Morgan Franklin: Earlier this week, I was in between
recordings for a podcast that I do on location at an office
building, and a man walks in for the regular business this office
conducts, and he's asking about the podcast equipment and what
we're doing. And this happens, I'd say, a few times a day when
we're recording the podcast in office, so I usually don't think
that much of it. But this guy sits down, and after he asked me
about the equipment, he says, So do you make any money off of it?
And of course, this made me laugh, not because of the actual
question, but because, usually we're not so straightforward
about asking people how we're making money. I live in the
south, and usually this is not something that someone would ask
the first time that they meet you. So naturally, I'm laughing,
and I say, you know, most of the money that we make goes back
into producing the show and trying to grow it. So then, of
course, as this conversation pretty much always goes, he
launches into a 10 minute pitch to me about the podcast that he
has been brooding on over the past five years. This
conversation inspired me to make this episode because while most
of us understand the possibility of making money podcasting, we
don't fully understand the kind of podcast that makes money.
According to captivate.fm only 35% of podcasters will ever make
a dime from podcasting, and honestly, I thought that it
would be way lower in this episode. We'll talk about the
two different kinds of podcasts that actually make money. How to
better align your podcast with one of these two strategies and
why so many podcasters are never able to monetize their podcast.
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. I
live in a smallish town in Tennessee. I'd say about 40,000
residents, give or take. Growing up, we had several different
locally owned grocery stores, a few big name stores, but we all
more or less lived in harmony together. Over the past 10
years, I've seen almost every mid sized, locally owned grocery
store close expansion of our big name grocery stores, and, you
know, the entrance of a few micro farm to table markets,
those boutique, kind of tiny little grocery stores, basically
either big and cheap stores that have everything you would need,
or small and expensive and very selective options. And to me,
this is the perfect comparison to podcasts that make money you
have your big name, broad coverage, podcasts like Joe
Rogan, call her daddy, Mel Robbins, and then you have much
more niche, specialized podcasts, like, for example, the
podcast that you're listening to right now. All these podcasts
make money, but they make money for different reasons and appeal
to much different audiences. Normally, there are two kind of
podcasts that make money. The first is the commercially
popular mainstream podcast that is reaching a broad audience,
and I'd say, gets at least 100,000 downloads on new
episodes in the first 24 hours. Again, that's podcasts like new
heights with Travis, Kelce, Conan O'Brien Huberman lab
podcast consistently ranking in the top 200 of the all category
on Apple podcast or Spotify. Basically the celebrities of
podcasting, the other kind of podcast that makes money besides
these really well known podcasts, are the specific niche
industry or interest specific podcast. For example, I think
about all the marketing podcasts that I love to listen to,
especially as someone who works in marketing and digital media,
these podcasts are very important to me. I like them
just as much as the big name podcasts, but they're probably
never going to be on the Apple top 200 All Categories list,
right? And that's okay. They're probably never gonna get 100,000
downloads in 24 hours. And again, that's okay. That doesn't
stop them from making a full time income and growing a team
around this podcast. Let me use, for example, one of my favorite
podcasts about learning how to market and grow your business on
Pinterest. It's called simple pin podcast with Kate all and
Kate is incredible. If you guys don't listen to this podcast,
you should, especially if you want to get into Pinterest. But
she has so many ways that she monetizes her podcast, and this
is just by me listening to her podcast, knowing this and. Not
really. I mean, I've never bought a service through her,
but I know that she has digital products. I know she has
education, templates, worksheets, workbook coaching.
You can hire her team to manage your Pinterest or to run ads on
your Pinterest. They do it all. And I'm sure that she has a very
lucrative business and podcasts that work in tandem together.
The story that I was telling you earlier in the episode about the
guy that came into the office where I was recording that
podcast isn't connected to a business. It gets about 40,000
downloads per month and doesn't have any kind of business or
service that we could sell. However, we've been very
intentional about knowing our audience and keeping that
audience local and specific. We know exactly who is listening to
this podcast every week, and that's why we're able to sell ad
slots to advertisers and make money off this podcast, even
though it's not as big as those big name ones, and we're not
selling anything through a business. You either need to
have a wide enough audience that brands want to advertise with
you because you have a big audience, or you need to have a
specific enough audience that brands see the value in knowing
exactly who listens to your podcast. You know, if I could
tell every podcaster who wanted to make money podcasting one
thing, it'd be that either you work hard enough and get lucky
enough to have a huge podcast where you need to be specific
enough to know exactly what kind of audience you have. This is
why, when people tell me that they want to start a podcast
because they think they're funny, or their friends have
tons of stories, or whatever it may be, my first question always
is, who will listen to this podcast. That's the reverse
engineering practice that every podcaster and content creator
needs to exercise. So let's talk about strategy number one, which
is basically the rock star approach. You're going to grow a
big enough following and have enough people listening to your
podcast that brands want to have blanket advertisements with you.
Great. The first thing that you need to do is focus on at least
four social media outlets, and whether that's Facebook,
LinkedIn, Tiktok, Instagram, whether it's x, Pinterest,
substack, YouTube, I don't really care, but I'd be working
and building on those platforms, posting every day, multiple
times a day, trying to get as many followers and engagement as
you can. If you want a podcast with a big following, you need
to either have a full time content creator or be a full
time content creator yourself. And I know that that's not easy
and it's not cheap, but there is no one, except maybe someone
that was already recognized as a celebrity that can start a
podcast and grow that podcast without having any other way to
promote it. You have to use all the tools in your tool belt. The
second prong of this approach is guesting on other shows and
getting the best possible guest you can get on your show if I
was going to try to get a top ranking show, I would be
reaching out to PR teams managers, trying to get any kind
of celebrity or celebrity adjacent person that would give
me the time of day. You need star power and you need name
recognition. This is not a time for having your friends as
guests. Lastly, even if I was trying to get a wide audience, I
would still be niching down. Let's see. For example, Candace
Owens, on the day that I'm recording this episode, she's
eighth on the Apple podcast overall chart. If you don't know
who Candace is, she's a conservative podcaster. She
talks about politics and pop culture and conservative
ideologies, she never misses an opportunity to capitalize on
political friction here in the United States, she is trying to
reach a wide audience, but she's making her opinions and
interests well known. I've said this many times, but a friend to
all is a friend to none. And if you want to grow quickly on
social media or digital media, share your opinions now, that's
much easier said than done, and if you're sharing political
opinions, you are going to get backlash, no matter which side
it's coming from. But if you want to speak directly to an
audience like you, share what you think going for the broader
reach podcast approach is the most difficult, and isn't one
that I normally recommend to clients, unless you have an
audience following you from somewhere else, or you are a
celebrity in some capacity, it's like saying that you're going to
be an influencer, and it might happen, but there is a much
greater probability that it will not so what would I recommend to
you, if you aren't a celebrity of some kind already, I'd
recommend that reverse engineering approach, where you
ask yourself who your listeners are and why they're listening.
Why are they coming back every week? What value are you?
Providing for them. What specific interest or industry do
you want to represent through your podcast? What do you want
to be known for? All these questions can be answered of a
new or existing podcast, and I don't want you to think because
you already have a podcast that's not serving a specific
audience, that you can't become a podcast that answers all these
questions well, because you absolutely can, and I would love
to help you. I'll include the information for working with me
in the episode description, but I have strategy calls that are
made for this exact reason. As I said in the beginning of the
episode, 65% of podcasters never make a dime from podcasting, and
I'd say most of them go into debt making the podcast. You
will never just make money from podcasting. And I think that's a
really big misconception that's never going to just magically
happen. I think the day and age we're living in, we think if we
just make enough content that eventually it will be worth
money. But that's just not true. There's no build it, and they
will come guarantee. And you know, all that being said, I
truly believe that every podcaster can make money
podcasting, every podcast can be a success if you know how, and
you stay persistent in trying, if you want to work with me, one
on one to see how your podcast could monetize, or what you need
to do to start building an audience that's monetizable. My
contact information is in the episode description. Or you can
send me a message at Morgan, at Morgan Franklin, dot media, I
love to hear from you, 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
more episodes like this one, go ahead and subscribe to the show.
New episodes air every Monday morning. And if you found this
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the information they need to start making money on their
podcast.