Podcast Profits Unveiled: Your Guide To Monetization

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Hey everyone. Welcome to Feed you'd brand. I'm Tom Hazard along with my co host Tracy Hazard. Today we're going to talk about podcast profits. Unveiled your guide to monetization. And I'll tell you, we have a very different perspective on this than a lot of podcast professionals in the industry and certainly what a lot of people who are monetizing podcasts will tell you. And so I don't think what we have to say is all that controversial, but boy is it. I think some practical reality and insights into what actually works well into the.

Fact that there isn't profit in a lot of the things that are being pushed on you as a podcaster to participate in. Like there are lots of models out there and there's just not a lot of money in it and they take a lot of time or they take a lot away from the listening quality of your show and you don't even understand that or don't realize that. And so it harms what you are doing and where you are benefiting, participating in some of these programs so that they actually have a negative profit effect. And that's what I think most people don't realize and understand. So when we're talking about podcast monetization, we have two paths and they're very different. And I want to be really clear, if you're choosing the ad monetization path, it is a completely different path than what I would call promotion monetization. And promotion monetization is your own stuff, your affiliates, your joint venture partners, things that you are very connected to promoting. So, so that's why I say it's, it's still an ad. You might still be putting it in like an ad, but it's different than what I would call the typical ad monetization model.

And just to be clear, there's an awful lot of money to be made in the promotion monetization model. And usually for most podcasts, there's a lot more money sooner in the growth and age of your podcast than there is in the third party ad model. There still can be third parties in the promotion model that are sponsors of your show. So I don't want to say that it doesn't always have to be only your own stuff like Tracy mentioned there. But.

Right. And there is a number three. I just want to be clear about that. But we're not going to really go into it in great detail today. But number three is what if you're making money off of your guests or promotion of your episodes? So like you're offering them publicity of the episode and you charge them more for it. Charge them for things like that. So you're making money off the guest side of it. That's a different model as well. But. But we're really not going to talk about that today because we kind of touched on that in our guest models that we've covered in the past. So. But that is one model as well.

It is a legitimate model and we have several podcasters actually doing that, surprisingly, because there's a lot of people that really that model rubs people just absolutely the wrong way or they love it and it works great. So. But anyway, yeah, we'll save that for either we've talked about that before or we could do another dive into that in another episode. But today we're going to talk about the first two.

Right. And they're related because the reality is is when you have a guest model and an ad model, your downloads actually matter. If you cannot deliver listeners, then you have no value. You have no value to advertisers and you have no value to those guests. So if you're faking your downloads, it's helping no one.

Or also, if you don't have very large downloads, there are the third party sponsor route. You can go down that road. A lot of people are trying to lure you to, but you're not going to make much of any money that makes it worth distracting your audience with all those messages that have nothing to do with you.

So let's talk about the two models. Tom, in the ad monetization model, downloads matter, right? And now it's getting harder and harder with all the changes at Apple and other places. And it's getting harder and harder for you to be able to make those legitimate downloads happen in a way that those ads are getting listened to. So that's why what's happening is all the ads are always crammed on the front of every show and very often, depending on the app, I can sometimes hear depending on the program you're in because some of the programmatic advertisement happens at a production company or a host and then they dump a bunch of ads on it and then they distribute it out to Apple. But I very regularly from Those models hear 90 seconds or more of advertisement before the episodes. Any second of the episode ever airs, the intro music, the trailer, whatever it is that you've got in the front, the teaser, none of that happens. So they don't get to your episode till they're 90 seconds in. So what if you have a show that's all about Zen mindset and you got 90 seconds with three different ads about like, could be ED medication and I mean, you don't know what they're advertising. Bitcoin?

No, we literally hear that I've have customers that have been in one of the programmatic ad programs and they actually thought they had stopped participating in it, but hadn't actually. And this show was actually meant for you younger ears as well as adult ears and they were very unhappy. This ED medication or I think there was other, other ads for other things that were, let's just say, inappropriate for you.

I've heard condom ads on the front of things I've heard, yeah, very age inappropriate things can go on, but also gender inappropriate things. So if you're focused on women in business and you've got ED medication being advertised, they're like, I'm in the wrong place. They're going to crash out before they ever listen to one second of your show. So it's a very dangerous model because in this blanket advertising, this broadcast advertising model, you do not get any choices when you sign up for one of those programs because their goal is to put as many listens. So they're just trying to aggregate all the listeners across all the podcasts because they know you, your download numbers are crap. Like they just know it. So they just need more and more and more. So they try to lure you into signing up for it. And when they get you into it, they're going to just cram as many ads on the front of that as possible because they know that listener is going to crash out and they need to make sure they got their listen in so that their advertiser has to pay them. And your share of that is so low and so small, chances are very good. And we have clients who will go the entire year and never make their hundred dollars. So they're, every time it hits $100, that's when they pay out. It's like, they're like, yeah, we just don't want to do little small transactions. So every time you hit $100, we're going to pay you out. And sometimes they'll go their entire one year contract and not even get enough to cash out.

And Tracy, just the day before recording this yesterday, I was speaking with, or actually I think I exchanged emails with a customer who said, hey, I've been offered to join this network and I'm not going to out the name of the network right here, but said, hey, I've been offered to join this network and they say they'll monetize my show and do you think that's a good idea? And so, boy, I had to write back this long, thoughtful email saying, hey, you need to be prepared for what this means. First of all, they are luring you and wanting you to go to their network because they want your show to add value to their network and they want to aggregate, I use that same word, your show with all the others to have a large enough volume of downloads that they can monetize that yes, would benefit you, but it's going to benefit them more because they're making a cut of everybody's shows and the amount that you will make as I double check and make sure you understand what you're agreeing to in this contract. Was there any minimum guarantee of monetization and all that? So a lot of things to investigate when you're doing that, but obviously don't want to go down the network rabbit hole right now. But that's often what happens is networks like you, Tracy, will want to monetize your show. They'll paint this rosy scenario of how they're going to monetize your show. You don't have to do anything. But usually there's no minimum guarantees. And in fact, like you said, there's minimum levels you have to reach before you make any money. And you may be stuck for a while and you have zero control. You're right. This is the biggest issue for podcasters. No control over what those ads are that are going to be played on your show. So I do not recommend that at all.

Right. Now look, I get that you would love to have the next smart list that is just got a deal, a three year deal for $100 million. You'd like to be Joe Rogan who just got a $250 million renewal. Now, interesting enough, on the Joe Rogan model, he made his renewal a non Spotify exclusive contract.

Good for him.

So because he knew his listeners had been downgraded, but he forced them to pay him a minimum guarantee to cover that. And so now he says, no, not good enough. I could be making even more money out there. So he struck A deal where he is still also being distributed on YouTube and Apple. And Spotify has not only given him a minimum guarantee for staying on his platform, like kind of first release and then he gets a ad cut which he didn't get before, they were just paying him out monthly. So this is a very different model from he can command that rumors are going around about new heights Jason and Travis Kelsey's podcast and that they could be the next hundred million podcast. Jason Kelsey, Travis Kelsey, if you are listening out there, and I doubt you're listening to our show, but maybe somebody will tag you if you are listening out there, hold out for more. Because when you build a great show like they have and you have a guaranteed listener base that takes more action. So Joe Rogan's listeners are a bunch of complaining guys who are sitting around and they don't have any money to spend on the advertisers. They really aren't spending money. They're not in the same way that Travis's girlfriend's listeners and followers spend. Right. I can attest to that. I can tell you, I guarantee you that we have spent our swifty lovers in our family have caused us to spend thousands of dollars in the last year.

Oh, I'm sure.

Right. So if their listeners are anything like that, and we know that NFL listeners are because NFL, I mean NFL gear, NFL, all that stuff sells. So they're guaranteed to have much better action taking listeners. So if they do a better job of that, then their advertisements are worth more money. Smart List. I love the guys over at Smart List. I think they're really funny. But it's entertainment. I'm going there to be entertained. It's like tv. Those commercials are an annoyance to get to what I want. That is not the case with new heights. It doesn't have to be the case with them. So I think the difference in them, they should be worth twice as much money in my estimation. Their ads should be worth twice as much money. So they should trike a double deal. I think if they don't get 2x what smart list got, then they got cheated.

But Tracy, look what we're talking about. We're talking about the elite, elite, elite of any podcasts out there. We're not talking about the typical independent podcast.

Right. And that's what I really also want to say. The building that show, they have hundreds of episodes already and so does Smart List. It's not like they started and they started making $100 million. They put their time in, they prove that their show was valuable they prove that they could grow their audience month over month. This is a full time job or a full staff job. Some of them have staff, right? Like they've invested in this. If you're not willing to do that, you will never make it in the ad monetization model. Not going to happen. This is a full time influencer job. So you're either going to spend money and get staff that is going to help you grow this, promote it on social, do everything you need to to do it right and get it out there and grow that audience in a legitimate way. Because at the end of the day, if you don't have playthrough, you don't have value. So you've got to make sure your listeners are sticking around, loving the show, sharing it with others. That really matters more at the end of the day than just getting through those 90 seconds of ads and then you're valuable. But that's less. And it used to be less than 2% of it. Now it's less than 1% in my estimation right now. And I mean, I can't do it because there's lots of deals that are hidden and struck on the side. So I think I'm actually being generous by counting it as 1% right now.

I think you are too.

Right now. It represents a lot of dollars, don't get me wrong, because these deals are big. It represents a lot of dollars, but it does not represent the larger podcasting community. So none of you probably listening to this because I don't have Travis Kelsey listening to my show or Jason Kelce. Right. Like none of you are going to be in that elite 1%, so where are you going to make money?

Yeah, let's pivot to some value here for the independent podcaster because there is very real value in monetization available for you. I mean, it does depend on several things and there are many different ways that monetization can happen. It's not just one way, but so let's move to that now.

Right? So first off, if you were going to go for the promotion monetization model, this model of you advertising or suggesting your own stuff, working with joint venture or affiliate partners also is included in this. Right? It doesn't have to just be your stuff. It could be somebody else's course or somebody else's book. Right? So if you're going to move into this model, my number one thing that you must stop doing is taking those dumb ads because they're harming your ability for your promotion to be taken seriously. The irrelevance of those makes it seem that you're desperate to get money from anywhere. Which means that your advice to me to go look, check out this course or this book is devalued in my mind as a listener. So immediately you are harming yourself. Secondly, Mr. Beast, one of the most popular YouTube influencers, says if you're not absolutely screening the first 30 seconds of your show of what's going on there, then you're missing out because that's when someone decides if they're going to listen to you and trust you. So if the first 30 seconds are dumb ads, you're not helping yourself. So let's move into that to make those valuable for you. The next part that is not prevailing advice is don't make an offer, a promotion or any kind of advertisement in the first five minutes of your show. We recommend waiting all the way till the last third of your show. That's our recommendation. But there are so many people out there are saying, well, because people don't really listen to your show, like they're going to crash, they're not going to listen all the way through, or they're only going to listen to the first minute. You immediately after you have your intro music, put an ad in for your stuff. You've already lost the trust to your audience. So if you want them to buy this stuff, you need to take it from a different approach. This is not I'm cramming my stuff down your face or down your ears. Down your ears, in your ears. I'm not cramming my stuff into your ears. And I'm going to take advantage of you right at the moment that just because you happen to click on no, I'm building a relationship with you, I'm building trust with you. And when you do that, then you're going to see upwards of 30% conversions on those promotions. Tom and I can personally attest to. In our 3D print podcast, we had 37% loss, higher than 37% conversion rates on all promotions we made on that show because our audience believed our advice. They trusted us to make sure that that advice was worthwhile. And if we gave the advice, we would tell them when it wasn't good for them. So that made them trust us even more. So we would say, if you're not an experienced 3D printer and you haven't been doing this for a year or more, don't try this. This is not for you. For the starters, they would love that, honestly, probably made them try it anyway just to. But it works, right when they can trust in your advice, they will click through and convert.

So, Tracy, it is, I think, a prevailing belief in a lot of podcasters that, yeah, that pre roll spot is the most important one because more people are going to hear it and they can charge more for it. And I understand that belief exists out there. It exists among big advertisers. It's what a lot of them only care about. But what we've experienced is when your people are coming back and listening to every episode, like you said, Tracy, they want to hear you, they trust you, they want to hear what you have to say. You provide them a promotion two thirds of the way through, they're listening really attentively and whatever you're going to promote them at that point, they're going to hear, they're going to really let. It's going to sink in and if it's relevant to them, they're going to act on it. Much more so than something at the very beginning that they still haven't settled in to your show and they don't know, am I hearing, is this an ad or am I hearing something that's from the guest? I mean, there's a lot of, I think, confusion that can take place up there in the front, right?

And this is what we're saying here, really. You've earned the right to promote to them by going through 2/3 or half of your show or more. Right? You've earned the right. There's a lot of reciprocity kicking in there. You've earned the right to be able to ask them for something or suggest something to them and get them to take action. Plus, we always say that in the last third of the episode, I've gotten the bulk of what I want and I may very well still listen all the way to the end because I want the full payout on it. But I'm also at that point, ripe and open to what is next for me. My mind has opened to thinking about how am I going to learn more about this? Where can I find more information? What's next? What podcast episode should I listen to next? Right, we're ready for a suggestion. And we're not the only ones who think this YouTube follows this model. The end cards are becoming more and more popular on YouTube. It is something where they're suggesting the channel that's next, the video that's next, and they're letting that be in the influencers control, in the YouTube influencers control because they know that you can recommend what's best next. And when you do that. That YouTube listener or YouTube viewer stays in YouTube and does more. So they get what they want out of it. That's why that feature has been turned on. So this is not just our advice and not just our experience. This has been happening across other platforms as well.

Quick side note, YouTube influencer, that's you listening to this, watching to this. You, the podcaster, that's you. You're the influencer. I just want to make sure that's really clear. You kind of understated that. And I just want to make sure all of you out there, you are the influencer. So you do have more control. So. Okay, I'm sorry, Tracy.

Yeah, exactly. So here's a couple of stats on the podcast promotion side of things. Okay? 80% of listeners report visiting a website multiple times in response to a podcast promotion or Advertisement. Driving engagement. 80% of listeners. So this is where in our past episode, I don't know whether it was a week or two weeks ago or whatever, but we were talking about the fact that if you don't have your website properly linked here, you haven't made it easy for someone, for a listener to reach out to you. You are making a huge mistake. 80% of your listener base will reach out at some point. We'll check out your website. If that website is your hosting company, you just lost all engagement, all connection. So let's not do that.

I sadly see that every single day with several podcasters that I meet with. They're not paying attention. Either don't have a website or they have a perfectly good website. They just don't even know their host has hijacked their traffic by putting a link to their website in there in your episode. So make sure you're aware of that.

An impressive 81% of listeners state that they've gotten a new brand new product or some other program, course book thing that they found through a podcast promotion or suggestion from a host. 81%. That's a high influence rate. And then there's another 78% of listeners that understand that promotions and advertisements and these kinds of things are essential to keeping their information flow free. Which is why if they're willing to buy something or they have the funds or they've been out there looking for a book on this or a course on that, they're going to give you their business because they want you to stick around and podcast for them tomorrow. So this is a win, win for both of you in this process for you to use promotion monetization. Now, there's still work to be done, you still gotta have a good show, you still gotta get listeners in. Right? But. And there's a few different models. When we were saying on the ad monetization model, it was all about driving downloads, like that's really all that mattered was downloads. Right? Just get more ears on this. That's how you make more money. Which means that there's less care sometimes in the relevance of the content. So what can you do to increase your opportunity for promotion monetization?

And I think it'd be helpful to have a couple examples to share here.

So I agree.

For instance, there's a show that this campaign is over, but I can talk about it now after the fact. So a show called Grief and Rebirth. It's actually a support podcast for people going through grief of many different kinds. The host, it was motivated as her husband died many years ago and has been through all this. Anyway, it's an incredibly popular show. And rather than just sell ads to third party sponsors, she brokered a deal with a mobile phone app that provides people grief and counseling services through their mobile phone. It's right at their fingertips. And this app, people pay like $120 a quarter or three or $400 a year or something. So it's not a cheap app, but worked out an affiliate arrangement. So she put ads in all of her podcast episodes stuff herself speaking about the app, had used it and tested it, found real value in it, recommended it to her audience, and also have ads for it on her website sidebar image ads that click through with an affiliate link. And every time somebody signed up, she got a pretty decent cut of what the people paid to sign up and kept getting it going forward. So that's just one example which is monetizing not with your own stuff, but yes, a third party paying you, but a different kind of a relationship. It is different because it's pay for performance, but also if you're the influencer and you recommend it, and of course, if it's something you believe in and experience, you can make some significant money. Once you put all that out there, it's passive. You've recorded the ads, you've put the ads on your website. You just, you set it and let it go and then you make money. So that's just one way, but there are others. And I want to mention one more, that is when if you're not selling your own stuff, but you want to sell to third party sponsors, but a different kind of relationship. We have several podcasters that are striking deals that are 90 day long deals, six month deals, or one year long sponsorships. They're selling sponsorships to eight to 10 to 12 different companies at the same time. Each sponsors featured on their website gets mentioned in podcasts. The company's executives or either owner or other executive gets featured in an interview on an episode maybe once a quarter, maybe twice a year. But these are like long term sponsors of a show. Kind of like you might think PBS would do, right? When you have this show brought to you by this company, this company and this company, you can do sponsorships like that that will pay out, depending on the length of engagement, thousands of dollars each sponsor for a quarter, a half a year, or even five figures for a year. We have some independent podcasters doing this for real.

And I want to step in here and say this is the exception to like mentioning some kind of advertiser sponsor or promotion like at the beginning of the show. It's perfectly reasonable to say production support for this show. We need to thank our sponsor hp, which we did when we had Hewlett Packard sponsoring a special series. And so we did a 25 episode series special, which is another way to go, so you could sell it out. And it always stays with their ads contained in that. And it was a special series selected and curated and sponsored by hp. We would say that at the beginning so they know who to thank. But that's all you're setting up. You're not making a webinar offer, you're not doing the promotion piece there. You're just doing a thank you for sponsoring us and making today's show happen. That's an okay thing to do at the beginning. I want, I do want to say that's an exception to our role there because it's really valuable, right? Because now, as we said before, like 78% of listeners wanted to know that those advertisements, those promotions matter in terms of making sure that the content's free. So now you've told them who to thank for that. That's always good. And if you ever watch any PBS show, they always say that at the beginning.

They do.

They're brought to you by.

They do at the beginning and often at the end. But again, here's the point. This is a different way for you as the podcast host to be an influencer. You're endorsing these companies, these products. They're sponsors of your show. This is a long term relationship, not a bidding situation. Somebody wanted to put an ad on as many podcasts as possible in a short period of time to get a quick hit of sales. This is long term relationship and a and a fair exchange of influencer marketing that is really authentic and quite successful. Literally lots of podcasters that we're supporting are engaging in this model because it's really so valuable and profitable unless you have your own business and you have your own products, services, programs, events, books, masterminds, more to get than what's in the public podcast when people are willing to come and pay for it. And those are some fantastic ways to also monetize your show. And if you're selling your own stuff, then you're making all the money when people buy, right? So it's a pretty quick and easy monetization.

I want us because we're always kind of a little bit transparent about what we're doing here. Our show Feeds yous Brand is exactly that model. We are never going to advertise for another podcast service company out there on here. Right? It's just not going to happen. Why would we confuse things? We rarely if ever have a guest on this show. That's what the binge factors for for having podcast guests and service companies out there to network and do that. This show is not that. The only advice you'll ever hear on this show comes from us and from people who we are strong referral partners with who have delivered again and again for our clients. We call them coaching crashers here. Right? And they come in and talk about it. Next week we have got another one. I'm so excited we're coming up. We're going to have our good friend Fran Osaro, who is our YouTube guru about everything. So we do that on purpose because we do not need to confuse our audience with somebody else's message. But also we then have that all in one place. Easy to search, easy to contain, easy to share it so we don't have to make promotion opportunities just being in our community. And the fact that we collocate this podcast on podcasters united.org with other great resources in the podcasting industry, because we've chosen to do that, it just gives you this sense that we're out there working for you to make sure you have the resources you need. Like that's it. That is the message that our podcast is sending. Not we need to push you to buy a course. We need to push you. So it can work in two ways. One, it can be clearly that you're gearing up a lesson and you're sharing the course that goes with it. So that's a sneak peek into something. Or it is just we are being in tremendous service to this community, this niche. And we are going to attract more and more of you to work with us. Because can you imagine if you listen to this show and you take one piece of our advice and this works like tenfold, can you imagine how much would be available to you if you could be in our zoom room right now and ask us questions when this was over? Ask us very personal questions where we get to know you and your show and your business and we can answer that. Like that's the model that we're working on here that we're demoing to you, but it might be actually the ideal model for you as well in order to increase promotion in your business. So, Tom, before we wrap up and close out this episode, I want to hit on some things. Whether you're doing ad monetization model or promotion monetization model, there's about, I must say five to seven like, because a couple of them don't apply to every show. But five to seven things that you're doing that is going to devalue your monetization opportunities. So I want to make them really clear to you because they are in your strategy of how you set up your show. They're in everything that you do. And so here clearly are my list. If your cover art has a picture of you on it, you are going to have to work three times as hard as the next show. If the show is named after you, you are going to have to work 10 times harder than the next show to be able to make that clear.

That's a hard one for people to hear. Both.

I know.

I'm going to tell you that hearing it. I know.

Okay. There are exceptions to the rule, meaning that advertisers who want to be associated with CEOs of or CMOs of companies and you're one of them. And that's great, okay. But the reality is is that that limits your field of sponsors. So that's why I'm telling you you're going to have to work harder to achieve your goals there. If you are clearly in a niche and you have deep dived in a strong, valuable and clear that you belong in that niche and your show belongs in that niche. Everything about the COVID art, about the name of show, about the description of the show, about all the episodes that you run and the people you bring on your show are clearly identified in that niche, you are going to have people asking you to advertise. That's. We never once sought out advertisers. They came to us, the ones we got. They came to us and offered us way more money than we would have put out if we had put out a bid for being a sponsor on the show. Right. We got higher rates because of it. That is why I'm telling you this. It has nothing to do with. This is just wrong. Like, it's not wrong. It's just going to make this harder and take longer because you're going to have to prove that you are the valuable reason they need to advertise on the show. And that's a lot of heavy lifting on your part. You better do your job. Website, an email address, a connection point that is not on the show. If you don't have that, you can't engage. Like, it's just not. It's not creating that connection point. It's not creating a track through of the activity of your listener base. So just because you say I have this many downloads or this many listens means nothing if you cannot tell a future sponsor, a partner, an advertiser, or know that you have a place for your own stuff to be sold, right? Like it doesn't really matter what it is. You don't have a home base for that. It's never going to work to test the conversion and Tom and I always recommend in the early days, maybe you do reviews of some products so you get people to go and read a more detailed review or you do a donation that's going to go to something and highlight an organization that's valuable in your niche, make sure they're in your niche, right? And you do that and you test how many people go through where there's no real sales offer. It doesn't feel icky to them when they're clicking through. They're just getting something more. No downloads. That is not attraction to tell whether or not I've got conversion on promotions. Downloads is not because people are afraid to download stuff. Clearly afraid to download stuff. They're afraid to get a virus, they're afraid of a scam. So when you have a loan number on your downloads, don't take that as nobody wants my promotion. Nobody wants a PDF. It's really what it is, a dangerous PDF, right? Like it has nothing to do with you. So make sure that this is clearly something that they can navigate to, that they could type into that they could go into the description, click through to. They could go to the website that's listed as a link in their Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever their link is and go and find you. That needs to be done. The have A system for forwarding links. Because I'm going to tell you from experience, Tom and I did 650 episodes in 3D printing. And there are times when your sponsors go out of business, especially if you're in a startup field or a disruptive industry. People go out of business. You don't want to be associated with people anymore. Create forwarding links for everything so. So that you can just change it on the back end. And when somebody gets there, you say, sorry, we're no longer doing business with them, but here's another resource instead, and redirect them to something currently valuable. That's a great way to serve your audience and also a great way to make sure that you don't end up associated with things you do not want to be associated with anymore. And then so that's the last one that I have on here. And then there's two more. But they're kind of like not for everybody, right? Explicit and swearing. If you have explicit content in your show, you will have to work harder. With some brands, they actually have screeners on it that say that they can never advertise on a show that has explicit content. So be really careful. It can have a negative brand thing. Now there are industries where this makes. This is why people would choose to go on your show, right? Like, so I say that it's just if you're looking for that more general and it's not. Not niche specific for you, remember that that is sensitive for a lot of advertising partners.

I don't think it's in the grand scheme truly limiting. It's just a matter of which sponsors would be interested and which would not.

Right? Exactly. So in a particular niche area it could be limiting.

That's true.

And in other areas it could be reason why they choose your show. Like it's totally fine, right? Like they like that brutal honesty. Right? Or that being yourself thing. So it's perfectly fine. There's. So then the other two things are if you're doing promotions for your own stuff, consider an ad mixing system. Consider that you're going to need to change those ads. This is why we developed Productize the way that we did. And this is not an advertisement for Productize. You could reach out to us if this is important to you. But I am telling you right now, you will have to re edit your episodes if you do not use an ad mixing system like ours because the ads won't work the first time you do. It will take time to get your promotions working and converting with your audience. You need to Dial in and test messaging. This is why I'm telling you about the forwarding links, but I'm also telling you about the advertisements. And the second thing on promotions is what looks good on paper. What you write and what you say are not the same thing. You must practice out loud any promotion and offer and feel how it lands. Listen back to it, keep it short, keep it sweet, keep it to the point, keep it personal with your audience sounding like it comes from you. You're going to do so much better than if you take a sponsor or a joint venture partner and use their copy their ad, use it their way, make it your own. Because this is your show, your influence, your audience. They need to believe that what you're offering them is of valuable interest for them to take the time to click through.

I want to just plus one of your things there, those forwarding links. So I just want to put a little emphasis on that. And maybe this is a subject we should cover in another future featurebrand episode, things like that, because we have a.

Tip on it in the tip library on how to create forwarding links. So if you don't know how to do it or what we're talking about, there is a tip and we'll link it in the episode for this show, for this particular episode. We'll put it in the blog for this episode@podcastersunited.org yeah, because those forwarding links are really important.

I use them all the time because I conduct live webinar sessions every week and the messaging is out there in LinkedIn and it's out there in emails that people have gotten and they may not see it in the time that I want them to. And email experts were always telling me, oh, no, you got to put the actual registration link to register for your live session in your emails and put the real link out there and don't do a forwarding link. And I quickly learned how wrong that is because people are listening to my podcast episodes months after they've been published. People are reading those emails weeks or months after they've been sent when they finally get to it. And if I have a forwarding link like I have Poditize co, which is what I use for forwarding links, forward, slash, register for one of my webinars. I updated every week with the new registration link so that whenever anybody clicks that link at any time or wherever they do it, they're always going to get to the next one. They're not going to get a dead link or an event that happened. That's no Longer available. Right. Just one example of the power of those forwarding links. And for sponsors, to your point, Tracy, you can update those calls to action to whatever the sponsor wants to send people to next month, next quarter. After that, even if they're hearing an older ad or you don't need to change out that ad, it's going to get to the new thing that you're promoting. Right?

Right. Absolutely. Somebody's going to take the time to click through your link in your episode description or whatever you said on the air, which is another way for you to be reinforcing your website. Right. Like Tom just did. Poditize.com poditize co right. Podcasters united.org we keep reiterating it so that you'll remember it, because if you go there, you can find all kinds of stuff about us. Right. You'll be able to navigate to wherever you need. So you're reinforcing your information, not your promotion partners. Right. Not their stuff you're always going to forward and send. And I recommend keeping it simple. Like Tom's got it register. Right. If you keep it one word, make it simple. Like if anyone ever asks me about it and they ask it for. When I'm a guest on someone's show for the binge factor, I always give them binge like it's super simple and easy. Like I always give them a bit that as my forwarding link for.

That makes perfect sense. It's. There's a wonderful world of opportunities of monetization for shows. Yeah. You've got to be committed to your podcast. You got to be publishing regularly. You got to be showing up and serving first. But once you're at that point, you've earned the right with your listeners to promote something, hopefully that's win win of value to them and of value to you. And there are some things that might be an introductory thing that you don't make a whole lot of money on or no money on just to get that engagement and that action of conversion happening, like Tracy said. But eventually you can turn that into actual monetization in very meaningful ways. And just to say one last thing before that, Tracy, we have podcasters, I mean, one in the real estate business, his entire business didn't used to be that way when he started his podcast with us four years ago. But now his entire earnings come through his podcast and it's all that he does. He doesn't do what he used to do in his business, monetization, it's all coming through his podcast.

But that's taken A couple of years to get there, right? Like it was not overnight, right?

No question. Taken actually several years.

But if you're at that stage, I want to say this to you and think this through carefully. If you are at the stage where you're finding that your audience is taking action, if you're at the stage where you're doing promotions that are actually working and leading you and you want to know how to up the monetization model on that side, whether it's in ads or in promotion, it doesn't matter. It's the same rules at this point. You have to figure out how you can maximize the number of episodes per week and the minutes per episode. That is how you will make more money. So if you're in the ad monetization, you have to maximize out Joe Rogan shows 90 minutes to two hours for a reason. They can cram more ads into that show and people listen because they want to hear what he's going to say next and what crazy things is going to come out of his mouth. And so they'll listen all the way through. But if they didn't listen all the way through, you're wasting your time and doing longer, right? So you've got to figure out where that maximum edge is. So if you've been producing this 15 minute show, you got opportunity for one ad, double it. See how much your playthrough is. See if you can now do two promotions, same thing, maybe two different ways, right? But you are now making more space for that promotion and advertising. You're building more trust, you're building more length in it. The other option is if you're doing it, do more per week because the number of episodes drives up your downloads. And the number of episodes also drive more binging and trust with your audience likely to be higher conversion rates. So key to everything, don't miss a week, be consistent about it and increase your velocity of your show in either length or a number of episodes, whatever works. For your audience member to be sensitive to it, you might have to dial it back. So that's my biggest advice for if you want to start maximizing your dollar amount opportunity. Because it's already starting to work for you.

All right, well, I think we should probably wrap it there. I could talk about this for hours. I do geek out on it. It's because it's so important and it's exciting to me. But only so much we can do in a single episode. Hope you got great value out of this.

Well, thanks for joining us here today on Feed you'd brand. We really want you to find ways to stay podcasting and finding the right monetization fit for you can do that. So be careful in your thoughts about this. Try things, test it out, make sure this really fits you and your business at the end of the day and feels authentic and useful and valuable to your audience and to you. Just really take this. Don't just jump at the next person who sent you an email offering you oh, make money from your podcast. Chances are good that is going to steer you down a path where at the end of the day you're just going to quit your show.

Sound advice, Tracy.

All right, thanks for listening. We'll be back next week when live if you're watching us and following us anywhere on social media United we pod and we'll also be back here with another episode launching every single week if you're listening to the podcast feed. So thank you subscribers.

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