How To Turn Your Podcast Into A Full-Time Business

I made $1 million this year off my podcast. Last year I made $6 million off my guests.

Hala Taha is the host of the Young and Profiting podcast and she's the founder of YAP Media. This is the full blueprint for building a podcast business that actually scales.

A lot of people just don't understand how podcast sponsorships work. 40% of our podcasters' revenue every month comes from creative. Campaigns. I do webinars. Other creators do like email newsletters. So on average, we are increasing sales per month for our podcasters by 300 to 400%. Podcast is the main lead gen, and it's all like stealth marketing. So a lot of entrepreneurs have podcasts now, need somebody to help them with their personal brand. And typically what happens is that at the end of the show, they're like, hey, I know that you do LinkedIn, like, can we talk about it? That's how I get all my clients.

What's something on the podcast side that you think professional creators would really want to know?

And this is something that I learned and I wish I was doing it earlier. Now I'm just like, I don't even want to give these secrets away. I'm like, wait, should I tell these secrets?

Oh, you're one of the best of anyone I've ever talked to in monetizing and growing podcasts. I just want to dive right into it. How much money do you expect to make off of your podcast? Just the podcast itself this year?

This year my show Young and Profiting is set to make $1 million. That's what we're on track for. We already secured over $600,000 for the year.

That's amazing. And what was revenue last year?

$600,000. So we, we already surpassed what we did last year.

Q1 is locked in and you're like, we're already past those numbers and we can ramp it up from there. Every creator listening is going, is perking up at that and saying, okay, how, what? Like, tell me more.

Yeah.

So. You maybe let's just start with the size of the show and, yep. And some of those things so people can kind of frame and be like, okay, you're twice as big as my show or you're 10 times bigger or any of that.

Yeah. So we do about 350,000 downloads per month across my audio and my simulcast. That's how much we sell per brand.

Okay.

I technically do more than that, but I only wanna put half the ads on my videos on YouTube. And so what I sell to brands is 350,000 impressions per month across my audio, my YouTube, and my LinkedIn Live. That's my simulcast. And I get about 6 to 8 brands a month who sponsor me.

Okay, and so if I can ask maybe a naive question, how do you— like, what is the simulcast and how do you break that down?

So a simulcast is basically any place that you can play your full episodes.

So not YouTube Shorts, but your real episodes where you can put your commercials.

So usually it's like a one-to-one version or close Yeah. To your podcast. You don't have to title it the same, but generally the same show.

Mm-hmm.

On your audio, your YouTube. And for me, I also do LinkedIn Live because I have a big following on LinkedIn. Some of my creators in my network do Twitter. You could do IG Live if you wanna stream your full episodes on there, which I do sometimes. Right. So it just depends on what channels have your biggest audience, and then you can package that up into one simulcast that you sell to brands.

Okay. And then I, I feel like there's a way that podcast advertising and sponsorships used to work. Okay. Where it's, and this is what I always understood, like someone sponsors, they're baked into that episode.

Yeah.

And it goes from there. That's not really how it works in 2025 anymore.

Well, some people still do it that way.

Okay. That's not how the professionals and the experts, like, you know, the people on the cutting edge do it anymore.

That's not the modern way to advertise on your show. So there's like 3 ways to advertise on your show right now. There's baked-in episodic, which means that you bake in ads episodically and you really are selling like either a package of baked-in ads, like maybe 4 or 8 a month, um, or like 2 every month for the year or whatever. So you're selling a package of baked-in ads typically.

And so for the, like if we had a sponsor on this show or on this episode, yeah, then forever when someone goes back and listens to it, it would be thanks to Squarespace or whoever. Yeah.

Unless you had some like 90-day clause that you can remove the ad after 90 days. Usually it's forever. Forever and brands will pay a higher CPM, right? Uh, to get that baked in forever. Now the, another way that people think they're modernizing their ad tech is through faked in. Okay.

Okay.

So basically what faked in ads are is that you're on a platform like Art19 or Megaphone. Mm-hmm. And you're able to dynamically insert the ad, but they're still doing it episodically. And so they're faking in the baked in ad, and then they're typically removing it after 90 days and swapping it out with someone else. They might be swapping it out with another. So a lot of people are doing faked in ads for their new episodes, and then they're monetizing potentially their back catalog only with dynamic ad insertion. At YAP Media, we do full back catalog and new episode dynamic ad insertion. So it's called full catalog DAI.

Okay.

So we are, we're monetizing every single download, whe— whether it's a new episode or an old episode across the entire catalog. And that takes a lot of work to kind of get your catalog ready to do that, especially if you have like an older legacy show.

Yeah.

So oftentimes, like let's say Jenna Kutcher is in my network. When she signed on, she had like 500, 600 episodes. We had to take 100 hours of manpower and go through all her old episodes, remove the old commercials, and then add in dynamic insertion markers so that we could run full catalog DAI on her show.

Right. So that's a good point that we should bring up. Yap Media and how you're running networks.

Yeah.

And then we'll come back to, cuz that, that ties in so much to how you're monetizing, you know, your show individually. But give the rundown of Yap Media.

So Yap Media is my company and it's really twofold. I started it as a social media and podcast agency. We're the number one LinkedIn marketing agency. And so I started my agency portion of the business 5 years ago.

Okay.

And we basically manage influencers, CEOs, entrepreneurs, their personal brand across Instagram, LinkedIn, and podcasts. We produce podcasts as well. Then about 3 years ago now, I started the YAP Media Network where I grow and monetize other top business, self-improvement, society, and culture shows. And now we have about 35 shows, uh, people like Jenna Kutcher, Neil Patel, Russell Brunson, John Lee Dumas, mm-hmm. Um, Lori Harder. We've got amazing creators in our network.

Yeah, there's so many people. We cross paths a lot. Yeah, right? Like, Um, Jenna and JLD and others, I've been friends with them for a long time.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, Jenna uses Kit and so there, there's a lot of these, uh, yeah, so much overlap, lots of crossovers.

Yeah.

So why would someone come to YAP Media? Like what, what would you be providing different from, you know, if you're listening to podcasts, you might hear, uh, I, I don't know, the HubSpot Podcast Network pop up or some of these others. And it, on the surface it sounds like apples to apples.

Yeah.

And as I've dug in, I'm like, oh, they're not the same at all. Yeah.

I would say we're We're more of like a white glove podcast network. Um, so first of all, we're so good at monetizing. I was telling you earlier, like, my shows have been sold out since February— well, since January, like 70% sold out. And now we're like completely sold out for the year. So my number one goal is—

yeah, so my, uh, my friend Bob Glazer, who— yeah, uh, you represent his show Elevate. Yeah, yeah. So we were hanging out, uh, I guess in February, end of February, and he was like, oh yeah, my show's sold out through the end of the year already. And I was like, Bob, it's like February 15th.

And he was like, yeah, it's crazy. And no other networks, I don't think, have this problem. Like advertisers are like, what are you talking about? You're sold out. It's like, yeah, we're sold out. And that's because we prioritize these really long-term deals. We've got more demand for our shows because we understand how to package up sponsorships in a way where there's just not that many opportunities for sponsors to get in. Because we wanna lock in people for the long term. Yeah. So, so for example, like I really only have like 10 to 12 brands for the entire year, um, that can really sponsor my show, at least for the long term. Cuz there's no room for like these small flights. And a lot of these networks are doing these really small deals and they're kind of just churning and burning advertisers. And we don't like to do that at YAP Media. Uh, but you were asking what makes us different. So number one, we're just amazing at sales. So on average, we are increasing sales per month for our podcasters by 300 to 400%.

It's not 30 to 40.

No, 300 to 400. 300 to 400 people are like, what? I can make it.

That zero makes a difference.

Yeah. So we're really able to, to increase monetization. And that's because, like I said, we're focused on really long-term deals, 360 campaigns. So because I started as a social media agency, yeah, we really understand how to do all these creative campaigns, these, uh, dynamic campaigns that go way beyond just commercials. So we just don't only sell commercials.

Right.

And so 40% of our podcasters' revenue every month comes from creative campaigns that might touch the podcast, but it's not just related to the podcast itself. Uh, we're also really flexible. So a lot of these networks will lock you in to a certain amount of ads, to a, to like a certain amount of frequency of your podcast episodes or length. We're really flexible in that way because our creators are typically like CEOs, they've got their own things going on. And so we try to support them in the best way that we can, where they can really opt in and opt out of anything.

Because they might have their own products or companies that they wanna promote.

Yeah, they might need like a blackout period to promote their big push of the year, for example. Uh, we help them flight any internal ads that they have. Some networks don't allow that. Um, any sort of affiliate deals or whatever that they wanna push on their podcast, we don't take a cut of that. We're only, uh, taking a cut of the sponsorships that we secure.

Yep.

And in general, like we're just more flexible. Like if somebody's like, Hala, like the, I can't do 8 episodes a month anymore. I'm like, okay, cool, let's do 4. Just know that you're not gonna make as much money, but yep, we need this much time so that we can kind of re-rate all the deals. But it's just more flexible. And I think it's partially because we're still small enough to be flexible, whereas these other networks, you're just locked in. Yeah. And there's nothing that you can do about it. So we're flexible. Um, and the other thing is that we, we're really transparent. So that's the other thing that makes us completely different. Like we've got 24/7 financial trackers, we've got, um, You know, proposal updates every week where we're saying this is all the deal status, this closed, this didn't. Um, and giving people updates that way. And we try to be, um, really helpful to our podcasters. So we create recording packs, for example. No, I don't think any other network does that. Everybody's in our Slack, right? We've got Slack channels for all of our teams. So it's just like really tight-knit. We really help support the organization for the shows and, um, also our growth programs cuz I don't think every podcast network has like a holotop behind, like, trying to figure out how to grow all the shows. So we've got lots of really innovative growth programs.

I want to get into podcast growth, and that's probably where we'll talk about a bunch of that in a little bit. But going back to your show, okay, and that $600,000 from last year, from last year, is that all sponsorships? How, like, how does that break down?

So that's 60— it's a really even split. 60% was podcast commercial money.

Yep.

Just straight commercials, mid-rolls typically.

And are those host read?

Host read. I don't do, we don't even turn on programmatic. Mm-hmm.

Why is that?

Uh, programmatic is, there's a couple reasons.

Problematic.

Pro programmatic is problematic. Uh, so number one, lower CPM. So host read ads, we can get anywhere from typically like gross CPMs, I'm talking $26 to $35. $6.

Okay.

Uh, programmatic is usually like $5 to $17. Yeah. So way different.

Half at best.

Yep. The other thing is that you don't know what brands got played until the month is over. So you can do category exclusions on Spotify Ad Network or Ads as with, and say like, I don't want gambling, I don't want, you know, lottery or like nothing like this. Um, but you still don't know the brands until afterwards and it just, it doesn't perform as well. It's not great for the listener experience. Like I love doing ads and I never get complaints because I treat them like stories. I make them funny and it's just like a part of the show, you know? So it's, it's just not as intrusive as a programmatic ad. Right. So there's multiple reasons, but we typically don't turn them on at all on our network.

Okay. So then that 60% is from the commercial side, the host read ads.

And then 40% is from creative campaigns. So I, every podcaster has different creative campaigns that they leverage. So at my network, one of the first things that we do during onboarding is we talk about What are you willing to do? How can we productize your creative campaigns on like a quarterly basis? So for example, I, I'm, uh, I do webinars and they're really popular. So I'll have like Pipedrive, Teachable, BetterHelp, like they sponsor me for these webinars where I educate, uh, the audience on a topic. So for example, Pipedrive, I'll do like a sales training.

Yep.

And part of that will include like a 10-minute demo of Pipedrive and I'll just tie in Pipedrive to that. And there's, Social promotions, there's email promotions to invite people to the live webinar. Uh, we're really trying to drive like free signups. It converts super well.

Mm-hmm.

And then we then replay it on my YouTube, my LinkedIn Live, and my, and we like clean it up and put it on the audio podcast as well. So it's a real 360 campaign and I'm doing like 2 of these a quarter and people are paying anywhere from like $30,000 to $50,000, right? For this one webinar for me to do. So like that's something that I do. Other creators do like email newsletters, uh, or like a series of email newsletters. And you know, there's all different types of creative campaigns that we can do.

Okay. That makes a lot of sense. And so in that case, the brand is looking for like how many high quality leads did you drive to their, to Pipedrive or—

Yeah. So they're tracking like signups, right?

Yeah.

How many paid signups did you get? Free trial signups did you get for that webinar? Yeah.

Okay. So to take the example further, if we were to hypothetically use, uh, like let's use Kit as an example, right? You know, we're trying to reach entrepreneurs, creators, um, all of that. So how would you go about packaging? Let's say we want to do a webinar for Kit and, you know, packaging that. And maybe as you talk to it, think of the things that speak from the creator side, right? That another creator thinking of doing the same kind of offering might want to.

100%. So first of all, when you're selling any sort of creative campaign, you need to think of what are the channels, What are the deliverables that I'm guaranteeing? Right?

Okay.

So part of it would be like pre-promotion period, then the live webinar, then the post-promotion is how I think about it. So for pre-promotion, it might be like pre-rolls on my podcast. I'll give 100,000 pre-rolls to promote people signing up to the webinar. Right. I'll do 2 LinkedIn posts and they're gonna get 50,000 impressions each. And then, um, anybody who engages will then DM them. And invite them to the webinar. So DM retargeting on the LinkedIn posts, right?

Okay. That's something that I haven't thought about more. Like, break that down. How does that work?

So basically, especially on LinkedIn, um, you can DM any of your first connections and then you can invite and then DM any second or third connections. So what we do for all of our sponsored promotions is anybody who likes or comments or even shares, we're then gonna retarget them in the DMs with either the promo CTA link for the brand or the registration link for a webinar or whatever, you know, we're trying to drive clicks to. And the click-through rate on DMs is way higher than people just clicking the posts. And so that's typically how we get almost all of our registrants for our webinars is actually DM retargeting on the posts that we're doing to promote the webinar or any past posts that we think that that audience would want information about that webinar.

So if you had a story-driven post that got people's attention and maybe it talks about the brand or the webinar a little bit, but it's not. You're not pushing the CTA super hard.

Yeah.

So you're getting likes, shares, comments, and that can, that's the top of funnel. And then everybody who engages, you're then following up with the CTA.

Exactly. To, to sign up to the, to the webinar. So then they get like multiple touchpoints. They get like an overview either, like it could, it could barely talk about the brand, right? Mm-hmm. Just talking about sales. Let's take Pipedrive for an example. So maybe I'm giving a sales tip. It does really well on LinkedIn. I get, you know, 1,000 likes, 500 comments, whatever. We retarget those people, invite them to the webinar, and then in the webinar they're getting such amazing value, right? The law of reciprocity is in play because it's all sponsored by Pipedrive. Pipedrive is on every single slide and they're like, oh my God, I learned so much in this webinar. And it's all thanks to Pipedrive, right?

Right.

And then they're like receptive to watching the demo. They feel like Pipedrive is on their side. And they end up signing up a lot of times.

I mean, you're blowing my mind here already because I didn't realize the, the way to do engagement. I was looking at, you know, the comments or maybe you're replying or engaging in the comments further, but not realizing the DM follow-up that's happening behind the scenes. 'Cause you don't actually see, you know, I don't, like if I'm watching your LinkedIn, I don't see that.

So, so like we have a LinkedIn agency, so that's why I'm lucky. 'Cause I've got a whole team that's like, you know, 24/7 DMing people and it's just, yeah, another one of our strategies.

Right. So how, How does LinkedIn handle it? You know, on some of these platforms, if you're doing more outbound or you're pushing more of this, there's limits, right?

So LinkedIn is actually really good. There's no limits once you've warmed up your account. Now you can't like, you know, day one, brand new account, DM 1,000 people in a day. But on my account, we literally are DMing people 24/7.

Are you doing it from your personal—

my personal account? You cannot DM on a company account. Yeah, you can only do it on a personal profile. Um, so first connections, unlimited amount of DMs. So the name of the game when you become a huge LinkedIn influencer, once you hit 30,000 connections, you actually wanna remove people who don't respond to you so that you can keep DMing people.

Okay.

So I am like removing people every day to bring in new people that will attend my webinars and or subscribe to my podcast or whatever it is. And so you constantly wanna bring in new people that you can DM, but you always have 30,000 people that you could DM every single day in an unlimited manner. Which is totally different than Instagram. It's like 25 a day or something on Instagram. So you can just DM all day. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm going to use you as my personal LinkedIn coach for just a minute because I have, I have a question on this.

Yeah.

So I have like 30,000 followers on LinkedIn.

Okay.

And I mostly kept the connections for people that I actually know.

Yeah.

And so I don't know, I have maybe 1,500 connection requests that I have just let sit there.

Yeah.

Because I'm like, I don't, I don't know. I think, and I, as far as, you know, there's the 30,000 limit.

Yeah.

And so maybe I should, should save that. I think what you're saying is I should accept every one of those connection requests.

If you think you can sell to them. Yeah. If not, if not, you shouldn't. 'Cause they automatically follow you now if they send a request usually.

Okay.

And you can now, this is a new feature. So I also have like thousands of people who sit in my connection requests. We can actually DM those people now without having to connect with them. So part of my strategy, especially when we're like out of people to DM, I'm like, go DM all the people on my invite list. Yeah. You know? 'Cause just more people to invite to the webinar or do whatever we need to. To do. So you can DM those people with some, sorry, my connections are full, or I'm really picky about my connections, but I'd love for you to check out ConvertKit, you know? So you can still DM those people and engage them, and they're likely— it will tell you if they're following you or not.

Okay. Oh, interesting. If someone, let's say I, I accept a connection request and then later remove them because they weren't engaged, or, and I need to— I've hit my 30,000 limit. Do they, uh, remain following me?

So if you're, um, you can't, you can't force them to unfollow you. You can only remove a first connection.

Okay.

And you actually, so this is actually really important. You don't wanna have dead connections on your LinkedIn because you want people who take viral action, who see your stuff to engage within the first 90 minutes of you posting.

Okay.

So you actually don't want dead connections who don't log on, who don't take viral action, or people who wouldn't like your stuff. Because then you're never gonna go viral because in that first 90 minutes you're not gonna get engagement cuz the people either don't see your stuff or if they do, they're not gonna scroll right past it. Yeah. So you wanna make sure that you're bringing in people to your network who would take viral action and support your content. Mm-hmm. Um, the one thing I'll say is that about 2 years ago, maybe a year and a half ago, LinkedIn wiped out like a ton of dead profiles.

Mm-hmm.

So when I first used to bring on clients, I used to go through and have my team, like, there's ways like kind of ways to automatically do it, but find out like who hasn't logged on in 6 months and stuff like that.

Right.

Through Sales Navigator, you can actually see that.

Okay.

And then we've removed, like mass remove, like thousands of followers and that would like kickstart their account. But now they already removed a lot of them. So if you don't have a ton of followers, you don't need to really worry about it. Just going forward, I would just make sure you are purposely trying to get people who take viral action. I'll give you one more tip. Yeah. Of how to find those people. um, go look at influencers on LinkedIn. Go on somebody who has a really engaged profile like Gary Vee, Alex Hormozi, Cody Sanchez.

Yeah. Chris Donnelly. Me. Yeah.

You know, so go on my stuff and if you feel like they're a lookalike profile, somebody who has an audience that you want, anybody who likes and comments on their stuff is the perfect audience for you. So you would just go look who likes and comments and then invite those people to connect cuz you know, they take viral action. Yeah. They like similar content and that's a perfect person to invite to your audience.

And so that's how, so you could go out and connect with them.

And that's how I first started on LinkedIn. I, I targeted Gary Vee's followers.

Oh, fascinating.

Yeah.

Because so much, you know, when people think about inbound marketing and, you know, they're— you gotta lead with great content so that people will happen to see that in their feed, follow you, and go from there. But what you're saying is, yes, obviously have the great content because that's what they're going to stick around for.

Yeah.

But you can go out and find people and put your content—

Well, there's so many reasons why this works. We're getting real into the LinkedIn rabbit hole here.

Yeah, we are. We'll get back to podcasting in a moment.

So the reason why this works is because DMs are the most viral action on LinkedIn. So if you DM somebody and they DM you back, they're 85% more likely to see your content the next time they log on.

So basically what you're saying is that is determining the algorithm feed. It's like on Instagram where same thing with DMs, like the stories are going to show up About that.

Exactly. Exactly. So because you DM them, LinkedIn's like, oh, they're friends.

Yeah.

They want to, like, this person wants to see your content. They responded back. Right. So first of all, new connections also see your stuff more, more frequently. So you connect with them. Hey, I love, I noticed you engage with Gary Vee. If you like his stuff, you're gonna like mine too. I talk about motivation. I have a podcast. I talk about marketing. Let's connect.

Yeah.

Would love to provide value on your feed. They accept. They respond back. If you, better yet, you have like a conversation with them. So they're, they're not only bought in from the algorithm, but they've bought into you as a person. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Then they start engaging on your content because they start engaging on your content. LinkedIn starts showing your content to their first connections that are similar and are interested in that type of content. So it's like a flywheel effect.

Yep.

Um, also when you comment on that influencer's post where you share so many connections, LinkedIn's more likely to notify those connections that you commented. And so you'll get engagement on that comment on Gary Vee's post, for example. Yeah. And comments have their own like impression algorithm and that's actually being shown on LinkedIn now. You can see like this comment has 1,000 impressions or whatever. So people start seeing your comment, they're even more likely to follow you on their own accord cuz they're like, who's, why does this person have so much engagement on their content? Who's this person?

Right.

And then they follow you that way. So there's like so many different reasons why it works, but The whole, um, strategy is like, how do you get people who are engaged on LinkedIn to start engaging with your steps so that you're just in this community, um, that will just help you go viral?

Oh, that's amazing. Okay. I have a lot of things that I'm gonna go and implement just based on that. Are there any tools that you use to help, uh, streamline this?

So I would say LinkedIn is really stern on automation tools. Mm-hmm. So I don't advise that. I will be transparent. I'm always honest. When I first started, I did, I used LinkedIn. Linked Helper, it's called. Yeah. And I would scrape people who like and comment every post and you can like automatically do it. Mm-hmm. But it's really risky and LinkedIn's really against it. And now for me and my clients, everything is 100% human.

Yep.

And we just get VAs.

Mm-hmm.

So you can get a virtual assistant, but the key is you need to get residential VPNs. Okay. So you need to actually log in, the person needs to log in from your city ideally, or your state at the very least. Um, and then you wanna have some sort of like session protocol. So you can use like a platform like SessionBox so that like you guys all log in through like a platform that shows that it's just one session. Or there's just rules. Like, so for my clients, it's like you can't log out, log in before 5:00 PM, you know? So we do like, we do both ways.

But you're saying the client wouldn't log in before 5:00 PM or the, it doesn't, the VA, it's just to be really, really strict.

But I was saying the client, so the VA needs to work during the day, right? Right. So like client can't log in until a certain time. The key is like you can't have like many sessions open.

Mm-hmm.

So like maybe 3 max and they all should be from the same state because you'll get flagged if like somebody from the Philippines is logging in and somebody from New York at the same time, then LinkedIn thinks that's fishy. You're technically not allowed to have anybody run your LinkedIn account, but having a VA, you'll get a slap on the wrist versus automation, you, your account might get deleted. So it's just like way less of an offense and you can be like, oh, I didn't know, or, oh, I have an assistant and LinkedIn will just turn you back on, you know?

That makes sense. Yeah, it's fascinating of the different angles on it. Okay, so bringing this back from LinkedIn podcasting, because LinkedIn is a huge part of your podcast success.

It is.

So talk to me about the area, like what you do specifically for, you know, the podcast growth on LinkedIn.

So I have a couple of strategies for LinkedIn. I do LinkedIn Lives and I play my full episodes. And then I'll retarget anybody who likes and comments on those, uh, videos and I'll ask them to subscribe to my podcast. So I'll say, hey, I noticed that you checked out my livestream. If you didn't catch the full episode, here's the link to the full episode. Uh, most, most of the time people are like, oh, I already listen. Or, oh, I listened, it was awesome. Oh, thank you. Can you copy and paste that as an Apple Podcast review? Right? Yep. So what is this doing? This is actually helping my ranking on Apple. So driving new people to your Apple page. Increases your ranking. So ranking is not based on downloads, it's based on new subscribers. So daily—

is this because I've seen some shows shoot way up the rankings where I'm like, I don't think that you're getting more downloads than these other established shows.

So Apple Spotify downloads— sorry, Spotify rankings is based on trends, trending. They're trending charts, they're not download charts. So, um, you can't actually tell who's a bigger podcast based on their ranking. It's all based on daily new subscribers. Now some are using like virtual machines and people from Bangladesh and whatever, and they can just manipulate it, right? Um, and so some people are doing that. Some people are doing like me where they're sending DMs constant. I'd send DMs 24/7 and I'm always at the top of the charts because I'm just driving new subscribers all the time. And I have a fairly large show as well, which helps. Um, but it's really the new subscribers through the DMs. So, LinkedIn Live is the primary way that I'm getting new subscribers. And then also, like I was mentioning before, since there's unlimited DMs, we're constantly thinking of strategies of how can we find more people interested in the podcast. So for example, we can see who registered for like a negotiation event, and then we can say, hey, I just interviewed Chris Voss about negotiation. I'd love to send you a link to my podcast. Or, um, I, you mentioned Marth Manson before.

Mm-hmm.

Hey, I just interviewed Mark Manson. I noticed you follow him. I'd love to give you a link to the, to the podcast. So we're constantly trying to just get new subscribers through finding the target audience on LinkedIn.

Okay. That's fascinating. And then the target audience is so interesting cuz for my show, I'm focused so much on serving professional creators who are already really established.

Yeah.

And so if someone's like, oh, when are you gonna do a beginner episode on this? I'm like, never.

Never.

It's, it's not gonna happen. Right. Cuz I want, I want the show to be like your favorite creator's favorite podcast.

Yeah.

And so some of the growth tactics that I've heard other podcasters talk about are all about how do I just reach more masses? And I, I don't care about that at all. I wanna get the right people.

Yeah.

And so what you're describing is really this direct, you know, you could target, you say like, okay, let me figure out how to find established creators on LinkedIn.

Yeah.

And then invite them to come and listen to the show.

Yeah. There could be a certain title that they have in their profile that you target that way. It could be certain events that they register for, groups that are part of.

Could you do it based on follower count?

Um, I don't think you can filter for follower count. Okay. I wish you could.

Yeah. But you could, I mean, you could have a, a VA go through and build lists based on that.

Totally. I would say the best strategy would be like, who's another creator like you or entrepreneur who has a following that you want? And then you can just go look at their following. You can go look at their posts.

Oh, that's fascinating.

Yeah.

Okay. So going back to your podcast.

Okay.

Because this is so many things of how, how you've grown the show. Yeah. And And then, you know, you're on track for $1 million in revenue this year.

Yes.

And we talked about those two sides of it, right?

Mm-hmm.

The advertising side and then this, these like 360 deals or—

Yeah.

What other things go into driving revenue? And look, 'cause you were actually telling me, you just like dropped a little hint of this.

Yeah.

You actually like, this is relatively small compared to, which is crazy to say that $1 million this year is relatively small compared to some of the other ways that you're monetizing and earning off of the podcast. Podcast?

Yeah, so my podcast is the main lead gen for my social media and podcast agency and for my podcast network.

Yeah.

And so the people who I interview, we're pretty strategic about it. So it's people that I'd want on my show anyway. I have an entrepreneurship show. Yeah. So it's, it's most, a lot of entrepreneurs have podcasts now, need somebody to help them with their personal brand.

Mm-hmm.

And so a million dollars this year off my podcast. Last year I made $6 million off my guests.

Okay.

From the agency.

And so that's my network, a portion of the guests saying, okay, so tell me more about this. Like, I'd love to sign up for your agency.

Yeah. I'll tell you exactly how I do it. Like, it's very strategic. It, it was an accident at first.

Yeah. And then you're like, wait a second, that works.

And I was like, oh my gosh, we could just totally use this. Right? So podcast is the main lead gen and it's all like stealth marketing. So first of all, our guest outreach team who's incredible and like super professional, like they don't skip a beat. They've got a email signature that says like number one LinkedIn marketing agency. Yep. Top self-improvement and business podcast network just in the email signature. So like there's, they're getting a glimpse of what we do. We send everybody a gift box who's a guest. Okay. So they get like a branded box. It says like number one self-improvement network. There's like a little flyer in there. They get like a mug and a mic and like all this cool stuff. And there's just like a little bit about what our company does.

Mm-hmm.

Then before the interview, and this is something that I learned and I wish I was doing it earlier because like when somebody hops on an interview with me, they always just like assume like I just like have this podcast and nothing else, you know? Like they're just like, or like that I got lucky or whatever they thought. So now I'm just like, I'm like, my name is Hala. I have a company called YAP Media. It's a LinkedIn and marketing agent. It's like the number one LinkedIn agency. We're a top podcast network. Um, sometimes I'll throw out like, we're on track to hit 8 figures this year, whatever, like depending on what I wanna do. Um, and I just let them know what I do. And typically what happens is that after the interview, and of course I do a really good job, like for example, I was supposed to interview you today and I was like, I can't, I didn't get time to study. You know, I was like, I can't, I gotta study really hard for my interview. Cause I wanna do a great job. And then usually at the end of the show they're like, hey, like I know that you do LinkedIn, like can we talk about it? Mm-hmm. And if they don't ask me something like that, I'd be like, so how's your podcast going? How are you monetizing? Like at the end. And then I'll just give them some advice. I'll be like, oh, you're doing it that way. You should do X, Y, Z. And they'll be like, hey, like can I talk about this more?

I had this client who did this and you could share a story. Yeah.

So it's like, I just, I just give advice. I'm not like hard selling in any way. I'm always waiting for them to say, can we hop on a call?

Right.

And that's how I get all my clients.

So are you deliberately leaving 5 to 15 minutes, uh, at the end of the podcast recording so that if you could have a conversation?

I try. Yeah, I try. Sometimes it's hard cuz I just want like the content for my show and there's like 2 minutes and I'm like, by the way, how's your podcast? You know?

Yeah, exactly.

So I should be better at that. But yeah, like it usually just naturally ends up and I love it because they feel like it was their idea.

Mm-hmm.

You know, and like, so it's just way easier.

And it was their idea.

It was their idea.

You just, it was your idea to create the opportunity for it to be their idea.

This is, exactly, exactly.

Oh, that's fascinating.

And swaps work even better.

Okay. Talk about that.

Because that's an opportunity for me to give my expertise. So once they're like, they're like, oh my gosh, she knows so much about LinkedIn and podcasting. I wanna work with her. So I've noticed that like conversion, if we do a swap, like skyrockets.

Because they're going to spend an hour asking you about all the things and they're going to take all of these notes and then they're going to go, can you just— can I just pay you to do this? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And so in that— so the way that you're ultimately monetizing then is the agency fees that they're paying you for managing social, implementing all these LinkedIn strategies, all of that, and then obviously sponsorships on that side. What's the split of, of that in, in your business?

So I would say about $2.5 million was agency, and then last year it was like $4 million on the network, including my show.

Oh, that's amazing. I, I always think about packaging of content, right? So as you're having a conversation, things that run through my head of like, okay, how would you package this on YouTube so that, uh, you know, someone is searching for the right thing and they come across it and totally delivers on it. Mm-hmm. And just as a very meta thing that creators will care about.

Yeah.

In this, what's running through my head is like, oh, building a $6 million agency, building a podcast to a million a year in revenue.

Yeah.

The, the secrets for growing on LinkedIn. Like we've covered all kinds of stuff that, and it all gets together.

I feel like I have so much more to share, especially on the podcast side. Yeah.

What's something on the podcast side that you know, you think professional creators would really want to know?

So I feel like a lot of people just don't understand how podcast sponsorships work, and I feel like there's so many creators that like are kind of scared of it.

Okay, why would they be scared?

Like, there's so many creators that have a big enough show to monetize, but they're like, I don't do sponsorships, you know?

Like, there's a— is there like some status that there— that comes?

Or like they feel like, I've never done that before, or I just sell my own products, or like, I make so much money on my, on my stuff that like I don't need to do I mean, candidly, I'm in that boat, right? You are in that boat.

Because I, uh, the show's so targeted. We've got a good number of downloads, but not hundreds of thousands a month. And, uh, I make a lot of money running Kit.

So you might not be a great fit because you still need maybe more volume.

Yeah. But, but if you're getting to someone who say has 100,000 downloads, uh, per month.

Yeah.

And they're like, I don't do sponsorships because I make You know, my course makes $1 million a year. Yeah.

Or, yeah, but they can make another million or like maybe not a, maybe they can make another quarter million.

Yep.

Doing sponsorships or more depending on how creative they are.

Mm-hmm.

Like I was telling you, like I punch way above my weight. Like I probably make double a podcast for my size. So transparently guys, I get like 350,000 downloads a month across my simulcast. It's a big show. It is not a huge show.

Mm-hmm.

So I'm like, probably the 4th biggest show on my network right now.

Okay.

Now a lot of people lie about their podcast numbers, so when I say 350,000, people are like, oh, that's probably— like, they might think like that's small, but a lot of people in this world lie about their numbers, and I don't lie about my numbers, you know.

Well, there's— people will combine it in a way, like, that's why I dug in a little bit when you said, you know, long-form plays, like full length.

Exactly.

Because people will put their YouTube Shorts numbers in there. They're like, this reel went viral and that was from the podcast.

It's actually really funny, like, I I have people that like, like I'll hop on a call from my network and like, they'll be like, oh, I'll be like, how many downloads do you get? They're like 2 million a month. And I'm like, that's not true. You know? And I'm like, let's talk real numbers so I can give you real projections. And then I'm like, I go into their stuff and they get 20,000 downloads a month. Like, you know, the, it's, it's, I don't know if people are like lying on purpose or like they just don't understand. So when we talk about downloads, it's usually monthly downloads. So some people will give their all-time downloads.

Downloads, right?

You know, some people will give their downloads before the Apple iOS 17 update.

Talk about that for a second because, um, there are definitely people as algorithms change both in podcasts or email or all of that where there's one way of running and checking numbers before and then after the update things are different. So what happened there?

So, um, iOS 17 update happened like a year and a half ago and basically It removed automatic downloads on Apple. So in the past, if somebody listened to your show and they didn't go on Apple, the next time they went on Apple, like let's say like they didn't go on Apple for 6 months, the next time they logged into their Apple app, it would download at the same time all the episodes that they missed. Yep. So, um, it was just a lot of bloated downloads on Apple and podcasters lost anywhere from 40 to 70% of their downloads on Apple. Oh yeah.

And they weren't real listeners.

They weren't real listeners. And they were also mostly back catalog downloads. So again, it's like that, it was the downloading of all the old episodes typically. Mm-hmm. And, um, it really impacted legacy podcasters who were on Apple for a long time. Okay. So legacy podcasters on Apple are, are funny because a lot of people, they have like tons of reviews, right? So if they started in like 2016, 2014 to 2018, timeframe, you'll go on their page, you think they're a huge podcast cuz they have like 12,000 reviews, whatever. But they were just like early adopters and got a ton of, like, there wasn't a lot of podcasts, so they ended up getting a lot of listeners and reviews. But now their podcast is likely really small after this iOS 17, or has drastically decreased in downloads. And I saw that with a lot of my podcasters, like a lot of my shows lost downloads, I was lucky because I had a really diverse strategy. Like I'm a big podcaster on Castbox and I, I have like downloads on all these different platforms, so I didn't really see much of a hit, but other podcasters did.

Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. So then where we're getting into with podcast growth and yeah, your show and all of that. So you're, you're talking about how the downloads are calculated, but what's, what's that in service of?

Another thing that creators don't really understand is that your podcast has multiple variables. Commercials to be successful at monetization. And so if you have 100,000 downloads on your podcast and you can only take one commercial, that means that you can only monetize 100,000 downloads. But if you have 100,000 downloads and you can fit 6 commercials on your podcast, suddenly you can monetize 600,000 downloads.

Okay.

Okay. So there's lots of ways to monetize and kind of expand the amount that you can make just on increasing your episode length. Links, for example, and just getting creative. Um, so for example, I created like a new inventory for my network of mini episodes that get 100% share of voice. So we're all sold out. So I have to think like, how do I make more inventory? You know? So one of the ways is through these like, uh, mini feed episodes. They're 10 to 20 minute episodes that we'll do like 6 a quarter for a brand, 100% share of voice. And it's sort of like a really long baked-in ad It's more expensive 'cause it's like a full episode and we put it in the podcast, right? So now suddenly I've got, you know, you, you can 6x your downloads just by having a longer show where you can fit more commercials. So typically it's about, for audio, it's about one commercial per 10 minutes.

Okay.

Is what you can fit comfortably. And, uh, you can also do creative things to monetize your show, like paid interviews or miniseries or these other things like we were talking about webinars. And whatever else you want to do in terms of monetization.

Let's talk about the world of paid interviews because this is something that I think both brands need to know and understand more about. And the creators and the hosts need to know more of. How does this whole world work? I think that a lot of people just assume that every guest on a show is just someone that you thought would be interesting and you had them on and it's just like, it's very casual in that way. But actually there's a lot more happening behind the scenes.

Yeah. So there's lots of different ways that people can do it. Some people are like, literally, they're like, you have to pay $3,000 to come on my show. And every single guest for the most part is paid, right?

Okay.

Very few shows like that, I think. But there are, are some shows where like that's their entire monetization strategy. Most shows, especially like reputable shows that have like a great, great content, great following. They're typically doing paid interviews when there's good brand fit.

Mm-hmm.

So for example, with my show, um, I interviewed the CEO of Just Thrive. She, she has like a probiotics company. She talks about gut health. She's really passionate about it. She has an awesome story. Mm-hmm. And she did like a tour on my network where she paid for the interviews. And then after the interviews, we did mid-rolls for her company and it worked really well. And she like, that's her like number one marketing strategy to grow her company is guessing on shows and then doing mid-rolls afterwards. So now she just does this at every network, but she started with YAP Media. So it's just like any other 360 campaign. It's very similar to the webinar campaign. We put together deliverables. So like it includes an interview, it includes a link in the show notes, it includes mid-roll commercials, social posts, email blasts, and it's just a package of deliverables based on your channels and the impressions that you can guarantee and you price it right. And, um, The way that you price it is really up to the podcaster's discretion. Like, what is, what is it worth for you to have somebody on the show? And then you wanna back into like a reasonable eCPM. So a CPM is for, for podcast commercials, and now eCPM is this new term for the CPM across all different deliverables.

Okay.

And so typically like a good eCPM is anywhere from like $40 to like $150. And the more that you are like famous, you're like a celebrity where your endorsement is worth more, or the more difficult the project is. So for example, uh, an interview is a lot easier than creating a whole presentation training, right? So an interview eCPM might be like $50, which is still higher than a commercial, which is $30, but a webinar might be like $80 because it's just harder to do. Deal, right? So you always want to put some sort of, uh, CPM behind it, or else the brand's going to be like, well, this just doesn't make sense. I can't back into this, you know?

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so a brand is thinking about it of how do I build credibility for my executive or the brand as a whole?

Yep.

And then how do we follow that up with, you know, buying more impressions? Because, for example, if I were to, uh, come on your show as a, you know, the, um, like paying for the, the slot, then I know that a good chunk of your audience is gonna hear that episode.

Yep.

And so then over the next month or more, as I'm running impression, running ads on, you know, on your show, then they're gonna be like, oh yeah, I listened to Nathan on the podcast. I know what Kit is.

Exactly. And then they're more likely to take action. Right. Because podcasting, you really need to repeat, like have repetition. And if you have a whole interview, that's basically an hour-long commercial for yourself. To get people bought in, to trust. And then if you're playing a commercial for the, another month, the listener has so many chances to remember the link that they need to click to follow up. So the listener just has more chances to actually take action.

Do you think, are a lot of shows doing paid interviews or is it really like, if you had to guess, of the shows over 100,000, uh, downloads a month, like what percentage?

I think it's like Maybe like once a month.

Okay.

You know, it's not a lot. Yeah. Because most podcasters, if they're gonna have, first of all, like once you become a bigger podcaster, like you don't wanna have like just random people on your show. Right. Right. So for me it like has to have really good brand fit. They have to be able to afford it, which like most people, like, you know, you tell them $18,000 to come on my show, you know, that's a hard sell for some people. Yeah. Right. So, and for bigger podcasters they might charge $50,000, $80,000.

Right.

You know? So I think they're like every so often, but not like, you know, every single episode.

So they might be doing one out of every 6 to 12 episodes or—

Exactly.

More than that.

Exactly. Yeah. Okay.

That makes sense. And then it, does it end up driving a, a meaningful percentage of revenue or is it still usually small relative to the, the rest of the, um, so on average on my network it's usually 60% commercials, 40% other stuff, whether that's social, paid interviews.

And I would say in my network, people are doing paid interviews like every other month. I wanted to get more of them. Yeah. Right. They're just hard to secure. Uh, the other thing with paid interviews is sometimes it, it's like an upsell for the brand. Like, so for example, with Shopify, mm-hmm, I am like one of their, um, I'm like their most sponsored pod. I have the most commercials out of anybody for Shopify. Right. And so I interviewed all their top founders that use Shopify as like a paid interview series. Right. So you can also like upsell to the brands. I did something with the Olympics where I interviewed all these Olympians.

Um, and that's great content for your show. Yeah. Right. Because someone's like, oh, we'll pay the $18,000 for the interview and we wanna have this person on. And you're like, no.

Yeah.

No. Who's the person that's going to deliver a ton of value and, uh, like really elevate the brand?

And the benefit of like pricing high is like if they can afford it, they probably have something cool to say because they can afford that cost, you know? So, yeah.

Okay. What about if we dive into growing shows?

Yeah.

So we talked about the LinkedIn strategy. What are some other things that work really well for growing shows?

So there's like two avenues that you can take. There's media buying and that's really getting advertising on the different podcast players. So there's about like 40 different podcast player apps out there. There's Apple and Spotify, right? And the way to get organic visibility on there is through like PSO and like you can't really buy ads. On Apple and Spotify.

Oh, what's PSO?

Podcast search optimization.

Okay.

So it's like the SEO of podcasts. Got it. PSO. Something I'm obsessed with lately. It's like my number one, like, thing that I'm obsessed with.

Okay. Well, let's dive into that for a second. I always wanna talk about someone's obsession. Uh, what are the things that make a difference in search optimization?

So I'm still like testing stuff. Mm-hmm. Um, but basically what I found out, and we can take Spotify and Apple are two different algorithms. Mm-hmm. So we can start with Spotify. What I've found out so far is that all the different metadata points are ranked differently. So your title is ranked the highest, your author title is second highest, then your description, then your titles, then your just show notes.

Mm-hmm.

When I say description, I mean like your podcast description as a whole, not as an individual episode. And the key is to have the same keywords repeating throughout all of them.

Okay.

So something that I've done, is I put like entrepreneur marketing and sales in my title now. And now, you know, I don't even wanna give these secrets away. I'm like, wait, should I tell these secrets?

But, um, yeah, like, but you're noticing that you're ranking higher for those search terms.

Yes. Yes. So it's all about repeating the same search terms throughout all the different, uh, metadata, uh, spots. And the impact of the keywords in your title and author title and your show titles are ranked way he— more heavily than your show notes. For your show notes, you wanna have keywords in the first 2 to 3 lines. Nothing else really matters after that. Okay. And again, it's the same keywords over and over again. So this is something that I always kind of knew, but I never proved it. Like I always kicked myself for calling my podcast Young and Profiting and not like Young Entrepreneur.

Okay.

Because it would've gotten way more organic search and visibility within the apps had I just called it Young Entrepreneur than Young and Profiting. Cuz nobody's searching young or profiting, but they're searching entrepreneur, right? So having a keyword in your title is so important. If you don't have a big show, I would definitely right now go change your name to something with a main keyword. And you can actually use a tool called Ausha.

Okay.

A-U-S-H-A. It's a new tool and it will show you how you rank on all these different keywords and you can track it. And that's what I've been using to kind of like test things. So Spotify is using the same keywords over and over again.

Okay.

Apple is similar, except I believe that they heavily weigh how popular your show is.

Okay.

So on Spotify you can rank very easily no matter how popular you are, just if you've got a good keyword strategy. On Apple, it seems like you've gotta have down— like it, it's tracking your downloads and then deciding like who gets shown based on their popularity. Does that make sense? Yep.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, so that takes us down.

So that's the PSL.

Yeah.

Okay.

That side. Now let's go back to, you're talking about advertising in these other podcast players.

Well, I have another tip for PSL that's really hot. Okay. So on Apple, on the bottom of the show, and I actually told you this when we were on the phone the other day.

Yeah.

On the bottom it says like podcasts you may like or podcasts like this, something like that on the bottom. That is one of the only like organic discoverability features that Apple has, right? Other than like ranking on the charts like we just talked about. The way that you get on that is by guessing on other shows. So if I go guest on Lori Harder's show, mm-hmm, people listen to that. They end up following me because I went on her show. Now if she goes on my show, they end up following her because because she went on my show and they show podcasts based on who has mutual subscribers, right? So now because I went on Lori's show and I invested in guesting on her show, my show pops up when people go on her show, and that's discoverability for my show. So big strategy would be guesting on other shows so that you can get in not only that episode, but there's a long tail effect of getting in this podcast like feature.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

So you're, yeah, you're getting the instant return from being perceived as an expert in front of a new audience.

Yeah.

And then Apple is saying, hey, let's, there's mutual subscribers here.

Yep.

And it's a very genuine, people who like show A. Yep. Seem to like show B and it's like, oh yeah. Cause they, yeah.

And then also on Apple, um, there's channel pages now for networks. And so there's also, if you're part of a network and you are in their Apple channel page, there's also another bar that says like podcasters in the network, right? So that's also how you get organic discoverability is joining a network who has an Apple page.

Okay.

Yeah.

Anything before we move on from—

that's it for me.

We covered it on that side. Okay. So then talking about, you know, advertising in these other players, how does that work?

So every player has a different advertising strategy and there's like a bunch of them. There's Podcast Addict, Player FM, Castbox, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Overcast, right? So there's all these different podcast players and they are, you can get banners in their apps, you can get integrated into their onboarding series. So when somebody signs up for the app, it can say like select the categories you're interested in and then it will say like recommended shows and they might like pre-select you subscribing to them. Right. Um, they can put you in the featured, they can send push notifications to their users. So there's all these different ways. And really what you wanna do is like test these, uh, apps, see what the retention is like, which is really easy to do because most likely if you're a podcaster and you've never bought on these apps, you probably have like 10 downloads from that player. And then you can just see like, okay, during the promotional period I got X downloads, a month later I got this much, a month later I got this much. And you can see like, does this retain or not?

Mm-hmm.

And then, you know, if it does, and you're happy with it, you just keep buying it. So like I personally love Castbox and Player FM and I do media buying with them all the time.

Is that something that, you know, a creator should put $1,000 a month behind or would you spend even more than that?

So usually these packages range anywhere from like $5,000 to $10,000 a month. So usually it's like if you're already monetizing or you, you want to monetize. Um, and this is more for like volume. So if you've got a broad show, it's good for that. But if you're like really niche, it's not a good strategy because you're basically just advertising to anybody who's on the app.

Right.

Right. So if you've got a broad show like mine, it's a great strategy. But if you have a niche show, better just guest on other niche shows is a better strategy for you.

That makes a lot of sense.

Or commercials on other niche shows.

Something that I'm fascinated by from the outside is watching different creators maybe move between networks.

Yeah.

So for example, I feel like when HubSpot came out with their network and they're ramping this up, one, I thought that it worked differently than it did. Mostly they're just facilitating swaps and buying their own ad inventory. But, you know, I watched a bunch of big podcasters come on with them and then I've actually seen a decent number of those large podcasters leave HubSpot and go to my network, your network. So you take someone like Jenna Kutcher as an example. What goes into winning her over from, you know, any of these other networks to your network?

Yeah, I think with these big creators, most of the selling is like control.

Mm-hmm.

Like you can still have control. They trust me, I'm their friend.

Right.

So they know like I'm not this big scary serious network or like some guy that they don't know that they're signing to. I'm the head honcho at YAP Media. They already know me. Yeah. So they know that like they could just text me and be like, yo, Hala, like, Blah, blah, blah, whatever the problem is, you know, instead of like, oh, well yeah, let me talk to my boss. Yeah.

And then I'll try to get the director of whoever.

Actually, it's really funny because so many of my podcasters are podcasters that have never signed to a network before because you mentioned HubSpot, but they weren't really a real network. They were an advertise, they were an advertiser that was, uh, just calling themselves a network. They were just buying a pre-roll and a mid-roll.

Mm-hmm.

They did not have sales exclusivity. So like for me, if you're a network, you are responsible for all of the podcaster sales. So for a while, Jenna was like on paper in the HubSpot network and I was doing all her ads, including flighting her HubSpot stuff. But I was getting her, she only, she's got 5 ads, one of them is HubSpot and I was doing the other 4. Mm-hmm. Right. And flighting her HubSpot ad. Um, so yeah, it wasn't really a real network.

Yeah. Okay. Interesting. So then, When you are saying, hey, I'm already doing this, like fully come over and—

Yeah, because I helped explain to her as well, cuz she was confused too. Like she was like, I'm part of the HubSpot network. And I was like, are they running your sales? No. Can you get more ads? Yes. Okay. Are they hosting your show? No. Okay. They're not flighting your ads, then they're not a network. They're just an advertiser that, that has branded themselves as a network.

Work. Okay.

Yeah.

That makes sense. And so in that, right, as you win her over and you're taking over all of the sales and, and—

Yeah. All the ops, all the sales, all the tech stuff. Yeah.

Yeah. So where do you take that from there? Like what are some of the first things that when you bring over a big show like that, that you're like, all right, here's everything that we're optimizing and—

Yeah. So, uh, during the onboarding we're transferring their RSS feed, their audio RSS feed. To our network account on Megaphone.

Okay.

And that's actually really simple. So a lot of podcasters are scared of this, right? But it, that's like a, takes an hour.

Okay.

Right. Just moving their RSS from wherever they were to like a modern advertising platform. Mm-hmm. Usually it's Art19, Megaphone. I think Captivate might be another one. That's, there's only really 3. Then we're going through their whole back catalog. We're removing all the old commercials. And we're agreeing on an ad load. So this is a conversation that we have with the podcasters. Hey, your show's 45 minutes. I think we can put 4 ads comfortably, 4 mid-rolls, maybe 2 pre-rolls. One can be for your internal promotions, the pre-roll, one can be for sale. And we're kind of like negotiating like, what is a good ad load? This can change over time, right? Like I mentioned, everything is kind of collaborative.

Yep.

So then we're setting up the show for, to future-proof it, whatever their max ad load they're comfortable with. Um, and then we're just, you know, helping them with their episode frequency, length, all the things that we need to make sure that we're able to project impressions for advertisers. And then we're coming up with their monthly catalog number. Once they're in our megaphone, we're getting all their downloads. Then the next step is like, what is their monthly catalog number that we're gonna start selling them at? Okay. Um, then we're trying to get a gauge of like, you know, here's the top 100 advertisers we work with. Do you approve? Do you not approve? Then we're hitting the ground running trying to get sponsorships. One of the things we didn't talk about yet is the way that we sell differently in terms of at YAP, we're focused on monthly flights. So other networks, they might sell weekly dynamic flights and a lot of them are selling that faked in strategy that I was talking to you about. Yep. Right. So we sell full monthly flights. So for somebody like Jenna who takes 5 ads on her show, that's only 5 brands a month. Months that can sponsor her show. So all year I'm trying to get her tests. So like a new show comes on, let's say they have no advertisers, they've never advertised before, okay? My job is to get them as many tests as possible and renewals for the year so that by the time like September, November, December comes, that I'm booking them annual deals.

So that's a big part of how you're getting sold out for a long period of time, is you're like, I'm not dealing with Oh, I wanna sponsor 2 episodes or something like that.

Yeah. You're saying, so like our minimum is 1 month flights and typically people are testing 2 or 3 months at a time. So our tests are 2 to 3 months flights. Then if you perform well, you get a renewal.

Mm-hmm.

Sometimes this renewal is like end of till end of year. That's the goal, right? So we wanna perform so well that brands, they'll test for 2, 3 months and then they're gonna renew for the rest of the year. Okay? So if you're with a network that is churning and burning advertisers, they're doing it wrong. Okay? They're not strategic. They're just looking for scraps and you're just getting scraps all, all month. Basically. Okay. You're doing a lot of work cuz you're having to read all these different commercials. Your audience is getting a bad experience because you've got 20 different brands that you're, you know, repping. For example, like Shopify has sponsored me for like 4 years now. Indeed for 4 years. Masterclass, like I just LinkedIn, I have the same sponsors. I already know what my sponsors are. Like they don't change Airbnb, right? Like they don't change. So my goal for like a new podcaster is like, I need to first of all get them in front of like the brands that sponsor my whole network, like Shopify, Indeed, Airbnb, LinkedIn, get them tests, get them renewals. And then in September, November, December, this is called the podcast upfront season.

Okay.

That's when we're trying to negotiate all the annual deals. The worst time I would say to join a network is in that period, which is because you don't have any tests, because everyone's focused on annual deals.

Mm-hmm.

And so like the slowest quarter of the year is Q1 cuz everybody was focused on annual deals in Q4. So whenever somebody signs with me in Q4, I'm like, oh, this is gonna be suck for them. You know? Mm-hmm. But it is what it is. They didn't do their tests yet and we've gotta focus on the annual deal. Deals. So for example, by the time Jan 1 hit, my network was 60, 70% sold out already for the year because everybody had like 3, 4 annual deals on their show and that took up spots for the whole year. And then now what's left is just 2, 2 spots. And the highest performing shows, usually the bigger shows end up being the highest performing shows, right? Are already sold out 100%, you know? So like I had had like one spot left. Tori Dunlap had a couple spots, Jenna Kutcher, like, so like if you're a, a bigger show, uh, you're usually also a top performer. Mm-hmm.

So you've shared all kinds of stuff of like very specific tactics and all of that, but I want to, as we wrap up, go as actionable as possible.

Okay.

And maybe if we could take two different sizes of creators, so someone who's getting 50,000 downloads, uh, per month.

Okay.

And then a creator who's getting 300,000 downloads per month.

Okay.

Like what are the things that you would go and implement right away?

Okay. Okay, so if you're getting 50,000 downloads per month, I would recommend that you start like dabbling and getting sponsorships. Yeah. Because you are big enough for certain networks.

Mm-hmm.

Okay. So there's like these networks like AdvertiseCast and Gumball, which are, they cater to non-exclusive podcasts, which means like they don't host their podcast.

Okay.

So you don't need to move anything. You can still do your own independent thing. It's a really great option for like people who wanna stay independent and sort of like dabble in advertising. So you sign up with Gumball, you sign up with AdvertiseCast, you're non-exclusive with them, and they just start sending you deals. You've gotta flight everything yourself. They're not gonna help with your ad ops at all. You're likely gonna just start with baked in or faked in depending on if you can get on Megaphone or not. And you can start just monetizing, getting a feel for it. So that's how I first started. I was independent and I just started with AdvertiseCast, Gumball, and then I was like, wait a second, Who are they working with? And then I figured out like all the agencies they were working with and I started bypassing them.

Yeah.

And then started my own network. Right. So, um, that's a good place to start. You can also start reaching out direct to brands. So let's say you have a company and you use 50 different tools. So what I used to do is I used to just go, okay, we use Slack, we use Indeed, we use this, we use that. Let's just reach out to them. Sometimes these brands will reroute you to their agency if they work with a podcast agency. Now suddenly you have got podcast agency.

Right. And that was a good introduction. You didn't come in, it's like, oh, the brand made the introduction to the person. Yeah. And you're like, oh, I'm trying to keep this brand happy cuz they're a client of mine. So let me take the—

yeah. So you can work, you can work direct with the brands and come up with your deals yourself. You're gonna use CPM models. So there's so much information online about podcast CPMs. So typically $22 to $30 depending on your niche. And you can put a package together of probably baked in if you're not with a network. And you don't wanna get too techie, and you can also sell social media, you can sell webinars, you can sell whatever you want directly to these brands, right? Mm-hmm. And getting experience with AdvertiseCast and Gumball will kind of teach you how podcast ads work. Yeah. And how to do them and all. And then you'll be able to sell direct better because you'll already know how it all works. Right. So that's what I'd recommend for $50,000. Now, if you're $300,000 plus and you're in business, self-improvement, and society and culture, Well, come talk to me.

Yes, exactly.

But seriously, you are a great candidate for a network.

Mm-hmm.

Okay. So for you, I want you to think about how can you max your downloads? And that would be, you wanna think about like episode frequency. So one of the quickest ways to do that, if you are only putting out 4 episodes a month, make it 8 right now. You've 30, you usually it's like a 30% increase in downloads off the bat. That. Okay, if you've been podcasting for a long time, play old episodes. Like, I do YAP classic episodes twice a month of older content, um, or I'll play my guest appearances. Like, I would love to play your episode on my podcast. I think my listeners would love it, right? And so you can get creative, especially if you speak or whatever, to double your episodes, and now suddenly you have 30% more impressions to sell.

Okay, the guest appearances is an interesting one because if you're doing an interview show You spend all of this time drawing all the expertise out of someone else.

Yeah.

And you know, if you look, maybe you talked 20%, the other person talked 80%. That's just, that's how an interview goes.

That is. Yeah.

But then if you invert it, your own audience hasn't heard as much of your expertise. So it's like, take the guest interview and run.

And they love it. Right? So like my audience loves to hear my appearances because I don't do that much solo episodes. Right. So, or you can add solo episodes is another idea. Right?

Right.

Right. So the frequency of your episodes, the lengths, like I said, there's multiple variable variables of how you can make money. The number of commercials that you can put on a show. Mm-hmm. So if you have an hour-long show, you can put 6 ads. So if your show's only 20 minutes and you wanna monetize, can you make it 40 minutes? Mm-hmm. Because you'll make a lot more money. You'll make double the amount of money if you made it 40 minutes. Right. So there's little things that I would like, you would tweak, you would wanna think about like, okay, like if I'm really gonna be serious about monetizing, maybe I should be guesting on shows. Shows, right, once a month to kind of grow my show, uh, joining a network so that you could be in all these growth programs. Like, so for example, we're gonna do like PSO revamps for all of our shows.

And like, you're taking what you've learned from your own experiments and they're like, all right, this is what's working now, we're gonna go implement it.

And I have relationships with all these podcast players because I've done so much media buying with them. So now we do like, in exchange for $5,000 of social media, you get 10,000 subscribers on Castbox. Like, right, so we're doing that all the time for our podcasters. So you get into these growth programs for more advanced podcasters. Um, and, and also like, it's, chances are if you're that big of a podcast, you've got your own business going on. You wanna be with a partner who's gonna handle all the tech, make it easy for you, create recording packs and do, you know, to make it as easy as possible for you to monetize.

Yeah.

So those are my two recommendations.

I like it. Yeah. That's very specific. So just going back to the beginning, you know, we, we came on talking about your show and doing, $600,000 in revenue last year, on track for $1 million this year, just have your show. But I think what's so interesting is that the other business opportunities beyond that are worth, you know, $6 million combined. And that's like just going to keep—

hopefully $10 million this year. Yeah.

Yeah. Just keep growing and everything from there. And that's the power of attention. Like when you can get in front of the right people and you have the right message, like the level of business that you can build is absolutely amazing.

Yeah.

So thanks so much for coming on, for sharing all of this.

I had so much fun. This was such a great interview. Thank you.

Thanks for being one of the first, or actually the very first, to record in Kip Studios Chicago.

Beautiful, Nathan. Congratulations.

Thank you. Uh, where should people go either to follow your show and, uh, maybe connect with you on LinkedIn, but also if they're like, all right, I am that 300,000 subscriber, 300,000 download show, and I'd like some of this managed for me.

Yeah. Um, so Young and Profiting is my podcast. It is an amazing entrepreneurship show. I highly recommend you guys go check me out on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you like to watch your shows. And then yapmedia.com, Y-A-P media.com if you wanna check out agency stuff, network, fill out a recruitment form, whatever you wanna do. It's all there.

I love it. Yeah. Thanks so much for coming on.

Yeah, thank you.

If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search The Nathan Barry Show, then hit subscribe and make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were and also just who else you think we should have on the show. Thank you so much for listening.