297 - Monetization in Your Podcast Ecosystem

0:04 Good morning podcasting. Morning chat. Today is Monday, May the 5th 2025. Happy Cinco de Mayo. Today we are talking all things podcast monetization, but not that typical CPM rate nonsense that's really not effective for independent podcasters. We're going to dive into other strategies that will help you generate income for you and your show O. With that, let's get this party started.

1:20 Good morning again, everyone. I'm Sid Meadows, and I'm your host for today's conversation. As most of you know, Mark has taken a couple of weeks off and the crew and I are stepping in to make sure that the party keeps moving forward. And I'm excited to be joined today by producer Ashley, Dr. Jonathan, Alex, Nick and Dan on stage at the moment to help us with this conversation. And since we're talking about monetization, we're going to do this a little bit differently today. And we're going to start with actually a clip where Mark actually talks about monetization for a minute. And follow up to that clip, we've got an ice breaker question for you. So Danny got the clip for us. Yes, Sir, here we go.

2:00 I mean, sure they want to know what your reach is, but they are more interested in who the target audience is. Does their, does this podcast audience align with the people we are trying to reach? That's the focus. And, and they've showed me some of the podcasts that they're partnering with, sponsoring. And there are big names and not even the biggest names. They're not even interested in the biggest names because they're more interested in the focused content. But they're they're looking at big guns. They're looking at really small podcast long as we can prove that these podcasts have the right fit audience for them. So yeah, the the big names, we think we sometimes jump to that conclusion that oh, I'm too small for them. They're going to they're already working with other companies. No, they they just want to know, is this a good fit for us and our audience?

3:01 So one of the things that I love about that clip is that he really focuses in on the size of the show not being that important to the overall scope of monetization and generating income for each show. And I think each and every one of us here and those listening, we are independent podcasters and it certainly doesn't mean that we have a Mel Robbins or Joe Rogan type show necessarily, right? But you can be monetized. So the icebreaker question for today is describe your audience in one line that would make a sponsor say yes to sponsoring your show immediately. Who wants to kick us off? Dunthan, you want to go? And yes, I'm going to call people nobody on the spot.

3:43 It's. Monday morning, it's 7:00 in the morning. You put me on the spot. I got nothing. Let me think. Oh my goodness. Y'all. Know I'm going to say give us give us the question again. OK, let me give you the question again. Yeah, one more time all. Right, so here's the question. Describe your audience in one line or one sentence that would make a sponsor say yes to sponsoring you and your show immediately. Now this time I'll ask again who wants to go first? Makes let's bookshop instead of someone. Offering it maybe? Let's workshop it. Yeah, well, I mean, I can describe mine pretty quickly, pretty easily. So the listener, my audience are people that work in and around the built environment. So those people are architects, interior designers, people that do office furniture manufacturing, sales, interior design.

4:33 So anything that happens inside the built environment, the peep, those are the people that listen to my show. Now that wasn't true. A sales description shouldn't necessarily, but that's the people that listen to my show, people that work in in and around the built environment providing products and services to people that occupy office space that give you guys a good idea or. Some well, I can give a an exam my audience that I can do my audience is successful coaches who've been in the business for three to five years that are looking to level up. They've got a built in audience and they've been successful in what they're doing, so they're second act entrepreneurs.

5:13 Well, I like that John. Then what does second act mean? Means they've had a career previously, but they've left that career to go into coaching. So they gave up their nine to five or gave up corporate and decided that coaching was their thing. Yeah, go ahead. So I'm going to put myself in the shoes of one of my clients and she would say my ideal, my audience is made-up of fellow clinicians whose main concern is with children's mental health. Clinicians. So is that like doctor nurses is what that means, right? Right. She's a retired pediatrician. OK, that's great.

5:55 So what I like about both what you and Jonathan just said was it was real descriptive. You really knew who the audience was, right? Coaches in this in their second act, clinicians helping you said children or something. What did you say, Dr. Fellow clinicians whose main concern is children's mental health. So again, very descriptive children. So you know the demographic is going to be parents, right, mental health, you know what the topic is about. So I think those are all really, really good. I was just about to say it's technically it's not parents, it's clinicians who treat children with mental health. Yeah.

6:36 So it's four other clinicians. Dan, can you give us a descriptor of your audience? That's me. They are driven. They're action oriented. They're entrepreneurs, coaches and leaders who invest in their personal growth. They value high performance tools and resources, and they're actively seeking solutions to help them execute at a higher level. Again, that's very descriptive. You know who you're talking about, you know what you're helping them with, and I think anybody that you might be talking to as relates to monetization or advertising or sponsorship would have a clear understanding of who that person is. I am curious though, for anybody on stage or down in the audience listening, put it over into the chat as these phrases are being said, are you getting an image in your mind of what that person looks like? I'm it's happening to me.

7:28 Is it happening to anybody else? Wait, are you talking about what we look like as? No, just in general. No, just in general. As you're describing the person, I'm getting a visual image in my mind of what that person looks like. Because I get that. Say that because I think the descriptors are really good so far. OK, I see some thumbs up. You guys are being quiet this morning. I'm like tossing out all these opportunities to talk to me and you guys are being quiet. Alex, tell us about your audience. Oh, that's a fun one. For the what is fromcast, we focus in on people that love puzzle type shows. From is in its third season going into its fourth season. So if you like creepy puzzle shows that have monsters and everything that goes along with that, were your show. OK, so you lost me there for a second that puzzle, but then as you kept talking, I I got I got it like just like pieces putting together of a story.

8:25 Puzzle show, Yeah. I mean, every week you get a little bit more to the story. It's kind of a Pandora's box, 'cause you know once one question is answered, two more pop up. OK, I didn't realize I was watching puzzle type shows. I've never watched that show particularly, but now that you describe it, I would have never called it a puzzle. But it certainly makes a lot of logic and a lot of sense to. Me, yeah, my, my partner, my part, my podcast partner loves that term. And it's just kind of stuck. It's a really good term. Ashley, do you want to describe your audience? We got about two or three minutes left in this segment of the show. Yeah, that sounds great. I was just thinking about, you know, when you mentioned what they look like, I was actually visualizing them.

9:05 But to describe the listeners of Sunshine State Showcase that would be it's a lot of retired folks, folks who are anywhere from 30 till 75, who enjoy music festivals, who enjoy cultural events, who enjoy singer songwriters. They often they're campers. A lot of them own RVS. A lot of. Them are retired or getting close to retirement. A lot of them are musicians themselves and I'd say they like adventure and they like homemade things. Tons of descriptors in that. By the way, Ashley, well done. Yeah. And just as an aside to Ashley, you know, my father was a musician. He never, ever had to throw a newspaper at a door or say, would you like fries with that or anything? He was a musician from a very young age to the day he died. And when he retired, he went to Florida and he'd he was never busier in his life.

9:59 He was getting gigs left and right. There is a whole like a population of retired musicians that all they're doing is gig, gig, gig, gig, going from 1 gig to another. It was crazy. So I'm thinking Dr. is I inch closer and closer to that segment and like I'm going to call it the third act, right? That might be right. Retirement, the third act 'cause I'm not going to sit around and just, you know, watch the waterfront, the lakes for sure. That's great. Good morning, Nick, how are you? What do you have to say to this topic? Hey, good morning. I was going to say with Ashley's as she was describing that audience always picturing with all the different sponsorship opportunities, everything that she included in her description like enjoys camping, outdoors, adventure like that is there are so many opportunities there for sponsors, sponsorships just in her description like she named them specifically.

11:01 Totally agree with you, Nick. And I was thinking the same thing like, oh gosh, they have mobile home, not mobile homes. What is it campers, right, RV's campers. Like there's there's all these little you said so many Nuggets actually have sponsorship opportunities, which Nick, thank you for that because that is a perfect lead in to the next segment of the show. You don't even have the the notes about the show today. So that's really great. Thank you. So we want to dive into a little bit. I've got a few talking points to come. We're not going to get to all of them today. But the first thing that we want to talk about as relates to monetization is the, let's call it the basics. And there are some basics that you need to make sure that you've got before you can move forward with really attracting sponsorships.

11:46 OK, so I'm going to name off a couple. And if I leave something out, please pipe in or drop it over into the chat. What do you think is part of the essentials or the necessities that you need before you can go talk to a brand about monetization? So here's what I've got. First off is you need a podcast 1 sheet. This is an overview of your show. We've talked about these before, so we're not going to dive into any of this necessarily specifically, but this is something that you need, right? It includes the problem that you solve for your audience, who your audience is, maybe some of your best through episodes. A1 sheet is something super easy to create. You can do it in Canva, but you definitely need a one sheet.

12:26 The other thing that you need is audience demographics. We talked a little bit about audience just a minute ago and kind of creating our sentence, including that sentence about your audience into your demographics would be really, really good. So who is your audience? What do they do, where do they live, how old are they? You know, if you've never done this before, this is a great opportunity to actually create 3 or 4 personas about your listener. That's a great exercise to do and it's something that just really zones in on who is the the listener. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry I'm in the kitchen but I wanted to unpack that a little bit. And for the newbies that might be listening in, where would they find that information?

13:14 So information about who your customer, who your customer, who your listener is. Right, Your demographics, how old they are, sex, where they live. Yeah, 100%. So I'm going to answer that question, but I want to go. I see Austin has a question down in the chat that says 1 sheet, same as mid as media kit or different purposes. So I think let's open that up for discussion. Is a 11 sheet and a media kit the same thing? I think they're a little bit different. He wants to chime in on that real quick. So I think they're for two different intents. They're similar. I think that an electronic press kit and EPK is more for the eyes of media and A1 sheet is more for the eyes of sponsors.

13:58 That's just my opinion. That's actually a really, really great clarity there. So thank you for that. Anybody else want to add in? Oh yeah, go ahead. I was going to go a different way. One sheet I consider for someone who wants to get on the show. So one sheet is usually sent to the host of the show or the producer and a media kit is usually sent to the sponsor. OK, so a little bit different opinion. I could see how they overlap and maybe you're a little bit the same thing, but I know Billy's got an opinion about this and a lot of other things. So, Billy, what do you say? Let me find my opinion. I don't care about any of that. Honestly, I've never I've created those one sheet.

14:38 I agree. I think in one sheet is like, hey, I'm trying to get the attention of somebody else to be a part of their programs, their system, their report, whatever. I've done thousands of sponsorship deals at this point or brand deals. I will say hundreds of sponsorship deals with my podcast journey. And I think I had one person ask me for that and it was like I spent a lot of time building it and it didn't really do anything for me. I think the biggest mistake people make is they like create that. They spent a lot of time creating a media kit, pricing guide, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

15:20 But they're not good sales people. And they think just because they dropped that in someone's e-mail that they're going to get a phone call and they never do. And so they're really sad. So I'd say be really good at sales or figured out the sales game and who cares about a media kit? Use your e-mail. That whole sales conversation is something definitely for another day because it's certainly some things you need to learn in the art of the follow up, asking questions, cold outreach. I mean, there's so much to talk about with that. But I think the general is, so we have mixed opinions about media kit versus 1 sheet. So maybe they're interchangeable, maybe they're not. I think the point here is, is that you need something that describes your show that you can easily share with people that might be interested in monetizing or people that you want to reach out to, to tell them about your show.

16:02 So you need something, it could be one page, it can be 5 pages. I think again, we talked about breaking the rules with podcasting. Do you the way you want to do you and share the information? But I want to go now to DRS question, which was where do you find your audience demographics? Your podcast host will have some of that, right? Apple will have some of that. Spotify will have some of that. I mean, Buzz Sprout tells you the male, female doesn't tell you the age range, it tells you where they live. But the thing that I found most beneficial to understanding the demographics of my audience is just asking them and asking them to reach out to me. Or when they reach out to me without me asking them, just going and like looking at their profiles on their different social platforms to understand who they are to build my own demographic of my listener.

16:54 I'm curious, what are any of you guys doing that are on stage or down in the chat? What are you doing to identify who your audience is and to create a demographic, if you will, of them? Calls to action. All my calls to action ideally lead to direct engagement, which gives me the opportunity to not just have a conversation with that person, but take note of what that person represents as far as demographics are concerned. That said, I don't really pay attention to the demographics to that extent. So I have a follow up question for you. You said you're not paying attention to them. Why is that? Because it's not as important to me, this conversation is not as important to me with regards to all of the technicalities and details. You know, if, if I feel like there is an ideal fit for monetization sponsorship in this particular case, then I'm just going to reach out to them and we're going to have a discussion.

17:53 I love conversation as a sales tool and connection relationships. I, I don't rely on any of the tools which you've already suggested. So I'm not as interested as in the deep demographics, whether they're male or female. I'm more interested in the characteristics of those people. What are they tied to? So I mentioned when you asked me earlier, they're lifelong learners. They're committed to that personal development side of their life. They're committed to identifying the tools and resources that are going to help them take their life, their business, their things that they're working on to the next level. That's more important to me to know more what they're about then whether they're male, female, 35 to 45 or those things. Now, I do listen for those cues.

18:42 You know, age is an important demographic because you might shift language in your podcast to attract more of those people if you know that they're of a different age group, as an example. But I don't spend a lot of time digging into those. Thank you for highlighting that. I mean, I think what you're, to me, what you're expanding on is all the different aspects of the demographic of knowing who your audience is, knowing what the problems are that they have, knowing how you solve those problems. I think that's all part of demographics. I saw a couple of hands go up and Michael has joined us. So first, I want to go to Jonathan. Jonathan, I saw your hands. One of the things that I also use is our Instagram insights because those insights provide demographic location, female, male, age.

19:31 So I take that into account along with the the demos that I get from the podcast platforms because that gives me a better, a more rounded picture of what I'm at home I'm actually dealing with. That's great. Thank you for reminding that. I'm going to go to Michael and the Billy. We're coming to you. Good. Michael, welcome to stage. I got a ton of thoughts on this, but a couple of things. I think. First of all, knowing your audience is is in my mind is as important, if not more important than the topic of your show. As I've heard a dozen people say from stage and various forms, the riches are in the niches. The more specific you can be about who your audience is, the more impact you have and the more loyal Raven fans you wind up developing. And I think a lot of times honestly in this morning chat when we talk about monetization, we focus so heavily on sponsorships and.

20:25 I don't, I'm not focused at all on getting sponsors zero. I mean, if some come along, that's fine, but you're not in control completely of income that's generated from sponsorship. And there are so many other ways to monetize your podcast and it could be affiliate marketing, but and, and representing and talking about products that will impact that specific niche that you're talking to. It could be building a community that's a membership style community. It it could be simply using something like Patreon and giving people willing to support your show some other benefits. I can think of probably another half dozen ways outside of sponsorships that you could monetize and make a terrific living once you have built that audience. And I just think that that sometimes when we start talking about monetization here, we get so focused on sponsorships. And I think that's old media thinking. Sponsorships are like radio commercials and TV commercials, and we can monetize our podcasts in ways that those traditional historic media outlets can't.

21:37 And I just think that that there's just, you know, we need to have a lot of conversation, not just about sponsorships, but how can you develop raving fans that are not going to leave your show, that are not going to leave your community because you're providing value. And then the last thing I would say, huge fan of Gary Vaynerchuk, who many of you guys know and Gary's book he put out last year day trading attention, how to get I think it's how to get attention in a today's social media world or something. And following him on social media, so much of it, if you're, if you are looking for sponsors instead of focusing on the media kit and that type of thing, what you need to have. And by the way, you do need to have a quick answer for who your show is for, right?

22:23 And what the value you provide is. But so much of it is getting that attention and his content creators, if you plug into and, and really pay attention to what Gary Vee talks about all the time on his YouTube and his TikTok and, and you know, his books that he's written or listened to his podcast. If you implement that, you will grow your audience. As long as you have a well defined bullseye market that your show is designed to empower or benefit or whatever that, that whatever the, the value that your listeners are going to get out of the show. So just some food for thought. And maybe I opened up a couple of cans of worms there, but I thought it was important.

23:08 No, no, no. I appreciate your insights and you coming up and sharing. I will say that I have a whole list of monetization ideas that we're going to dive into a little bit that are not related to direct sponsorships, right? This part of what this conversation is about. And I appreciate you reiterating that you need to know who your audience is. You need to understand them because the riches are in the niches. I fully agree with that. And so I know that D heart, I I've seen you, D heart, I've seen you. I'm going to you. So go ahead and then we're going to go to Billy. So when people find out that I'm a producer, the conversation inevitably turns to, oh, you know, I got to get a sponsor. I got to get a sponsor. And I let them know that, you know, there are lots of ways to make money. And sponsorship is probably the very last thing on my list, on my preferred list.

23:58 The first thing on my particular list is sell your own stuff. You know, if you have a course, a book, come up with something to sell your own sponsor. That's actually the first thing that I would do. I think a lot on that opportunity to promote your own stuff, regardless of what it is, whether it's a show, a course, you know, something. I think we all miss out on that. Billy, I'm going to come to you myself. You're. Making me laugh. Billy's making me laugh. I got all the fun emojis because I'm going to go soft in the paint here. I won't go hard in the paint, but I totally disagree. I think you're, when you first start out, I think the fastest way to monetization in the way to make the most amount of money, the quickest, if that's a goal of yours is to go with the sponsorship deal and really, and you do have to do the work, right.

24:53 So in my instance, I have salt water fishing podcast on the coast of North Carolina. We produced 4 episodes just because I felt good about having a sample. Went out and closed at $10,400. Sponsorship deal. There's no way in hell I would have been able to get clothes $10,000 worth of business. Selling my own product, Creating a membership group, Putting our logo on a T-shirt. Like promoting affiliate marketing products? Not a chance that was going to happen with a four episode show. So I think there's a lot of strategy. But if you're like wanted to do a business and you want to make money quickly, I think you got to get your ducks in a row.

25:34 You got to figure out your your targets. You got to figure out your value and you got to go pitch sponsorship deals because they already have a brand and you're building a show. You can't build a show and a product and all this stuff. And when you look at the numbers, only 1 to 3% of your audience size is going to convert to most of that other stuff anyway. And even though I wanted to call BS on that, it's pretty true because we did launch a membership show two years, yeah, two years or membership program two years after we started the show. And our consistent 20,000 person audience, you know, per month converted at about one 1 1/2 percent or our membership group. So I completely disagree just based on my experience. I'm going to say that I don't know that I feel like there is a right or a wrong answer to this question. I think there is a lot of different avenues or a lot of different approaches that you can take to monetize your show. If you're really good at sales like Billy is, and you've got the information and you want to go out into your local market, then go do it.

26:38 If you're not comfortable with that and you've got a course or you've got an e-book that you want to promote, then at a minimum, at least promote yourself on your own show or your own products on your own show to generate something right into Michael's point. Look beyond simple monetization or excuse me, simple sponsorship into other areas of things. But so I think there's a lot that you can do here in this in order to generate income into your show. And so I'm going to wrap this section up so we can dive into the next section. But let's go back to real quickly, just some of the basics that I think you make your own decision. OK, But what?

27:19 I think some go ahead, Billy. I was going to say, man, I love it. And I think we got to stack all these things. You don't go to Walmart and they have one product sitting in the middle of the store. So that's that was my last point when you said that, I'm like, I totally agree. We got to stack them all. And you got to pick what works best for you, right? You got to pick what you're most comfortable with and what works best for you and what's congruent with your show, with your brand, with you as a person. So, all right, so let's go back to the basics real quick. You need to know information about your show. Who is your audience, the statistics of your show, What are your downloads? How many followers do you have? All that you didn't know all that, right? If you got a newsletter, you need to know how many of your subscribers, right? You need to know your social media statistics of how many followers do you have on social media, those kinds of things, right?

28:04 If you've got a website, you need to be sure and have as much information about your website, landing page visits, you know, e-mail subscribers, those kinds of things just so that when people start asking you about your show, you have the details right of your show. So with that, those are what I would refer to as the basics, right? So now I want to talk a little bit about some of the ideas as it relates to monetization, ways to create income. And this, this isn't just a list of ideas that I kind of came up with in looking at different ways you could go that were beyond selling a mid roll, a pre roll and a post roll ad, right?

28:49 So I'm curious if you're any of you on your show, if your show is currently monetized, tell me what it is that you're monetizing or how are you doing in monetization on your show currently, if anybody's show is currently monetized? Both both myself and Mimi have sold parts of our program from the podcast. You know, we actually. Will. Provide custom links that only are ones we use on the podcast so we know where the where it's coming from and we both monetize from the podcast in that way. We also have done that with friends of ours that have, you know, that we either add on the show or answer an episode with a program they have or a challenge they have coming up, stuff like that. To recap that Jonathan, or to reframe what I think I heard you say you're selling your own services, you're selling your own courses and then people are coming in and like if I'm doing a challenge, then I you charging me to come in and to promote my challenge.

29:52 Is that right? Those are some of the. Those that that's what we've done. OK, that's great, right? You've took a, you took an action. I see that Dave said down in the in the chat that he's using buy me a coffee that's generated $6500 and seven months. I mean that's I think great way to to do buy me a coffee is a great way to do it. So I think that when we look at what part of your ecosystem, your show, what part do you think can be monetized, That's an open-ended question. What part do you think can be monetized? It's an example said of what you're like. What part of your show can be monitored? Give us an example.

30:34 All right. So I can answer this question. And I think that your podcast or your ecosystem of your brand, I think that it can all be monetized. I think every aspect of it can be monetized. And I've got a list of ideas that I think in different places that you could actually monetize. But I think the short answer to this question is that every aspect of your show can be monetized. So let me give you an example. So what if somebody's just looking for some brand awareness and that's all that they really want is brand awareness? You could actually charge them to put their logo on your cover art on your website, right?

31:17 I mean, that's just one aspect of what I think of where your show could be monetized. Go ahead, Nick. When this whole conversation started, this was kind of the direction I was hoping it would go because the podcast we talked about monetizing a podcast. I don't think monetizing the podcast itself is necessarily the strategy. It's about monetizing that ecosystem that you have because you might have followers on social media that don't listen to the podcast. You might have people who listen to the podcast that don't follow you on social media, might have a completely different audience that pays attention to you on YouTube. And you're catering all to the same audience, but just they differ in how they consume content. And you need to sell that package. You need to sell that broad audience to a brand and that's how you're going to monetize.

32:10 I mean, you could have a very relatively small show. Maybe you're only getting 50 to 100 downloads on your podcast per month, but maybe you have 10s of thousands of followers on Instagram. That brand is still going to want to work with you because you still have an engaged audience. It doesn't matter where it's coming from. So I think approaching brand deals, kind of like what we talked about at the beginning from that clip that you play to Mark, we're approaching sponsors and brands because they want to get in front of your audience. Your audience is their target demographic. It's who they need to get in front of. And I like to look at it from a what would it cost CPM wise on advertising on Facebook or Google Ads or something like that? What would it cost that brand to get in front of your audience, whether that's 5010 thousand, however many people your audience is, how much is it going to cost them running ads to get in front of that audience? It's likely going to be a lot more expensive to really hit that audience that it would be to pay you 10 grand a month to have direct access to your audience. Yeah, really, really, really great points, Nick. And that's exactly what I wanted to focus on today was beyond the pre post mid role running the ad because Sarah dropped something in the chat that I think is really important is that she quit listening to one of her favorite shows because it was so ad heavy.

33:36 I was listening to one of my favorite shows that drops every Thursday. It's a seasonal show, so it only drops like once a year. And the 1st 6 minutes of her show were promotion. And I'm like, come on Amanda, get to the topic. Like let's get into the topic. So I think that's really important to understand that you know what ads potentially if you're running and inside your show, what it does to your listener base. I want to go to Jonathan and then Billy and then Dan. So, Jonathan, I saw your hand up first. Yeah. Another thing that you can do with your audience and even do this on every show is promote an affiliate link. You've got affiliate links. If you've got any product, any services you use, you know, even if you promote your podcast platform, like any of that, you can get affiliate links for and get kicked back on those and use that in every episode. Yeah, I love it.

34:28 Affiliate links are great. Doesn't bring in a lot of money, but it brings in some money. So affiliate links are great. Billy, what do you got to say? This is kind of what I, you know, teach people that come into my mastermind group is it's fun to get really niche and really, you know, like this is my podcast. This is the spot on the show. But I always encourage them like think of yourself as a as a whole brand, as a creator and like we said, monetize your ecosystem. But that's going to look a little bit different. Like just because, yeah, I mean, I guess it's like, OK, I'm technically monetizing myself, but not really my podcast. Because if I'm creating, I don't know, say affiliate type of content or UGC type of content over on Instagram because of my Instagram following, that's really not podcast sponsorship deal or that's really not a, you know, podcast monetization opportunity.

35:24 So I don't know. I mean, I think it is a definitely a broader conversation is like as a content creator, period, how do I make money? And there's a ton of different ways to do that. But yeah, as far as just like monetizing your show, I guess you're going to really lay heavy on sponsorship deals or, or, or on your audience or community. So interesting topic. Yeah, I mean, I think you have to look at the full ecosystem, Billy. I mean, you got to look at every aspect of what you're doing because you're you're a podcaster, but you're also a content creator and you're creating content on multiple different platforms. And podcasting is just one arm of your content creation for the most of us anyway, it's just one arm of your content creation.

36:07 So I mean, and here's the thing again, when there's no rules around exactly or no guidebook around exactly what you can do, you can create your own goals. You can create your own way about it and forge your own path with it and then share with others what you did. And Bill, you're a perfect example of forging your own way with things and then come back and share it with people. So I think you have to get beyond that. It's either you got to do this, this, or this. Just figure out, break the rules and figure out what it is you want to do. How much money do you want to make and where do you want to monetize? I think that's one of the biggest arguments that I make when people are like, send my podcast, be a video, and I go, Oh yeah, because you have more opportunity for placement. And that's what we're talking about. And all this stuff is just like placement. It doesn't matter if it's your own product or another branch product or an affiliate lane doesn't really matter what it is.

37:01 It's just more opportunities for more eyeballs in the area and see you in do that real estate on a video. There's all kinds of it that you can, you know, put in there. So I love that. 100 percent, 100%. And so I want to do a shout out in the chat. Thank you guys for all using the chat. Kate, I see your question and Jonathan, I'm going to ask you to take note of Kate's question in the chat tomorrow. Jonathan will be talking about your signature style and I think that is a great time to answer that question directly, Kate. So if you hang on till tomorrow, we'll get to, should you have a separate IG for your podcast? Is that OK with you, John? Sounds good. Yep, ready to answer that one.

37:43 All right. So Dan, you have saw your hand up. I really wanted to say that I have grown so frustrated recently with ask that I enjoy and the amount of time spent pre roll and mid roll on ads. It's you know it's sickening. 3 minutes is way too much. That said, as far as monetization goes, you probably recall that I tend to go against the grain and I'm not creating content for the purpose of sponsorship or any traditional monetization necessarily. But I do agree with the strategies that have been mentioned as far as using your own products and services as a #1 means of monetization and affiliate links or affiliate relationships are a great opportunity. And those don't require 3 minutes of ads. It's anyway, yeah, those, those are my thoughts. You know, I think I will add that if the only purpose of creating content is for monetization, I would encourage people to reflect on that for a moment and maybe look at how they might align with creating content that they can enjoy creating, not for some external reward, but for the purpose of creating, which would lead to many opportunities. Those are my thoughts.

39:09 That ties directly into a conversation we had I guess what, 2 weeks ago about what's your why, why are you doing this right? And if you're, if you're, and listen, there are people that do it, that they're only doing it to make money, then you do you, right? But I certainly think there needs to be a deeper reason as to why you're creating any of the content that you're creating. So I want to move on just a little bit, about 15 minutes left, and I want to move on with just some general things of where I think you can create monetization for your ecosystem. I mentioned this just a second ago, but you could actually have a sponsor, if you will, for your cover art on your podcast and their logo is on your podcast.

39:52 I did that. It was part of a package that I put together for somebody. You could also do the same thing for your YouTube cover art and put somebody's logo on there. Remember, that's brand awareness. You could put their logo. You could put a link to. Their website there on the cover arts. I think that's just one option. Another one is the landing page for your website. If you've got a website for your podcast, you could actually do like a scrolling banner ad into the middle of your podcast landing page that had multiple sponsors there. Think about when you go to a lot of websites, where do you see the ads that come up on those websites? Because they're pretty much ads on almost every landing page that you go to, right?

40:34 Sometimes they're really obnoxious and they're pop up boxes that stare in front of you that really irritate you when you're trying to find information. But you'll see those ad placements on the bottom, in the middle, on the side at the top. All of that is available to you as well on your podcasting landing page. I think you could also have an individual episode sponsor very similar to what Jonathan talked about. And somebody wants to promote a challenge that they're having. That's a sponsorship opportunity, right? You could have a special episode sponsor like for example, one of those, one of the episodes I have in my show is called Tend to Win, which are really quick little 10 minute episodes that hopefully provide a lot of value for you and your life and your business, right? I could actually have a sponsor just for the tend to win and say, all right, in today's tend to win is being brought to you by XYZ brand.

41:28 And with that, let's jump into our conversation today, right? I usually do five or six of these a year. Maybe I charge 500 bucks for it. And now all of a sudden I've got a little bit of money coming in because I have a special segment in my show that's an opportunity to be sponsored. And it's not an ad running necessarily. It's just say, hey, today's 12:50 is being brought to you by Dr. FA production studio, kind of a mouthy broad production studio or whatever. I mean, it's super easy to do that without disrupting the show like Sharon talked about in having too many ad placements, right? I think another option might be a segment inside of your show. Like one of my favorite shows that I listen to has a segment at the end called Rapid Fire. I'm actually adding this to my show in Season 7. And at the start of the rapid fire section, you could say almost the same thing, like, now let's get into our rapid fire questions brought to you by dot dot dot. Again, I'm promoting that person. I'm not going into length, I'm not doing a 32nd promo about that person, but I am saying that today's rapid fire is brought to you by and now I've got another way to actually monetize my monetize this show.

42:43 So before I go on, any thoughts about those that I've mentioned so far? I think it's a great idea. I love the segment part because it gives you an opportunity to kind of break stuff up and if you get the right sponsor for that particular segment, you could really have a little fun with it. And you know, I'm just thinking of my what is from cast. You could have, there's this one company called Patriot. They do like long term like shelter in place type of things, you know, food like for like 30 days or whatever. And that would be like a kind of a perfect fit for it because it goes along with the whole survival theme. Like Dan said, you don't want 3 minutes of of commercials because people are just going to pass over it, especially if it's a podcast or a video.

43:32 But at the same time, if you can kind of, you know, sneak a man without it being too obvious, people are used to hearing sponsored by and then whatever the conversation is, that's a little bit more tolerable than like 5 ads or whatever. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think we're all used to today's segment of the the Today show is brought to you by whatever, right? We're all used to hearing that. So why not incorporate that into into your show or into your ecosystem? Janae, good morning. Welcome to the stage. Yeah, Good morning. Thank you for this topic. This is really powerful because a lot of people that come to me on calls, I'm like, when can I start monetizing my podcast? So when can I start monetizing my YouTube video? So said that the list of ways that you mentioned is really powerful because now they have a a la carte menu option of all the different ways that they get monetized. So thank you for putting this this together because I can just now send people to this episode and OK, check out what's it shared.

44:35 Here's the different ways you can do now it all comes down to how are you going to implement it? Well, that's a whole different question, right? So thank you so much for that. And I want to give it out to Mike. Give a shout out to Michael. He's been shouting me out last week and I totally skipped my mind because of this drive. So thank you so much. This is so cool. And I know Mark's in the he's in DC area right now, which is local to me. But on monetization, I'm going to reach out to our good friend Justin Moore, who wrote the book sponsor Magnet, see if if he can come on the show one of these days and see if he can bring them some more perspective on us.

45:17 Thanks guys. That's great. I actually have that book on my shelf to read. It's in my to read pile. So be sure you give us a heads up so I can read the book before he comes on. But that's a that's a great idea. So some other things that I think are ways that you can monetize is e-mail newsletter. If you've got an e-mail newsletter, you could put a sponsor very similar. We talked about a landing page. You can put a sponsor banner in the middle of your newsletter or at the top of your newsletter, right? Kate, I see your question. It's called the sponsor magnet, right, Janae? And that's the name of the book. Yes, Sponsor magnet by Justin Moore. I'll drop a link in the notes. All in there. Thank you.

45:58 So our e-mail newsletter, if you've got a LinkedIn newsletter, same thing. I'm actually going to do that with my newsletter beginning in January. I'm going to put a banner in the middle of it that the LinkedIn newsletter is sponsored by and it'll just be a graphic. And that doesn't cost me a lot to put together. But that's another way. You can also have your emails monetized. So think about the How many of you send out an e-mail to your followers with the information about today's show? Like maybe a show of hands or emoji or something? How many of you are sending out an e-mail to your followers every time you launch a show? It's a missed opportunity. Nobody in this group is actually sending an e-mail to their followers.

46:40 OK, Yvonne, I see you're doing it. Go ahead. I. Actually I have one of my clients. I created something that I call the nudge, the nudge e-mail and it's so simple. It is as tiny and small as you could possibly make it. And it says, hey, just dropping in to tell you about today's show that's being dropped. Joe blows on talking about blah, blah, blah. Hope you can join us. And that leaves a lot of room for any advertising, anything that you might be offering, anything that maybe is sponsoring you or anything like that. So it's just a very simple sentence and boom, that's it. I stopped emailing because I started throwing out an episode every day with the the mindset minute in the mornings. And that was just way too many emails because it was an automated RSS integration.

47:34 And, and so now I do e-mail once a week, but, and it's around the topic, but I don't drive my e-mail listeners to the podcast. I don't always try to drive my podcast listeners to the e-mail. I think each of those platforms has their purpose. There is some crossover and I do encourage feedback by e-mail, but not necessarily asking my podcast listeners to go now just all over for my e-mail. I think it was Michael or said, you know, there are are some purposes for each of those platforms and that you know, they each have their own way of consuming content. So that is an important note.

48:16 Anyway, that was my two cents. Yeah, no, it's great insights for sure. I mean, I have a news, I have an e-mail that I send out every time I publish a show, which is every other week. That is the only time that I e-mail my list. And I have about 500 people on my list. And I take the transcript I uploaded to Chat GPTI asked ChatGPT to write a brief e-mail about this show to e-mail to my followers. I have a folder in Chat TPT about my podcast. So it remembers my podcast, right? And remembers what it's written in the past. And so it writes it. I take it, I tweak it, and I send it out to my listeners. I get a between A50 and 52% open is enormous in e-mail marketing and I get around a 4% click through rate, which means 4% of the people are actually clicking the link to go to my website to listen to the episode on the landing page that I've embedded there.

49:16 So it's a great marketing opportunity. That e-mail can be monetized. You could say something along the lines of today's e-mail is brought to you by and you could insert a banner, an image, a graphic or something about that brand that is sponsoring that e-mail. And again, that gives brand awareness. You're not necessarily disrupting it, but it's there. You can just put a text at the bottom of the e-mail. Shout out to our e-mail sponsor, ABC Company. Thank you for your support of the trend report. I mean, something really easy like that. So if you're not doing e-mail marketing about your show and you launch it, I certainly think you should. And I think it's great that you're starting to do it once a week and you're recapping what you did in the week.

49:59 And I'm a huge, I know e-mail marketing people will hate on me for this, but I am a huge fan of above the scroll. If you've got to scroll 234 times to read somebody's e-mail, you have lost me at the first scroll. So I take my behavior and that's how I send to my audience. And so I think that's part of the reason why I get really great open rates and click rates is because it's short and simple and there's no scrolling necessary to do it. So great opportunity. Some other ideas that I had were like an industry report or a white paper like you could, if you are a writer or you're a researcher and you're doing reports or steering information about your industry, you could have that monetized. You could talk and poor on your show. You don't have to talk about who's sponsored. If you could talk about that report on your show, like, hey, I just did this report.

50:54 I actually just did one of these reports about pioneering and what it means to pioneer in the office furniture industry. What are the challenges that brands and the sellers have, and then how can you overcome those challenges and work together in order to generate income? I could have somebody sponsor that. And when we send that out, we're going to put that on our website. We're going to have people download it as a bit of a lead magnet to build the list, but it could have a sponsor tag in there somewhere or a graphic on the side or the bottom that says this white paper is brought to you by, right? Another one that I think is really cool is depending on what your show is about, you could do a sponsored giveaway that maybe might help to drive community engagement.

51:42 You know, if you've got a like a focus show like Billy had that is in a specific marketplace doing something specific, you could do something that raises money and maybe there's a partnership there that of every sale you get 10% of whatever every sale is or something like that. So anything that I think drives community engagement could be really good. Yeah, go ahead, Al. You know, one of the things that we do and we haven't gotten sponsors for it, but we do a, our contest for the show and people bring, you know, then we have prizes and, and we've gotten prizes from the show and sign stuff from the show. But again, that's another sponsorship opportunity along with that. I mean, my biggest challenge is trying to find the sponsor, which I know, you know, it's probably easier than I think. It's just it doesn't always fall into your lap. But that's a separate conversation. I don't know how many of you guys listen to the actual radio on your in your car or whatever else, get a lot of ideas from them because they've been doing this a long time. And it's just like what we're doing, you know, we as podcasters can learn a lot from traditional radio and the way they do their business in terms of monetization. And I think Yvonne has her hand up, but I think she's in. The Yeah, I'd see that.

52:57 Yvonne, you're not on stage, so we can bring you up. You want to come up? I don't see your hand raised. Ashley, can you bring Yvonne up? Janae, I saw you come off mic a minute ago while Alex was talking. Alex, great question. You know, it's, it's hard to find those sponsors and, and why that book is so powerful because he talks about a certain formula that you don't have to. I mean, yes, you can wait for sponsors that will come up if they're listening to your show, but there's always a what value are you bringing to that sponsor? You know, so that's kind of a little structure that you got to create. And Billy does this all the time, like he's getting those sponsorship deals, those brand deals. What's beautiful is that we're already creating so much content that you can then use as leverage to say, hey, I'm already doing this, how about we plug you in? So anyways, there's a huge formula around how that works. Justin had the whole ideas in there. But regardless, the emails part that Dan was mentioning, but he's sending a daily e-mail.

53:59 That's actually something really powerful. My good friend Jonathan Stark has been doing. He's got a e-mail list of 100,000. He sends daily emails and I still have not unsubscribed from his from his e-mail because they're so valuable. Now. Every single e-mail, every single day's e-mail is going to be a little different. And it's just keeps the audience engaged with your content, with your podcast, with all the things that you're doing. And then he's got a little template of the, the bottom of the e-mail. I'm like, hey, come join my course or come go listen to the podcast. So those kind of things you could templatize in your automated emails so that every single time people are getting to know you. I mean, how how is somebody going to discover your new stuff if we're not telling them on a daily basis? And I'm, I'm a victim of just myself. I'm not sending daily emails either. So yeah, something to consider.

54:59 I listened to a show recently, Katie Brinkley, a lot of you know, Katie Brinkley, Rocky Mountain Marketing is the name of her show. And she had somebody on talking about e-mail marketing and he talked about how the fact he's emailing his audience multiple times a day, like, Oh my gosh, that just gives me the creeps. Like I, I don't want to do it more than once a week, right? But I think it's understanding who your audience is and what they're, what they will tolerate and then taking it from there. Two more things that I want to mention real quickly and then I'm going to go to Yvonne. So one of them was like, if you're using Speak Pipe, in order to have people come on and ask you a question on your show, you can put a little graphic right beside the link on your website that says this feature is brought to you by or sponsored by. I think that's a great it costs you money to use a tool like Speak Pipe.

55:50 Why not turn it into a revenue? And then the other one was you could do a feature on a small business, for example, I might call this in my show, a small business spotlight for an entire spotlight, this and what they do and how they do it, what makes them different, what makes them unique. And I could charge for that, right. And Yvonne had an idea of when I was writing these out, you were in my brain about like, oh, speed Pipe's free. I don't use it. But thanks, TR, for that clarification. I did not know that. Yvonne, you could monetize the sponsorship of a local roller skating rink that has AI hate to use the word senior night, but a senior night, right, That you could monetize and advertise that on your show and drive people to the local roller skating rink where you can teach them how to do roller dancing or whatever it is that you might be doing.

56:42 So I'm going to leave that into you. You came up, you saw, you had a question, what you would say you this morning. It's so funny, I I was raising my hand to say I listen to the radio. That was all I was doing. It was just an emotive. I should have done like a thumbs up you. And me, you and me, Yvonne, you and me, we're the only two 'cause I still listen to the radio every day too. Oh. My God, that. Was it? I was just hanging out and listening today, but thank you for the idea of fit. You're welcome. But one of the things that I wanted to do that we did not get a chance to get to today because we are over the top of the hour. So thank all of you that have hung around with us. Obviously this is a really important question, a really important topic about generating. One of the things that I wanted to do that I hope you might have a time to get to.

57:27 Maybe we can do it again after Mark is back is do a little bit of workshop and brainstorming around using couple people example like who are brands that could identify your show like Yvonne, we can use you because I think your show is got so many opportunities for different types of brands. Ashley, yours too, right? So maybe Mark, you can add that to the list of things we can talk about when you're back about workshopping, who are sponsors for your show and people that you could reach out to. There's so much about this particular topic that we can talk about that I think it is important for us to all explore ways that we can take our love for what it is we're doing as relates to content and turn it into revenue, into our business or into our lives. So with all that, thank you all for joining us this morning. Mark, we see you down in the audience. Hope that you guys have a safe trip to Madrid. Enjoy your vacation and your much, much deserved holiday. So with that, we will be back again tomorrow as we are every day of the week, Monday through Friday at 7:00 AM Eastern Standard Time.

58:38 Tomorrow Jonathan is taking the helm and talking about your signature style. So be sure and come back and join us again. And with that guys, go out there and make today great and we'll see you again tomorrow. Take care everyone.