How do podcasters make money from their shows?

Jun 7

Joe Rogan's $250 million Spotify deal and Smartless' $100 million Sirius XM contract aren't just industry anomalies - they're proof of podcasting's massive revenue potential. In fact, the podcasting industry is now a 7.2 billion dollar industry and counting.

I know you can look at those numbers and think, “Yeah, but that’s only for the really big shows”. But the reality is, there’s money to be made as an independent creator with a small listenership. You’ve just got to be willing to put in the work and get creative. After producing hundreds of podcasts with independent creators, I've identified which approaches deliver results for shows of all sizes.

Here’s my snapshot breakdown just for you.

Sponsorships: More Accessible Than You Think

Sponsorships remain the most direct revenue path, and they're achievable at much lower download numbers than most podcasters realise. The benchmark is far more attainable than many believe, especially if you have the right niche audience.

The critical factor isn't just audience size - it's audience alignment. Sponsors care about reaching the right people, not just reaching lots of people. Even modest audiences can generate significant revenue with the right sponsor match.

I want to make something very clear here though - the quality needs to be top-notch. Before approaching sponsors, ensure your production quality meets professional standards. Poor audio quality immediately signals amateur status to potential advertisers, regardless of your content value. They will value your podcast lower based on poor production quality.

Crowdfunding

Platforms like Patreon allow listeners to directly fund your show through monthly subscriptions. The key advantage is predictable recurring revenue rather than the one-off nature of sponsorships.

For this model to work, you need to deliver genuine additional value. This could be ad-free episodes, extended interviews, early access, or exclusive Q&A sessions. The subscription tiers should reflect meaningful differences in value, not arbitrary price points.

Apple Podcasts' subscription feature offers an easy way for you to gain paying subscribers because it’s frictionless for Apple Podcast listeners. If they’re already on the platform, it’s a click of a button and they’re supporting your show. Spotify has similar functionality, but noting your show needs to be hosted on Spotify for you to access the subscription option for listeners.

I go into this in detail inside my Monetising Your Podcast mini-course. Feel free to check it out if you want a deeper look into your options.

Create Your Own Offers

The best strategy I’ve seen is through creating your own offers. They need to be tied seamlessly into the content of your podcast so that you can drop in a relevant offer when it makes sense to do so. This is the method that I have seen our independent creators generate transformational wealth for themselves and their businesses. It’s not a quick win though. It takes time to build rapport with your audience, create meaningful and valuable offerings for your listeners and “sell without selling”.

The most successful podcast-to-produc/servicet transitions maintain clear alignment between free content and paid offerings too. Your podcast builds trust and demonstrates value, while your products provide deeper, more structured solutions to listener problems.

Live Events

Live podcast recordings create unique monetisation opportunities through ticket sales, merchandise, and exclusive sponsorships. The in-person connection strengthens audience loyalty while creating additional revenue streams.

Even modest shows can successfully sell out small venues. The key is creating an experience that goes beyond what listeners get for free. You’ve also got a lot of things to organise when it comes to live events, and generally at least a couple of team members to help you pull of the event. There can be big money in live events for podcasters, but the marketing is key here.

Merchandise

Effective podcast merchandise goes beyond slapping your logo on a t-shirt (though I’ve seen this work quite well in the right niche). The most successful merchandise strategies focus on products that:

Solve a problem for your audience
Serve as conversation starters about your show (DOAC’s conversation cards)
Are items that the listener would need to purchase more than once (Call Her Daddy’s “Unwell” beverages)

With proper planning, merchandise can generate significant supplementary income while turning your listeners into walking advertisements. There is a huge market in merchandising, but it will take significant planning and cashflow to get started.

YouTube

Converting your audio podcast to video creates multiple new revenue opportunities:

YouTube AdSense (once you reach platform requirements)
Channel memberships
Super Chats during live streams
Sponsored video segments

The production requirements are higher, but so is the monetisation potential, but I wouldn’t rely on the AdSense money alone because unless you’re getting millions of views, it’s not going to be a huge income generator. It’s all about how you use YouTube as a tool to pull your audience into the other offerings that you have. I break this down in our Monetising Your Podcast mini-course.

Podcast Networks: Strength in Numbers

Networks aggregate multiple shows to attract larger sponsorship deals and provide production support. While major networks typically have significant download requirements, smaller collaborative networks are emerging for shows with more modest audiences.

The typical revenue arrangement involves a split between the network and podcaster. This can be worthwhile if the network brings sponsors you couldn't access independently. We’ve seen varying degrees of success with this method of monetisation. I’d suggest being wary of joining a larger network if your show then becomes a “small fish” in a “big pond”. You as the smaller podcaster generally don’t get anywhere near the attention or opportunities as the larger shows on the network.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate partnerships allow you to earn commissions on products you genuinely use and recommend. The key is authenticity - only promote products you would recommend regardless of compensation.

For niche podcasts, specialised affiliate programs can generate meaningful monthly income with a modest but engaged audience. If we use Bamby Media as the example here, we are affiliates for brands that we genuinely love and use. It’s an easy win for us to recommend these products to our listeners because we know they will be of benefit. There is no sleazy selling here. Your audience will see right through you if you’re recommending products you haven’t really used.

Don't try implementing all these strategies simultaneously. Select one approach that best aligns with your content, audience, and personal strengths. Commit to it for a defined period before evaluating results and potentially adding a second revenue stream.

The foundation of all successful monetisation is consistently delivering high-quality, valuable content. No monetisation strategy can compensate for mediocre content.

As I’ve mentioned, if you want further info on these strategies, check out our Podcast Monetisation mini-course. I provide tracking spreadsheets, email templates for sponsorship reach out and video tutorials to help you learn the ropes.

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Brianna: A quarter of a billion dollars. That is what Spotify paid Joe Rogan in 2024, and he's not alone in that either. We also have Smartless who landed a $100 million deal with Sirius XM and Alex Cooper who has a podcast. Call her daddy, which secured $60 million from Spotify. Wows, there is some big money in podcasting and you are not getting any of it.
[00:00:28] Is that right? You're not getting any of it. Here's the thing though, you don't need millions of listeners to make some actual real money from podcasting. Those three shows, they have huge listenerships. It makes sense that they would have big. Money involved that they would have advertisers like banging down the door.
[00:00:47] Please, I wanna be featured on your show, but you don't have to compete with that. You don't have to even come close to those numbers to actually make some real money from your podcast. Today, I'm [00:01:00] gonna go through a bunch of different ways that you can make money from your podcast. This is gonna be more like a brief overview.
[00:01:06] I'm not gonna go. Nitty gritty onto all of these things because we do have a podcast monetization mini course that you can purchase that will give you the full, detailed instructions, including pitch decks, what a rate card should look like, what rates you could potentially be charging, how to work with sponsors, how to get monetization other ways.
[00:01:30] It's a really solid mini course. So if you are interested in doing that, click on the link purchase that it's ready to go whenever you are, and you can start learning and making money from that. But if you just wanna know a little bit, let's just get straight into the different ways that you can monetize your podcast.
[00:01:48] Obviously number one is sponsorships. This is kind of the bread and butter for a lot of the bigger shows. Even with as little as 10,000 downloads per episode, you could be [00:02:00] earning a a decent chunk. Now, if you are looking at me going, oh my God, 10,000 downloads per episode, and you're saying like. Even with like, that's nowhere near a number I'm at, don't worry, because even if your downloads are a lot less, you can still be gaining sponsorship for your show.
[00:02:17] In fact, we have had a lot of success with smaller shows that have nowhere near those numbers. The target is to make sure that you are chasing aligned sponsors. The sponsors that would be interested in your niche. One of the keys to sponsorship is to make sure that you are actually niched enough that your content is good enough so that if a sponsor is interested and they listen to your stuff.
[00:02:40] It has to be good enough. It has to be like, cool. I wanna be associated with that show. And so if your quality isn't quite there yet, don't go chasing sponsors. Get a better show first. And then once you have a good quality show, even if it's small, you've got good audio quality, you know your niche, it's targeted, then you can [00:03:00] chase sponsors.
[00:03:00] And we will go into that in the course that I have mentioned at the top of the episode. The second way is. Memberships, and this is kind of like crowdsourcing your show. So you can use platforms like Patreon to create kind of this community around your show where they support you. And instead of getting a sponsor, basically the person listening is your sponsor.
[00:03:25] They give you a couple of dollars, you know, you can set the prices, and then from there they are helping the show. By contributing some money every month. You can also subscribe, like using Apple Podcasts for example. You know, you can set up like a tier that's kind of like a private show where they don't get access to it unless they're subscribed to it.
[00:03:45] You would've seen those. Wondery does that too. Lots of podcasts do that. Where to get ad free content, they have to pay money, et cetera. So that's kind of like crowdsourcing it's members, it's community building. That's another way that [00:04:00] you can actually make money from your podcast. The number three way is actually selling your knowledge like your ip.
[00:04:09] Now, there's a few ways that you can do that, and it depends on the content of your podcast, but you will see there are plenty of people that have courses, uh, workshops, consulting off the back of their podcast, and I mean, I just did it in the beginning of this. Episode because we do have a podcast monetization mini course that you can purchase that's leveraging the podcast into some form of payment.
[00:04:35] And I'm very specific with that. With this episode, it makes sense for me to sp spook that thing because it directly relates. So if you've got something that you can sell that is a course, that is a program, something that relates to the topic that you are sharing on. Then you can absolutely monetize that way.
[00:04:54] And in fact, it's a really great way to do it because you are not relying on sponsorships. You're not [00:05:00] relying on like having to put ads in your show that you potentially don't wanna put in. You're not having to, like with Patreon for example, you might have to add extra tears and then give more to the members that are.
[00:05:10] Subscribing, you know, it can be a little bit more detailed, more involved if you're doing it that way. Whereas if you've got courses, programs, digital products, you know, spreadsheets, templates, all these things, you can sell that way. And even consulting Consulting's a pretty quick way to actually make some income off of your podcast as well.
[00:05:30] We'll go into that in more detail in the course. There's a lot of different ways you can do it and there's a lot of different software tools that you can use to actually facilitate that stuff as well. Number four is the live experience. I've seen a lot of podcasters do this, and let's use Smartless as the example here.
[00:05:49] They did a live show, which I watched, and I just flip and loved it, where they toured. The US went to a bunch of locations and they had. A [00:06:00] live recording of their show. So it was Jason Bateman, will Annette and Sean Hayes, and then they had guests like surprise guests come on and do a live taping of their podcast.
[00:06:11] They also leveraged that further by then having, you know, a video production company come in. Film the whole thing. Make it like a documentary that's a step further. You know, you might not be at that level, but being able to put on a show of your podcast that's a live experience is a very cool way to engage with your community, get people involved, get people through the door.
[00:06:34] It's a scary way to do it, you know? You have to sell tickets, you have to book a venue. Is anyone gonna come? Oh my gosh. Chris Williamson did it just recently, modern Wisdom. He did a live like tour and it was just him solo with a microphone. That's a lot of pressure. If you're not a standup comedian and you're just there with a microphone talking about stuff, that can be a lot of pressure.
[00:06:56] But it is certainly a way that you can make money from [00:07:00] your podcast by doing a live experience. Number five is products. So this is more suited to, well, I mean, anyone can do it. This could be branded merch, this could be digital products. Your podcast can serve as kind of a landing zone. For things that you are offering, we could use Ali Abdal as the example on this one.
[00:07:24] If you don't know Ali Abdal, go check him out. He's on YouTube, but he actually launched a actual physical product, which was a mechanical keyboard, and that was off the back of his YouTube channel, his content creation. He wanted to do this product and then he could sell it. Based on the influence that he was able to tap into from his YouTube channel and his podcast and things like that.
[00:07:47] So if you are a show that is maybe more of a comedy podcast and you, you're not gonna like sell courses and programs and things like that, you could do actual merch. Lots of people do merch, [00:08:00] something that is kind of cool to wear and maybe it's a hoodie or it's a cap. It's definitely cool if it's the kind of merch that someone can put on and they're walking around town and they're, you know, it's free advertising for you at this point.
[00:08:12] So the product play is, is a really good one. It's a low barrier to entry. It is. It does cost you a little bit of money upfront to do, and there are certain providers that are better than others to facilitate those things as well. Number six is YouTube. So if you are a podcaster and you're not on video yet, it could be something that you could potentially do to monetize your podcast.
[00:08:39] There's a few ways you can monetize on YouTube. The one that everyone knows is. Through ads like Google Ad Sense where once you reach a certain threshold, which is a thousand subscribers and 4,000 watch hours, within 365 days, you can start monetizing off of your podcast, off of your channel. That's [00:09:00] one way to do it on YouTube, but there are other ways that you can do it on YouTube as well, which I'm not gonna go into here.
[00:09:06] But do know that YouTube could be a great strategy for you to monetize? It's a bit of setup. You need to film, obviously, your videos. They need to be high quality, they need to be useful. They need to be great for you to get to a point where you have enough subscribers and you have enough watch hours is gonna take some work.
[00:09:24] But that is certainly a way that you can monetize your podcast. Number seven, you can actually look at podcast networks as a way to monetize your show. Podcast networks are like a conglomerate of shows that are all under an umbrella. So for us here at Bambi Media, we have the Bambi Network. We have a network of shows that based on kind of their downloads, we can look at trying to find them sponsors.
[00:09:51] It's easier for advertisers as well because they will come to a network saying, I need. This kind of thing. Have you got shows in this [00:10:00] market and then it's a way to sell for you to get onto a network can be tricky. Uh, there are plenty of independent networks for you to get onto big ones like SiriusXM, you would have to be at a very high level to be even considered, but it is a way that you can monetize and there are certainly networks that take on smaller shows with smaller downloads.
[00:10:24] And the last way I'm gonna tell you today is affiliate marketing. This is certainly a fun way to grow a little bit of income from your podcast as well. If you don't know what affiliate marketing is, it basically means we have a big list of gear that we actually use in our podcast, in our videos as well.
[00:10:42] Every time someone clicks on one of those affiliate links to go and purchase that thing, that takes them to Amazon. Amazon then gives us a very small commission on any purchase that was made. There's not really big money in that to begin with, but it's certainly a way that if you are talking about [00:11:00] products and services and software and there are affiliate programs that you can join, then why not?
[00:11:06] It's an easy way. You just need an affiliate link. You need to be approved by a partner program, and you can start to be monetized pretty quickly through affiliate linking. But here's the secret, okay? You don't need to be doing all of these things at once. In fact, I would not recommend trying to do all these things at once.
[00:11:24] It's too much. Just pick one thing that you think that you could really go all in on. Try it. Try it for six months. See how it goes. Reach out to people. Set up a good system. Set up a process for how you're going to implement this monetization strategy, and then test it and research it and follow how it performs.
[00:11:45] And then if it's not something that you like doing, it's not resonating, then you can move on to the next thing, to the next strategy, all while making sure that the content that you're delivering is worthy of monetization. Okay. That's the [00:12:00] biggest key to this whole thing is your content, if you like, be critical with yourself.
[00:12:04] Criticize yourself a bit. Listen and watch back the content that you're delivering. Is it worthy of monetization? If it's not, you got some work to do before you can get to this step, which is monetizing your podcast. And as I wrap this up, I want you to remember Joe Rogan, call her Daddy Smartlist, Chris Williamson, Ali Abdull, all these people that are making big money off of brand deals, sponsorships, podcasting in general.
[00:12:35] They didn't start with a $250 million deal. They started with a microphone and a passion. To have a conversation, whether that's conversation with another person or conversation like I'm having right now where you are not responding to me and I'm just talking to a camera. That's it. That's where everybody starts in podcasting.
[00:12:55] The difference between where you are now and where you want to be might just [00:13:00] be a strategic move. So go and check out my monetizing mini course. If you wanna learn more, if you wanna get the pitch decks and the rate cards and the what it means to work with sponsors and how to put together an ad, how do you make an ad?
[00:13:14] How do you put music with a voiceover? What should you say in your ad? How long should they be like we go through all of that in the mini course. If not, this is all you needed. I'm so happy to have helped you and thank you for listening, watching, and I hope you have a great day.