Prologue
No Podcast is "Too Small" To Make Money with Advertising
Making money via podcast advertising is a common "money plan" for podcasters, yet few do it successfully.
In this issue of Big Podcast Insider, I share info about how to pick a podcast topic that will attract listeners, how to build an audience via word-of-mouth advertising, and the best way to "pitch" sponsors.
How do you find sponsors? You don't. When you set things up properly, sponsors find you.
But how many listeners does your podcast need before this happens?
Not as many as you think – as long as you have the right listeners and people are talking about you.
The very first podcast sponsorship deal I did was for $5000. This was in 2005 and before the show went live.
How did it happen? I already had an audience from other things I'd done and the sponsor was betting that they'd follow me from those things to my podcast.
They did.
This wasn't a fluke though. When you have the right topic and deliver your message in the right way, people will find you .... quickly.
This issue has more details on how to make it happen.
NOTE: I'm 99% sure you won't need to change your topic, but you may want to tweak it for better (or at least faster) results. If you have any questions about this, feel free to reach out to me via Twitter.
Podcaster Opportunities
10 Niches That Make Money in 2022
Being successful at podcasting requires a lot of moving parts, but the foundation of your podcast basically comes down to two things:
- You
- Your Topic
At that point, "marketing" comes in. And I've got info on that below, but let's start here, with the topic of your podcast, because this will give you a massive advantage in building a big podcast audience.
This is a list of 10 blog podcast topics (and multiples niches within those topics) that make money. Beyond that, topics that attract listeners.
BONUS: If you see something you like, reach out to existing blogs to partner with them on creating a branded podcast or other type of cross-promotion. This will give you access to an instant audience and grow what you do even faster.
Podcast Marketing
How to Bring Big Word-of-Mouth Content to Your Marketing
Let your customers take the content stage and amplify the power of their word-of-mouth marketing.
Where to start:
- Feature relevant user-generated content
- Engage in real-time conversations
- Build stories around listener reviews (or just listeners)
- Create and share audio/video testimonials/comments/questions
These things are easy using tools like Voiceform or PodInbox, but can all be done without any additional hardware or software. In other words, you already have what you need to kickstart this thing, so what are you waiting for?
How to Promote Your Podcast: 21 NEW Strategies
If you want to innovate with your podcast marketing, you need to look outside podcasting.
Content is content, podcasting is simply a method of distribution. And this list of 21 promotion strategies for bloggers will give you some great ideas of how you can get more attention (and listeners) for your podcast.
Podcast Hosting Skills
How to Improve Articulation & Diction - Articulation Exercises for Actors
Articulation is one of the core elements of voice work, and being able to communicate clearly is paramount for podcast hosts.
This fun video gives you some simple exercises you can do to improve your "radio voice" and become somebody people want to listen to.
My suggestion ... start up a sausage factory podcast where you implement these exercises in addition to other practice work to improve your hosting. It doesn't take long, just 10-15 minutes a day, but the results you'll get from this practice will be massive and do a lot to help your podcast stand out from the crowd.
Podcasting Tools
Podcast Stats = More Ad Sales
This free tool has some good stats to help you score an advertising deal. For example, the "word cloud" that shows advertisers what you're talking about on episodes.
Jeff Sanders from 5AM Miracle sent this to me and, using Jeff as an example, here's another way you can use it.
Jeff has been doing his podcast since 2013 and he's never missed a weekly episode. Every Monday, regardless of what's happening in his life, he publishes something.
That's impressive to advertisers and sending them a chart like this one, where they can see what this consistency looks like, can help make the difference between you getting the deal or not.
RELATED: How is Jeff consistent like this? One reason is that he records wherever he is. Here's a photo of his temporary "closet studio" from when he was traveling and away from where he normally records.
The Wrap Up
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My goal is to better empower podcasters to be more successful spreading their messages and make more money with their podcasts.
I'd love it if you'll help me spread the word about this newsletter by sending your podcasting friends to bigpodcast.com/newsletter.