How to Choose the Right Monetization Strategy For Your Podcast Artwork

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How to Choose the Right Monetization Strategy For Your Podcast

November 21, 2025 • Buzzsprout • Episode 203

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Monetizing your podcast doesn’t have to mean chasing sponsors or hitting massive download numbers. We break down what podcast monetization actually looks like for indie podcasters and how to choose the strategies that genuinely fit your show.

We cover:

When you’re truly ready to monetize
How sponsorships actually work
Affiliate marketing as a simple testing ground
Subscriptions options: listen to the full Buzzcast episode
Listener support and why it works for every podcaster
How to talk about money without feeling awkward
Why the future of podcast monetization is all about value and community

Read the monetization blog: How I Make Money Podcasting (What Still Works In 2025)

Contact Buzzcast

Send us a text message
Tweet us at @buzzcastpodcast, @albanbrooke, @kfinn, and @JordanPods

Thanks for listening and Keep Podcasting!

Jordan: 0:00

So, our last episode, our not so quick cast, we have a post-show, Alban. It was this really awesome story where you're talking about recording a podcast with your daughter and talking about recording with family members over the Thanksgiving break. And we got some fan mail in response to that post show. Lisa from Capturing Essence for Care said, I'm ear-to-ear smiling right now, listening to Alban talking about recording family members at Thanksgiving and hearing about how podcasting is being encouraged for family recordings and play. Thank you for sharing. I'll definitely be adding these ideas to future podcast episodes of my own. And Sparkling Dee said, Alban, I love your idea of recording a podcast with family members. I was just visiting my 90-year-old auntie and wish I had thought to capture her stories. It's also such a great way for those of us who are just starting out to practice interviewing others. Thanks for the inspiration.

Alban: 0:51

I forgot about this, but I did record my grandmother.

Jordan: 0:53

Really?

Alban: 0:54

Yeah. Would have been like February 2020. Kevin is telling me every day more about COVID. And so I go and I think I don't know what's going to happen, but my grandmother was and still is in a memory unit. She has dementia. And she was didn't have too much then, but I went and recorded just in voice memos because I was afraid it would be the last time I saw her recorded talking to her. I should go back and find those. I think I've honestly forgotten that I'd done that. I also got an email on this from Matthew at the podcast host. And he wrote in and said, Enjoyed the last episode. A few months ago, I got a Micro Speak Plus recorder, uh, which is easy enough for my four-year-old daughter to use. And I've been collecting a lot of her recordings, she often uses it without any prompting. And I went and looked at it, and the Micro Speak Plus is like a $70 recorder, but it's so simple. Like it's turn on, hit record, and you can put an SD card in there. And so you could get a bunch of recordings. And I was looking at it and it's on the list for my nieces now for Christmas. I thought I was like, that would be such a good honestly. I should just buy one now and take it to Thanksgiving and give it to my daughter and nieces, and just they'll all record silly stories and stuff while we're at Thanksgiving.

Jordan: 2:09

That'd be so cute. It's funny, I was looking at this, and my first impression looking at the images is that this looks like it was made by Fisher Price. It's like the primary colors, like yellow, blue, and red, very Sesame Street. And then I looked at the price and not Sesame Street. It's $70. I was like, whoa. So it better be good. Jeez.

Alban: 2:31

If you get a few really good recordings out of it, then it's worth it. If it becomes a piece of junk that sits around the house, even $30 wouldn't be worth it. So you've got to, it's got to work for you. But uh I loved the idea.

Jordan: 2:42

Yeah. Here we go. Welcome back to BuzzCast, the podcast about all things podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout. I'm really excited for this episode. We are talking about podcast monetization, but we are talking about it from more of a lens of what monetization strategy is going to work best for your podcast because podcasts are unique and it's not one size fits all. I personally have had a lot of experience with monetizing my podcast. I tried really hard. I worked really hard trying to make podcasting my profession. And I spread myself so thin doing every single monetization strategy under the moon. And some of it worked out really well for me. And some of it I absolutely fell flat on my face. So this is a topic that I feel very passionate about.

Alban: 3:35

Strategy number one, get hired at Buzzsprout.

Jordan: 3:37

Yeah, that's it.

Alban: 3:38

You've made your podcast is monetized.

Kevin: 3:41

I do think we should clarify. When I think of the word monetize, I think that you're actually earning something from your venture. So we're talking about podcasting, you're earning money from your podcasting, meaning that you're bringing in more money than you're spending. I don't think any of us would say that you could do that day one. I think you can start executing on some strategies to potentially earn more, have more coming in than you're spending on day one. But I don't think anyone's going to launch a podcast on day one, they're going to start bringing in more than they're making.

Alban: 4:11

I think if we're talking about monetization, meaning cash, like I'm taking effort and I'm turning it into money that I can spend on other things, you're entirely correct. I think you can get more value than you're giving in lots of different ways. And I think that's one of the ways maybe Buzzsprout thinks about monetization differently, is that a lot of the value isn't going to go through cash to a bank account. Often what you're getting is something else. And the something else is something that you would have been willing to pay money to get. You're just going to skip the money piece.

Jordan: 4:49

Alban, you sort of touched on this. So we're going to talk about when to start thinking about making money from your podcast. Something that a lot of podcasters will fall into is that they feel like they need to have like a massive audience or huge download numbers to start monetization, but that's really not true. I personally know plenty of podcasters who have audiences of like a hundred, you know, they get like a hundred downloads per episode and they have found ways to make money from their podcast or sustain their podcast through a small but super engaged audience. So I think if you're trying to decide if you're ready to monetize your podcast, there are some things you can like look at. If you if you can't decide if it's right for you to monetize your podcast right now, you know, is your time becoming like a cost? Are you spending more time to the point where you kind of want to like start investing in your podcast or outsourcing things? It's funny because conversely, when you're thinking about monetizing your podcast, there are some monetization strategies that actually take more time. And so it's it's kind of like this double-edged sword. So it's like, you know, is your time becoming a cost? But at the same time, do you have enough time to invest into trying to make money from your podcast? If you have a small but engaged audience, or maybe your podcast is taking off and you're one of those lucky people that's getting like 10,000 downloads per episode. And then also with this one is very, very important. Are your listeners already asking how they can support your podcast? I think that that is a really good indicator. That's maybe the best indicator that you're ready to start monetizing your podcast or allowing listeners to support the production of your show.

Kevin: 6:29

I feel like we should have some discussion around the idea that not everybody wants to monetize. Not everybody thinks that monetization is the right path. So I don't I don't really want to talk about that. The other side of that coin is that there are some people who say, I'm getting into podcasting because I want to or I need to make money. And we should probably preface some of this conversation with we're not really talking about either one of those. We're talking about like sometimes the stars align and you didn't set out to make money, and you can. But what happens less often is that you do set out to make money and then you figure out how to make a significant amount of money in podcasting. That's very, very, very rare.

Jordan: 7:10

Yeah.

Kevin: 7:11

It is like so rare that I would say there's a hundred million, like billion trillion easier ways to probably make money than than there are in podcasting, including like just becoming a social media influencer. Like that's probably easier. I think it is probably easier just to go create 30 second whatever clips that are funny, and just by getting views on Instagram, they're gonna send you four to six dollars a month. And in order to do that same level of four to six dollars in podcasting, you have to work really hard. And so if you just want to make money, I would say, I don't know, like wash cars or set up a lemonade stand or create, you know, some Instagram videos. They're all gonna generate around four to six dollars a month in income for it.

Alban: 7:53

I'm sorry, the the the easiest way to make money is to get a job. Like full stop.

Jordan: 7:59

So if you are in the camp of like, I want to start making money for my podcast, I want to start sustaining this hobby, you could do what I did and experiment with a whole bunch of different monetization strategies and waste a whole bunch of time and like fail miserably, or you can be really smart about how you try to make money from your podcasts. And all podcasts are different, all are unique. What works for an interview podcast that has like thousands and thousands of downloads is not going to work the same for like an audio narrative podcast that has a very like niche audience or a DD podcast or something like that. They're all different. They have different kinds of audiences with different interests and different wants and needs. And so you have to make sure that you are gearing your monetization strategy towards that so that you're not wasting energy on something that your audience isn't really interested in. So the four strategies that we're going to talk about in this episode: sponsorships, affiliate and referral marketing, subscriptions, and listener support. I think that there's other revenue streams that we could talk about, but it's probably just going to be an episode all on its own. So, like, we're not gonna get into like merch or live events or anything like that.

Alban: 9:13

Courses, digital products, PDFs, white papers.

Jordan: 9:17

Yeah. Let's get into sponsorships. I always feel like sponsorships are the end goal, all podcasters. They're just like, I'm gonna know I make it when I have a sponsorship and when I'm doing that like sponsored ad rate that this podcast is brought to you by this brand. I have done sponsorships, I've had a lot of sponsorships. So I will explain how sponsorships work very quickly. The first step is that you're going to pitch to the brand, and it's typically in an email, and you're gonna send like so many of these emails, but each email needs to be catered to each individual brand. You need to have like a really heartfelt message in it. You need to say, you know, why your podcast is a perfect fit, why your audience is a perfect fit, why you love the company. And then when you eventually get a brand, you're gonna negotiate, you'll work out like number of spots for ad reads, um, script points, payment terms, and timelines. Then you record the ad and you're gonna insert in the episode. And then after it publishes, you send an air check to the brand for confirmation that you did the ad read. So it's just an air check is just like a timestamp and a link to the episode. And then in about 30 days, you will follow up again and get payment. The thing is, is this is so much work. I spent so many weekends just sitting at my computer researching companies or researching how to reach out to companies that I was a really big fan of, creating like a one-pager or a pitch deck and trying to get them to read my email about why I thought that they should work with me. Or sometimes I would be like emailing companies trying to get payment when they're like overdue. It turned into like a full-time job trying to get these sponsors. It ate up so much time. And I would send probably like 10 pitches a weekend and maybe get a response to like one. It was so much work. And I think a lot of podcasters don't realize how much work it is to do sponsorships.

Alban: 11:22

One of the things I liked from the blog post you wrote, Jordan, was that you had emails in there with some like the back and forth negotiations or people reaching out to you and got to see a little bit behind the scenes of what it looked like.

Jordan: 11:36

Yeah.

Alban: 11:37

Your first sponsor was something like somebody reached out and said, Hey, I donated $50 to your Patreon. Would you do an ad read? Is that right?

Jordan: 11:44

Yeah, it was a company, like a beauty and wellness company that reached out and they asked, Would you do an ad read if we donated $50 to your Patreon? And it was so cool because I was thinking about doing sponsorships. You know, I was like at a point where I was like, my podcast is getting big enough. I could do sponsorships. And I was really scared. So I didn't send that first pitch email ever. But they actually approached me. And then that was my opportunity to say, oh, actually, I get this many downloads. Here's information about my podcast. And we could work out like a sponsorship, and here's how it works, and here's how much it would cost. And I think I ended up negotiating like, I don't know, a hundred or two hundred dollars for that. Maybe it was 300. I don't remember. But I ended up negotiating. I talked about like, hey, it would be really fun to do a giveaway for my listeners and then also get paid for the ad rates and also do this. So sponsorships can be fun. But yeah, it was, it was really cool having a brand reach out to me. And then, you know, it's one of those things like after I got that first taste of like a brand deal and how awesome it was, I was just like, oh, okay, this is great. After that, I started pitching my podcast and taking it more seriously.

Alban: 12:57

I was actually on Reddit this morning and somebody was talking about they want to start a podcast about bicycle photography or cycling photography. Oh. And I guess they used to do, they take photos of like Tour de France or something. And there's only like 20, 30 people in the world who really do this as a profession. They were like, I want to do a podcast about it. I just don't know if it's worth it doing 30 episodes, interviewing these people, then shutting it down. And I wrote them like why I thought that podcast could be have much more legs than they thought. But then at the end I said, and the monetization opportunities there are going to be pretty big because you're combining two categories that had a lot of gear and a lot of companies with big marketing budgets that will want to reach your listeners if you build an audience. Cameras, photography, drones, and bicycling. Like multiple multi-thousand dollar item purchases a year for their target demographic. Very expensive. And if they do build out a nice little audience, you know, DJI is gonna show up when they build a new biking drone and Canon when they come out with a new camera. There is some level that I think it's worthwhile thinking about who could sponsor this podcast in some format and like not just think like, oh, I've heard BetterHelp and AG1 or on all sorts of podcasts, but like, are there brands or are there products that naturally want to reach the audience that I'm trying to reach and that I'm passionate about? Are there brands I use in this space? Those might be the right people to be forming relationships with.

Kevin: 14:36

You can be strategic about seeking out who would be a good fit for the show. So you might only be reaching 50 people, 100 people, but those 50 or 100 people might be the perfect match for a company, a product, a service, a consultancy, whatever. And if you can be strategic about finding who these companies are and then presenting an opportunity to them to be a sponsor of the show, and sponsorships are they're like a partnership. They're not, at least we don't view them. Um when I say we, like we Buzzsprout, we don't view our sponsorship of the Pod News Weekly Review as something where to us it's not strictly a business transaction. It's not us wanting to put our name on the Pod News Weekly Review and run an advertisement that then returns more than we're investing. I mean, that's part of it for sure. But there's also this we like what the Pod News Weekly Review is doing. Like they're covering all the news and and happenings in the podcasting industry, they're talking about interesting things, they're raising up new people who were starting in podcasting them and giving them the voice and giving them an opportunity to introduce themselves to the podcasting community. So they're doing a lot of good things in a space that we're passionate about, and we've got to know the people behind it. So we know James and we know Sam and and we we like them personally. So we want to support them personally as well. So there's a whole bunch of stuff that goes into that equation for us. And if it was strictly a, oh, this sponsorship is going to cost us this much, we have to see that much come back. It may or may not make sense. I don't know. But Alban and I don't run those numbers. We listen to the show, we listen, we read the newsletter, we're fans of what they're doing. Uh and then we ask them, what would it cost for us to support this in a sponsorship type package? They run numbers on their side and they say, How does this sound? And we said, That sounds great. It's as simple as that for us as a business to come in and support something that we like that's happening in our industry. And so when you don't have an audience, things like that are possible, but you've got to do the legwork. Like Alban and I are not going out there looking for up-and-coming podcasters who are doing things we like that we could approach, like not so much. We don't have a lot of time for that. But every once in a while, one of them might reach out to us and we'll take a look and we'll say, Yeah, that actually sounds like something that would be good for podcasting. We're interested in supporting it. And it may or may not make sense on the RO ROI side of the business, but we still want to put a little bit of money behind it and just support it anyway.

Alban: 16:49

All right. I like the way you're talking about this, Kevin. As a business who sponsors content, what do you want to see from the creator to get excited about sponsoring their content? I'm thinking multiple creators that I've talked to this week about sponsoring content that they've all been someone who created the content first. They were creating content around podcasting, around our niche, and they're reaching the right audience and we want to support what they're doing, and they seem to know and understand what Buzzprout's doing. And so the sponsorships that have not really worked for us, to be honest, have been ones where we're reaching out to some big creator going, Hey, can we send you a bunch of money? And then you use these talking points to do a video for us. But somebody who is already doing content that's very close and they have recommended Buzzsprout in the past is someone that I want to reach out to. And I've done many times and said, Hey, I really love what you did with this video. We really appreciate it. You do obviously do really good content in this space. How can we support you for your next five videos? And multiple have said, You are on my list of people I'd want to work with because there's a natural partnership between the person who's creating the content, they know which brands they like, and they want to work with the brands they like. If you're a big Adidas fan, you really just don't want to work with Nike, and now you have to switch out your wardrobe. And if you're in whatever tool you use, you want to use the tool that you use and not have to get sponsored by their competitor. And if the brand, you want to work with somebody who understands your product. Often the person who understands your product is giving even better recommendation than you could write with talking points.

Jordan: 18:30

Yep.

Alban: 18:30

So my advice would be if you want to sponsor, maybe just like not ad reads, but like talk about why you love the products, talk about why you like the services. And that can be a proof point to whoever's making the decision of where to buy ads or do sponsorships. They're gonna go, oh, this person understands us, we should be sponsoring them.

Jordan: 18:52

Yeah.

Kevin: 18:53

Yeah, we've all seen those videos where somebody is talking about something. It happens a lot in the social space, but it does happen once in a while on podcasts too. Somebody will be talking about a product and they'll say something like, I love this product. I'm not sponsored by this product. I wish I was. If anybody from this company is listening, please reach out. I would love to be sponsored by you, but I'm not. But I'm just gonna tell you about the product anyway because it's so great. I can tell you like if we hear somebody talk about Buzzsprout like that, we get super excited. Yeah. Yeah. Now it doesn't mean that it's always gonna work out. But sometimes you reach out after that. Sometimes you do, right.

Jordan: 19:23

And I think that that is a good distinction too, with sponsorships when you're pitching either as a brand to a podcaster or as a podcaster to a brand, you have to make sure that when you reach out in that initial message or email that you are being very intentional about making it personable and saying, like, hey, I like this about you. And, you know, I think it would actually be really cool for us to like work together. Here's why. Here's everything like lined out because I've received uh pitch emails from brands that maybe they're legitimate, but it could also be like not legitimate. It could just be like a spam email that's like mass sent out and it's just like, hi, dreamful. We really love your podcast and would love to sponsor. Make sure to get in touch with our representative. Those I avoid at all costs. It goes straight to spam. But when I get an email from a company and they're like, hey, my kids actually love your podcast. And I think that our brand would actually be a great sponsorship opportunity. We love to, you know, work together with you. That to me goes, oh, this is a real person. And then I immediately reach out and make that deal. So it it does matter that it's it's very intentional when it comes to sponsorships and brand deals and stuff like that.

Alban: 20:43

So if we're talking about when should you start thinking about reaching out to sponsors, I'd say pretty early if there's a natural fit. You know, if your podcast already you're talking to an audience and you're recommending, hey, here's a product I use, here's something I really enjoy, here's something you'd like, then go ahead and talk about the products, but then maybe reach out to those companies and ask them to sponsor you. Sometimes a piece of bad advice I hear is don't give away sponsorships for free. So don't like recommend stuff. And you know, there are people who would be like, I'm worth more, so I need to get paid, and thus I won't talk about products. I think that's misguided because you what you're thinking is if I just tell everyone about this product, then they will never sponsor me. But when you're telling people about products, your audience about products that you love, they're gonna build trust with you because they think you do have good recommendations. And then the companies and products you recommend will know, yeah, we got one ad read for free, one recommendation, one sponsorship for free. But what we really would like is 12 of those a year. And we can tell this person's an influencer, we'd like them to influence 12 times as much. And so I think it's misguided to imagine like I'm holding, I'm not going to recommend stuff unless I get paid, because that's kind of how you do get paid.

Kevin: 22:07

Hearing you talk about how difficult it can be to find that right partner, you know, it's a little eye-opening for me for sure. And I think I would have a tendency to, gosh, I don't know. Like this sounds like the worst advice in the world, but all the sponsorships that we've done from the Buzz Sprout side have just sort of happened.

Jordan: 22:26

There's like the option, like you could do a DIY like I did for a long time, but at some point I just like didn't have time for it. It was just eating up like half of my time podcasting. And so I went to a media agency. But the thing with media agencies is that they will pitch your podcast for you to these brands. They work with all these brands, and it's great because you don't have to do any of that work. You don't have to follow up and get payment, but you're also do getting payment on like their terms. And so instead of me saying, like, hey, I want you to pay me within 14 days or 30 days of this ad dropping, I would have to wait like 90 days. And the way that they get so many brand deals is that they like put you all in a pool, like all of these podcasts, and they go to the brand and they're like, hey, we will give you this at like this rate. And so I was taking less CPM rates than I would normally. So when I was negotiating my own podcast, I would get like $25 to $30 per thousand downloads, which was great. Or I could negotiate like flat fees, but then when it goes to an ad agency, they're negotiating like $14 to $20 for a thousand downloads. And so there are like upsides and downsides to a media agency, and there's upsides and downsides to doing it yourself. It's just, yeah, it's a lot.

Alban: 23:43

Sounds like there's a couple ways to do sponsorships. I mean, one is it it's perfect if it kind of just happens. Like Kevin, I kind of described a few that you find someone, it just fits perfectly. You reach out, they already know the brand, and before you know it, you've been working together for a few years. Um, that's ideal, though probably not super common. You have working with these big ad agencies where you kind of become faceless as a podcaster and faceless as an audience, and they're reselling your space, but it's really they're selling you because you're big. Or you've got this uh version, Jordan, that you're doing, which is you're doing a ton of work. I mean, you've invented an additional job to try to start landing sponsors, which is very impressive. The grind is there for sure, but it may not always be worth it as much. How do we know which way of those three to go?

Jordan: 24:40

I'm gonna say that I really don't think that sponsorships are for every podcaster. I think that it is probably just for podcasters that are big enough. If you have like, you know, a few hundred downloads, then yeah, doing it yourself and pitching to brands yourself is gonna be the way to go. But if you have like 10,000 downloads or 20,000, 30,000, then I'd probably do a media agency just because, you know, it doesn't take as much time.

Kevin: 25:10

And and when your audience is small, I don't think you have to apologize for that. You just need to say, you need to be upfront and transparent about it. It's that I don't have a large audience, but the people who do listen are a perfect fit for your product and I love your product.

Jordan: 25:20

Yeah.

Kevin: 25:20

And so this should be about us working together in a way that makes sense. You're not going to sell that ad for a couple hundred dollars. I mean, unl unless you're selling something that's a super high margin product. Like if you're selling, like, I don't know, wealth management or something, like there's hundreds of thousands of dollars in obtaining a new client, sure. Or you're selling high-end AC systems or something, yeah, there's a lot of margin there. But if you're just doing a podcast about podcasting and you have a microphone that you love and you want to talk more about it, but you only reach a couple hundred people per episode, it's just not going to be worth it for them to spend hundreds. But you could say, I just really want a sponsor of the show. I would do it for you know 10, 20 bucks an episode. Like it just helped cover some of your costs. But I think sponsorships are different than ads, and they're different than host red ads. They are. And so I think it's about relationship building on both sides. I don't think it's just about here are my numbers. That if you're just if you're leading with numbers, that's a tip-off to me that it's an ad. And uh the difference between like programmatic ads and host right ads is the CPM is a little bit higher because you're endorsing it. So it feels like it's getting into sponsorship territory, but to me, it's still different. It's not a sponsorship, it's a host rate ad.

Jordan: 26:31

If you talk about a product, if you're doing something like very niche and you just want to make like 20 bucks an episode, I actually think a better option would be affiliate marketing. We could totally get an affiliate link for microphones and talk it up. And then every podcaster who listens to our show and goes and buys that microphone using our link or using our code, we'd get a kickback of like $15 or $20. Affiliate marketing is very lucrative if you're smart about it and you don't have to have a huge audience.

Alban: 27:01

So when Matthew wrote in about the recorder he got for his four-year-old at the beginning of this episode, that is a good example of like affiliate marketing.

Jordan: 27:11

Yes.

Alban: 27:11

You know, if you're recommending something, you add on the link, it goes to Amazon. And if I buy it, Matthew gets a, I don't know, 5% of that back or something. If you're recommending physical products, especially ones that are sold on BH or sold on Amazon or places like that, those are really good opportunities for affiliate marketing.

Jordan: 27:33

Yeah. And I think that affiliate marketing is exponentially easier than sponsorships. So with affiliate marketing, you don't have an audience threshold. So you don't need to have like a hundred downloads per episode. You can literally have five downloads per episode and still sign up to get an affiliate link or sign up for a referral program with a company. You get paid per the acquisition, not per downloads. So every time someone uses your link or every time someone uses your referral code, you get paid after they make like a purchase. And it's also super, super easy to sign up. You could take an afternoon and just go browse websites of companies that you like. And usually if you scroll to the very bottom, uh, like the little footnotes of their websites, you can find if they have a referral program or affiliate links and you can sign up really easily. There's affiliate marketplaces that you can go to. And what's so great about it is all you have to do is record an ad in your episode, or even just talk about it organically in your episode, and then just mention that you have a link, mention that you have a referral code. And if your listeners click that and then make a purchase, then you make like five bucks, $20, something like that.

Alban: 28:51

If you're looking for someone to start recommending and you listen to this podcast, you probably have a Buzzsprout hosted show. Go use the refer friend link. And for every person that signs up with it, they'll get 20 bucks, but you will as well in your Buzzsprout wallet. So oh, we would love to be your first affiliate.

Kevin: 29:08

I do like affiliate marketing. I think it is a good testing bed for you to figure out like how effective you are at selling products that you'd like and believe in. And if you're successful at it, then it's a really good opportunity for you to add that to your email, your pitch deck when you're approaching somebody to move up the chain into sponsorships where ideally there'd be a little bit more money involved. Because affiliate payouts usually at small scales, they're not they're not huge. But if you can say, I've been using affiliate codes on my site, you know, for the three or six months or a year or whatever, and I pushed this many sales or I've generated this much revenue or yada yada yada. It's really good for a brand to hear that and say, Oh, they not only have an audience, they have an audience that values their opinion that takes action on the things that they recommend. And so I I really do think it it's a wonderful place to start, but it can also be discouraging because really your ability to push. Someone to buy a product is one thing to push them to buy a product with your affiliate code is another. And oftentimes you might be influencing them to make that purchase. Like I listened to a podcast. I got hooked on RX bars a few years ago because the ATP podcast was talking about it. And they said to use this code at checkout, and I couldn't remember the code. So I just bought it anyway. But like ATP got no credit for it. But really, they're the ones that turned me on to RX bars.

Jordan: 30:25

Yeah.

Kevin: 30:25

And so that that can happen sometimes in affiliate marketing. I'm not poo-pooing the idea. I'm just saying that you're going to push more sales than you'll get credit for. But if you can get credit for enough, you can really use that to leverage brands to move into sponsorships.

Alban: 30:38

Yeah. You can also get credit for sales you didn't really drive. So the way Amazon works is you just get credit for everything the person buys after using your link, like within a short window.

Jordan: 30:49

Yeah.

Alban: 30:49

And I remember somebody was like, I just got the biggest affiliate payout from Amazon I've ever gotten because someone bought a $10,000 gold coin or something on Amazon. Oh yeah. They did it right after they'd clicked their link for uh some piece of camera equipment.

Jordan: 31:04

Yeah, Kevin, you mentioned something that I actually really like is using affiliate marketing as sort of like a test for podcast advertising because no one cares. No one's gonna know if you sign up for an affiliate program or you sign up to get a referral code from something and you do an ad, it's not gonna be embarrassing if nobody makes a purchase, right? No, do you disagree?

Kevin: 31:28

I don't disagree. I I'm just wincing a little bit because if with affiliate marketing, you do have to disclose that you're using an affiliate link. There are rules and regulations about that.

Jordan: 31:37

Sorry, let me clarify what I meant by no one's gonna know. Listeners are not going to know that nobody made a purchase.

Kevin: 31:44

Yes.

Jordan: 31:45

Right. So who cares? It it doesn't matter. Yes, you should absolutely disclose that it's an affiliate. Oh, another thing that you should leave out when you're doing an affiliate ad read. So with sponsorships or brand deals, you hear this episode is brought to you by or this podcast is brought to you by or sponsored by, you cannot use that language when you're doing an ad read for an affiliate code because the brand is not endorsing you. They're not sponsoring you. So you have to make sure that you leave that language out of it. But you can naturally talk about how you really like something and just let your listeners know that, like, hey, I get a kickback if you use a referral code and this is a way to support the podcast, right? Yeah, perfect. But yeah, it is a great way to test things out. I tested out several, and you know what? I do think that you should test out several different affiliates or referrals to see what works. I had a handful of them. Some of them I never got a single purchase, and I really believed in the product, and so I was really bummed out about it. But I had one that I think was really well timed. It was this like luxury uh wooden puzzle company. And I talked about it and I had a referral code and I had an ad read for it in like early November to late November. And during the holiday purchasing season, I think my listeners just went like bananas on this for gift buying. And then in January, I got my affiliate payout, and it was like over a thousand dollars. It was so much money. And I was just like, whoa, that was for like that one ad read. And so it can work out. It was actually more than I got for some sponsorships.

Kevin: 33:21

Yeah. And the holiday gift giving season, at least in the US, such a great time to do this. So many podcasters do things like uh, you know, I think Oprah started the My Favorite Things idea around the holiday season. And so many podcasters share their things and forget or or just don't take the time to hook up an affiliate link to some of this stuff. Now, an affiliate link won't be available on every possible product that might be on your favorites list, but it could be on some.

Jordan: 33:48

Yeah.

Kevin: 33:48

And so it's a great time of year to try it. I personally just listening to a financial podcast two weeks ago, and the person gave five gift ideas that they loved. And one of them, I was like, I would be perfect for my wife. I sent the link to my daughter. She was like 100% get that from mom. It was very expensive. There was no affiliate link. I would have gladly clicked it.

Jordan: 34:07

Yeah.

Kevin: 34:07

But whatever. So thank you for the recommendation, financial advisor guy. But you get no.

Jordan: 34:13

That's kind of ironic.

Kevin: 34:15

Yeah.

Jordan: 34:20

Let's move on to our third monetization strategy. And we actually have a whole episode on this, but I want to touch on it. Podcast subscriptions. This is going to work for any size of show. There's certain subscription models that are going to work better for if you don't have any extra time put into your podcast, or there's some that are going to take a lot of time. So, you know, if you are doing early access to episodes and you're already ahead of schedule, you always have your episodes scheduled to be published two weeks, three weeks before they're supposed to be published. Early access is no skin off your back. And that is a really easy way for you to offer an incentive for your listeners to subscribe to your podcast. If you are creating like a subscriber-only podcast or bonus episodes, obviously that's going to take so much more time because you're literally making an entire extra podcast or an entire you're increasing your publishing frequency. And so you're making more episodes, there's more content planning. Things like that are going to take more time. But yeah, so that's something that you can turn on regardless if you have like one listener or a thousand.

Alban: 35:28

I love subscriptions because you're connecting people to the content that they really want. The audience is helping pay for the content that they think is most valuable in the world. Obviously, we're differentiating this from listener support, which would be giving without there being a kind of like a paywall. But I subscribe to some podcasts, and they're some of my favorite, and I'm very excited to keep paying for them because there's certain content that is so much better for me than the stuff that's out there for free. And there's some really wonderful, great, big podcasts that you can just get for free, but it just isn't my favorite stuff. And my favorite stuff happens to be subscriber podcasts. And if you're creating really good content and you've built a good audience and people are asking for more episodes, I think subscriptions are a really interesting thing to experiment with. It's tough in the beginning, though. This is one of the points Kevin and I talked about a lot when we launched subscriptions and listener support in BuzzProw was at the beginning, subscriptions can be tough because people will promise, I'm gonna start doing two episodes a week, one that's free, one that's paid. Well, now even if two people sign up for the paid version, you're doing a paid episode for them and you've doubled your workload for, I don't know, six dollars a week or something. It may be pretty small in the beginning. So you want to have a little bit of a customer base that is clamoring for more content before you start making promises about publishing future content, especially if time is a bit tight.

Jordan: 37:04

I think that's a really good point, Alban, because if you're thinking about monetizing through a subscription, it's really important to be like, okay, does my audience actually want this? Is there a demand for this? Is this something that they're willing to pay for? That's a really good question to ask yourself. Because if you are not running ads in your podcast and you're thinking about doing an ad-free subscription, well, that doesn't make sense, right? But if, like I said, you are always ahead of schedule with publishing, maybe early access would work best for you. What can you deliver consistently? If you are promising like one extra bonus episode a month, that might be more doable than one extra bonus episode every single week. Try to give yourself some grace. Try to think about your future podcasting self when you're making these promises to subscribers, to paying listeners. And then another thing that I think is really, really important is thinking about will the subscription support your ability to keep podcasting or will it completely burn you out? Because you can't monetize a podcast that doesn't exist because you burned out and you're not even podcasting anymore. It it that doesn't matter. So those are just some really important things to keep in mind with the subscriptions. And like I said, we have a whole episode on subscriptions. We deep dive in every single different kind of model you can go into. And I'll link to that in the show notes too. This is my absolute favorite listener support. This monetization strategy works for absolutely anybody, regardless of your audience size, regardless of how much time you have to devote to podcasting. And this is like donations or monthly pledges or the value for value model.

Kevin: 38:47

Listener support, huge fan. Love this model. Like you said, it scales really well, whether your audience is tiny or whether it's large. But oftentimes people think this is the the gotcha here is some people think that they can turn it on and it will just start working magic. And it doesn't work like that.

Jordan: 39:03

Yeah.

Kevin: 39:04

You have to talk about it. You have to pitch it. And I think oftentimes people maybe more so like in this than I don't know, doing ad raids or sponsorships or affiliate marketing or whatever. You're maybe more comfortable talking about other people's things than you are about your own stuff or your own time and effort and energy that goes into producing this show. But you have to get comfortable with that because it doesn't work if you don't tell people it exists, first of all, and why it's valuable and important and necessary for you to be able to continue doing the show, producing this high quality content. Takes time. You have to talk about it. And my favorite case study example of this is the Pod News Weekly Review. And I wish we could get James or Sam to come and give a testimonial about this at some point. But I I remember as soon as we rolled out the listener support feature, they turned it on. And I think they had like one or two. Like I think I was one of the first power supporters for their show for like a year. There was like three of us. There was hardly anybody. And at some point, they started talking about it. And then they started doing at the end of the year, they do a podcast predictions episode for like what do you think is gonna happen this next year in podcasting? Yeah. And they started saying, How do you get interviewed for that? How do you give your like present your idea? You're a power supporter. That's like one of the things you get. So they're they just talked about that last week. Is that if you want to be on our predictions episode for 26, you better sign up and become a power supporter? And they're gonna start reaching out to those people in the next couple weeks. And so they're using it to be a part of their show. They're talking about how valuable it is. Every time they get a new power supporter, they say, like, you know, the sweet 16 and the superfluous 17 and the elite 18. I don't know. They give they give different names every time they get another one. I think they're up to 20 something now, but they're making it fun, they're making it part of the show, and it's working, it's growing. Like just over the past year, it's just grown and grown and grown and grown. Every episode they have another supporter or two.

Jordan: 40:53

Yeah.

Alban: 40:54

The reason people feel uncomfortable about this is one of the few areas of our lives where people are asking you to give the money is panhandling. And we imagine that's what I'm doing, basically. I'm just saying, please, I just need a little bit of money. Can you give it to me? And so it feels like wrong. We're not saying I need it for food, we're just asking for some money. But it's not panhandling. What you're doing is you're saying, look, I'm putting a lot of effort into this. I really want to keep doing this. I want to dedicate even more time to it. If you think I'm good at it, if you think that what I'm providing is valuable, I'd love for you to be a part of it. Then people have the opportunity to join you in that. If they don't like what you're creating, then they're probably not listening. But if they're listening, they're probably interested in it. And if they have the means, then they should be excited to offer you some amount of money to support the show. So it's really you're giving an opportunity to people to support the content you're creating by opening up listener support and talking about it. And as Kevin said, the more that you can make this part of the show, the better. It works well on pod news. I think of No Agenda with Adam Curry. They do lots of, they're reading off the boosts and they read all the funny names and they have all the stuff built into the show. There's so many podcasts that have figured out unique ways of bringing in the audience that's supporting and highlighting them and celebrating them. And I think it's not just good for the podcast, it's good for the listeners too.

Jordan: 42:31

This is actually perfect because we did get a famous message from Abby, who we uh saw at the meetup in Tampa. And she said that she just added the Buzzbrot subscription to her podcast, but she said, now I need to tell people about it, which makes me feel like I'm asking for money, which I am, but I feel a little awkward doing it. And she's asking for tips. And I actually think that's perfect. Um, another thing that I tell people all the time is yeah, it feels really awkward asking people to support your podcast because especially if you only have like a small audience, you know, you're getting like five or 20 downloads every episode. It feels really weird to be like, hey, you guys, can you give me money for the show? Cause I'm working really hard on it, even though there's just like a few of you.

Alban: 43:17

My advice is not be did not ask that way.

Jordan: 43:21

You guys it feels that way. It really does feel that way. And yeah, you can have a bravado about it or just be really like courageous. But inside it does feel really awkward. It does. But I'll tell you what, like when you get that first email, that notification of like confetti, you got a subscriber, or so-and-so sent you like $10, $20. You immediately go, this is not awkward anymore because they are like buying what I'm selling. They understand that I'm bringing value. And me telling people I would really love your support actually worked. And then you start doing it every single episode and it becomes habit and it's no longer awkward because it's actually working. So I mean, it might take a while to get there, but yeah, once you once you get that first email that you got a subscriber or you got a supporter, the awkwardness goes away. I promise. But I love the idea of like integrating it. And I think that that's a really creative way to create an additional value add, even though with listener support, you don't have to create an additional value add because you're already bringing value. Your podcast is bringing value. You are entertaining people, you're accompanying them on their commutes, you are educating them, you are uplifting them, or whatever the purpose of your podcast is, you are bringing value to your listeners. And so you don't have to do an additional value add, but I do think it helps to incentivize people a little bit more when you work in thank yous, when you work in creative ways to like really highlight your supporters.

Alban: 44:50

Yeah. You're not asking from a place of need. You're not saying, I need $5. You're asking from a your it's an opportunity. Do you want to support this show? Do you like this show enough that it's worth supporting? If so, please do. We want to incorporate you into the show. But it's not like a I'm running out of money thing. It's a, I'm just putting in as much effort as I can because it's a hobby. But as I get more money from this, I can put in more and you can be a part of it.

Jordan: 45:20

So just to summarize, when you are deciding what podcast monetization strategy is going to work for your show, just think about your audience size. How engaged is your audience? You know, are they constantly sending you fan mail or are they like leaving lots of rating and reviews? If they are engaging with your podcast or engaging with you on social media, then you can kind of tell how engaged they are. How much time do you have to invest in making money from your podcast? Or what makes sense with your content? So, sponsorships, they're best for large engaged audiences. It takes so much time and you want to only work with brands that align with your podcast. Affiliate marketing, it takes a lot less downloads, but you want to have an engaged audience. And it takes some time to find brands that you can get affiliate or referral codes for, but it's way easier than sponsorships. It's a good way to test the waters. Subscriptions you can use with any size of audience. And if you wanted to offer like additional perks, that can sometimes be like a low workload to a higher workload. And then, of course, support great for everyone. Go turn it on immediately because it's awesome.

Alban: 46:35

Like the summary, Jordan. That's great.

Jordan: 46:40

All right, we got a couple fan mail messages. Damien the DM said, You can still leave a review on the PC for Apple Podcasts. You need to go to the iTunes app. I have to be completely honest, I didn't know iTunes app still existed.

Alban: 46:55

A lot of people listen to podcasts on iTunes still. So do they?

Kevin: 46:59

A lot of pots listen on iTunes. We weed out a lot of iTunes downloads.

Jordan: 47:04

So when you leave a review on iTunes, does it carry over to the Apple Podcasts app?

Alban: 47:09

I'm sure. I think from the uh infrastructure standpoint, Apple isn't differentiating those systems. A lot of like the APIs or iTunes APIs and the naming schemes, they it all seems like it's still built on the same platform.

Jordan: 47:23

Okay. Blake wrote in and said, question that came from a previous episode. When Alban has come to Kevin to say he would like to see something fresh or something change with the podcast, specifically between episodes 50 and 100, what things were adjusted or added that brought new life in the energy to the pod? I think I was somewhere in there. That's what I joined.

Kevin: 47:45

Yeah, these are these are regular conversations that all any any of us have with anybody else on the team at any given time. Yeah. Which is we say, oh, that episode felt really good. This one felt really bad. This one felt, you know, this was hard, this was easy, whatever. And so it's like a constant dialogue, and we constantly make micro adjustments. Every once in a while, like we get on to record at one o'clock and we're like, let's change everything today.

Alban: 48:09

Those are rare.

Jordan: 48:09

Yeah.

Alban: 48:10

Once in a while. I've got a few examples since I read this. I thought of at least three. One thing that used to be really painful for me is we didn't do an outline. In the early days, we'd kind of show up. It was Kevin, me, and Travis, and we'd get on and we'd kind of be like, What happened this week? And we're pulling up pod news, and we're someone's got a tweet that they saw, and we would kind of fumble our way through an outline, writing it up as a group. And that was just so painful. Took an extra hour, and I remember a specific episode, like the energy would just get so low, and then we'd hit record. So after that, we did much more investment on making the outline on the front end. Another was just when we didn't have a set schedule for when we recorded, we just kind of got it some point in the week. There's just a lot of back and forth messages where we're like, hey, can you do it here? Can you move it this way? Just setting that all up once saying we're going to record at this time unless someone specifically asks to move it. That was something I really liked. And I remember a time where Kevin, I think it was mid-episode, you go, I've had enough on Spotify. We've talked about Spotify in like a hundred times in the last 40 episodes. Too much. I don't want to talk about it again. This will not be fun for me. And we were like, yep, I think let's just take, you know, a self-imposed Spotify band for a bit. And you just have to kind of notice like this is something that is taking the energy out of it for me and be honest with your co-host so that they get the best version of you, not the version of you that's tired and worn out.

Jordan: 49:44

So actually, when thinking about what our next episode topic should be, you mentioned a few things I think would tie into a great episode about podcasting workflows. So, like outlining, scheduling, things like that. And I think that we should really dive into what our podcasting workflow is. And it would be really cool if our listeners could send in like tips or things that they adjusted in their podcasting workflow that made their podcasting process so much easier. Don't send us your entire workflow, but just send us one solid tip about what you've done that worked for you by tapping the text show link in the show notes and sending us in. All right. I'm excited about that. Until next time, thank you for listening and keep podcasting.

Alban: 50:35

All right.

Jordan: 50:43

Is everything all right?

Alban: 50:46

Today I caught my wife listening to a podcast for the very first time, the first time I've ever seen Marie or heard her listen to a podcast that was not a podcast playing on my phone. Oh my gosh. You don't listen to podcasts when you drive together? No, we'll listen to podcasts together when we drive, if it's a long distance drive. So, like when we go to North Carolina and we'll go there for Thanksgiving, we'll be in the car for six plus hours. We'll listen to some podcasts.

Kevin: 51:19

Okay. I mean, that's you, you're pushing that. So you're trying to introduce her to podcasts. You've never experienced her seeking one out and listening on her own. Yes.

Jordan: 51:27

Now I have to know what was her first like sought-out podcast.

Alban: 51:32

Um, she was telling me something that she'd learned about sleep, and I was like, oh, that sounds like a podcast um from Diary of a CEO. She's like, Yeah. And I start talking about uh Matthew Walker. I was like, Oh, I just listened to an episode of Diary of CEO with Matthew Walker, and we're talking about it, and so many of the things she'd said reminded me of that podcast, and I'm like in the middle of listening to it. It's two hours and I'm an hour in. And then I called her on the way. Um, I was driving across town yesterday, and I called her and I was like, Yeah, more of this podcast is stuff you told me. She's like, Oh, that's strange. What? And then later on, I see her and she's like, you know, there's this guy I really like. I don't know if you know who he is, Stephen Bartlett. I'm like, Stephen Bartlett. And I'm like, that's the diary of a CEO guy. That's the it's a podcast. Dude, no, no, no. They're like videos on YouTube, they're just like short little videos. Well, good for her for recognizing the difference. Like very those short little videos are part of a big video that a then is a podcast as well.

Jordan: 52:38

Yeah.

Alban: 52:39

And she's like, Oh, I've never watched the whole videos. And I'm like, You're that's the gateway drug. You're in on the three, four-minute videos. She's like, I mean, he's great. He talks about, you know, there's health and there's fitness and there's stuff about mindset and psychology. And she's like, and they just YouTube just shows me all these videos now because I click every one of them. And like, probably helps a lot that he's got a British accent. And so I'm like, You're you're gonna listen to it. And I go, let me have your phone. She goes, uh, don't put it on my phone.

Jordan: 53:08

I don't want that.

Alban: 53:09

And so I sent her a link up to the podcast episode, and I walk downstairs today to grab a cup of coffee, and I hear it, and I know the two voices, and I'm like, You're listening to a podcast, baby. That's it. Yeah, so YouTube. She was listening on a on a speaker, she's listening on her phone, speaker playing.

Jordan: 53:29

Nice.

Alban: 53:30

Can we get this girl some AirPods, please? She's got AirPods, she's got a pair of AirPods and AirPods Pros, but she's downstairs by herself. She doesn't need to have them plugged right into her brain. It's still a better experience to have them in your ear.

Jordan: 53:44

I've got like a cute little Bluetooth, old school looking radio. I've got one, and yeah, I don't do AirPods or my AirPods Pro. It's it's gotta be the uh little Bluetooth speaker.

Kevin: 53:55

Oh, for real?

Jordan: 53:56

Yeah. And I don't care if the rest of my family has to listen to it.

Kevin: 54:00

I I only like headphones unless I'm in my car alone.

Jordan: 54:03

Really?

Alban: 54:04

Yeah. I think AirPods are like one of the greatest inventions of my lifetime. Maybe.

Kevin: 54:10

I wonder if you're gonna say that in 20 years when they realize we all have weird growths in our heads because we have AirPods in all the time.

Alban: 54:16

Yeah, I'm gonna have like an AirPod-shaped tumor in my ears. For sure. Well, as long as I don't get cancer from it, I just think they're so nice. I mean, you pop AirPods in, you don't yank the cord, and you can work out, and it makes every bit of working out, doing chores, cooking so much more enjoyable. Even if you're not listening to anything.

Jordan: 54:39

Oh my daughter does that.

Kevin: 54:41

Yeah, and keep on the noise canceling. It just your world is so much more serene when there's all the noises cut out. And the new ones, as soon as you start talking, they automatically go to transparency mode. So you don't even have to take them in or yeah, I've got another story on this, Kevin.

Alban: 54:55

I went to the golf range, and I'm trying to get better at hitting and like when you play golf, you can only work on one thing at a time. And you really can't work on more than one.

Jordan: 55:06

Okay.

Alban: 55:06

And this like 90-year-old guy sits behind me and starts coaching me. He was not ever a golf coach. And I'm trying to be respectful, but I don't have any headphones in. So as long as I keep hitting, he's still giving tips and I'm still wanting to respond to every comment. And I thought, you know, the only solution I could think of is next time I might have to wear some AirPods to not get free uh golf tips.

Kevin: 55:29

I wear them to the store now in Publix because people will talk to me when I'm grocery shopping sometimes, and I don't want that. So now I always put AirPods in.

Jordan: 55:36

Well, if you didn't look so friendly and approachable, I guess that's the problem.

Kevin: 55:41

All right, you guys, enough of me, enough roasting me.