- Joe Rogan has the biggest podcast in the world right now
and according to the Forbes list,
he also has the most profitable one.
Bringing in an astounding $30 million in 2019,
The Joe Rogan Experience is by far the leader
when it comes to top earning podcasts,
and so today, we're gonna take a look
at how Joe Rogan makes his money
and how we can properly monetize a podcast.
So let's jump into the video.
Hey everybody, this is Roberto Blake
helping you create something awesome today.
Welcome back to the channel.
Today, we're gonna be talking
about The Joe Rogan Experience,
the biggest podcast in the world,
bringing in a whopping $30 million in 2019,
so we're gonna break down all the different ways
The Joe Rogan Experience made money with this podcast
and we're gonna learn a lot about
how YouTube podcasts work in general.
By the way, if you are thinking
of starting a podcast yourself,
I'm gonna link to several videos that I've made
to help beginners launch and start their own podcast.
I'm also going to drop some affiliate links for Amazon
to give you a good setup for your podcast on a budget
or if you wanna be fancy,
I'll link to the exact same gear
that Joe Rogan is using for his podcast.
Now, while the Forbes list did break down
what the top earning podcast in the world were
and how much money they're making,
they didn't really get into a lot of details
about how these podcasts make their money.
And while I don't have the back end numbers
of any of these podcasts,
what I can tell you about The Joe Rogan Experience,
is it does make a significant amount
of money on YouTube AdSense
and I'm gonna give you some industry insider information
about how sponsorships and brand deals work,
especially when it comes to podcasts
that have a massive following not only in YouTube
but in terms of the number of audio downloads.
This is the stuff that a lot of people don't know about,
a lot of people don't share information about this,
but we do have some resources we can use
to start calculating these numbers.
Now again in full disclosure,
it's not like I've looked at Joe Rogan's
YouTube AdSense earnings on the back end,
but we do have a lot of good information
that can actually give us a rough idea.
We're not gonna just rely on Social Blade.
If you guys have looked at Social Blade
and then you've compared that,
the videos where I've shown you
in my actual YouTube dashboard
exactly how much money I make,
you can see those numbers are wildly off
and part of that, no shade Social Blade,
part of that is because Social Blade's calculator
assumes a 25 cent to $4 CPM rate.
Now for those of you who aren't familiar,
CPM rates are basically how advertising dollars
get spent in relation to how many impressions,
how many views something gets.
So in the case of YouTube,
it's basically the amount of money that is paid
for every 1,000 views.
Now, The Joe Rogan Experience gets millions of views a day,
not only on the main YouTube channel
but also on the Joe Rogan clip show.
So when we look at the numbers for both of those
and then we run them through a calculator,
adjusting for a much better, more realistic CPM rate
for this particular program, this show,
then we're gonna see some very interesting numbers
that helps us get the amount of money
that Joe Rogan makes a year on the podcast.
Now, remember we've looked at before
how much YouTube can pay for one million views.
We actually revealed what I make on the channel
for a million views in another video
so I will link to that in the description down below
and also in the info card if you wanna check that out.
Also I'm gonna link to my blog.
Every month, I actually share my YouTube income reports
where I break down how much money
I make from YouTube AdSense earnings,
Super Chats, merchandise, like the hustle hoodie
and the creator hoodie, get those in the link down below,
and also I even share with you what I'm making
on brand deals without naming the sponsors
and how much they paid individually,
and I show you my affiliate earnings
from the affiliate links that I use in my description.
This is not all of my income
and so I do have my coaching business which is separate,
my speaking engagements and other things,
and I bring this up because Joe Rogan
does more than The Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
You have to remember that Joe Rogan is a stand up comedian
and he does have a Netflix special.
You guys should definitely be checking out more
of what he's doing because I think you'll be fascinated
with all of the different income streams that Joe Rogan has
and that's actually a really important lesson
because if you wanna do a YouTube channel
whether it's a podcast,
whether you wanna do streaming on YouTube and Twitch,
or whether you want to do an audio-only podcast,
you need to look at the multiple ways
you can diversify your revenue
and create all these different multiple income sources,
just like entrepreneurs like me
and also entertainers like Joe Rogan.
So here in the laptop I'm looking at Joe Rogan's numbers.
I've actually pulled his daily views on YouTube,
from Social Blade, and I've imported them.
Now again Social Blade does its conservative estimate
when it comes to AdSense.
Joe has a very popular channel
so I'm going to make a very reasonable assumption here.
I'm going to assume that Joe gets a minimum
of a $5 CPM rate and a maximum of a $10 CPM rate or better,
just because that's what the sliders
will allow me to do here.
Now if you remember, I tend to have something closer
to a $20 plus on average CPM rate
and entrepreneurship channels,
channels that deal in money, or even technical channels,
software and tech and gadgets,
they tend to have higher CPM rates.
So, with Joe, I'm gonna put him in a category
as a high-tier entertainer and make the assumption
that it's a $5 to $10 CPM rate,
that seems reasonable, that seems even conservative.
And so let's look at what the numbers
come out to when we do that.
So on the main YouTube channel,
Powerful Joe Rogan, The Joe Rogan Experience,
Joe has about an average of three million daily views.
It's sometimes dramatically higher than that
just depending on what's going on.
And so conservatively, we can see that yearly,
that would result in about $5.5 million conservatively
to $11,124,000 a year.
So somewhere between five and $11 million
is already a healthy start that would put you pretty high
in the leaderboard when it comes
to the top earning podcast in the world.
It's definitely more than enough money
to put you in the top 1%,
but what a lot of people don't remember
is that the Joe Rogan clip show also brings in massive views
on a daily basis as much
as four million views a day on average.
And so when we look at those numbers,
applying the same $5 to $10 CPM rate,
we get something really interesting.
So when we look at that YouTube channel
and again I've imported the data directly in here
with Social Blade.
We're looking at an average per year
of $7.2 million to $14.4 million.
It's not a small amount of cash, right?
So you can already see that even if we play
the conservative numbers,
we've made up about a third of that $30, million
without anything else Joe is doing,
without sponsorship deals or anything like that.
And then on the high end, this gets us close
to pretty much $25 million.
So somewhere between $12 and $25 million
from YouTube AdSense earnings alone.
But we're not done yet, with the YouTube side of things.
Now, a friend of mine who works in the industry
told me that Joe Rogan's team actually
claims the AdSense revenue of people
that are repurposing their content
or re-uploading their content,
that they're either splitting or gaining all that revenue.
And while I can't accurately confirm
or deny that's 100% true,
I have no reason to disbelieve this person,
and this is something that's actually a common practice
from people who are podcasters, Twitch streamers, gamers,
a lot of times, their stuff is uploaded
as compilations or just re-uploaded entirely.
Instead of filing a DMCA takedown notice,
a lot of them just claim the AdSense revenue
for this through a private company
that helps manage that for them.
And so they get a portion of the revenue from that.
With Joe Rogan being such a popular figure
across so many diverse different categories,
whether it's sports, comedy, entertainment, politics,
there are so many people that are fans of his
and they're also freebooting his content
and trying to circulate it.
And so rather than not get the extra free publicity,
they just take the revenue.
So let's review real quick.
We're at like 12 million to 25 million
in AdSense revenue alone conservatively
right then and there,
and you have to remember that Joe Rogan's audio podcast
is the biggest audio podcasts in the world,
getting a whopping 190 million downloads per month.
That is insane.
Is it really a surprise that Joe Rogan
makes $30 million a year with such a lucrative platform?
Like the opportunity for an advertiser,
for a brand to get in front of an audience
of everyday people,
the type of people that Joe Rogan attracts
from all diverse backgrounds.
I mean, this is a great vehicle for brands
and so that's why more of us should think
about this important question.
Is our content a good vehicle for brands?
If you want brand deals, if you want sponsorships,
if you wanna make money from brands,
then you have to ask yourself, is your platform,
whether it's an audio podcast, a YouTube channel,
whatever it is that you're doing,
are you a good vehicle for brands
to be able to reach the average consumer
or a target audience or demographic
that they want to sell to?
Is your content something that helps
another brand sell their product or sell their service?
Be honest with yourself because that's why some of you
are struggling to monetize your platforms
because, honestly, your stuff might be appealing
and entertaining to an audience
but it may not be a good vehicle for selling anything.
Just a thought.
In fact, if you wanna know more
about how you can get sponsorships and brand deals
as an influencer,
I've done two very detailed videos about that,
I'm gonna link to them down below,
also up here in the info card
because I really think that that can help you a lot.
I talk about the importance of building a media kit.
I even show you the pricing that I'm using
and talk a little bit about what brands are looking for.
Now, in a past interview and this was in the past,
it was speculated that Joe Rogan or rather revealed,
I think, the way that went down it was an interview
where it was revealed that Joe Rogan
was making $75,000 per episode back in the day.
Still not small money.
So I thought about this and I looked into some things
in the industry, I looked at industry standards,
I looked at high level influencers
and the fact that people like Bethany Mota,
she's in a completely different genre than Joe
but she's been able to get as much
as quarter million dollars for a single brand integration.
Now, well that's a dedicated video
and what Joe does is more like ad reads and plugs,
I also have some industry numbers on how that works.
And so I was able to come up with a rough calculation,
again, being very modest, very conservative
after talking to a lot of people about this
about how much an individual mention or plug
on an episode of Joe Rogan might be worth right now
with the numbers that we're seeing.
And if you want a little bit of background
and also how I'm coming up with this,
so a friend of mine from the internet
who I've met a couple of times
and he's one of the most prolific podcasters out there
in terms of the entrepreneur space is John Lee Dumas.
He's an amazing guy, I love his program,
like it's a goal of mine one day
to actually be on his show as an interview,
and he gets over a million listens a month.
Now, listens aren't the same as downloads
but let's assume that they were,
John, because he publishes his income reports
as an entrepreneur and was one of the inspirations for me
to share my YouTube AdSense revenue
and share my YouTube income reports every month
kind of like what he's been doing with his business,
he showed us that he makes
about $50,000 to $90,000 a month from sponsorship.
Now again, if we assume one million downloads
for John Lee Dumas and Entrepreneur on Fire,
and then we look at Joe Rogan
with 190 million downloads a month,
almost 200 times the audience,
well, all of a sudden, we can start
to scale some numbers here.
And so what I came up with was I'm making the assumption
that for the three individuals sponsor plugs
a piece that on average are in a Joe Rogan podcast,
that he's getting at least a minimum of $50,000
for each individual ad read.
Now again, I can't swear to that,
but with the numbers that we have to compare
from people who've been on the record
and based on industry standards,
scaling what I know I've been able to get for brand deals.
I'm pretty comfortable and satisfied
that these numbers are conservative.
I would not be shocked to find out
that the numbers are higher and that individual brands
might pay even more to be in front of Joe Rogan's audience.
So with that assumption in mind,
that would mean that we're talking about $150,000
per episode of The Joe Rogan Experience.
And since we know that Joe does a weekly podcast,
let's just make the numbers really easy on ourselves
and say they does 50 episodes a year.
Let's just say he goes on vacation for two weeks, right?
So, with that in mind,
we're looking at a whopping $7.5 million
in sponsorships per year, it's not bad at all, right?
And again, I'm pretty comfortable with that number.
It would not surprise me to find out
that it was 10 million a year or even 15 million a year
given what I know about the industry.
And as I said, there are other people
who've put their numbers on record
so we can kind of apply the math and scale here
and Joe is the leader of the pack.
So when we look at that and we look at the value
and the size and diversity of Joe Rogan's audience,
is it really that outlandish that Joe would be pulling down
somewhere between 7.5 million and 10 million a year
in sponsorships and brand deals?
I think that that's probably conservative.
And so between sponsorships and brand deals,
if we assume the lowball number for YouTube AdSense revenue,
that would make up about roughly $20 million of the revenue
on a $30 million podcast already.
And again, I think that it's actually higher
on that number on the scale when we really think about it
and I think this is probably where majority
of 30 million is, it's the sponsorships
and the YouTube AdSense earnings across the two channels,
plus claiming the AdSense of any videos
that are completely re-uploading 100% or 90% of the videos,
minus any fees associated with that.
And then of course there's the fact
that Joe Rogan does other things.
He is an entertainer,
he does have his Netflix comedy special
and who knows what the deal was with that.
It's hard to get those Netflix numbers
and to know what people's deals were, and that's fine.
And then there are a lot of other opportunities
for someone like Joe Rogan as an entertainer
and I really think that when you really put it all together,
you can see that building multiple income sources,
making your platform a great vehicle for brands
and garnering such a large audience of trust and support
is really beneficial for you in the long run.
Joe has been doing this for 10 years now.
Joe started this in his 40s for fun
and something that was interested in doing,
in a time when most people would have said
that his career was behind him already
and that there wasn't any real like great thing forward
to build on top of and yet he did.
And so Joe's in his 50s now, and he's crushing it.
He's probably at the peak of his overall relevancy
in his career and at the height of his powers.
So when you really think about that,
for all of you that are saying,
"Oh, it's too late to do anything."
Joe did this in his 40s and he's in his 50s how.
You should be inspired by that
and you should look at what you have
in terms of opportunities to monetize your platforms,
monetize your hobbies and do something
that you really enjoy and it doesn't have
to make money up front right away.
I really don't honestly believe that Joe
was crushing it with these kind of numbers year one
or even year two,
I think that you have to respect the time it takes
and with Joe, you can see the discipline and commitment
of an athlete applies to a healthy business.
And so that's it for this video guys.
This was something a little bit different.
I wanted to really play with this one
because again, I'm a big fan of Joe Rogan.
I love long-form podcast and I love long-form audio.
In fact, if you're a fan of podcasting,
for one thing, I would love for you guys
to check out my podcast.
We're coming back with season three this year
and I have some great guests lined up,
I also doing some solo episodes
where I give you a deep dive into my own thoughts
in different topics,
so make sure you're checking out
the Create Something Awesome Today podcast.
It's in all the podcast platforms
and multiple links for you
are in the description down below.
Also, if you're a fan of all things audio,
I'm gonna recommend two amazing books from Audible
who are not sponsoring this video,
but Audible, hey, reach out.
So if you wanna grab a free trial of Audible,
I'm gonna link to that down below,
that's my Amazon affiliate link
and you can get two free audio books whenever you want.
And you get to keep them even if you don't keep
your free Audible membership and start paying for it.
And so two books that I'm gonna recommend that I just think
will be very interesting to you guys
are I'm gonna recommend "The War on Normal People"
by Andrew Yang, fascinating dude and a great read.
And I'm also going to recommend something
massively inspirational that I think can help
a lot of you who want to be productive.
I'm gonna recommend "The Miracle Morning" by Hal Elrod.
This is a book that changed my life
and I think they can help you change your habits
and it's also gonna be something I include
in my millionaire habits series that I'm working on.
So make sure you're subscribed and checking all of that out.
Like I said, links to everything are down below.
Question of the day, have you listened to my podcast?
Do you even know that I have a podcast?
And what topics would you love to hear me cover
on my new season?
Let me know in the comments section down below.
I'm gonna be replying to a lot of you,
and so make sure you're hitting that up.
Like this video if you like it.
Don't forget to subscribe.
Check out the other awesome content here on the channel.
As always you guys, thanks so very much for watching
and don't forget, go out there
and create something awesome today,
even if it doesn't make you 30 million bucks, take care.
(upbeat music)