How We Make $1M A Year From Our Podcast

Today we are going to talk about how we make $1 million a year from our podcast. So the podcast I am talking about is Marketing School. So that is the daily marketing podcast that I do. I've done it for about 3 years. I have a co-host for that podcast. The way we do it, I'll give you a couple practical tips, but I'll talk about the deal itself. So the deal we have is an annual deal and it's close to $1 million. It basically pays us a month, but it is a contract. So what I learned initially, what we learned I should say, is If we can publish a daily podcast, because a lot of people pay based on not necessarily the number of downloads per podcast, but they pay on the downloads we get per month. So right now, because we're getting 1 million downloads a month, let's say we charge a $60 CPM. A CPM is cost per 1,000 impressions. So 1,000 times 60 is $60,000 a month. $60 CPM is very high. But the other thing I'll say is if you have a podcast that's getting a lot of downloads and it's in a, it's in a niche that is very relevant. So we're in marketing and if we talk about software or whatever, people are going to listen to us, right? If you can make it daily, do it. The way I do it with, um, do it daily is we batch our episodes. My co-host and I, we have busy schedules, so we will do it, you know, once or twice, 3 times, maybe 3 times a month. And from there we're able to constantly be ahead by months. You want to make sure that you are, at least for us, because our frequency is above, that's how we're, Or our frequency is daily. That's how we're getting so many downloads. Um, we do get, I think, um, about 20,000 to 25,000 downloads per episode, which is not so, not so bad. If you are starting out, if you have some kind of audience, let's say you have an audience on YouTube, you have an audience on Instagram, you have an audience on your, you have an email list as well. Utilize those audiences. Tell them that you're launching this podcast and when you launch, you want to get on New and Noteworthy. The way you get on New and Noteworthy is that sure, you're having a lot of people talking about it and a lot of people are listening to it, But you're also consistent, meaning that when you launch, launch with 5 episodes if you can. If you're not gonna do daily, do weekly, but launch at the same time. It's almost like a show, like a TV show, right? You wanna launch on like the same, typically the same days, maybe around the same time or so, but that way people know what to expect. And if you're on the new and noteworthy, that's gonna give you a bump as well. Usually when people launch and they get on the new and noteworthy, they shoot up on the list and then eventually they settle back down. Um, which is fine, right? And the other thing I'll say too is if you want to make, if you want to make good money on your podcast, uh, you can use a host. I mean, we use Libsyn and then we post, whenever we post one podcast, it goes to Spotify, it goes to Apple, it goes to Google Play. It's basically publishing to 7 different areas at once. So you want to take advantage of that. You know, you want to make sure that you're repurposing to all those channels and where you're, um, where it's very native to those channels as well. And consistency. So What I'll say about my first podcast, which is those of you that are listening to this right now, this actually does go to the Leveling Up podcast. After the first year, I was only getting 9 downloads a day and I was spending 6 hours a week on the podcast. After the second year, I was only getting 30 downloads a day. I wasn't making any money at all. But what I learned was that I was consistent because I was going after the right goal. My goal was to learn. And even when I interview people right now, still on the Leveling Up podcast, which you should listen to as well, I learned something new. I get a— like today I was interviewing in the morning and And we set up some collaboration deals. I'm probably going to speak at this guy's conference. This guy might speak at my conference as well. I'm going to be in his magazine. We're going to try to do other collaborations as well. It's just, it makes sense. It's very, it's a very symbiotic relationship. I had another interview this morning, um, and basically I, um, you know, we're just talking about investing, we're just nerding out on stuff, and then we're talking about, you know, potentially hanging out in LA. So think of what your goal is for your podcast. Don't necessarily think about just making money out the gate because if your initial goal is to make money, you're probably not going to make money, right? Unless you're like a large, uh, you know, NPR or something like that. You've already got the audience and then you're optimizing for revenue goals. But the vast majority of you that are listening to this right now, focus on the goal. The goal could be learning. And then from there, eventually once you start to build the audience, then you can think about monetization. Because for the Marketing School Podcast, we did it for 3 years. Imagine this, we were getting hundreds of thousands up to a million or plus downloads a month. And we didn't monetize it for the longest time. We didn't see a reason to. We just wanted to keep building the audience. I didn't monetize, uh, Leveling Up Podcast for the longest time and now it's finally monetized. But just keep in mind, like you are playing the long game here and to build the network, to build a community, to build up content, it just takes time. All good things take time. And the other thing I'll say too is listen to the feedback. Recently had someone message me on, um, I think it was Twitter, And one guy's like, I'm so sick of your sinuses, Eric. So he sent me a link to buy a neti potter or neti porter, whatever. Neti pot. So I have a neti pot sitting at home right now, and now I'm gonna have to use the thing because the guy gave me the feedback. He's like, please just use this thing. First, I could have said, fuck you, fuck you, that's not nice, but it's real feedback. So I'm gonna take— I'm gonna take advantage of that feedback, and next time when I actually start using it— it's still in the box right now, but whoever's listening to this that I forgot who said it already, but you can bet your ass I'm going to sound amazing. All right, now find the right partner. Most podcast deals are maybe for a month or 3 months or so, but if you can find a deal where it makes sense. So for example, DreamHost sponsors the Leveling Up podcast, they sponsor the Marketing School podcast, but it makes sense because a lot of people listening, they are maybe looking to, they're building new websites or maybe they're looking to start a business. A lot of people are starting out, so it makes sense given the, the Marketing School brand that we have. And also at the same time, um, it makes sense given that, you know, the stuff that we're teaching, it just, it's the right audience at the right time. So if you're going to negotiate a deal, you can say, hey, you know what, let's negotiate something for 1 month, 2 months, 3 months or so. If it goes well, let's extend it to a year. So do you want to set a contract up and say, hey, we'll do it for 3 months. If it looks good after 3 months, let's come back to the table and let's make it an annual thing. And that's how we made it an annual thing. If you can't do that, if you don't want to, if you don't know who to look to, you can always use a, you can always use a service like AdvertiseCast. They actually have salespeople that will go out there and they'll go sell stuff for you. AdvertiseCast actually is a sponsor on our, uh, on the Single Grain website as well. So just full disclosure there, there's a lot of different services out there that are like that. The final thing, I kind of touched upon this point already, but try to do annual if you can. Again, set the deal up where they get a taste of it and if they feel good about it, then they'll renew for annual. And then you also want to build a relationship too because what we added on top of the podcast is we added the ability to get access to the conference that we have coming up. And we also gave access to other things that we typically wouldn't give people access to, such as a meeting with Neil and myself to help with, you know, kind of quarterly planning around marketing and giving the right tips. Because this is a, this is a big company where if we help pull a couple of levers, they're going to grow a lot faster. So it's actually really worth it for them to, to do a deal like this because they should be getting at least, you know, that, that, that amount in value. If not a multiplier on that. All right, so let me know what you think in the comments. Do you think I missed anything? Do you have any other questions about getting to, um, you know, helping to build a podcast to monetize? And, uh, if you're coming from YouTube, don't forget to check out the next video over there. And don't forget also, YouTube, hit the subscribe and the bell button, and we'll see you tomorrow.