We’ve all heard rumors about the possible income of full-time successful podcasters, but can these rumors be trusted? Can you make money Podcasting – enough to replace your current full-time job?
In this post, we will uncover some of the highest-earning podcasters and demonstrate how you can make money podcasting.
The key to making money from podcasting is to have a large listener base. If you have not started a podcast yet, choose a topic that has the potential of attracting a large listener base.
You can do a quick search in an iTunes library to see if there is a demand for a topic you would choose for your podcast. If there is a demand for that niche, aim to create the best possible content for it.
If there are few search results, there isn’t much demand – so you have little chance of growing to a point of earning an impressive income.
Podcasting equipment can be costly. Not everyone has the ability to invest into podcasting equipment. There are podcasting services out there that will provide you with the equipment and the space needed.
Podcasters can make money in different ways. The two primary avenues are:
You may, while listening to a podcast, have heard the host say “this episode is sponsored by…”. These sponsors are advertisers that have paid to be mentioned on the show.
As you can imagine, the more listeners that tune in (or download) a podcast, the more money the advertiser has the possibility of making.
As a result, podcasts with a large listener base tend to get paid the most money for ad space.
The amount of money a podcast can charge for an ad is charged per hundred thousand listeners (CPM). Advertisement rates can range from $20 CPM to $100 CPM.
Here is an example of how ad revenue would be calculated. Let’s say your podcast has 150,000 downloads every episode and an advertiser pays $30 CPM for an ad.
You will make:
30 x 150 = $4,500 per episode.
If you have two advertisements in one episode, charged at the same rate, you will make:
2 x [30 x 150] = $9,000.
If you have 3 podcasts per week, each running two ads at $30 CPM you will make:
3 x $9,000 = $27,000 a week!
As a general reference, once your subscriber numbers grow to at least 5,000 per episode, you can start charging for advertising space on your show. If you couple advertisement space with affiliate sales, you have the possibility of making an impressive amount of money from podcasting.
Another way a podcast can generate money is via affiliate sales.
During your show, you could mention different products or services – and when they are purchased, either on your website or via a special URL you quote, you get a percentage of the sale.
The amount of money you could earn depends on the product. The most commonly sold affiliate products are Amazon products.
However, you could also approach businesses you admire and invite them to offer you a commission per sale whenever you promote their product/service on your show.
As an estimate, if your podcast has about 10,000 downloads per episode, you can expect to make between $500 – $900 per episode in affiliate sales.
Not all podcasters make their earnings publicly available. We can, however, estimate their monthly earnings based on the number of episode downloads.
This American Life is an entertaining, story-based journalism program.
They average about 2.5 million downloads per week!
With the average advertising rate at $30 CPM, this podcast could generate about $75,000 a week or $300,000 a month!
Joe Rogan hosts an entertaining podcast that discusses trending topics and interviews public figures of interest.
He is estimated to make about $30,000 per episode.
With about 5 episodes per week produced, his estimated monthly podcast income is $600,000
Chapo Trap House is a humorous political podcast that publishes two episodes a week.
Their estimated monthly income is about $90,000.
