Monetizing Your Podcast

The Podcast Life is a newsletter by Deanna Chapman that helps you create a great podcast.

Last week, I did a quick breakdown of 4 ways you can monetize your podcast. You can watch the video below or listen to it here.

The only way I’ve ever really tried to monetize any of my personal podcasts was through Patreon. Since my shows didn’t run ads, I tried to offer bonus content, similar to what I do with this newsletter. As it turns out, that was… a lot of work.

I ended up having a hard time keeping up with it and having ideas that felt like they were good enough to justify people paying me for them. I wasn’t consistent enough with it either, so in the end it was a failed experiment.

I’ll be honest, I got so caught up in seeing other podcasts make money, that it felt like I was failing if I couldn’t find a way for mine to generate some money. The truth is, Welcome to Geekdom and Chat Sematary were never shows that would be easy to monetize. They weren’t bringing in thousands of downloads per episode and they were entertainment based.

The two main ways I’ve seen entertainment based shows bring in money are ads and Patreon, both of which require large audiences to be successful in those monetization options. Let’s face it, most entertainment podcasts won’t be like Blank Check, which has over 17,000 paid subscribers.

I don’t say this to discourage anyone, rather to set expectations. Making money from a podcast is hard, especially as indie creators who don’t have the backing of companies such as iHeart or NPR behind them. Sometimes you have to get creative with how your show makes money.

I hope the four options I outlined in the video are helpful for you to figure out what may be best for the type of podcast you have. Let me know if you’d like me to go more in-depth on any of them or if there are some options I missed by replying to this.

If you enjoyed this newsletter and really want to level up your podcast, I interview the smartest people in the business. I’m always looking for the best ways to help you grow your podcast. So be sure to subscribe and share this with a friend! And if there’s something you’d like to see covered, reply to this email.