us, this would be no problem. We have digital
products, we have partnerships. We're pitching ourselves in
every episode. This is the status quo. However, for the
greater majority of us, we would have no idea. In this episode,
I'll walk you through how I'd help a client make their first
$10,000 with their podcast, what you need to know and how you can
capitalize on your experiences, your audience and your existing
brand to make your first $10,000 podcasting. 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. One quick note before we get into
this episode, if you're like me, I'm a visual learner. I feel
like writing things down is really the only way that I learn
something. I have a completely free printable PDF companion
that goes with this episode. It's a worksheet and also a gold
tracking asset, and that will be in the episode description.
First things first. Why do you want to do this? And I know that
this might seem like an easy answer, right? Because
obviously, it's because you want to make money. You can make
money a million different ways. Why do you want to make money
from your podcast. Why would making $10,000 be meaningful to
you and your goals moving forward? For me, when I think
about this question, it's because it's validating to me
and my podcast that it's worth $10,000 but also because I want
to grow my podcast. I want to hire a staff of people to help
me edit and write and promote. I want to go to podcast
conferences. I want to be able to be where podcasters are, to
talk to them in person. I love podcasting, and when I make
money through my podcast, it helps me do more of what I love
and help people to do more of what they love. It's easy to not
follow through on a goal that has no meaning to your life. We
know that. Have you ever noticed that when you have to get
something done, there is literally no way and nothing
that could stop you? That goal has a purpose, and when you have
to get something done, there is no other choice other than to
get it done, right? So if it helps you, think about this in
the same way use the purpose of why to get you over the finish
line. How will making this money help you, or your business or
your podcast? What exactly will it improve for you? What will
you be able to use this money on? Give the money a job, figure
out exactly what it's going to do for you. And when you make
this money and commit yourself to making the money, we can't do
X without y, and we have to do Y. So how are we going to do X
after we figure out why we're going to do this and what it
really means to us now, we need to add some specifics, because
we can hold ourselves to a mission all day, but if there's
not a clear path to when and how we're going to get there, that's
a problem. Okay, so how long are we gonna give ourselves to make
this money? This is all going to depend on you and what your
audience size is and what methods of monetization that you
already have in place. So how many sources of revenue does
your podcast currently have? How much time and effort do you have
to put into making this happen? That's a huge question that you
need to consider. Like I said earlier, this could be really
easy for some of us and could only take a matter of weeks, but
for some of us, it might take all year. So either way, that's
okay, but you need to have a clear picture of how long that
you're gonna give yourself to make this money. For the sake of
this example, let's say that we're going to make our first
$10,000 with our podcast over the next three months. So that's
roughly 3333 a month, or $833 a week. For me, it's a lot easier
to break a goal down into weeks if it's stretching over months,
so that I can say, Okay, I need to make just under 850 Week to
reach this goal in three months, versus just saying, all right,
this is how I'm gonna make $10,000 because that's a lot of
money to just figure out how you're gonna make if it's over
one block of time. So take some time download the worksheet that
I've made for you and do the math on how much time that you
want to give this goal and what it will look like every week for
you to contribute to this amount. All right, so
logistically, we're pretty sound, but you're probably
thinking, Morgan, I can look at the numbers and mission all day
realistically, how am I gonna make this money? And obviously
there are endless ways to do this, and I can't speak directly
to every single one of you in this moment, but I can tell you
that if I was talking to the average podcaster who has never
made a dime on their podcast, and they came to me and said,
What do we need to do to get to $10,000 in the next three
months? This is what I tell you. First, we need to know your
audience, and I'm not just talking about the gender or age
of your average listener, we need to take a deep dive and
say, here are the top three reasons that your audience is
tuning into your show every week. We need to get that
listener profile down to the exact person. There can be no
deviation on this. If we want to make money on a podcast, we need
to know exactly who is listening, and that doesn't
matter if it's partnerships or selling your own products or
affiliates or memberships. I don't really care. Our first
order of business is figuring out who your audience is and
what they want from you. If we don't know that, we can't really
go any further. Defining your audience is not easy. I'm not
going to pretend like it is. I'll say this as a podcaster
that's constantly trying to evaluate and re evaluate my
audience, knowing who is listening and what reason, is a
never ending quest, but it is such a necessary one. You can't
sell to someone that you don't know. After we figure out your
audience and we really get to put together a meaningful
listener profile, we're gonna go through all the ways that you
could potentially monetize your podcast. First being, what do
you already have available? Are you a business owner? Have you
done partnerships before? Do you have affiliate deals? Do you do
coaching? Do you have memberships? What do you have
available to leverage in making this money? Because here's the
thing, podcasts don't just make money. It's not only you putting
in the work of having this podcast, then it's also you
having to figure out how and what you're going to sell
through the podcast. It doesn't happen by accident, and that's
something that I wish that I could share with every podcaster
that's thinking that they're gonna be a millionaire by
posting and uploading an episode every week. Sadly, if you aren't
making a plan, you aren't making any money, but let's pretend,
for this example, that you don't currently have anything to sell
on your podcast other than you're an entrepreneur with a
service based business. Sometimes you'll casually bring
up your business in your podcast episodes, but you aren't even
really super consistent in that. This is what I tell you. First
thing we're going to make a contact form that speaks
directly to the listener that would be hiring you after
listening to your average podcast episode. We'll say that,
for example, you're a YouTube expert, and your podcast is
about growing on YouTube. You would make a contact form that
is speaking directly to YouTubers or future YouTubers
you want to work with on that form, it'll ask questions about
their channel, what they want to accomplish and how you would be
able to help them. Okay, so after they fill out the initial
contact form, you are going to have three packages set up that
you are able to share with them, either at the time of your
exploratory call, or the pitch that you follow up with when
they contact you through the form. You really only need three
services to sell someone, and these services should be very,
very clear. This is what I can do for you. This is why you'd
want me to do it, and this is when I'll have it done. So speak
to the problems that you are addressing consistently in your
podcast episodes and tell them how you can solve those
problems. After that, I'd have you make a list of 10 companies
that you would like to partner with. So from there, we're going
to send a media kit about your podcast, asking if they are
looking for any kind of paid partners to represent their
brand. So explain why your podcast audience is the exact
audience that needs to be hearing about their product. If
they say no, that is when you're going to ask about an affiliate
program. Because usually affiliate program. Have a much
lower barrier to entry. So that's because they are not
having to pay you unless you are making money for them. So if you
get a no on doing a partnership deal or asking them if they
would like to advertise with you, follow up with, do you guys
have an affiliate program? I love your product. I still want
to represent you that way you can keep working for them, and
then a year, a year and a half from then, say, Hey, look at all
these sales that I've made for you. I want to have you as a
partner on my show. And I'm not gonna lie to you, this is gonna
take some time. It's gonna take some time with following up.
This is where you are gonna have to be really organized and know
what your podcast is bringing to the table. Also, this is where
you can't be shy about bragging on yourself. You want this
company to pay you to talk about them. So tell them why. Tell
them why they should. After you've sent the first 10
pitches, figure out the next 10 that you want to reach out to my
best advice is to pitch 10 brands every month. This seems
to be the sweet spot for podcasters without overwhelming
yourself. Don't try to send 10 pitches a day. Instead, just
figure out who you are really aligned with and who you'd like
to work with, and make sure that you're putting in that even
amount of effort so that over time, it is showing some impact
for this goal and for your bottom line. I'd also tell you
to get on websites like Amazon and like to know it, and Walmart
and any of these other big companies that you shop at that
have affiliate codes if you are plugging a product in your
episode at any time, there is no reason that you are not tagging
that product in the episode description with an affiliate
link so that you can make some money off it. We don't do free
promo here, so make sure that you have affiliate links for
everything that you are pitching next. What kind of digital
product can you make my episode before? This one is dedicated
completely to digital products, so please listen to it if you
haven't. Digital products are the best way to make money
without having much money. It's the best way to make money if
you're a one person show and you're basically starting with
nothing. I'm not gonna harp on this too long, because I know I
just had a whole episode about it, but I do have a free tool
that will email you 10 digital product ideas that are made
specifically from your podcast with a little bit of magic. For
me, the link will be in the episode description of this
episode if you haven't used it already. It is so amazing, and I
am so proud to provide this resource for you. So make sure
you go check it out. Like I said, it is based on answers
from you about your podcast, about your audience, and it is
just such a cool way to see how you could make money from
digital products. Exclusive content is another thing that I
look into after figuring out what kind of digital products
that I want to make. And what do I mean by exclusive content,
content that is behind a paywall, and this can be so
stupid easy you want to know a podcaster who should teach a
masterclass on this is Payne Lindsay. He has that podcast.
It's called up and vanish. But he also has radio rental. He
does this thing where you can pay five or $10 a month to
listen to the next episode of the podcast. It's basically a
week before you could listen to it for free. You can listen to
it without ads. I know this isn't groundbreaking, but I just
wanted to bring it up because I think his production company,
which is called tenor fit TV, does this really well, because
they've hooked me on so many shows and got me to pay for it,
and I rarely will pay for anything like that, so make sure
that you go check them out if you want kind of an inspo on how
you could do this. It's basically just that you have
another episode ready to go, and if someone pays, they can listen
to it a week early. This goes for all my podcasters. Whether
you are filming your episodes or not, you need to be repurposing
your episodes every way you can into any kind of content you
can, because you can monetize YouTube and Tiktok so easily.
And I know it's like only a 10th of a cent of you, but if you are
already making that content, there is no reason that you're
not making money from people watching it. Take the time and
effort to repurpose your content into formats that make sense for
your podcast. So YouTube, Tiktok, I'm talking even
Instagram and Facebook have monetization now. So monetize
those channels and start building audiences on those
channels so that you can also drive back listeners to your
podcast when they see a short clip, or they see anything that
has to do with your podcast, they think, oh my gosh, yeah, I
want to go listen to their podcast. So make sure you're
taking advantage of repurposing all of your episodes. Finally,
make sure that you have started and are actually utilizing an
email list. There is no better. Way to access your listeners, to
share with them, then an email list. And I want you to do this,
whether it's for making money or just simply growing your
podcast. You are a podcaster. You have something to share with
them every single week. You don't even have to make anything
up. So make sure that you are taking advantage of this and you
are using every opportunity to grow your email list, because
you know, podcasting is a really cyclical media, and the more you
use your social media and your email list and your products and
services, the whole ecosystem of your business and your podcast
will thrive if you are ready to make your first $10,000
podcasting, please reach out to me. My contact page is in the
episode description, or you can get a hold of me at Morgan. At
morganfranklin dot media. I know I said this at the beginning of
the episode, but there is a printable PDF companion and
tracking worksheet. Those will also be in the episode
description. And as always, I can't wait to listen to your
podcast. Hey. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode.
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