How Do You Monetize Your Podcast? - The Podcast Report Episode #24

How do you monetize your podcast? It's the podcast report episode 24. Show notes and links and conversation at the podcastreport.com 24 show hotline is 503-897-1290. It's the podcast Report with Paul Colligan. And here's Paul. Okay, this isn't complicated. Market + message + money + media is the only real formula for podcast monetization. People have been doing it wrong for a long time. The great thing is you've got a plan now. We'll walk through it in this episode. My name is Paul Culligan. I'm the six time top best selling author of a number of books including the Business Podcasting Bible and Podcast Strategies that when it launched was number one in seven countries at Amazon. I've been part of podcasting since nearly the very beginning. Love this industry and want to have here not a massive play, but a deep one for two members of my audience. A the podcaster. I got a bunch of podcasters who are listening to this. Thank you. Your reach out, your touch back, your comments have been thrilling to me. It's fun to hear that I'm making things better helping you out here. The other audience is of course, those thinking about getting into podcasting and this episode might be more for you than it is. But sadly, there are a lot of you who have a podcast haven't figured out how to monetize it yet. So this episode should hit home. All right, why this topic? Well, sadly, I don't know if sadly is the right term, realistically speaking, just to what's happening in the industry. This is the number one question that I get. Now, I don't tend to get the technical questions, I don't tend to get the hosting questions. So maybe it's not the number one question in podcasting, but it's the number one question I get and it's huge. How do I make money on my podcast, Paul? I'm at episode 50, I'm at episode 100. You know, I'm in debt. My wife, my husband won't let me spend the money anymore. You know, how do I make money in podcasting? Well, here's the problem. Some of you are pointing in the wrong direction and you're doing it with, you know, you're doing it with strength, you're doing it with passion, you're doing it with certain je ne sais quoi, but unfortunately it's just not working. Now here's the problem. Some people just aren't thinking, you know, they Heard that. You podcast your passion, the profits will follow and we'll hit passion a little bit later. But gosh darn it, it isn't working. Now, here's the deal. If you start your podcast with this formula, and I'll give it to you again. Market plus message plus money plus media. If you start with that, you're able to get a podcast that's going to see a revenue stream for me. Or at least you got a much, much, much better chance than this fire, aim ready approach that everybody seem taking on. So let's take these four different levels. The first one is market. Who is your podcast for? Who is your avatar? And I'm not talking the crappy James Cameron film. Yes, not a fan of that film. But actually the idea that there's a certain type of person who listens to your podcast. Now, I've heard people say, well, my podcast is for everybody. Well, here's the deal. If your podcast is for everybody, your podcast is for nobody. If your podcast is for everybody, your podcast is for nobody. You don't draw do general in podcasting unless you're NPR or that type of thing. The more specific you are to your avatar, the better off you will be. Now, I speak to my avatar at the beginning of every episode of the podcast report. I say quite clearly it is either somebody who is podcasting right now or someone who's thinking about getting into podcasting. My wife has no desire to listen to this show. My kids have no desire to listen to this show. Most of my friends here in Portland, Oregon, have no desire to listen to this show. It is isn't for them. The more specific your market is, the better your podcast will do. So first question is, who is your market Now? If you don't have an avatar, if you don't know who your market is, if you don't know who your podcast is for, stop. Don't collaborate and listen. Just stop and figure out the avatar for your podcast. What is the market for your show? That's step one. Figure that out first. Step two is, what is the message for that market? In my particular case, I'm telling podcasters, gosh darn it, you can think a couple of things through and you react a little bit strategically and you make sense of what's coming. You can do a lot better than before. That's what I'm telling my audience. It's part of my larger mission statement, which is actually only four words right now. Yeah, that's right. The calligan.com mission statement is expand, reach, leverage Tech, get your show. Let's expand the reach, let's leverage the tech. Let's do what's out there. That is the message. And really, if you notice, every single episode of the podcast report and every single episode of Thinking Out Loud and every single episode of YouTube strategies are all really commentary on that message. In this specific case, in this podcast, I speak to podcasters. So the message is, let's think smart, let's work through this. Let's make a podcast that makes some money. Strategically, that is my message. So I have the market, podcasters, the message we've got, then it goes to money. How are you going to make money? And you can always figure out the money when you have the market and the message. Because when you understand the market and the message, the chance to make money is really, really clear. If I'm just entertaining the masses, there's really only one way to make money, and that's to sell ads. And, boy, you got to have some serious masses to make any money. You know, you're looking at really, best case scenario, about $60 per thousand downloads. And if you're generic, it ain't going to happen. So ads are one model. Yes. And in the last episode of the podcast report, I spoke to Dan Benjamin, 5x5 TV. Everything he's doing over there, he's a great model to watch, but it's a numbers game. In a recent episode of Grit, he spoke to the fact that he has to do some pretty crazy numbers, much more than other people have to do, just to pay his overhead, because it's ads, and that's one way to do it. The cool thing is, and Dan's seen a little bit of this, if you have a very specific audience, and in Benjamin's case, it tends to be the techie audience, If I've got an audience, I've got an audience of podcasters. And we know that podcasters spend money on equipment. They don't tend to spend a lot of money on training. Although we're seeing some industry changes there. You figure out where the money's going to come from. There are three ways to see money from your podcast. Number one is indirect. That's the. Because of my podcast stuff. Because of my podcast, I got a book contract. Because of my podcast, I got a speaking gig. Because of my podcast, I might get some consulting. Because of my podcast, I might, you know, get free stuff. Whatever it is, the indirect model is great. It's. It's there. It's a little hard to really quantify and prove over time. It's, it's, it's not my favorite. Now, the next model is the direct model. My podcast makes me money directly inside of the podcast. We speak about that in episode eight, when I brought on Ed Rush chatting about the world's greatest fisherman podcast. I mean, he bought an audience. He knows what they like. He sells directly to them, and he's doing a great job. And if you missed episode 8, head out to the podcastreport.com 8. I think it's a great model of direct marketing. Also dan Benjamin and 5x5 TV, definitely a great model as well. So you got indirect, you got direct. The third model, and this is the one that I like, is integrated. That's where you don't have a podcast strategy. You have a business that has a podcast, you don't have a show strategy. You have a business that has a show, it becomes part of it. In some cases, you never put advertising on it, which deals with some of the things we chatted about last week. In some cases, you put very specific advertising on it and it sells the larger you, it sells the bigger vision of what it is that you have. And if you look at some of the most successful podcasts, they are all integrated. John Lee Dumas, you know, podcasting star, good friend, great guy. If you look, the majority of his money is not in the ads. The majority of the money is in podcasters paradise, which is one of his products. The majority of his money is in the different things that he does, not the ads. And if you head to the podcastreport.com 24 for episode 24, I've got a direct link to his income report where you can see what I'm talking about here. But John is an integrated guy. And if you look to itunes and you look at what NPR is doing, NPR is using podcasting to expand their business. It's not ads on the podcast versus ads on the show. It's an expansion of who they are. It's an integrated model and it is my favorite model. It's the model that everybody goes to, I recommend goes to. It's definitely what I'm doing here. Here you'll notice quite a few episodes. No ads here on the podcast report. Yes, I mentioned the Kindle book and in future episodes you'll be hearing more about some of the opportunities here. But it's an integrated model and it's one that I highly recommend. So you figure out who your market is, then you figure out what your message is to them, then you figure out where the revenue is going to Come from, from there and there only you figure out the media. I remember back when high definition video cameras were expensive, way back when. And I would get email from people saying, hey, I bought my high definition video camera. Paul, what should I do my podcast about? It's like, oh no, don't do that. What is your market? What is the message? Where is the money going to come from? Then the media format. See, when you figure out who they are, you figure out what format is best. For me, podcasters, video makes very little sense. The podcasters are running around, I'm not necessarily that good looking of a guy and the idea of watching me on the screen, you know, wave my hands about as I'm trying to make my points is possible and we will be looking at that. But definitely, definitely, definitely the audio format makes sense. How long. I know the podcasters are listening to a lot of stuff. I know that the podcaster who listens to me wants straight, wants answers, doesn't want rambling, doesn't want to hear about or at least long extended diatribes of my life. So I try to keep this show in about 15 to 20 minutes. It makes sense for my market, it makes sense for my message and it makes sense for the money model that I've done. So the format, the length, the frequency, all speak to the media choice of the podcast report being an audio podcast. Now remember, if you've listened to any episodes and if you haven't, please subscribe. Go back to the back catalog. They're all 10 to 20 minutes long each. I speak to multicasting, the idea that your content is bigger than any one particular format. Right now this is episode 24. You can actually go to Amazon and you can pick up a book that is the transcripts of the first 15 episodes of this show. And you bet when episode 30 comes out, we'll have that option as well. There is the printed version of this, there is the audio version of this, there will be other versions of this. Don't worry. Podcasting is much smaller than multicasting. And really, it's simple. A show will always be better than a podcast and content should be even bigger than the show. So the media format is not just the choice of a single media format, but maybe your primary media format and all the other formats that go from that see back again market message, money media. When you know who it is that you're speaking to and you know what the message is and you know where the money is coming from, you can then make the media choices that will make it Happen, happen. And you got to do this first before you record the first episode. Now, one of the big ideas I was thinking about for this episode is, and this will offend a couple of people, but basically looking for a monetization model is as silly as a married couple looking to change each other. You don't want to have the show first and then find the monetization model. You want to have the monetization model and build the show around it. All right, what about passion, Paul? I have this topic. I love this topic. I'm podcasting about this topic. I'm not making any money. What do I do? This happens. And there have been some who have made money from a passion podcast. They figured some things out. And I've got an idea for you, a method to kind of reboot, if you will, here that we'll chat about it. But podcasting first with passion is a really bad bet. And the funny thing is you can bring passion into this formula and into this model. Let's say you are passionate about honeybees, or you're passionate about hardbound books, or I'm just kind of looking around the room getting weird ideas here, or you're passionate about dry erase boards or that type of thing. Take that passion. Figure out what audience involved with that passion needs a podcast. Figure out what your method is to them. Then you can speak within that realm. I love podcasters. I love them dearly. I built this show and I built this model around the passion. And I realized podcasters don't need another show about microphones. They don't need another show about editing. They don't need another show about all the other things about there. They need a show about making sense of this. So you can bring a passion to this. I have done that now. Well, what about those who say, well, you don't have to monetize? Well, I agree, you don't have to monetize. But here's the thing. This is an episode about monetizing. The monetizer should not criticize people who don't want to monetize their podcast. And those who do want to monetize their podcast should certainly criticize those. Should not criticize those who don't. You get the idea. Let sides be sides. I'm going to give you an example that I think kind of sums it up. I have no doubt in my mind that the best I love food. I have no doubt in my mind that the best marinara sauce in the world is made by some grandma somewhere who maybe feeds her marinara. Sauce to an extended family of maybe 20 and maybe 20 people on the whole planet have access to the best marinara sauce in the world. Well, here's the deal that probably exists, but I still like marinara sauce, and I'm glad that I can go to a restaurant that sells it. So pure passion, pure love has a place in this world. But when you extend out, you have some options as well. I always speak, I like to speak at the end of the episode as to what I'm doing. And I kind of went through it here. I gave you my market, my message, my money, and my media. I love where I'm at. I love where this podcast is at. I've loved it since day one. The revenue I've seen from it is exactly what I'm looking for. Now you're asking where it's come from. Paul is at the book sales. No, book sales. Small. I think I got a couple of pizzas worth out of the book sales. It's been the consulting contracts. It's been the higher visibility that has enabled more contracts and that type of thing that have come. But realize it is an integrated part of my business, not the indirect kind of thing. So what do you do? Where do you go with these things? Well, first thing, just get a piece of paper and write down market message, money media. Write down those four market message, money media. And just write down what is your market for your podcast? What is your message? Where's the money going to come from? And where's the media do that? I started a thread at Google Groups for podcasting that I've got a link to. So if you go to the podcastreport24thepodcastreport.com 24. I've got a link to that where you can kind of share and work with some others. And I'll pay attention to that one as well. I think that'll be fun. So, Paul, what if I do this and I realize I have to start over? Well, here's the thing. There's actually a great model for that Michael Hyatt of the book platform. And I can't remember his podcast at the moment. It's the Michael Hyatt podcast, this Is yous Life, or something like that. I can't remember. It doesn't mean it's not good. I listen to it. I just. The name doesn't strike me at the moment. Mike, after 100 episodes, rebooted his show and launched what he was calling season two. And he changed everything. He went from audio to video. He went from monologue to dialogue. You know, he went from doing them every week to releasing it kind of Netflix like it's okay. Don't be afraid to launch a season two. All right. I would love your thoughts. I am at twitter@podcast rpt. Go ahead follow comment there. My personal Twitter account is Calligan but but the podcast report shows commentary. Let's put that a podcast rpt word facebook facebook.com the podcast report would love a like would love comments. There's and if you want to comment on this episode directly, you can certainly do that@the podcastreport.com 24 if you would like a transcript of this episode and the mind map I used to put this episode together, go ahead and text Ep. 24 to 503-897-1290 that's 503-897-1290. Feel free to leave a voicemail message there if you'd like. Again, the links at 24. That's the podcastreport.com 24 is a link to the latest John Lee Dumas revenue report. Again, notice the chop up there. And notice that it's not the ad money that's making him the money. Check the division there. I've also got a link to the thread in Google where you can chat with others about your market, your message, your money and your media. And then I've got a link to episode eight with Ed Rush where he literally bought himself an audience. So you could follow that and see some money there. It's a great model. I like my show. I like all the episodes. So if you haven't subscribed, definitely do subscribe. This is the podcast report. You can get it@the podcastreport.com iTunes, Stitcher, PocketCastsPunin, Spreaker, Overcast, not SoundCloud yet. We're working on that. If you would like to review the show, I would love a review at itunes. I think first maybe Stitcher. After that maybe Spreaker. If you're really, really excited, those are three places you can put a review. I'd love to get an email from you. The podcastreportoutlook.com if you'd like to do an ID for the show. Basically say who you are, what your show's about and if they're listening to podcast report, maybe I'll do that instead of the NPR type intro you heard on today's episode. But there we go. This is Paul Calligan. This is the podcast report@thepodcastreport.com chat with you next week. Can't wait to hear your thoughts. Bye.