5 Essentials To A Profitable Podcast - The Podcast Report With Paul Colligan Episode #78

It's the five essentials to a profitable podcast. This is the Podcast Report, episode number 78. Show notes, links, conversation and more@thepodcastreport.com 78. A podcast is no more profitable than is a sheet of paper. Maybe a better way to say it is that hope is a lousy podcast monetization strategy. Hey, this is Paul Calligan and this is the podcast report where we show podcasters how to reach more with their message and to profit more with their content. Today actually, I'm recording this upstairs in the living room couch. I don't know if the term is couch casting, but I did something a little funky to my foot and well, might sound a little bit differently today. You can get the links and the opt in and the worksheet that I'm speaking to@thepodcastreport.com 78. I've got a fun little worksheet that has everything we have today so that you can lean towards the profitable podcast. With that said and done, let's get to the content. All right, let's chat to where this came from. Many clients, too many clients, many students, too many students. Many of my a la carte Skype consulting customers, too many of them are doing the fire aim ready. I hear podcasting. I like podcasting. I want a podcast. Let's do this. Let's forget how to monetize. Well, hope is a lousy monetization strategy. The big idea of today's episode is simply that a podcast is no more profitable than is a sheet of paper. If you podcast doesn't mean revenue is going to come from it. Doesn't mean you're going to see anything come from it unless you get strategic about it. Now there are more choices in podcasts than there's ever been before. Yes, more people are listening, but there are more choices. It's harder to get profitable. But if you think it through, if you strategize, if you actually do the things that give you the best chance of being profitable, now you got something going. If you don't have the five elements that I discuss here answered, don't wonder why your podcast isn't profitable. If you listen to anybody in the industry, the simple fact is traditional ad rates are going down. The money that we're getting from putting just good old fashioned ads on our podcast, it's getting lower and lower. We've seen this before. We'll see it again. There was a lot of money made in the Google Ads added to your website. There was a lot of money made in affiliate Marketing ads added to your website. There's a lot of made in podcasting. It's going away. You gotta be strategic about your podcast. So I've got the five things that are needed in a profitable podcast and we'll discuss them here today. But more importantly, I've also got them on a worksheet that you can print off. It looks great in color. It looks good in black and white. I don't care how you print it off, print it off. Put it up on your board next to your microphone. And as you're building out your podcast, or even as you're speaking to your podcast, do what you can to make sure you follow these five elements. You can grab that worksheet@the podcastreport.com 78. Funny enough, this episode number so the five things you need quickly Compelling content strategically profitable shelf life Offer urgency, episodic independence and correct audience and offer match let's chat to these Compelling content is first. And it has to be first. Because this idea that I'm going to put something up and somebody is going to listen, it just isn't true anymore. There are so many choices. People realize there are many choices. They're looking around now. They know they have options, you have competition. And so they want compelling content A to listen to. B Compelling content moves them to action. If you don't make a connection with your audience, why are they going to make the make the next step. If your listener is not ready to go further, why would they go further? Spend the time needed here. Work through what it is that you're doing and why you're different and why you're compelling. Let me give you one example. A lot of you are doing the interview podcast, and that's fine. Interview podcasts are great, but what is it going to be about your interview that's different than all the other interviews? Most of the people out there who interview, they interview on all the podcasts. And you know, I'm tired of hearing this particular person share their story. But if there's something compelling about it, if there's something about the structure, it begins to get interesting. So the very first thing is just don't assume that the content is compelling. Why is it compelling? It's all about understanding your audience. We've chatted about that in past episodes. But get produce, perform, record, edit compelling content that moves them to action. That's number one in monetization. The next thing in monetization, this gets forgotten a lot is strategically profitable shelf life. Now, I've chatted this before in the past. And please hit pack episodes if you haven't already already. But basically you want something that lasts a long time. You'll notice I shared that at the beginning of this that I'm on the couch, there's something up with my foot. I didn't say what day it was, I didn't say what month it was, I didn't say what year it was. And you know I can have something wrong with my foot at any time. I didn't put this in basis of elections or movies or pop culture or anything. And the fact of the matter is, podcasters for the last 10 years have been looking at how to make a profitable podcast. And podcasters for the next 10 years will be looking for how to make a profitable podcast. So what I've done is I've produced an evergreen podcast. Now you can produce a non evergreen podcast, but then realize under the guise of the strategically profitable shelf life that if your shelf life is only a week, you know, this is the report for January 25, 1922. You know you got one week to make that report profitable. Not every means possible, but it's a lot harder when you do the call to action. Be really strategic here. If you have a campaign that you think is going to be worth a gazillion dollars, well, what happens if it isn't? What happens if you kill it? What happens if something changes? Then you've got a podcast that calls to that campaign. I will mention the how to podcast book a little bit later in the episode. And notice I'm not going to mention what year of the book because I don't care what year you listen to this. I'll have a version of the book. It will be selling well. I will be proud of it. And you just want to go there. So strategically profitable shelf life. If you only got shelf life of a week, that's fine. Can you be strategically profitable with it? Maybe if you change it from a week, a month, or even a place in time to sort of an evergreen thing. Does that change the shelf life and the profit potentially behind it? The next thing is offer urgency. There's this idea that I can just put up an offer and it'll work. Hey, download my free report on this that has nothing to do with what we just chatted about. Or buy from this customer who really doesn't have much to do with the topic at hand. Why should your audience act now on this particular podcast? Here's the deal. I know if you're this far into the podcast, you want a profitable podcast you're not looking for mike technique for me. You're not looking for hosting platforms for me. You're looking for profitable podcasts for me. And when I say head out to the podcastreport.com 78 to grab the download, if you're really into this, you are going to do that. And if you really want to get a profitable podcast, you can start doing this immediately. I know you want a profitable podcast. My offer has urgency. Do your offers have urgency? Episodic independence. This is huge. Now, I recently took a hiatus between season one and season two. I did it for a number of reasons. One thing that was really interesting and I'm still crunching the numbers and we'll do a future episode about this. One thing that happened was I got a lot more downloads than I thought I would and the downloads were not coming from my website. The downloads are coming from itunes. What does this mean? Well, remember, itunes is the 800 pound gorilla. They might not always be the 800 pound gorilla. They'll be for some time. But people were going through, they were searching for topics. My episode about what serial means to podcasting was searched a lot and downloaded a lot and hopefully listened to a lot. Episode search is a thing. And if all my episodes required that you had listened to all the past episodes, I wouldn't have gotten the action, I wouldn't have gotten the interaction, I wouldn't have gotten the new audience, I wouldn't have gotten a bunch of things if I had set these all up to be requiring 100 years, 100 hours, 100 days dedication. To me, the episodes need to be independent. And when your episodes are independent, then you have as many entry points as possible. If you have 100 episodes, you have potentially 100 entry points to what it is that you're doing. If you have 200, 300, 400 episodes, you have 200, 300, 400 entry points to what it is that you're doing. If you develop your podcast for episodic independence, throw a little offer urgency in there with the strategically profitable shelf life and some compelling content. Now it starts to get interesting. But then the last thing, and this is huge, a correct audience offer match. Now, if you've listened to any past episodes, you know, I'm not one for the, let's just put an ad for somebody in and see what happens. That's a lousy audience offer match. Now, if you're getting 150, 200,000 downloads, a congrats at that point. A generic audience offer match might work, might be enough to Pay the bills. But really, this is just a numbers game. If you build a podcast to a specific niche, to a specific audience, you know what it is that they want. You can make offers to them based on what it is that they want. The old classic my podcast is about everything. My podcast is for everybody means your podcast is for nothing and it is for nobody. The second you have the connection, the second you have that audience offer match combined with everything else, you're at a really good place. Then it just becomes a numbers game. This is why I love niche. Niche is easier. Niche is much easier. Niche is much more profitable. Niche is much more strategic. And I want you to think about it. So again, the five compelling content. You can't just put stuff up and hope they'll listen. You got to have a reason for them to listen. What are they going to get? What are the benefits? Why are you doing this? Why is this different than everybody else? Strategically profitable shelf life. How can you make this last as long as possible to make the most profit as possible? If you're doing a weekly, monthly thing, a timed thing, what's going to have to change to get even more people during that time? Offer urgency. Why should I act now? Episodic independence. If this is where they start, will they still take action? Is there profit still to be made? And finally, that correct audience offer match. What do you do? Keep the worksheet around. Print off the worksheet. Thepodcastreport.com 78 Pin it to your wall. It looks good in color, it looks good in laser. Every time you do everything, run yourself through the worksheet, ask yourself the five questions, give yourself the five answers. And if your podcast doesn't have an answer to these five questions, then you maybe have to rejigger the podcast. Then you maybe have to reanalyze what it is that you're doing and strange your strategies if you have to. To the five questions. These are solid. These are real. These are for niche podcasts. These are for massive podcasts. These are for public play. They're the five questions. Ask them, have the answer, and you'll see some success. So it's season two. We're trying a bunch of new things here at the podcast report. I wasn't planning on this episode of season two being a couch cast, but it has been fun to pull out the old Nessie and put some pillows around it and pretend like I'm podcasting in the old days. Sometimes you'll notice more music. This episode, past episodes, future episodes. I'm going to Try some live podcasting models. I'm going to try some one take podcasting models. I'm going to really get a groove for this show. Would love any thoughts you have on what you like, what you don't like. Always appreciate hearing from you. Got a couple links out@the podcastreport.com 78 first thing I've got is a link to the new version of the book, latest version of the book. And again, if you learn from what I said earlier, if we take to action, what it is that we need to do. Notice I'm no longer saying the date of the book, what year the book is. If you head out to the podcastreport.com 78 you'll get the most recent copy of the book. Trust you me this, I'm working on it hard and I'll be working on it for a long time. The other thing I have is the link to the two apps. I have a link to the Podcast Report app. Yep, we've got an app for the podcast report, something we'll be examining in a future episode. And I've also got an app for how to podcast. The book has a counterpart app. The app has a counterpart book. At the time of this recording, at least the app is free. Hope to keep it that way for a long time. You might want to grab that. And of course, @thepodcastreport.com 78 I do have the five essentials to a profitable podcast worksheet. Grab that, download that, print that off. Make sure that's part of your life. Heck, fold it up and put it in your wallet. Tape it to the front cover of your notebook. If you can answer these five questions, you are going to be at a great place. ThePodcastReport.com 78 I spoke to Episodic Independence earlier. That means this might be the first episode you're listening to of the podcast report. This might be one of the very first podcast episodes you've ever listened to. That's great. That's okay. Let me tell you one of the powerful things about podcasting that subscription. Yes, it's not just that you went to itunes and found this, or you went to Stitcher and found this. But you can follow me or you can subscribe, or you can do whatever it is that your platform suggests that makes sure that every week when the podcast report comes out, you get it sent to your device. So if it's itunes, it's subscribe. If it's Stitcher, it's follow. But here's the deal. If you go to the podcastreport.com iTunes it'll take you right where you need to subscribe. If you go to the podcastreport.com stitcher it'll take you there. The podcastreportovercast it will take you there. Any of the places that you might be listening to a podcast, go ahead and subscribe or whatever it is they call it at your platform. Just make sure that every week when it comes out, you get the latest. Would also love to participate in social with you. If you head out to the podcastreport.com Facebook that's our Facebook page. Thepodcastreport.com Twitter that's Twitter. You can guess all of the rest of them. Would love to interact with you socially. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast report. We will chat with you next week. Bye.