I started my first podcast 2 years ago and learned a few things. Are you thinking about starting a podcast? This article is a full guide for anyone who is considering starting a podcast and wondering how much money you can make with podcasts.
Table of Contents
What is a podcast?
A podcast is basically just a piece of audio that you can listen to. It could be a story, an interview, a documentary, etc. In 2014, a very popular podcast called Serial took the world by storm. I even had to do a report on it for school. Since then, there have been a lot more podcasts added. Today, there are over 700k different podcasts to choose from in many different niches including Crime, History, Cultural, and News.
Podcasts are hosted on apps such as Spotify, Stitcher, Google podcasts, Apple podcasts, Audible, YouTube, etc. You can even host your podcast on your own website! But you’ll have to find a way to get people there.
Listeners can choose to listen through an app on their phone or a website on their computer making it convenient for all types of digital users.
I tried to start a successful podcast back in 2020 and it took me a while to realize it just wasn’t suitable for my personality. I much rather blog anonymously through words on a computer.
However, I did discover many things about podcasting that I want to share so hopefully you can use it to your advantage and be a successful podcaster!
There are an average of 100M people listening to a podcast every month. You can surely find your own audience.
How much money can you make from podcasts?
We all heard of people making millions from podcasts but let’s face it, the chance of you or me doing that isn’t high so let’s talk some real numbers of what you can expect at different levels.
Let’s think about this. Let’s say:
You get 2% of your listeners (not too far-fetched) to be a Patreon at $5 per month (the most common Patreon donation amount).
You get 1% of your listeners buying an affiliate product that nets you $15/sale.
You get 0.05% of your listeners buying your $99 course (could be other digital products like a PDF, book, etc).
Assuming you produce an episode per month.
If you get 1000 downloads/episode, you can expect to earn $745/month.
- Patreon: $100/month
- Affiliate: $150/month
- Course: $495/month
- Total: $745/month
If you get 5000 downloads/episode, you can expect to earn $4925/month. You’ll be able to charge $20/CPM for sponsorship deals at this stage.
- Patreon: $1200/month
- Affiliate: $500/month
- Course: $750/month
- Sponsorship: $2475/month
- Total: $4925/month
If you get 10,000 downloads/episode, you can expect to earn $13,450/month. You’ll be able to charge $50 CPM for sponsorship deals at this stage.
- Patreon: $6000/month
- Affiliate: $1000/month
- Course: $1500/month
- Sponsorship: $4950/month
- Total: $13450/month
Of course, the true amount you can make differs from person to person. Not everyone with 1000 downloads makes the same amount of money.
Where to host your podcast?
I would recommend you to host your podcast with Buzzsprout. It is one of the most popular platforms for podcasters.
Busssprout is perfect for beginners and professionals. They have a free basic plan for you to try so you can decide whether podcasting is right for you before diving headfirst into podcasting and spending lots of money in the process. You have a 90-day free trial. Buzzsprout also has an affiliate marketing place for you to easily make extra money sharing links.
If you sign up using this link you’ll get a free $20 Amazon gift card while I will get a commission which helps me continue creating more useful content for you at no charge!
7 Ways to make money from podcasts
There are several ways podcasters make money from their podcasts. Let’s discuss the following 10 methods you can use to make money from your podcast!
1. Affiliate marketing
What is affiliate marketing?
Affiliate marketing is a type of marketing where companies pay a person to endorse their product or service and in exchange, you get a cut of the profit for every person who buys the product or service through the link you provided.
Good link vs. bad link to say in your podcast
You can read out the link in your podcast. Make sure it’s easy to say.
A good affiliate link to say in your podcast would be something like www.example.com/your-brand-name
A bad example of an affiliate link is something like www.example.com/asdf82?=3sedg7
Where to find affiliate programs to work with?
You can find good affiliate programs to work with on sites such as ShareASale or Rakuten. Amazon is also a popular choice for those into affiliate marketing.
You should only promote products that you have used before to ensure that you aren’t recommending crap to people. Your brand would be greatly damaged if you’re associated with a bad product or service.
Use Lasso to shorten links
You can also use a plugin such as Lasso to create short links that are easier to say in your podcast.
Have a website to place all your affiliate links
Something you should do is to have a website set up for your podcast. You can post all the links you talked about into your blog. People would find it useful to not have to scramble and jut down the web address onto a piece of paper.
Use Hostgator to set up your website for free
When you sign up for a website, you’ll need a hosting service and a domain name. I recommend HostGator as they are one of the best hosting service providers out there. They also offer a free 1-year domain for any hosting plan purchase. You can also ask their live chat support to install your WordPress site for you entirely for free. Just ask them to help install “WordPress” (most websites in the world are created using the free WordPress) for you and the SSL certificate.
HostGator is the easiest way to get your website up and running use this link to sign up now!
2. Sponsorships
What are sponsorships?
This is basically advertising. You’d talk about a company and how great it is in your podcast. It typically takes 15–30 seconds of your time. The most profitable way to make money from podcasts is with sponsorship deals.
How much can you make from sponsorships?
You can make $18–30 per CPM (CPM = money per every 1000 listener).
When to place sponsored content?
You can place an ad in the beginning (pre-roll ads), middle (mid-roll ads), and end of your podcast (post-roll ads). The mid-roll ads are more valuable as that is when the listeners are the most captivated. You can make more money from the mid-roll ads than from the pre-roll ads or the post-roll ads.
Where to find sponsorship deals for podcasts?
- Adopter Media
- Midroll
- Ad results media
- AdvertiseCast
- True Native Media
- Podcorn
You may be given a script
Your sponsors will either give you a script to read out or may give you more flexibility in covering their company.
How much to charge for sponsored content as a beginner?
When you’re first starting out, you can ask to charge $15 for pre-roll and post-roll ads and charge $20 for mid-roll ads.
3. Patreon
What is Patreon?
Patreon is a direct way for people to support you. Those who like your podcast would donate money to you either one-time or monthly.
You can set how much your Patreons will be paying per month and you can give them certain benefits for signing up to be a Patreon. It could be access to exclusive content for instance.
Many people have a different level of Patreon support. Level 1 may require a monthly donation of $5 for instance while level 2 may require a monthly donation of $10 for instance and level 3 may require a monthly donation of $20 for instance.
4. Courses
You can create courses to sell to your fans. The course could be something related to your niche or it could be a course on how to create a podcast if you’re successful at it. Many will want to learn what you did to become so good at podcasting.
How to create a course to sell on your podcast?
You’ll need to record your course either using screen record on your computer with the webcam turned on or off, or, record using a camera with a tripod. You’ll also need a video editing software to edit your videos. And, finally, you’ll upload your course material to an online platform (ex. your own website).
5. Books
Of course, you can also sell the books you wrote. You’ll read out the title of your book to your listeners and they’ll be able to search it up. You can also be a guest on other podcasts and talk about your book from there.
6. Consulting
Depending on your niche this could be very lucrative. You can make a lot of money letting people book a consulting service with you. The thing is that it’s can’t be scaled up infinitely as your time is limited. If you want to make the most money, it should be from a source that doesn’t take away your limited resource: time.
7. Events
Some podcasters would host events (ie. conferences) to meet their fans. These events can be great money makers as well since many people want to meet the people behind the voice.
If you don’t have a large fan base, it’s not really a good thing to do to host events as you have to book the location which can be quite costly.
What equipment do you need to do a podcast?
There are different types of podcasts and the equipment they use would differ as well. For example, there are podcasts that show the speaker as he or she is talking and there are podcasts out there that only show the voice.
The easiest way to record a podcast without a complicated mess is to buy a BlueYeti microphone, plug it into your computer, and record using the free Audacity tool. You don’t need to tinker with the camera to record your face, you just need to upload an audio file.
Having a crisp sound is so important. BlueYeti is what many pro podcasters and pro YouTubers use. You can’t go wrong with BlueYeti.
Highest earning podcasters
Some of the highest-earning podcasters include:
- Pat Fynn with his smart passive income podcast. He earned 1.2 million in 2021
- Patrick Hinds and Gillian Pensavalle made 1.2 million with their True Crime Obsessed podcast in 2021.
- Bill Simmons made $7 million with his “The Bill Simmons Podcast” in 2021
- Damn Ramsey is a well-known name even for those who don’t listen to podcasts. He earned $10 million in 2021 with his “The Dave Ramsey Show”
- Joe Ragan made $30 million with his show called “The Joe Ragan Experience” in 2021.
Some stats about podcasts
- 116 million American listen to podcasts each month
- There are currently 600 million blogs, 38 million YouTube channels, and 2 million podcasts (you have a lot less competition with podcasting)
- 6 in 10 people who are above 12 years old listen to a podcast in America
- Most people listen to podcasts from their phone
- 75% of people listen to podcasts because they want to learn new things
- 90% of people are at home when listening to podcasts
- Advertising through podcasts is to surpass 2 billion in 2023
- 82.4% of people who listen to podcasts takes more than 7 hours a week listening to podcasts
- An average podcast listener listen to 7 shows per week and subscribe to 6 per week
- If you have more than 125 downloads, you are on the top 50th percentile of podcasts
- If you have more than 1000 downloads, you’re in the top 20%
- If you have more than 3000 downloads, you’re in the top 10%
- If you have more than 5000 downloads, you’re in the top 7%
- If you have more than 7100 downloads, you’re in the top 5%
- If you have more than 18000 downloads, you’re in the top 2%
- If you have more than 32,000 downloads, you’re in the top 1%
How long does it take to get to 5000 downloads/episode?
If you have 5000 downloads/episode you can make about $4925/month. That’s a full-time income. If you want to make a living with podcasts you should aim to have 5000 downloads per episode so it’s naturally reasonable to wonder how long it would take to get to 5000 downloads/episode?
Well, I’ve done some digging and found this Reddit post that said they (two people) hit the 5k downloads after 6 months and 23 episodes. Before you jump up and cheer though, that 5000 downloads aren’t per episode, it’s across 6 episodes over 6 months.
The post was dated 3 years ago. Hopefully, they have made it. The good thing to note is that there are a lot fewer people listening to podcasts 3 years ago so it may be a lot easier for you to gain an audience in 2022 if you start a podcast. You might also be faced with more competition although it’s not too overwhelming just yet.
Then, I found another person asking how long it took them to reach 1000 downloads/episode. From what I gathered, most episodes don’t get more than 250 downloads so if you get to 1000 downloads per episode, it’s an amazing feat. One person in the comment section talked about how it took him about 1 year to get to 1000 downloads/episode.
Podcasting certainly isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme. It takes time to build up an audience. It may take more than 1 year at least to get to 5000/downloads per episode.
If you get 250 downloads/episode you’re on the right track, you’re doing something right. Keep going.
If you don’t know, Gary Vee has a podcast. You may think that he has always been successful but he also started out from 0 listeners. From the age of 15–30, he was working his ass off starting businesses all of which didn’t do quite well. He wasn’t a well-known name. In fact, for the first 1.5 years, his video series WineLibraryTV didn’t get many views. Nobody was watching his videos. 1.5 years is a long time to persist at something. Most people would give up before they get to the 6 months mark of their podcasts.
Joe Ragan spent 30 years building his audience and he started in 2009. Everybody started from somewhere. There was a time when all the successful people weren’t successful. Ragan currently has 1785 episodes and just signed a 100 million deal with Spotify not too long ago.
What should you talk about in your podcast?
Is making money from podcasting as easy as you think? What should you talk about? Do you need some kind of expertise to be able to talk about things people are interested in?
Some of the most common niches in podcasts are the following:
- Tech
- Health and fitness
- Personal finance
- News
- Sports
- Self-improvement
- Motivational
- Business
- History
- Facts
- Stories
- Comedy
- Culture
- Music
How many podcasters actually make money?
Not a lot of podcasters make any money from their podcasts, unfortunately.
Many sponsors wouldn’t consider negotiating with a podcaster unless they got more than 5000 downloads per episode. You need to be in the top 7% to have more than 5000 downloads per episode.
Sponsorships are the most lucrative way for a podcaster to make money. However, there are other ways to monetize your podcast if you don’t have any sponsors. You just can’t expect to make a living without sponsorships in most cases.
If you’re doing well, meaning you’re at the top 20% with more than 1000 downloads per episode, you can expect to earn $745/month.
How many episodes should you put on your podcast per month?
A season should have more than 5 episodes in most cases but it should be as long as you need it to be. 5–6 episodes per season is considered to be on the shorter end but aren’t uncommon. 20 episodes per season is on the longer end. Between 8–15 episodes per season is within the normal range.
Some people post an episode per week, some twice a week, some once every month. If you want to make money with podcasting, obviously, you should try and produce more podcasts more frequently.
Can you make a living on the internet with podcasting?
Yes, you can. You should aim to get at least 5000 downloads per episode. It’s normal to take you more than 3+ years to get there. Joe Ragan took 30 years to build up the amount of audience he has now.
Most people won’t get to 5000 downloads per episode, however. If you’re in the top 7% of podcasters, you’d have 5000 downloads per episode. That should be your goal. Otherwise, you won’t have many sponsorship deals which are vital to make you a full-time income every month.
Final thought
Starting a podcast today in 2022 and 2023 is like starting YouTube in 2017. Podcasting can be a great opportunity for many people to make extra money or to earn a living on the internet without showing their faces on camera. For those who are a bit camera-shy, you should definitely give podcasting a try. More and more people are starting to listen to a podast.
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