Learn how to podcast and blog to establish thought leadership, extend your brand and engage your target market

Survey Says

A while back I sent out a survey to the community to find out what podcast producers wanted to learn about most. I was intrigued by how things had changed since 2005 when I first started podcast consulting. The results also offer some very important insights for your own podcast.

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I’ve had podcast monetization buzzing around in my head this week and I’ve come to a conclusion. If you want to start making real money, then stop being a podcaster.

Is there deliberate shock value in that statement? Sure. But it’s incredibly important to understand what I mean if you’re podcasting and have financial aspirations.

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In this post I’m going to share with you the strategy that is the most profitable for me as an online content creator. It’s probably not what you’d expect. Then I’ll share with you which podcasting expert quoted me about this out of context, criticized me, then censored my response on his blog.

In Q3 of this year I I used an often overlooked strategy to generate over $70,000 from my podcasts and blog. You might be thinking that I’m referring to advertising or sponsorships. But if you listen to my podcasts you know that I’ve never run a single ad (at the time of writing this post). Yes, advertising is the most talked about monetization method (and quite lucrative for many podcasters), but it is the one I use the least.

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A couple weeks ago I set up a new site and blog for the Association for the Downloadable Media. Since the launch several of the founding members of the ADM have been blogging on an almost daily basis. You should take a look since there’s some interesting content from a variety of interesting people involved in podcasting.

Here are three posts that I especially recommend.

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I’m a big fan of using Wordpress for publishing podcasts. I’m also a big fan of affiliate programs for monetizing podcasts and blogs (getting paid for sales from people you refer to a site or product). One of the most ubiquitous affiliate programs is Amazon’s.

If you’ve ever used the Amazon Associate Program to create affiliate links on your site, you know that it’s not the quickest process. Well the process just got a lot easier for Wordpress users.

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I have more to say on this issue of affiliate marketing and disclosure, but in the meantime…check out this video interview with Mary Engle of the FTC on the matter. This was recorded by the coBRANDiT team at the Word of Mouth Marketing conference.
 

It seems the overall trend in social media tends towards transparency when it comes to disclosure of interests and relationships. If you’re being sponsored by, have been sent something for free by or have a “conflict-of-interest” relationship with a company, then you disclose it in your blog/podcast content.

But what is the policy when it comes to affiliate links? Linking to recommended products & services in exchange for a commission is a potentially lucrative way for bloggers and podcasters to monetize their efforts. But is the affiliate relationship always clear? How explicit do you need to be when mentioning or linking to an affiliate partner in your content?

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In this video interview with JD Lasica at Podcamp West, Michael Geoghegan talks about how to make money with podcasting. He quotes a survey run by Gigavox Media, a company he started with Doug Kaye, in which one third of the podcasters who responded indicated they would like to make their living with podcasting.

Some of the interesting points he makes about how to do this include:

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If you’ve been wondering how to turn your podcast into money then you need to listen to the latest episode of Profitable Podcasting from Paul Colligan. He interviews Steve Prussack of Raw Vegan Radio. Listen carefully and you’ll come away will several ideas you can take to the bank.

This past week I had the pleasure of dining with Lee Gibbons and Doug Smith, who head up Podango, at the world famous Carmines next to Times Square. We batted around some ideas and I got a chance to pick their brains about their new company.

In brief, Podango is creating numerous podcast stations. Each station is focused on an area of interest, produced by a station director and aggregated from a variety of quality podcasts (with permission of the content creators). The goal is to make things easier for the audience to find content that interests them, for the advertiser to find quality content to sponsor and for the podcasters to make money.

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