Avoiding Middlemen: Directly Monetizing Your Podcast

When it comes to you and your audience, you wanna keep

anybody out of the way between you having a

direct connection.

Welcome to Your Podcast Consultant. Small lessons

with big value. With more than a

decade of experience and millions of downloads, this

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to work with you. He's your podcast consultant,

Dave Jackson. Look, I'm not

anti capitalism. By all means, if you got an idea, throw

it on the wall and see if it sticks. But this one makes

me scratch my head, and there are a few of these coming out. And this

is where you want your audience to give you value

in the form of money for the value that you

deliver to them. Now that's called value for value. I like that

model. I like it a lot because when you have a

direct connection with your audience, there are no sponsors

to boycott. There's all that stuff is out of the way. You wanna keep

it direct between you and your audience. And

so, consequently, if I am looking

into a service and they're like, oh, yeah. Just add this to your feed, I'm

gonna think long and hard about that one because if

whatever I'm putting into my feed or before my feed, if

it's a prefix, if that breaks, everything

breaks. And one that's slowly

coming up is I'm seeing people come up with these ways to

accept donations. And what I don't understand about

this is you can use a service like buy

me a coffee. So there's one. Right? You

buy me a coffee. Audience pays buy me a coffee. Buy me a

coffee pays you. I just did a episode on

this, and they're one of the best in terms of not making a fee. But

then there are other things that I go, I'm not quite sure I get this.

And there's one, and I'm just, you know, hey. Again,

kudos for trying something new. I just don't understand your business model, and it's

called Lenny dot f m. And what it does is listeners

choose a bundle of podcast to support for $4 a

month. And they say they're planning more flexibility, but they have to

start somewhere. And in US dollars, you pay

$4, and it's spit split equally

amongst the top 4 podcast, less, of course, a

10% fee to Lenny dotfm. And, again, they

gotta get paid. I get that. To start getting support from your

audience, just mention Lenny dotfm and use the brand kit for

your website. There's no new app for the audience and no extra

content crew to create. And we'll let you

know when support from listeners starts accumulating.

And I guess you have to have a a Lenny dot f m account. But

what I don't understand is what

what's in it for me again? Because if I'm going to ask

my audience to support me, why wouldn't I just tell them to

go to my website.com/support? And that's

where you can set up your PayPal, your buy me a coffee,

your Patreon, your Supercast, whatever it is. If you're using,

Buzzsprout has a way for you to do that. Now they take 15%,

and so does, Captivate. That's why, if you're just

looking for donations, buy me coffee isn't a bad idea

because you are losing 10%. Now

the other thing is you're asking your audience to give you

$4 or if it sounds like a dollar, which you're gonna get

90¢ of. Why are you putting a limit

on the value you provided? Did you

give more than a dollar of value to your

audience? Then why are you asking them to give you 90¢

back? That doesn't seem to make any sense to me.

Let the audience choose how much

your donation is. Because for some

people, $5, they're like, I don't know. $5, that's a

lot of money. And then other people are like, oh, $50. I got

that in my couch cushions. And they'll gladly give it to

you when you simply ask them. Now I do recommend that if you're

gonna do any kind of call to action, a,

mention it in the middle. But the other one is,

I if you're not gonna do any, do it towards the end. What

I don't understand is when people go, hey. Welcome to the show. It's the

Dave Jackson Power Hour. And before we get into the topic today, I just

wanna remind you, if you could go out to whatever and give me

money. Like, give you money for what? It's

kinda weird when you do that. Somewhere in the middle after

you've given them value, whether that's in the middle or at the

end or somewhere, I don't recommend right up front. I know I listen

to he said the guy that goes to church. I listen to a lot of

church podcast from time to time, and they're always asking for

money up front. And I go, you do know you are

pushing that stereotype that all they want is your money.

And it kinda sounds that way. So, again,

nothing against the fine people over at lenny.fm.

I'm just saying, a, why are you limiting the amount of

money, people give to you? And, b,

now it's it's the audience gives to Lenny, Lenny gives

to whatever PayPal, and PayPal gives to you. That's one

more person in the connection between you and your audience that

I just don't think you need. I don't understand

the problem that they are solving. The only thing I can think

of is, okay, but, Dave, what if I listen to 10 different podcasts? I've

gotta give money to this person and that person and this person, and

that's where I'm like, hey. You know, at some of these places, you can set

it up to just be automatic so they don't have to come

back. And I guess they

can support their favorite 4 podcast

in some form where before they weren't. Okay.

I guess they're making it a little simpler. But that's where you as a

podcaster, you have to realize you have to make this easy. It can't be,

oh, go over here and set up this and then buy some

tokens and turn those into whatever, and then I will

be able to no. Just make it easy if that's what you wanna do.

Now the other thing I need to point out here before we get out of

this is you don't have to make money with your

podcast. What? Yeah. It's true. I've said it

before. You don't have to make money with your podcast, especially when you

start out. I just saw someone in a Facebook group this morning, and

they were like, look. I am 30 episodes in,

and we need to start making money. And while I went over, number 1, they

weren't 30 episodes in. They were 10 episodes in. So I'm not sure

why. Maybe I'm missing something. But when you first start

out, I always recommend doing it for fun, know who your

audience is, know why you're doing it. Because if you don't get your why, you

burn out. If you don't know who you're talking to, you're not gonna entertain them.

But if you add on top of that, I wanna make money really quickly

because I gotta quit my day job in 6 weeks, that's not gonna work.

Because, a, it takes a while to grow your audience. I typically say

around 3 years, and nobody likes that idea. And, yes, there are people

that will sell you hope for 3 easy payments, but I've

got the proof if you want me to prove it to you. It's it's typically

around 3 years. The 1st year is awful. The 2nd year, you found your voice

and you're growing your audience. And by year 3, you have an audience that you

might be able to monetize. But I just wanted to put

that out there because some people think they're a failure because they're not monetizing.

And the reason they're not monetizing is they don't wanna monetize. And I'm

here to tell you, it's called a hobby, and it's fun. I ride my bike

every summer. I did this summer, and, I didn't make a dime. In fact, it

usually cost me some money to tune up my bike. So

as we talk about monetization today, for those of you that don't wanna monetize, that's

perfectly fine. Don't let others go you know,

it's kinda weird because nobody asked me, oh, you ride your bike? Yeah. How much

money is that making? Nobody asked me that, but they do with my podcast, and

I think that's somewhat rude in a way. If you need

help with your podcast, I would love to help you. It's

super simple. Just go over to, school of podcasting.com/join.

I'm Dave Jackson. I help podcasters. It's what I

do, and I can't wait to see what we do together.