Podcast Monetization Secrets

Monetizing your podcast isn't just a switch that you can turn on and off at the drop of a hat. There's a lot of hard work that goes on behind the scenes just to get you ready to earn that first podcast dollar.

There are 3 important things that you need to do in order to get monetization ready.

1) Niche down as tight as you possibly can

2) Determine the top 4 or 5 problems your niche has.

3) Come up with solutions to those top 4 or 5 problems.

I'll explain more about that in this episode.

By the way, I'm doing a free 5 day challenge to help you build your perfect podcast offer that starts on Dec. 6th. If you're serious about getting monetized, then there's no reason not to jump in there!

The Perfect Podcast Offer Free 5 Day Challenge

Want to learn more? Join our private Facebook group here!

You can also find Christy and her team at www.teampodcast.com!

Need help getting your podcast optimized and ready for monetization? Learn more about the Podcast Tune Up here.

It seems like almost every podcaster that I come in contact with...when we talk about monetizing it specifically through their own products and services, I start to get a glazed over look because they have no idea what to start with.

So, today I'm going to show you how the level of support you can provide your people to get results for them is going to be a whole lot better if you do something, besides just creating a course for them.

It seems like the first thing whenever I talk to people about actually creating their own products and services, is that people go right to courses and they are like, “well, I was thinking about creating a course for this, that and the other, I was thinking about creating a course for this, I could do another course for that. And I could do all these courses”.

The problem with a course...it's not that the information is the problem - you need the information.

But many times the problem with a course is that people are so used to taking courses, getting free courses, buying courses, whatever it is, and they cannot get through them.

Literally, the completion rate for most courses across the board is well under 10%. And the problem with that if you are someone who, as a podcaster are value based and value driven, because you're also impact motivated, right?

You want to motivate the most people in your niche to take action and do what needs to be done to change their lives and get the results they want.

Then what will happen is, if you only have 10% of the people that are taking your course, how are you even going to be able to judge the results that they're getting?

I mean, it's really hard for you as a course seller, and a course creator, to get testimonials of the incredible changes that people have had in their lives, if only 10% of your people finish your course.

Courses are great courses provide great information, they provide great frameworks. But they also have a huge drawback. And this drawback is the fact that people don't make it through, and if they don't make it through the course, they don't complete the course, that is not going to change their lives, it's not going to have the desired effect that you want it to have.

So if your people aren't meeting their goals, and getting their desired outcomes, you're not either, right? Because you're not changing the lives you set out to take right now in the online space in the digital space, where we all operate as podcasters.

Because we are online, most of us don't have a brick and mortar podcast where people show up and we record it live.

So we're using the online space, which means everything that we do can be digital, what happens is, we have reached a place where we are saturated with courses, we're saturated with information.

Most of it is great information. But we either don't have the motivation, the accountability, the attention span, whatever it is needed to finish the course and actually implement the things that the course taught us.

That's the downfall of most courses. I can go through course after course, after course, after course, and if I never get a chance to implement it, my gosh, it's a waste of my time, it's a waste of my money, it's a waste of every bit of effort I put into that course.

One of the things that I want to impress upon you today is that a lot of people are drawn to courses, because those are the kinds of things where you can create a course, and you can put it out to the world, you can even set up a sales funnel and drive traffic to a course.

Then you can go to bed at night and you can wake up in the morning and have four Stripe notifications that you sold for courses overnight.

That means you've reached the holy grail of passive income, right, you're selling things in your sleep. Who wouldn't love to do that?

So as creators, and as experts in our own niches, a course is very attractive to us.

So much so that we have saturated the marketplace, with course after course, after course, after course.

You can't find a niche that doesn't have a course.

So with courses, while it has an attraction for us as a podcaster, because you can sort of create it once and sell it 100 times.

Where we are in this marketing space is that courses alone are not enough to change lives and get the impact and the results you want.

What we're finding and what we're seeing as being most successful is essentially building communities and programs around getting people the desired outcome that they want.

So what happens is when you build a program, there are multiple components and whenever you're looking at building a program or what you can call it a Community, whatever you want to call it.

When you're building one of these things, part of what you're doing as a creator, is you're evaluating what are the biggest problems that your ideal customer...

I hear it over and over again - the first “real marketing” that a podcaster does is social media marketing. Then after spending a whole lot of money, they look around and start scrutinizing their stats and then scratch their heads because they aren’t sure whether it made any difference at all in their podcast.

I am asked about this often and I see questions in the podcast Facebook groups about it, so I wanted to take some time today and explain to you why I am so against social media marketing for the majority of podcasters.

So first, let’s define what social media marketing is:

This is where you run paid ads on social media platforms in order to try to get people to listen to your podcast.

Facebook has made it so easy to “boost a post” that almost every podcaster I’ve ever talked to has fallen for it at least once.

I am NOT talking about posting on social media platforms or sharing your episodes with followers. I always think that’s a good idea, but I also think it is not impactful enough for most podcasters to justify hiring a social media manager to manage this.

So the bottom line I am trying to help you avoid today is spending money on ads and social media management that will yield very little ROI, so that you can put your money into things that can actually bring you a legitimate return on your investment.

So, let me explain why this is an activity that most of you shouldn’t participate in, and then I’ll tackle the real question of what you should do instead of social media marketing.

• In strict marketing terms, the vast majority of ad campaigns that a podcaster would run would be considered an AWARENESS Campaign.

This means that there isn’t really something an audience member can buy from the ad, and the ad is just being run to make you aware of a podcast.

Let me just explain to you quickly why awareness campaigns are not something you should aspire to:

1. They are incredibly expensive to run, since all your ad spend is going into educating the marketplace that you exist, and not to buy your products or services.
2. Most of the time awareness campaigns are exclusively done by huge multi-national corporations who want to be remembered favorably by the audience.
3. You can never really determine the ROI from an awareness campaign, so you are most often lighting your money on fire.
4. Awareness campaigns are not targeted, so of all the people you have the potential to reach, only a fraction of them will be your target avatar.

Ok, so now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, this is where we start getting real about this conversation.

WHY are you really wanting to run social media ads?

I mean what is the real end goal?

To get more downloads, right?

And what does getting more downloads mean for most podcasters?

Well, of course it means you have more listeners, but what do you as a podcaster get out of having 1000 downloads rather than 200 downloads?

I mean, how much more money will you make when you have 1000 downloads vs. 200 downloads?

For the vast majority of podcasters, and maybe even you, it means absolutely nothing. There is a zero dollar difference in those 2 numbers.

Why?

Because the average podcaster does not have an offer that their podcast listeners can buy.

So this means that most podcasters aren’t selling anything.

And yet, when I talk to those podcasters, almost all of them will tell me that one of their goals is to earn some income from their podcast.

So why the disconnect?

1. Podcasters turn to social media marketing when they don’t know what else to do instead.
2. Podcasters see other podcasters who also don’t know what they are doing and also aren’t making any money, do it, so they follow suit. I’ll let you think about that, but why would you mimic that person anyway? If you’re looking for someone to emulate, at least pick someone who is earning money from their podcast, right?

Now, I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but if you don’t currently have an offer - and I’m talking about a paid offer, not just a free lead magnet - then you AREN’T ready for ANY sort of paid advertising.

And that includes spending money on a “marketing” person.

But Christy, why?

Because you have no way in the world to get ANY ROI on either your paid activities or your marketing person! Do you hate money that much?

It is my opinion that if you don’t have an offer that you can sell to your podcast audience, NOTHING ELSE MATTERS!

You can stop all your other peripheral activities until you have an offer.

That means you don’t need a new logo...

That means you don’t need to upgrade your microphone...

That means you don’t need to rebrand your website...

That means you don’t need a new pair of head...

Have you ever looked at really successful people and wondered, how are they doing it? Well, many times with a podcast, we look at other people that we think are successful, but the problem is we really don't know is success having a podcast that lasts a certain amount of episodes? Is success having a certain amount of status associated with your podcast? Is success actually making money from your podcast?

What is Podcast Success?

One of the things that I see over and over again, is podcasts are starting with the idea that if they just start and start putting out content, that somehow that will draw in the right people, and they can make money from it, and it can completely change their life.

Podcasting Can Change Your Life

And podcasting can change your life. But you've got to have a system and it's got to be set up the right way.

I've made more than more than a million dollars from podcasting. And I'm here to help you do the same thing.

I am just wanting to collapse the time it takes to get from seven figures in a business to eight figures in a business. And my goal is to help you do the same with your podcast on whatever scale you're looking to monetize.

The whole point of this podcast is to go against the conventional wisdom that says, "if you start a podcast plan on spending three years putting out content, and then after about three years, you'll finally have built enough of an audience to monetize".

I say that is complete BS! You can monetize a podcast very, very quickly.

Your Level of Success Depends on Your Level of Preparation

The things that you do to set up your podcast for success will depend on how much money you make in the future.

So there's a lot of things that we can do, and we've got to know how.

One of the things that I've been really, really focused on for 2021, and for even the rest of this year, is getting people results.

The bottom line is information alone is not enough to change people's lives.

And the one thing you have to realize is that if people are going to come to you in your business, and they're going to want to give you their credit card and they're going to say take my money, please, please, please take my money.

It is because you've got to have a solution for them that solves a pressing problem, you've got to be able to get your podcast listener turned client a highly desired result in their life.

If your offer is about making something better...

If your offer is about making someone stronger...

If your offer is making someone healthier...

If your offer is an improvement offer...

You really need to be able to offer transformation.

You Get Results by Getting Results

The way you get transformation is by getting people results.

The results I'm focused on is getting people from having a podcast that is stuck in free content creation mode, to simply giving out content every single week and not getting anything in return - to taking that same effort that they're putting into the podcast and formatting it in a different way and making more offers and getting people money in exchange for the value that they're providing.

Podcast Monetization Happens With a Small Audience

So there's a completely different way of podcasting and it doesn't take huge numbers. I've shared with you my numbers before and the 1000s of dollars that I make a month from this podcast is from a very small audience and the audience is growing every single month.

At the same time, many conventional podcast gurus want to make you feel like you don't have a right to ask for money or to make an offer if you don't have a big enough audience.

How Big Do You Have to Be Before You Can Make Money?

So my question becomes, what is big enough? What is big enough? Every business starts by signing their first customer, right? Every business starts by processing their first credit card.

Podcasting Can Become Your Most Expensive Hobby

If you are not planning on monetizing your podcast, then what you have is a very expensive hobby. Simply put, right, there's no point and you continuing to invest in a lot, and to pay a lot, and to do all these things if you don't have a plan to monetize.

But many times having the plan to monetize and saying yes, I would love to make money...yes, I hope to make money...yes, ultimately, that would be my ideal to make money - is not the same as making money from my podcast.

And there's a big gulf, there's a big, it's almost like you're standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon. And on your side is free content creation mode. And on the other side is a fully monetized podcast that's bringing you increasing predictable revenue every single month.

And in order to get t...

So many times when you start your podcast, you really have no idea what to expect. And the only way you can gauge your success is by what you've seen on Facebook groups, or what you're hearing from other podcasters.

And you think, "Wow, that's a huge amount of success. If I only have a fraction of that, I'll be doing awesome."

What I see very often is that people have a skewed view of reality of being a podcaster.

Today, I want to give you a little bit of a reality check. It's tough love, but you're going to need it because it will help you not feel quite so bad about yourself whenever you think things might be going wrong.

Podcast Launched, Now What?

One of the things that I find a big letdown whenever podcasters, you know, they go through all the hype of starting a podcast, and they launched the podcast, and not many people listen, and they don't really know what to expect.

And they're like, was this good? Or is this bad?

And I've literally had people launch three episodes and never come back to podcasting. And it's like, what were they expecting? Did they think like, automatically, they were gonna get 10,000 people downloading their show overnight for no apparent reason?

Downloads Aren't The Only Thing

Many podcasters don't realize it is a long slog for a lot of people. What I want to tell you today is just a reality check to make sure that you don't give up on something too soon.

But at the same time, this has no bearing on whether you can earn money or not with your podcast.

Hack Podcast Success

You need to know these things, so if anything, you can then shortcut success, right? So it's a way to tell you what averages are and what I'm seeing with clients. And over the years, I've worked with almost close to 300 podcasts, and there is a lot of commonalities.

One of the things that people always struggle with is how many downloads is normal? Like, is 100 good? Is 100 bad? I have this many downloads, Christy. Is it good?

Podcast Download Thresholds

So for most people, most podcasters, the first barrier is getting to that 1000 download/month mark. When you get to 1000 downloads a month, then from 1000 to 5000 will come much quicker often, then the from zero to 1000 a month.

The median number of podcast downloads in a month is something like 127. Think about that, when you see people talking about getting 20, 30,40, 100,000 or 150,000 downloads in a month, they are truly in the upper 1% of podcasters.

Realistic Milestones

So to be realistic, understand that that zero to 1000 downloads will be your first milestone. So the quicker you can hit 1000 downloads in a single month. Then the quicker you can keep pushing on to that 5000 And then that 10,000 download mark a month. That's what you want to be focused on.

Downloads alone don't mean anything. I've told you stories of podcasters that I've worked with, and they had 700 downloads in a month, and then they kept working, they eventually had 7000. Then they had more than 10,000 downloads, and they still weren't making any money. So it's not downloads alone. They don't mean anything alone in a vacuum, other than it's a vanity metric that people are listening.

Opt Ins to Your Email List Don't Come Easy

I had a podcast launch one time, and this podcaster wanted me to put an opt in on their homepage on their website. I told them that we just need a lead magnet. We were going put this opt in on their homepage. They didn't get us the lead magnet in time, and there were some technical issues behind the scenes.

So their podcast launched and it was literally like three days after their podcast launched, that their opt in was up and ready to go. I can remember getting sort of a hostile email from this client saying they wonder how many opt ins they missed out on from the launch of their podcast, because the opt in wasn't ready until three days after they launched. And granted, if they had gotten us everything on time, and there weren't problems on their back end, we could have had it all set up.

Opt In Reality Check

I had to chuckle to myself, because the idea that you as a podcaster will come out with a podcast episode and number one will have a juicy enough anything lead magnet to get someone listening to your podcast and right away to go to your website, to download something that you have or just opt in for something is just really unheard of.

It can literally take months for the average listener to begin going to your website to opt in to something. So you could literally have an opt in up for an entire year, and unless you are doing some special offers, and you are really selling it hard, I would say an average podcaster may get 100 opt ins a year. Does that surprise...