5 Surefire Ways to Make Money With Your Podcast and Monetize It Right Now

All right, we’re going to talk about five ways to monetize your podcast. My podcast Become a Successful Podcaster is doing very well in monetization and I want to pass on these strategies to you. I think it is a great way to monetize your podcast at any stage even when you’re starting out. Now most people do not want to always monetize a podcast before they grow their audienceI agree with that. It’s better to try monetizing your podcast after you have grown an audience and you can see my other strategies for growing your audience as well.

Use A Platform That Offers Built-In Monetization

First of all, the first way I monetize my podcast is to actually be on a platform like Anchor that has built-in advertising. What’s cool about Anchor is that you can apply to monetize your podcast right away. They provide you with ads. Some of those ads are audio ads, and some of those are just spoken words from the podcaster, but once I started my podcast, I put it right on Anchor that’s owned by Spotify. I started doing very well, and I’m very happy about the fact that every time I put out an episode, people listen to it, and I hear the commercials that Anchor actually pays me. I know there are other platforms that do the same thing. I believe Buzzsprout does it, although I haven’t really put my podcast on Buzzsprout, but I’m letting you know that this is definitely a way to go. If you’re on a podcast platform right now that does not pay you, I suggest you switch your podcast and that’s easy to go from one platform to another. You don’t have to move anything like you would move a website. We know that anytime we wanted to change a web hosting platform like GoDaddy or Bluehost or another platform, because we weren’t happy with a hosting platform, we would have to move the podcast, but what you get any podcast platform right now is an RSS feed. RSS feeds are all you need to move a podcast. The RSS feed takes your episodes with you, and usually a platform will just import it in. For those of us that don’t know, Apple Podcasts reads your RSS feed, so when you have an RSS feed and you understand why it’s to be used it’s always important to know that it will help you move to any platform you want. That’s a great way to monetize your podcast. 

2. Audio Commercials

The next way to monetize your podcast is to play audio commercials. There are audio commercials that pay anywhere from $1 to $20, and that’s a really good income stream for anybody who wants to get into podcasting. The commercials are anywhere from 15 to 30 to 60 seconds, and you can play those anywhere in your commercial, but I always advise that you play it with them. You play the commercials within the first three minutes of your episode, because doing it that way will get you will maximize your profits. Some ad networks will not even help as they have certain rules and they won’t pay you unless you decide to put it in certain places in your podcast dictated by them, but you can also go to the commercial exchange on the World podcast network that allows monetization using commercials right in your podcast episodes. You can get it right from a podcast network like the World Podcast Network. That’s really a cool way to do it, because they also pay you anywhere from 1 to $20 per ad, depending on your audience size, and the number of ratings you have on platforms like apple. 

3. Affiliate Ads

The next way of making money with your podcast is through affiliate ads. Yes, they’re not just for websites. If you have a website and you’ve ever tried using affiliate marketing you know that you can join Amazon and Amazon will let you sell their products on your website with a link that has your affiliate ID in it, and that affiliate ID will record every single time that Amazon make some sale from that link that you’re given. There’s nothing wrong with putting the affiliate links in the blog or show notes of your podcast episode and you can see my post on the Three-Way Marketing strategy for podcasts and how blogs help your podcast get marketed, but you can always put the affiliate link anywhere in your show notes. There’s nothing wrong with mentioning an affiliate link in your podcast episodes, so people who listen will be able to read the show nots and click the affiliate link. 

What do affiliate ads pay podcasters?

Affiliate programs or affiliate marketing programs pay you anywhere from 5 to 7% sometimes more for a podcast episode. Believe it or not, as they do it for websites, and they can do it for podcasts. I haven’t used this for my podcast yet, but I do use affiliate links and marketing on my podcast network to World Podcast Network. That is a really good way and that’s the third way to make money. 

Video Podcasts On YouTube

The fourth way to make money with your podcast is by having a video podcast on YouTube. Once you reach 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time, YouTube pays you for your videos, and you can always put your podcast episodes in the video podcast on YouTube. YouTube is known for good monetization program.

5. Paid sponsors in your episodes.

Pay sponsors are usually just a company who wants to sell a service or a product on your podcast to your audience members. Sponsors will simply give you a little script that you could actually read on your episode for your listeners to listen to. This is how Anchor actually works. There are over 1,000 sponsorship programs just waiting to pay a podcaster for a little ad space. You can also see the commercial exchange on the World Podcast Network for a list of commercials and sponsors. If you have good business relationships with local advertisers, you could also offer them a nice deal to read their business description, website, or product deals on your episodes..

If you have any other ways of making money, I’d love to hear it in the comments here, and I’ll see you in the next post.

 

Listen to our podcast on podcasting success!