MBA2235 Q&A Wednesday: Can I monetize my podcast that only has 500 listeners an episode?

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Today's question is from Steve and Steve asks, hey Omar, love your podcast. I'm actually a fellow podcaster and I have a podcasting question. I have a small podcast with a small following, about 500 listeners per episode. I've been looking for ways to maybe monetize the podcast, but can I with 500 listeners an episode, would sponsors be interested or should I wait a bit till the show grows? The thing is, I'm not sure if in my niche this podcast is going to blow up to thousands of listeners. Would love your advice as a senior podcaster. Appreciate the help along the way over the years. Steve thanks Steve for the question. For Q and A Wednesday, I got your back. I'm going to be answering Steve's question and we're going to take a step back and have a little bit of an open mind when it comes to monetizing our podcast. Regardless of what size it is. There are several ways to monetize your podcast and not just with sponsorships. Sponsorships is one of your options and it's still an option if you have a smaller audience and I'll explain How you can package the deal so that it's a win win for you and the sponsors. But there might be other opportunities you should start with first to start making money serving your podcast audience. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. So Steve asks if he can monetize his podcast that only has 500 listeners an episode. First, Steve, I wouldn't say only. It's not easy to get listeners to a podcast. And 500 is still 500 still people listening to your advice, to your content. And they are valuable. They're valuable members of your audience. And that's where I want to start. We really need to start seeing podcast listeners, visitors to our website, email subscribers, as real people. Imagine you spoke to 500 people in person. If you have access to 500 people, that's pretty valuable. You're bound to find somebody from that group that is interested in what you have to offer, whether that's your own product, your own services, or something that you're offering from a third party, like a sponsor's product or service. And we're gonna get into the sponsorships in a moment. But I always like to tell people when they're trying to monetize their audience, whether it's through email lists, whether it's a podcast or a YouTube channel, the best use of your energy is to offer something that's related to the podcast to that audience for sale. This is not rocket science, right? This has been part of business for a very long time. For example, when I was growing up and you'd listen to a band on the radio, I that was free content, right? Listening to that music when that band was touring, you would hear about their tour dates and therefore you would buy tickets. If you were interested to see them live, see them in person. This is their product, right? They're turning their free content and their audience of that free content to buyers of their concert tickets. So one of the easiest ways to do this is to run your own concert. Now, I'm not talking about an actual live concert where you'll be playing music and crowd surfing, but. But a live event, an online live event, a workshop. We've been doing this for years with our audiences. Whether we're talking to our YouTube audience or to our audience on our email list or here on the podcast. If people enjoy your podcast and the topic and the niche and what you share, there's a good chance that a number of them, a portion of that audience, is happy to pay for admission for more of that content, more in depth content, more Access to you to ask questions. This is why I always say the easiest thing to do is to sell a live workshop or webinar. I've sold live masterclasses for the last 10 years and they're easy to pull off, they're easy to put together. Shameless Plug. If you want to use our software, Webinar Ninja, we have a paid registration option. So if you want somebody to register for your webinar or workshop, they can pay, put their credit card information and you get paid. It's called a paid webinar. Over@webinar ninja.com if you want to try it out for free, we have a 14 day trial. The point here is, is that it's simple. You just put up a page, you run a workshop or an open Q and A, or ask me anything or an open coaching session, for example, for two hours. Put a price on it, whether you want to charge $20 or $50 or $100, and you tell people that you're running it this time, this date here, click the link in the show notes, click the link that is on our email, whatever to register for our workshop. Very simple. This is the easiest way to monetize any audience, is to give more of yourself, give them more what? And have a chance to interact with you as a paid product. Now, what I love about using this model is it becomes a pilot. It becomes basically a minimal viable version of possibly a bigger product or service, whether that is a full fledged coaching program or a course you're putting together, or even a book that you may want to write one day. You run enough of these live workshops and you realize, okay, these are the topics people are interested in. Let me put this all together, curate it and offer something a little bit more significant that becomes another product that you can offer your audience. As you can see, one monetization strategy can lead to the next. Now, I promised I would talk about sponsorships, and if you wanted to run sponsorships with a smaller audience, it's possible you could package it in a way. So it's not just the podcast or podcast read they're going to get as a part of the sponsorship, where you announce the sponsor on the show, but you can add them to your resources page on your website. So the sponsor feels like they're getting more than just an audio commercial, so to speak, they're getting that they're getting exposure and a backlink on your website. You may want to include them as a part of the package in your regular newsletter, maybe some social media shout outs, maybe they become your recommended tool to everybody in your audience for a certain period of time. You could put a package together that would look great for the perfect product or service. Think about your audience. Think about what is something that's out there already that they're probably already using or would need to use to be successful. Reach out to those companies and say, hey, I have a niche audience. This is what they're all about. This is my sponsorship package. This is how much it costs. Would you like to experiment and see how it goes? I've been on the other side of this equation several times where I was the sponsor. I sponsored some creators. We do this all the time and they gave me some really interesting package deals where when I sponsor them they include me not only in their newsletter but on their YouTube channel, but in the podcast as well. You gave me shout outs on social, some ran webinars for me, all kinds of stuff from my side of things as a sponsor. It was a no brainer. It's great value. I got my brand out there to a really targeted audience. So it was a win win.

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To wrap up today's Q and A Wednesday's question from Steve, Here are a few more tips if you want to monetize any audience. Most people, when they love your content, they want to get closer to you. They want to learn from you. They want to get to know you, maybe ask some questions. This is why the webinar idea works so well. But another option is a community, like a community forum or a Slack group or a Discord channel. Even if it's just a modest amount of money for them to join that group where they pay, I don't know, $20 a month and they get to ask questions anytime, get support from you, ask other people in your genre, in your niche questions, get to know people and make friends and be part of a community, not be lonely. This has a lot of value and it doesn't cost you much to run. Takes a bit of time and attention, but it's a fantastic way to also learn about your audience, what they're struggling with, what they're asking so you can build products and services around those needs. Well, there you have it. I hope that helps Steve give you some ideas to monetizing your podcast, or any audience on any channel for that matter. If you got a question you want to ask, just go ahead and email me@omar mba net and I'll make sure to answer it right here on Q and A Wednesday. If you love this podcast, if you want to support it, the best thing you could do is leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Just hit those triple dots on the top right hand corner and hit follow so that you can give us a review or star rating. Thanks in advance for doing that. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. The key to monetizing anything is understanding what your audience values. Okay? You can provide that to them easily and they'll be happy to pay it. A good indication is more of what you offer for free, but more in depth, more tailored, more customized, a bit personal. This is why I always recommend when you're trying to monetize is to choose ways to monetize that allow you to get feedback that you can talk to them, that you can get them to ask questions like a live workshop or a community. This gives you endless feedback and data so that you can create more valuable offerings for them and monetize further. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Foreign.

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