The Real Secret to Monetizing Your Podcast: It’s Not What You Think

When I hear things in podcasting repeated over and over that just aren't helpful, I'm like, ah, time to hit record.

Welcome to your podcast consultant.

Small lessons with big value.

With more than a decade of experience and millions of downloads, this hall of fame podcaster is a featured speaker, author, and mentor to thousands.

Now he wants to work with you.

He's your podcast consultant, Dave Jackson.

All right, first thing I gotta say up front is, anyone who thinks this, you're not dumb, you're not stupid, but you are kind of wrong.

And that's based on the fact that you've probably been fed some content that is misguided.

And one of them is, you need to be consistent.

In fact, I've heard it say, just be consistent.

And you've heard me talk on this show that, yes, you want to be consistent in schedule.

It shows you as reliable.

But as I've said, I'd rather get a late show that was good than an on time show that was meh.

So it's really about the content.

Be consistent in schedule, but be really consistent in content.

Because I've seen this multiple times in the past 10 days, and that is, I have X amount of episodes.

I've been doing it for X amount of years.

And first off, again, kudos.

Launching a podcast is not easy.

Other people will tell you, oh, just start.

It's easy money from.

No, it's, it's not super easy.

It's.

It's kind of simple.

Find out what your audience wants and give it to them.

But that's not easy.

And so I'll hear, yes, I've been doing it consistently for X amount of years.

I have X amount of episodes.

But then I always hear, I'm trying to find sponsors.

And when you go to a sponsor and you say, hi, I've been podcasting for, let's just say five years.

I have 300 episodes.

They are not impressed because their number one question is, who is your audience and how many of those are listening to your show?

And so I say this, you do not monetize a podcast.

You monetize the audience.

The podcast is the tool that you use to draw an audience, to build an audience.

Think of it as the fertilizer that makes the rose bush grow.

My brother has a bunch of hummingbird feeders in his backyard, and it's amazing to watch these small little birds fly in.

So how.

Why do they go to his backyard?

Because he has these feeders specifically made for them, specifically filled with food that they love.

And what do you know he has a group of hummingbirds that during the summer, like, hey, I'm going over to Doug's house.

He's got the goods.

And it's amazing.

It's absolutely amazing.

And so it's not how many episodes?

Again, I'm impressed with that because I know that it's not easy and it's not the number of episodes.

What you've proven is you are persistent and that is impressive.

But not to advertisers.

They want to know how big is your audience and who are they.

And if your answer to that question is, I don't know, you are headed in the wrong direction.

And another thing that I've noticed is that when I talk about audience surveys, I'm doing one in December, actually end of November.

I'm surveying my audience because I want to know what they want.

I'm in the kitchen cooking.

What are you in the mood for?

Because if the numbers go down, so many people think it's because of my microphone.

Maybe I need to switch media hosts.

Maybe I need new artwork.

And almost always in that case, unless your artwork was drawn by a three year old with a crayon, your artwork is probably okay.

Can it always be better?

Sure.

But it's not the reason people aren't listening.

And it's not because your media host, your media host, to me, it's like, which.

Which car do you want to drive long distance with?

Do you want to go in a minivan with a bunch of cupholders and really comfortable seats?

Or do you want to go in the Toyota Corolla, which is not a bad car.

I have one, but I don't know that I would want to drive cross country with that.

And it's about the interface, but in the end, they Both can do 80 miles an hour.

It's just.

Is one more comfortable than the other?

Neither one is going to get you a bigger audience because people aren't tuning in.

Hey, have you heard this new show they're on?

Captivate?

Nobody cares.

Nobody cares.

What they tell their friends about is the content.

And so when you say, I need a new microphone and you're using something like a Samson Q2U or Audio Technica ATR 2100.

Both those microphones are under $100 and they're perfectly fine.

If your audience isn't saying your audio sounds bad, you probably don't need a new microphone.

When do you change out a microphone?

When your audience says it's bad, or B, you don't feel confident behind the microphone I'm using right now?

A Rode Pod mic.

It's $200.

I have a Shure SM7B sitting behind me.

That's a $400 microphone.

Why do I use this microphone?

Because I like the sound of my voice on it.

And so.

But my audience could care less.

Nobody's ever said, hey, your.

Your podcast sounds like crap.

So your media host isn't going to grow your audience.

Your audio isn't going to grow your audience unless it was really bad.

Your media host isn't going to grow your audience.

But guess what all those are.

They're an easy fix.

I can buy a microphone, plug it in, and have that done in, you know, five minutes if I go to Best Buy, which is not where I would buy my microphones, but you get the idea.

I could change the artwork in less than an hour.

I could do all this stuff, and it seems like I'm making progress.

But you're keeping yourself busy when you're not really addressing the key ingredient.

The key ingredient in an apple pie is the apples, right?

But we're going to focus on the crust.

We're going to focus on all this other stuff.

And look, a bad crust can ruin a pie.

But you know what I'm saying here?

It's the content.

And that's the hard part, because we rarely get a chance to sit face to face with our audience and go, so, what are you looking for?

What can I do to make the show better?

Unless you do one thing.

Ask them.

And here's the thing.

My next episode is going to be about this.

When I was in college, the first time I was putting myself through school, I was running a household.

My mother had recently passed away, and I didn't really care about grades.

I just want to get through this.

In fact, my last semester, I was kind of like, I'm either going to die or I'm going to graduate.

My second time, when I went to get my teaching degree, I was kind of like, all right, well, I don't have all that going on now, and I'm actually going to try to get good grades.

And it was kind of frightening because it's one thing to get bad grades when you have that reaction of, like, well, what was I supposed to do?

I was working 30 hours a week and running a house and blah, blah, blah.

And that's why I got bad grades.

But now, what if I tried and I still got bad grades?

Would that mean I'm stupid?

Ooh, that's kind of scary.

There's the old line for singers.

If you sing in your Range.

Everyone thinks your range is endless, but the minute you sing outside of it and go a little too high, everybody goes, oh, not as good as I thought she was.

Not as good as he is.

And maybe that's why we shy away from really focusing on the content.

Because what if I try to make really good content and I still fail?

I'm going down swinging myself.

I'm going down knowing I based my decisions on what my audience wanted.

Maybe it didn't resonate.

Remember, there are two ingredients.

There's content and there's delivery.

Maybe you just don't like my somewhat kind of like, look, I'm just telling it like it is kind of style my sarcasm for whatever reason.

Maybe you just don't like the way I come across and I get that I'm not going to please everyone.

I do know I want to help you.

I do know I can see and understand what you're going through and point you in the right direction.

The question is, are you ready to do something that might be a little scary?

And I'm here to tell you, I've started over probably 30 podcasts and some of them just didn't work.

And I can tell you why.

And that's one of the reasons why for me, anytime you try anything and it doesn't work, it's not failure, it's a lesson.

It's a learning opportunity.

And then you take that knowledge and you turn around and you put it back into podcast number two.

It's really that simple.

It's not the end of the line.

It's the beginning of a new one.

Now, if you need help with that, simply go out to the Show Notes.

I'll have a link there where if you want to hire me for one on one consulting, you can.

But I'm here to tell you it's a much better deal to join the school of podcasting for a month.

You have 30 days to figure out if you like it or not.

I will give you your money back and you get unlimited coaching.

So you can buy coaching once for about double the price.

Or you could join the school of podcasting and get unlimited amounts of me, as well as step by step tutorials as well as an amazing podcast community.

So don't be afraid, because you can do this.

You've done hard things in the past and you can do this.

I look forward to working with you.

I'm Dave Jackson.

I help podcasters.

It's what I do.

And I can't wait to be your podcast consultant.