How to Make Money Podcasting

For many people, podcast is just for fun. But more and more people are looking for ways to make money podcasting. This post will give you a quick guide to how to make money podcasting

Make Money Selling Your Podcast

The most obvious way to make money from your podcast is to charge people to download it. However, you do have to have a very good reputation before people will hand over their cash to hear you. If you are brand new to podcasting and don’t have that reputation, it is unlikely you’ll be able to sell the podcast.

One alternative is to give away you most recent podcast and have your back catalog up for sale. This allows listeners to listen to your podcast for free (and discover how intelligent, witty and entertaining you are) but allows you to make money from your podcast at the same time.

This method of making money podcasting is most effective for people who have a general entertainment podcast with a strong fan-base.

The most cost efficient way to process sales of your podcast that I have found is E-junkie.

Make Money from Sponsorship

An increasing number of high-profile podcasts are making money by having their podcasts sponsored. Even if you don’t have a huge number of subscribers, companies may still be interested in sponsoring you if you have a very specific audience. For example, if you have a podcast that discusses the latest sci-fi DVD releases, you’ll be more likely to be able to get sponsorship than if you talked about what’s in the news.

The best way to get sponsorship for your podcast is to contact companies directly. Many companies will be eager to tap into your audience if you are well established and have listeners interested in a particular area.

This method of making money from podcasting is most suitable for podcasts with many listeners and a tight niche.

Make Money from Affiliate Promotion

Affiliate marketing is a much over looked way of making money from your podcast. Affiliate marketing is making money by referring people who buy a product. For example, you review a book on your podcast, your listeners go to Amazon and buy the book and you make a commission on the sale.

Affiliate promotions are a great way for new podcasts with a small listenership to make money podcasting. It will depend on the niche, but a great way to start making money is to sign up for the Amazon and eBay affiliate programs.

Make Money from Consulting

Podcasting is a great way to establish your expertise in a particular area. It creates a real sense of connection with your listeners - much more so than blogging. One you have established yourself as an expert, depending on the field you are in, you can sell your services to people.

For example, if you have a podcast on search engine optimization, you can sell yourself as an SEO consultant to your listeners.

Deciding the Best Way to Make Money Podcasting

Which of these methods you choose very much depends on the type of podcast you have and what stage you are at. No matter where you are in your podcasting career, there will always be a way you can make money podcasting.

How to Make Affiliate Money Podcasting

If you are looking to make money podcasting, using affiliates the best and quickest way to do it. Unlike other methods of making money from your podcast, it can pay off even with a small audience. It’s a shame that more podcasters don’t go this route as it’s a great way to monetize your podcast and still provide value to your listeners.

What Is An Affiliate?

Here’s how an affiliate system works: you recommend a product, your listener goes and buys the product, you earn a commission on the sale. Almost all the big websites offer affiliate programs. Two of the biggest and most popular are eBay and Amazon.

How Do You Create An Affiliate Link For Podcasts?

When you sign up with an affiliate, they will give you plenty of ways to build affiliate links. But there is a big drawback with these links for podcasters: they tend to be very long and complicated. If you were to read out one of these links in your podcast it would take 10 minutes, be very dull and no one would bother making a note of it.

There are two ways to get round this. First, you could include the link in the blog post that goes along with your podcast. The problem with this is that most people won’t bother searching out your post - they’re much more likely just to Google the name of the product and you won’t get a commission.

A better way, is to create a simple url that you can read out and people will be able to remember and have that redirect to your affiliate link. You can do this with a 301 redirect. This will allow you to read out a simple, memorable url (such as, “Mysite dot com forward-slash product.”) which will then redirect to your affiliate link.

Using affiliates is a great way to make money podcasting and it is well worth giving it a try.