Nathan Barry breaks down podcast monetization math: reaching $1M/year typically requires sponsorship rates around $20,000 per episode. The conversation weighs trade-offs between juggling multiple sponsors versus selling to a network, and how episode length affects sponsor spot value.
We know people who are making $5 million a year plus just on podcasts. That's exactly right. If you're looking for a lot of places to make more money, podcasts is a big space. What would have to be true to make $1 million a year off of your podcast? Sponsors can do really well, but the thing is, what they do is they sell themselves to a network, whether it's iHeartMedia, Spotify, whatever, and their episodes have to be 45 minutes and at least 4 sponsor spots. And that's why they buy the podcast for X amount of million, guarantee that money. Right now I do one podcast a week. So how much money would I have to make in sponsorships per episode? $20,000 per episode. I don't know the numbers on CPMs and all that to know how many views we'd have to do. About what I'm doing. Okay, you think you do $20,000 an episode now? Probably. The thing is, when you add more podcast sponsors, it takes— the average is down. Yeah, yeah, because they're like, I don't want to hear all these sponsors. Or I could sell my podcast to a network for a year under a million-dollar contract.
