9 ways to make money from podcast (Facts and Stats included)

Chances are there you have already started running a podcast but looking for ways of monetization from it, if you have landed up here…🎉

If you have not started yet, but want to know more about it, we have a detailed 20 minutes guide on how to start a podcast to help you along.

Today anyone with a mic, computer, steady internet connection along with a streaming audio platform can start to podcast on any topic.

People are 33% more aware about a podcast than a decade ago and this presents an opportunity to work on a side hustle making a full time income eventually of it.

This is exactly what we are going to look at today exploring in detail about 9 ways to make money from your podcast.

We will cover the following aspects on the topic:

• Key insights related to making money from podcast
• How much money can you make from podcast with each way of monetization
• Creator success stories along with an estimate of income etc.

Let’s get started…

Keynote : I am not a podcaster at present, although I may intend to do so in future. 

As such I have enjoyed every bit of the process of researching for the information and stats published in this piece of content.

I would love to have your feedback on this in the end.

9 ways podcasters are making living online from podcast

Podcast is one unique side hustle, in which every podcaster can find different unique ways to make money as per its audience base.

Before we dive in to the ways of monetization, here’s few key insights related to podcast:

• How much money one can earn from a podcast largely relies on audience base, episodes published and activity period of the podcast.

• Success in podcasts is largely a numbers game where podcasters over 200 episodes have 2x chances of getting success than those who have 100 episodes.

• 2 years is kind of a minimum time period to implement successful ways of monetization.

• Getting a higher number of listeners per episode is largely correlated to the success of a podcast.

• Around 2/3rd of successful podcasters choose to upload 1 podcast a week.

• Nearly more than 50% of high income podcasters upload content which averages around 80 minutes in length.

• About 90% of the high income group of podcasters put time to find data in relation to the audience group and their interests.

• Use of upto 4 different marketing channels helps podcasters make more money than lower income podcast earners.

• Sponsorships and host read advertisements work well for over 60% higher income podcasters while the second most successful way of making money are direct contributions or funding.

• Podcast earners making over $50,000 per year have their primary income source from sponsorship and are also 160% more likely to sell their own services.

• Podcast revenue is expected to touch $4230 million (approximately) by the end of 2024 (growth of around 2 times).

Advertisements and being a sponsor of a brand

Have you ever been interrupted in between with brand features and benefits by the host while listening to the podcast ? 

Probably you might have encountered this at the beginning, in the mid or at the end of an episode. 

These are nothing but targeted ads sponsoring a brand put up on a podcast for the listeners tuned to it.

Advertisements still remain to be one of the most common ways of making money from podcasts.

What’s even more surprising is that advertisers are willing to spend around 39% more upto $25 to run a 60 secs ad in order to reach upto 1000 listeners tuned in. 

But, why is it so?

The rising popularity of podcasts over the years and the buyer’s intent of purchase are 2 key primary factors.

Here are some mind boggling stats related to podcasts:

• Running an ad on a podcast is likely to have a conversion rate of 54 out of 100 listeners who would prefer to buy a product advertised to them.

• Podcasts are expected to reach an expected 505 million users by the end of 2024 at a forecasted growth rate of 19% over 2 years. 

Let’s discover more details about running advertisements on podcasts.

How does advertisement exactly work on a podcast

Advertisers know a fact very well, i.e. sales for a product is directly related to how well buyers retain information about their products.

This is where podcasts are one of the best places to put an ad for a product.

Why is it so?

As per a recent study by Nielsen, 2 key stats are revealed:

• around 71% of people will be able to recall the ads put on podcast and 
• More than 50% of the listeners tend to pay more attention to the ads while listening to a host.

There are 2 ways a podcaster can take help of podcast advertising to earn revenue:

• The podcaster needs to read a message drafted beforehand about the brand.
• Insert a recorded audio (message) while the show is going on.

Either way the brands pay money to the podcaster to reach the listeners tuned into the podcast.

This is how the podcaster makes money from podcast ads in a nutshell.

Key Stat: Did you know podcast advertising revenue has grown immensely to reach upto 72% surpassing twice as much as the total internet advertising market.

What does a typical podcast ad contain

Most of the podcast ads contain one or more of the following elements:

• Revealing information about a product, like Squarespace being a SAAS provider used for website building and hosting.
• What is the personal experience of using the product as a host?
• Any specific messages relayed to take action right away.
• Giving away discount coupon codes or promotional offers in the podcast etc.

Listeners are less likely to skip the ads broadcasted on the podcast (less than 35%), which is why more advertisers are willing to promote their products on a podcast platform.

What are the different types of ads served?

A podcaster can expect to serve ads in the following 4 categories:

• Announcers read ads or ads which are pre produced.
• Ads which are read by hosts.
• Supplier ads which are produced by clients or brands over time.
• Other types of ads which are produced by different publishers.

Announcer read ads

As the name suggests these are those ads which are produced beforehand by an announcer.

Announcer read ads have grown in significance and now occupy around 40% of ads served across all channels in 2021.

Host read ads

Host read ads again are the ads that are dynamically curated by a host of the podcast for their audience.

These can vary on day to day basis, niche to niche basis, or even as per different times as well.

Host read ads have seen a decline by around 11% over the past 2 years to reach around 55% of entire ads served in 2021.

Supplier ads

Supplier ads are ads designed and created based on a specific supplier that’s a part of the podcast show.

These are produced in association with a client, or an agency or maybe a brand.

Supplier ads has seen an increase and subsequent decrease by 6% over the year ending 2021 to comprise of a tiny 3% total share of ads served across podcasts.

Other Publisher Produced Ads

These are those ads which are served by other types of publishers who want to be part of the podcast.

Typically these would be podcasters advertising about themselves on a different podcast to grow and retain their audience.

This had seen a slight increase to about 2% of the total share of ads served in 2021.

Let’s look at what are the formats of ads that one can look to serve on their podcast.

What are the formats of putting podcast ads?

Here are broadly 2 types of podcast ads that you will find around on podcasts:

Baked in ads

Baked in ads are like ads baked onto the podcast episodes…😁.

These are pre written messages permanently scripted in the podcast and recorded as such. There is no possibility of removing those again or making any changes later on.

Key Stat: An IAB study published in 2021, revealed that baked-in ads dropped by nearly 3.25 times over a period of 2 years, to 16%.

Dynamic ad insertions

You guessed it right..😉.

These are kind of opposite of baked in ads where the hosts enjoy the flexibility of inserting the ads dynamically onto any part of the podcast episode.

The messages can be recorded with the help of a brand or any third party who can record the audio for you.

An added flexibility of dynamic ad insertion is that one can replace the said ad with another ad with time (if need arises for).

All this can be done without any editing to the original podcast episode while it still stays the same.

Key Stat: Dynamic ad insertions has seen a growth of over 2 times over a couple of years reaching 84% of total ad revenue served, reports 2021 data.

Benefits of having a dynamic ads in podcast

In such a scenario, having dynamic ads onto your ads can have multiple benefits such as:

• You can change the ads as per your choice as per the different content you produce.
• Listeners coming from different parts of the countries need to serve different ads, which is done by dynamic ads.
• Timing is a key to promote a brand, thus a specific ad which was relevant yesterday may not be relevant today. Dynamic ads take care of that.

In order to use the dynamic ads, one must have the hosting site configured correctly to insert dynamic ads.

Some of the popular options for dynamic ad insertions includes:

• Buzzsprout
• Podbeans
• Anchor

Let’s look at what should be the ideal ad duration for your podcast.

What is the ideal duration of ads placed onto your podcast

As per stats released for the year 2021, nearly 51% of ads on all the podcasts are of the duration of 16 – 30 seconds.

Here’s an interesting trend observed for what should be the ideal duration of ads on a podcast:

Duration (in secs)	Proportion of ads shown (in %)	Trend Observed
Less than 15 secs	16%	7% Growth in past 2 years
16 – 30 secs	55%	17% Growth in past 2 years
31 – 60 secs	27%	17% Decline in past 2 years
61 – 90 secs	2%	13% Decline in past 1 year
More than 90 secs	1%	No change observed

Note: All the above stats are obtained from IAB study published in 2022 for the year 2021 

The above stat reveals that around 16 – 30 seconds duration is the most preferred podcast ad for a publisher which has seen a tremendous growth over time.

What is the ideal campaign to run in a podcast ad

Again as per stats released for the year 2021, nearly 52% are inclined to use Direct Ads Response based ads on their podcast platform.

Here’s more about the trend observed for the type of campaigns being run on a podcast platform:

Campaign Type	Proportion of ads shown (%)	Trend Observed
Direct Response	52%	Drop in 2% over 2 years
Brand Awareness	46%	Growth in 4% over 2 years
Branded Content	3%	No Change
Product Placement	Nil	Not Applicable

Note: All the above stats are obtained from IAB study published in 2022 for the year 2021.

The above stat reveals that brand awareness is showing signs of forecasted growth over the years.

Although direct response based campaigns occupy the highest proportion of ads shown, brand awareness is picking up pace quite soon as regards to ideal campaigns for podcast ads.

How much can money can you make from ads

A recent statistic from advertisecast gives us the following data when it comes to finding CPM rates for ads:

• A CPM rate of $25 for running 60 secs ads.
• A CPM rate of $18 for running 30 secs ads.

Here CPM would mean how much cost would the advertiser incur to reach upto 1000 listeners on a podcast.

Do you even need to care about CPM rates in general?

Why is CPM relevant for publishers

CPM rates are relevant for a publisher for 2 reasons primarily:

• Indication of how profitable the niche would be.
• Revenue is broadly related to the CPM rate served for an ad on a podcast.

Okay this means CPM rates would stay the same for every content creator (no matter the audience size).

This is not correct!!

CPM rates set by advertisers decrease with every increase in the listeners count base of a podcast channel.

For example, the CPM rate is $26 for a podcast channel that has less than 10k listener base.

While at the same time CPM rate is $21 for a listener base exceeding 100k.

Interesting Stats related to CPM

Here are some fascinating stats related to trends observed for CPM:

Audience Base	Trend Observed
Upto 10000 listener base	7.07% growth over 2 years period
More than 10000 and less than 100000	Has a 5.24% growth in the past 4 months
More than 100000 listener base	9.75% over the past 2 years

The average CPM rate for a 60 seconds ad on podcast stands at around $23.6 in 2022.

This has increased by around 8.2% over the past 2 years.

What are these stats relevant for publishers?

This indicates that the advertisers are willing to spend more money over time to retain the same audience over a period of time.

This is a good news for the podcasters which means higher inflow of revenue with time …🤑

Okay here comes the next question.

Do all podcasts who have the same audience base make the same amount of money?

Not really and here’s why.

What determines the podcast rates of advertisement

Even though CPM rates stay the same for a fixed listener base, revenue earned is not completely dependent on only the CPM rates.

Here’s how podcast ad rates are mostly determined for podcasters:

• Consistent downloads received for the episode published.
• Streaming times an episode receives in the first 30 days of releasing an episode.
• Placement of the ads in an episode also determines the ad rates.

An ad that is shown in the beginning (pre-roll) or at the end of an episode (post-roll) has a lower rate as compared to the mid roll placement of the ad.

Pre roll or post roll ads served typically have upto 30 seconds duration in the podcast episode.

While mid roll ads served can go upto 60 seconds placed in the middle of the podcast episode.

Mid-roll ad rates are higher due to the fact that listeners pay a higher attention and thus engagement rate at the middle of a podcast as compared to other times.

Interesting Stats: Mid roll ads have the largest share in terms of ads placement (around 64%) when it comes to the placement of ads.

But there has been a decline in the preference in the mid-roll ads by around 10% for the past 2 years.

At the same time, pre roll ads served has seen an increment for upto 32% who prefer to serve the ads at the beginning of their content served on podcast (growth of 9% over 2 years).

Okay so now you have a fair enough idea on expected rates for ads served at different intervals of time.

But how do you start finding the sponsors for the show?

How do you find sponsors to advertise on your podcast?

Finding the sponsors on your podcast can work in different ways.

Some of the common approaches to finding sponsors for your show are as follows:

• Get in touch with local businesses running around your area who resonate with your audience (if any).

• If you have a niche topic which you are podcasting upon, find the brands that are willing to work with you.

• Start networking with other podcasters and foster relationships with the community around you to get in touch with the right people.

• Leverage your work onto your social media account to reach a wider audience and possibly get hold of sponsors willing to work with you etc.

How do you pitch to your sponsors for your podcast

As a podcaster you can pitch to different sponsors by keeping your approach simple and straight to the point.

Here are some of the key points to take care of:

• Explain what your podcast is all about in a few words (quick intro)

• Include information about who the target audience is for your podcast

• Pour in stats related to the average downloads and listener base in the audience.

• Include how you can bring value by being associated with the brand. 

• Give details of your association with other brands (if any).

In order to associate with high profile brands, one needs to accumulate a good number of downloads and build a healthy loyal audience around it.

But is there any other way to connect to brands besides doing it yourself?

Yes, podcast ad networks are helpful in that context.

What are podcast ad networks

Podcast ad networks are responsible for helping out podcasters in several ways such as:

• Building association with bigger brands.
• Helping to negotiate upon the rates expected from the podcast.
• Help in building the script for pitching to the brands.

Some of the popular podcast ad networks to associate with bigger brands include:

• Midroll
• Authentic
• AdvertiseCast
• PodBeans
• PodCorn

How do you grow your audience using podcast ads

One can grow their audience on their podcast channel by leveraging podcast ads as follows:

• Take help of premium podcast platforms such as Spotify to grow and leverage your podcast by advertising your podcast onto the non-premium users at a price.

• Look for swapping ads with other podcast channels who share similar content and you both could gain value mutually working with each other. 

Note: Audry is a website which can help to facilitate ad swapping for mutual growth 

Let’s look at the distribution of ad revenue as per different genres of podcast content.

Which niche has the highest podcast ad revenue

Top 3 well paid niches that get the maximum podcast ad revenue are News, Comedy, Society and Culture.

Here’ a simple breakdown of the podcast ad revenues as per different niches:

Niche of Podcast Content	Proportion of ads shown (%)	Trend Observed
News	19%	3% decline in 1 year
Comedy	13%	3% decline in 1 year
Society and Culture	11%	2% growth in 1 year
Sports	12%	6% growth in 1 year
True Crime	10%	3% growth in 1 year
Business	7%	2% decline in 1 year
Arts	5%	1% growth in 1 year
Other	5%	4% growth in 1 year
TV & Film	4%	1% growth in 1 year
Health & Fitness	3%	–
History	3%	–
Technology	2%	–
Music	1%	–

Note: All the above stats are obtained from IAB study published in 2022 for the year 2021.

It is interesting to note that the News niche is occupying around 19% of podcast ads served across platforms.

Music as a niche is the least performing among all on a podcast.

Besides above, the sports category has seen a 2x growth 🚀 over the past year due to Covid affecting games and interest picking up again. 

How often should you do podcast to earn maximum revenue

Here are top 2 types of podcasts (in terms of frequency) who are getting the maximum share in the revenue:

• On a weekly or bi-weekly basis (70%).
• Daily basis (23%).

Let’s have a glimpse at the frequency with which ads are shown in a podcast:

Type of ads	Frequency of ads being shown (in %)
Daily basis	23%
Weekly or bi-weekly basis	70%
Monthly basis	1%
Seasonal basis	3%
Limited Run Series (once in a while)	3%

Note: All the above stats are obtained from IAB study published in 2022 for the year 2021.

The above stat reveals that people who upload podcasts once a week or once in every 2 weeks earn a maximum share of podcast ad revenues (70%).

But another interesting thing to note here is that podcasts which operate on a daily basis have almost a quarter of share to total podcast ad revenue.

Daily podcasts have a higher CPM rate and higher episode count as they have a lower share in total podcasts as compared to weekly or bi-weekly podcast types.

Okay, is there anything left we need to cover upon…🤔.

Ohh, yes we almost forgot!!! What are the steps involved to create an ad for a podcast?

How to create an ad for a podcast?

Here’s a few key things to remember when you are looking to create an ad for a podcast:

• While creating an ad to bring in customers on board, focus on starting out with something that catches the reader’s attention asap.

• Give a suitable introduction about yourself and what you bring to the table for them (keep it brief and onto the point).

• Let the listeners know about the podcast preferably in 50 – 60 words in length. No one wants to read long form content just to get an idea of what it is.

• Do make sure to include when you are uploading podcasts (daily, weekly, monthly etc) and where can they find you (Spotify, Anchor, Castbox etc).

Okay we have covered quite extensively about everything we need to know about using podcast ads.

A key factor which determines the earnings from ads would be the listener base for your podcast.

Higher the listener base you have, such as beyond 5k or 10k a month will give you leverage to bargain for rates at a better term.

Let’s move onto the next monetization method.

Selling Courses on a podcast

Courses are the hot cake products you can prefer to sell anywhere be it a YouTube channel or even a blog.

Courses that are created as a digital product tend to have more saleability and reach.

People who are listening to you on the podcast would definitely be interested to learn what you have to teach them.

An interesting stat related to online courses reveals following 2 aspects:

• Growth of almost 4.4 times for the number of registered learners over the past 5 years on Coursera platform.

• Growth of nearly 6.6 times for the total number of enrollments over the past 5 years on Coursera.

These stats reveal how fast we are growing in the digital era why courses are one of the best products to sell worldwide.

But can you sell courses for any niche on podcasts?

Which podcast niches are suitable to sell courses

Not all types of niches would be suited to sell a course such as News, Music, Comedy etc.

Some of the niches which are more suited to sell courses on podcast includes:

• Teaching stuff about building personal brands.
• How to build an online business such as YouTube, dropshipping etc.
• Fitness related podcasts.
• Podcast on offering skills to get a HR certification, career development etc.

Here’s a few examples of podcasts selling courses which make a ton of money online are:

Podcast Channel	Niche of podcast	Earnings of podcast
Ecom Crew Podcast	Marketing and Business	$420k per year
Workology	Training and Development	$12.24 million per year

Note: All the above stats are obtained from Starter Story where income is not revealed from the original source.

These examples reflect what is the potential of selling courses on podcasts.

Next question that arises is how much money can you earn from a course?

How much money can you expect from selling courses on podcast

Graham Cochran talks about how he sells courses online teaching people to find passion and make money online.

What’s amazing is the fact that Graham makes around $1 million which started off at $7000 online around 8 years back.

While selling courses don’t come more often from podcasts but its a combination of blogs and YouTube he has built over time.

But how do you think are people getting to know more about him? 

Podcasts do play a major role to bring in the traffic he is looking for.

This is kind of a high estimation of what you can earn from selling courses on podcasts.

But it’s kind of a serious grind to build your business and build your own brand over a period of time which demands some serious patience and commitment.

Making money from selling services on podcast

How often have you come across a need for any services in life?

A best fit niche that comes right off the bat is a niche related to finance in life.

Whenever there is anything related to money and wealth we prefer to take help of services offered by an expert.

Afterall, we don’t want to take any risks associated with doing things on our own.

Another popular niche to look upto includes niche related to knowing about law and being familiar with legal matters.

Anyone who is podcasting on legal matters can find clients who would be willing to take in services related to what the expert has to offer.

Expertise on the subject and building a following online are 2 key factors to determine how successful you would be.

Some more popular niches to offer services on a podcast includes:

• Self improvement niches.
• Advice for dating and relationships.
• Niches related to taking care of pets and associated topics and more.

Any person who is giving fitness tips and motivation on podcast can give services as  

Offering consulting or coaching related services

Coaching and consulting tend to fall in the same line as providing services for money.

But a key difference is you essentially guide the people in the right direction without being actively involved in teaching them all.

As a coach or a consultant you are expected to give true and proper guidance on how to do stuff in life.

Some of the popular niches where coaches or consultants tend to make the most money includes:

• Business related advice.
• Diets and fitness related tips.
• Social Media consultant.
• Hiring a consultant to manage resources for work and more.

Raising money from Crowdfunding, donations or patron services

Raising money from crowdfunding, donations or patron services remains to be one of the most widely used methods of making money from podcasts.

But, why is it so?

Podcasters establish a degree of trust and relationship with the listeners who are tuned to listening to them.

Listeners believe in what the podcaster is doing for them and thus don’t hesitate to show their love for them.

Generally those niches which don’t have enough flexibility to make money from their podcast tend to raise money to sustain themselves.

Few niches which raise money would include those generally talking about sensitive topics:

• Anyone talking about political events,

• Hate crimes, 
• Discrimination, 
• Sexual harrasment etc.

So they contribute in whatever way possible for the value that the podcast provides to them.

They preferably can contribute for money in 3 ways such as:

• Donations
• Raising money from crowdfunding
• Patron Services.

Let’s get to know more about it.

Raising Donations

Stophateuk.org is an organiztion running its own podcast that raises donations to challenge any form of hatecrime and discrimination.

One such podcast known by HiddenHate is raising money in the form of donations from people.

Here are few donations raised for the cause with the help of podcast discussed above:

Doner	Donations Raised
University of Southampton’s Sports Team	853 Euros
Participation in Fun Run	1320 Euros
Burnley Fans	1667 Euros
Running 10 kms each day	775 Euros

Besides above, here are some more interesting donations raised with the help of podcasts that I found on Twitter:

• The All Rounder Podcast generated a generous donation amount of 1458 Euros.
• Hospital Ball podcast raised from donations, live event and sponsorships upto an amount of 1200 Euros.
• Feeding America met its target of $3145 which helped make 31,450 means raising donations from the podcast.
• 255 Euros raised from donations after a live show from Blue Moon Podcast.
• Broken Heart Podcast helped raise donations to the tune of $5500 raised.

Many podcasts have the donate button enabled on their site to enable people to donate money.

Generally the donations are accepted in the form of PayPal, Cash App or Patreon.

Raising the money from crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is typically when money is raised from a crowd of people in smaller amounts from the help of the internet.

This has been an amazing source of gathering money online to fund a project.

Some of the interesting stats of 2021 related to crowdfunding are as follows:

• Money raised from crowdfunding has grown over 33% in the past 1 year and North America alone accounts for $17.2 billion.

• An average amount of money raised from crowdfunding campaigns total up to $824.

• The crowdfunding market is expected to grow up to $300 billion in 2030.

• The campaigns operated in crowdfunding which have videos enabled earn 5% more than those which don’t have videos.

• 11 days is expected to prepare for a crowdfunding campaign for a successful launch.

Crowdfunding is possible from several types of campaign promotions.

Some of the prominent players to crowdsource include Kickstarter, Patreon, Indiegogo etc.  

We have a detailed guide on how to make money from crowdfunding in 2022. 

Make sure to check it out for more details! 

For now let’s talk about Patreon and how it is effective for raising money for podcasters.

Making money from the patron supporters

Patron supporters are like the angels for any content creators. 

They help with providing financial assistance in the form of rewards, money, gifts, endorsements etc.

Patreon is a membership platform extending support to content creators from patrons.

They are synonymous and interchangeably used with patrons quite often.

This is even more evident from the fact that around 6 Million content creators take help from Patreon to raise support from Patrons.

Podcast creators are currently placed at 2nd position (<8%) in terms of the category of content creators using Patreon for raising money from patrons.

Currently, Graphtreon states that an estimated 16225 podcast creators have been paid over $ 3.7 million from Patreon support.

That roughly accumulates to $228 per podcast creator (which is wildly inaccurate)…😑.

But, how do podcast creators raise money from Patreon supporters?

How do podcast creators raise money from patreon supporters

Patreon supporters pledge amounts for the favorite podcasters based on their content and what they provide for.

Here’s an interesting breakdown of what 

How much money can you raise from patron support as a podcast creator

Let’s see who are the Top 5 podcasters (in terms of patrons) as of August 2022 of Patreon:

Podcast Channel	No of Patrons	Patreon Earnings
True Crime Obsessed	46342	$234k per month (avg)
The Tim Dillon Show	40517	$213k per month
Maintenance Phase	39508	$200k per month (avg)
Chapo Trap House	35833	$158k per month
Matt and Shane’s Secret Podcast	33329	$169k per month (avg)

Source: August 2022 Top Podcast Patreon creators data

Here’s data of the Top 3 podcasters who had highest growth (in terms of patrons) in last 1 month:

Podcast Channel	Growth (in %)	Patreon Earnings
Issac Butterfield	106% (1294 Patrons)	$2335 per month
Cuentale Al Podcast	47% (1202 Patrons)	$6000 per month
Ian Senechal	65% (592 Patrons)	$2274 per month

Source: August 2022 Top Growing Podcast Patreons data

Taking a cue from above, we have following 2 key figures related to earnings from Patreons (from limited samples):

• For the Top 5 Podcasters raising money from patron supporters through Patreon, the average payout per Patreon is around $4.4 – $5.26.

• For the Top 3 Podcasters who had the highest growth in terms of Patrons, the average payout per Patreon is around $1.8 – $5.

This goes to show that with a higher number of Patron supporters you can make a higher amount of earnings and thus increase your payout rate per Patron supporter.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is something which is not unfamiliar to many of us.

Here’s what affiliate marketing is all about, in case you have never heard about affiliate marketing before.

Have you ever loved using a specific product or service of someone so much so that you would recommend it to others?

Well, what you need to know is now you can also make money if anyone buys the same product based on your recommendation.

The money that you would earn is in the form of a commission paid to you by the company for your recommendation and subsequent sale of the product / service.

This is broadly the process of affiliate marketing in a nutshell !!!

It sounds really simple, isn’t it? Not really…😐

What is the success rate of people doing affiliate marketing

I am no expert in Affiliate Marketing, but the stats say that only up to 5% of people find success in affiliate marketing in the long run.

But why is it so?

Here’s broadly 3 reasons as to why people are failing in affiliate marketing.

Reasons of failure in affiliate marketing	Percentage of People (%)
Impatience	25%
Wrong Approach	54%
Not Being Persistent	21%

Note: I read through 24 comments of people citing their reasons for failure in Affiliate Marketing in a YouTube video which was based on Reasons for failure in affiliate marketing.

The above stats shows that more than 50% of people have a wrong approach towards affiliate marketing altogether.

How did I come across the reasons for failure in affiliate marketing 

Here’s how I classified the reasons of failure of people in affiliate marketing (from the comments in YouTube video):

Impatience

Following are few reasons why people fail in affiliate marketing due to impatience:

• Jumping from 1 program to another without waiting for results.
• Falling prey to the “Shiny Object Syndrome”.
• Looking for answers to questions such as “How long do I need to wait to find success in affiliate marketing” etc.

Wrong Approach

Following are some reasons why people fail in affiliate marketing due to wrong approach (as per comments stated in YouTube video):

• Trying to promote products from multiple niches and not being focused on 1 niche.
• Spamming links onto the comments section and other areas on the internet etc.

Not Being Persistent

A common reason stated by many people for failure in affiliate marketing is not willing to do things consistently for the long term.

This shows not being persistent enough to make it work.

Okay, enough upon failures in affiliate marketing, but what makes affiliate marketing suitable for a podcast.

Why is podcast an emerging source for affiliate marketing

Podcast ads help to drive sales resulting in earning affiliate commission.

Podcasts bring in significant engagement among people which helps to boost affiliate sales.

Around 17% of people listening to podcasts consume 16 or more podcasts in a week.

This is also related to the fact that people pay to listen to the audio streaming services and prefer to listen to them.

Nearly 22% of people found it more appealing to listen about a brand on a podcast than on TV.

Here are some more interesting stats related to affiliate marketing from podcast:

• Around 45% of the podcast listeners have an earning of more than $75,000 per year which shows the buying potential of the people.

• Around 38% of people would prefer to buy products mentioned in the podcast (2017 data).

• 55.6% of people bought a product as they got to know about it from an ad on a podcast (2020 data).

How much money people can make from affiliate marketing from podcast

Number of downloads per episode and commission rate of a product are 2 primary factors responsible for affiliate commissions from a podcast.

Let’s assume there is a commission rate of 4 – 5% for a product you are promoting.

Here’s a quick glance at how much you can earn from a podcast (depending upon the downloads)

Number of Downloads  (per episode)	Average Earnings of podcast (average)
0 – 100	$100 per episode
100 – 1000	$400 per episode
1000 – 10000	$700 per episode
10000 +	$1000 per episode

Note: The above figures are estimated figures which may actually vary as per different users.

Affiliate commission is also broadly dependent upon the niche selected and also products targeted for.

Selling premium content

Premium content is anything that offers premium value to users for a paid price.

2.4% of listeners pay for subscriptions while listening to a podcast.

Premium subscriptions offer more to the users which includes:

• Giving extra form of content in the form of interviews to others.
• Showing behind the scenes content in their podcast.
• Answering the questions from the host of the show which gives more insights to the listeners about the podcaster.
• Introducing live sessions with special guests on the show that is exclusive.
• Putting ad free content for the premium users and more.

How much money can you earn from selling premium content on your podcast

Here’s 3 podcast channels that make money by selling premium content on their website:

Podcast Channel	Premium Content Offered
Comedy Bang Bang	Collection of episodes purchased at their store
Now Playing	Offers various rewards for pledge from $1 – $100 of pledge
American System TV	Charges monthly premium plan of $7.99 – $20 to access content

Here’s what Now Playing podcast channel offers as a premium content for their podcast:

Pledge Amount (per month)	Premium Content Offered	People pledged (in %)
$1	Thank You Note, Patron Only Comments Access, Patron Newsletter	4.3%
$5	A Thank You Note on the site,$1 pledge rewards	0.5%
$10	Patron only bonus content,50 exclusive movie review podcasts,New bonus podcast each month,$5 pledge rewards,Get Silver level rewards on the show	65.2%
$25	Early access to several episodes of a year,Unedited and raw movie reviews,$10 pledge rewards,Get Silver or Gold level rewards on the show	20.4%
$50	All rewards upto $10 pledge,Silver, Gold and Platinum level rewards on the show	6.3%
$75	Listening LIVE to new playing podcast,Shout-outs from hosts of shows,Private YouTube stream of audio stream of live shows,Dates provided at least 1 week before recording,All rewards upto $50	0.3%
$100	30 minutes group skype call or Google Hangouts,1 week advance time and date of call,All rewards upto $75	3.0%

The podcast channel has also accumulated upto $12,195 from 596 patreon supporters which is roughly $20.46 per patreon.

Doing Live Events 

Some podcasters do live events when given an opportunity to make money from it.

4 popular podcasts which have seen success doing live events are:

• The Last Podcast On The Left (conducting live shows more often)
• My Dad Wrote A Porno (2 sell-out world tours)
• The Guilty Feminist
• This American Life

Which niche is suited to do live events in podcast

Any podcast which has a sufficiently engaged audience base (especially youth) who are interested to listen to you more face to face would be highly suited to host a live show.

Some of the popular podcast niches suited for live events would be Comedy, True Crime, Personal Stories etc.

How much can you earn from podcasts doing live events

Here is how much money “The Last Podcast on the Left” and “The Guilty Feminist” podcasts will make for their upcoming live events in the future (as on the date of writing)

No of Tickets Sold	Price per Ticket	Occupancy of show (average  in %)
2679 tickets	$35 – $65 per ticket	84%
1193 tickets	$20 – $35 per ticket	66%
5737 tickets	$39 – $155 per ticket	97%

Note: All the above shown are for future live events as reflected on the website as on the day of writing this blog post.

Roughly speaking “The Last Podcast on the Left” podcast can make around $674k from live shows averaging around $78 per ticket sold for 3 live shows scheduled.

Let’s have a look at the numbers for “The Guilty Feminist”…

No of Tickets Sold	Price per Ticket	Occupancy of show (average in %)
408	27.96	41%
2600	36.09	92%

Note: All the above shown are for future live events as reflected on the website as on the day of writing this blog post.

Roughly speaking the“The Guilty Feminist” podcast would make around $105k from 2 live shows averaging around $35 per ticket sold for the live shows.

This goes to show that one can expect to make around $35 – $78 per ticket from live shows through podcasts based on actual numbers from 5 future live shows.

One must consider the fact that it takes a long time to build a reputation and fan following to be able to reach that figure.

The podcast has aired over 750+ episodes till date to reach this level of success as of today.

But this is just a possibility at what you can accomplish from starting a podcast today. 

Selling Merch Online

Many podcast content creators also have a separate merch store opened and make money selling different merch products to their fan base.

Here are some of the popular merchandise sold online:

• T-shirts
• Jackets
• Sweatshirts
• Mugs
• Home Décor items and more.

Which niche is suited for selling merch and making money from podcast

Any niche that has high popularity and a loyal fan base would be more suited to make money from podcasts.

Some of the popular ones would definitely be comedy, personal stories, entrepreneurial based podcasts etc.

How much money can you make from selling merchandise online from podcast

Looking at the same podcast i.e. “The Last Podcast On the Left”, I found a merch store active on their platform.

Here are some of the priced for the merchandise being sold on their website:

Shirts	$30 – $55
Shorts	$35
Jacket	$70
Mugs	$15
Bi-Cycles	$666

Now Ubersuggest says that the website receives nearly around 70k traffic per month.

If we take roughly a 1% conversion (lowest estimate), then this podcast channel would be making around $21k per month from selling merchandise only.

This is really a conservative estimate and hypothetical number so to say.

But the number would definitely be at least 15x or 20x from the estimated traffic and conversion rate.

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Conclusion

So we have covered up on all the ways podcasters can make money from their podcast in 2022.

Overall patron funding, affiliate marketing along with sponsorships are the top most ways a podcast channel can look forward to making money in the long run.

But building a long term success would need patience and putting quality content for the audience.

Now I want to know what you think is the best way to monetize a podcast?

Also, I would love to hear your thoughts on any facts or stats that you found helpful or maybe anything we missed out including in the content..

Let me know in the comments section below.

FAQs on how to make money with podcast