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Do you have a podcast? Would you like to make money with your podcast? I am sure you work really hard on your podcast. Wouldn’t it be great to make a side hustle out of your podcast? Or even make that your main job?
Well, luckily there are ways to earn money from your podcast. I am going to go over seven of them today.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money off your podcast. How it works is that you get an affiliate relationship with a company. You share their links and when someone visits their website from your link, you get a percentage of the sale. You can share their links in the description for your podcast. Or you can list the links on your website (this is one of the many reasons why we think your podcast should have its own website).
If all of this is confusing to you, don’t worry. We talk about how to get started with affiliate marketing here.
Podcast Sponsors
Another way to get money from your podcast is to get a sponsor for your podcast. They pay money and in turn, you mention them during your podcast. This can work especially great if your podcast has a specific niche and target audience and you partner with a company that wants a similar target audience. An example of this would be if you had a health and fitness podcast. It would make sense for companies who make healthy foods or companies who sell fitness equipment to advertise on your podcast.
Sell Products with Your Podcast’s Branding
Another way to make money is to get your listeners to buy products with your podcast branding on the products. This works great on a lot of levels because it can also work as advertising for your podcast.
If you already have a WordPress website, you can sell your products with WooCommerce. If you don’t have a website, you can consider getting one through Weebly, Shopify, BigCommerce, or Shift4Shop. They help you easily create your own store and charge money.
Create a Podcast Membership Program
You can consider having a membership program. What I mean by that is you can have people pay monthly membership fees. This is a great way to make money. It is an especially great way because when people pay you fees every month, you can start to count on a steady income.
The only negative here is that it can be hard to convince people to pay to listen to a podcast each month. And that is because there are so many podcasts out there that are free. But there are a couple of ways around this. First of all, if your subject matter is very unique, then people may pay anyway because they won’t be able to find an alternative to your podcast. The second would be if you really hook people like if you say have a fiction podcast and people really want to know what happens next.
The other way would be to offer a free podcast but then have bonus material for anyone who signs up for your podcast. People might start signing up who initially would not have because people don’t like feeling left out. And by having a podcast out there that is free, you can use that podcast to hook people during the free podcast and convince them to sign up for the extra content. And that is how you will make money with your podcast.
If you already have a WordPress website, you can use Restrict Content Pro to create a membership website. If you don’t have a website yet, consider using Brilliant Directories, where it is easy to set up a member website and collect payments.
Taking Donations
Have you ever listened to a podcast where the host told you that if you like hearing content like this, then support them by making a donation? Well, they do it because it works. If people like your content they will want to help you out. If you use WordPress, you can use a donation plugin such as Donation Manager for WordPress.
Sell Courses
Let’s say you have a podcast that is instructional in any way. For example, let’s say you have a podcast about investing. You could have courses about investing and tell people on the podcast how they can sign up for your classes. And of course, you will charge for these courses.
If you use WordPress, you can use LifterLMS to sell courses. By the way, I know I have been talking a lot about WordPress websites. If you want your own WordPress website, you can easily do that by following our non-technical WordPress guide.
Write E-Books
Another way a popular podcaster can make money is by writing their own book. If your podcast is fictional, it could be about the same characters (like Limetown did). If you have a podcast about say parenting, then you could write books about parenting and advertise them on your podcast. Now, in the past, getting your book published would be the problem. But now, you can create your own e-book a lot easier and advertise and sell it on your own website even.
