Today, we are going to talk about how we make $1 million a year from
our podcast.
So the podcast I am talking about is marketing school.
So that is the daily marketing podcast that I do.
I've done it for about three years.
I have a cohost for that podcast.
The way we do it, I'll give you a couple of practical tips, but I'll
talk about the deal itself.
So the deal we have is the annual deal.
And it's close to a million dollars.
It basically pays us a month, but it is a contract.
So what I learned initially, what we learned, I should say, is if we
can publish a daily podcast, because a lot of people pay based
on not necessarily the number of downloads per podcast, but they pay
on.
The downloads we get per month.
So right now, because we're getting $1 million a month, let's say we
charge a $60 CPM, a CPM is cost per thousand impressions.
So 1000 times 60 is $60,000 a month.
$60 CPM is very high.
But the other thing I'll say is if you have a podcast, it's getting a
lot of downloads and it's in a, it's in a niche that is
very relevant.
So we're in marketing and if we talk about software or whatever,
people are going to listen to us, right?
If you can make it daily, do it.
The way I do it daily is we batch our episodes, my cohost and I, we
have busy schedules.
So we will do it, you know, once or twice, three times, maybe three
times a month.
And from there, we're able to constantly be ahead by months.
Do you want to make sure that.
You are, at least for us, because our, our frequency is above.
That's how we or our frequency is daily.
That's how we're getting so many downloads.
We do get about 20 to 25,000 downloads per episode, which is not
so not so bad.
If you are starting out, if you have some kind of audience, let's
say, have an audience on YouTube, you have an audience on Instagram,
you have audience.
Or you have an email list as well.
Utilize those audiences.
Tell them that you're launching this podcast and when you launch,
you want to get on new and noteworthy.
But the way you get a new and noteworthy is that sure you're
having a lot of people talking about it and a lot of people are
listening to it, but you're also consistent, meaning that when you
launch.
Lunch with five episodes if you can.
If you're not going to do daily, do weekly, but launch at the same
time.
It's almost like a show, like a, like a TV show, right?
You want to launch in like the same, typically the same days,
maybe, maybe around the same time herself, but that way people know
what to expect and if you're in the new and noteworthy, that's going to
give you a bump as well.
Usually when people launch and they get on a new and noteworthy, they
shoot up on a list and then eventually they settle back down,
which is fine.
Right?
And the other thing I'll say too is if you want to make good money on
your podcast.
You can use a host.
I mean, we use Libsyn, and then we post, whenever we post one podcast,
it goes to Spotify, it goes to Apple, it goes to Google play.
It's basically publishing to seven different areas at once.
So you want to take advantage of that.
You know, you want to make sure that you're repurposing to all
those channels and where you're.
Where it's very native to those channels as well and consistency.
So what I'll say about my first podcast, which is those of you that
are listening to this right now does actually go to the leveling up
podcasts.
After the first year, I was only getting 9 downloads a day and I was
spending six hours a week on the podcast.
After the second year, I was on getting 30 downloads a day.
I wasn't making any money at all.
But what I learned was that I was consistent because I was going
after the right goal.
My goal was to learn, and even when I interview people right now, still
on the leveling up podcast, which you should listen to as well.
I learn something new.
I get like today, I was interviewing in in the morning and
we set up some collaboration deals.
I'm probably going to speak at this guy's conference.
This guy might speak at my conference as well.
I'm going to be in his magazine, we're gonna try to do other
collaborations as well.
It's just, it makes sense.
It's a very, it's a very symbiotic relationship.
I had another interview this morning.
basically we're just talking about investing.
We're just nerding out on stuff.
And then we're talking about, you know, potentially hanging out in
LA.
So think of what your goal is for your podcast.
Don't necessarily think about just making money off the gate.
Cause if your initial goal is to make money.
You're probably not going to make money, right?
Unless you're like a large, you know, NPR or something like that.
You, you've already got the audience and then you're, you're
optimizing for revenue goals.
But the vast majority of you that are listening to this right now
focus on the goal.
The goal could be learning.
And then from there, eventually, once you start to build an
audience, then you can think about monetization.
Because for the marketing school podcast, we did it for three years.
Imagine this, we were getting hundreds of thousands up to a
million or plus downloads a month, and we didn't monetize it for the
longest time.
We didn't see a reason to.
We just want to keep building the audience.
I didn't monetize leveling up podcast for the longest time, and
now it's finally monetized.
But just keep in mind like you are playing the long game here and to
build the network, to build a community, to build up content.
It just takes time.
All good things take time.
And the other thing I'll say too, is listened to the feedback
recently.
Had someone message me on, I think it was Twitter, and one guy's like,
I'm so sick of your sinuses, Eric.
So he, he sent me a link to buy a neti Potter or neti Porter or
whatever.
Neti pot!
So I have a neti pot sitting at home right now, and now I'm going
to have to use the thing because the guy gave me the feedback and
he's like, please just use this thing first.
I could've said, F you- F you.
That's not nice, but it's real feedback.
So I'm going to take, I'm going to take advantage of that feedback.
And the next time when I actually start using it, it's still in a box
right now.
But whoever's listening to this that I forgot who said it already,
but you can bet your ass I'm going to sound amazing.
All right.
Now find the right partner.
Most podcast deals are maybe for a month or three months or so, but if
you can find a deal where it makes sense.
So for example, DreamHost sponsors the leveling up podcast, they
sponsored market school podcast.
But it makes sense because a lot of people listening, they are maybe
looking to, they're building new websites or maybe they're looking
to start a business.
A lot of people are starting out.
So it makes sense given the, the marketing school brand that we
have, and also at the same time, it makes sense given that, you know,
the stuff that we're teaching, it just, it's the right audience at
the right time.
So if you're going to negotiate a deal, you can say, Hey, you know
what?
Let's negotiate something for one month, two months, three months or
so.
If it goes, well, let's extend it to a year.
So you want to set a contract off and say, Hey, we'll do it for three
months.
If it looks good after three months, let's come back to the
table and let's make an annual thing.
And that's how we made it an annual thing.
If you can't do that, if you don't want to, if you don't know who to
look to.
You can always use a, you can always use a service like advertise
cast.
They actually have, salespeople that would go out there and they'll
go sell stuff for you.
Advertise casts actually is a sponsor on our on the single grain
website as well.
So just full disclosure there, there's a lot of different services
out there that are like that.
The final thing, I've kind of touched upon this point already,
but try to do annual, if you can, again, set the deal up where they
get a taste of it and if they feel good about it, then they'll renew
for annual.
And then you also want to build a relationship too, because what we
added on top of the podcast.
Is we added the ability to get access to the conference that we
have coming up, and we also gave access to other things that we
typically wouldn't give people access to, such as a meeting with
Neil and myself to help with, you know, kind of quarterly planning
around marketing and giving the right tips.
Because this is, this is a big company where if we help pull a
couple levers, they're going to grow a lot faster.
So it's actually really worth it for them to, to do a deal like this
because they should be getting at least.
You know that amount in value, if not a multiplier on that.
All right, so let me know what you think in the comments.
Do you think I missed anything?
Do you have any other questions about getting to you know, helping
to build a podcast to, to monetize.
And, if you're coming from YouTube, don't forget to check out the next
video over there and don't forget also YouTube.
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