Why Podcasters need to think outside of Advertisements, when it comes to Monetization?

Photo by israel palacio on Unsplash

Podcasting in India today is like, what Blogging was about 5–6 years back — Something that everybody wants to get into, but has no clue about how and why!

And hence it probably made sense for the meetups, that a group of enthusiastic Indian podcasters kicked off about 3 quarters back.

We saw the attendance going up from about 8–9 people to about 20–21 in the last one. This was another indication that the first statement that I made in this post is right — there are people who are still trying to figure out what this entire “Podcasting” thing is about and wanted to connect with others who have already tested the waters.

While we could pass on some golden nuggets in how to get started and promote a podcast, one thing that most people including the seasoned Podcasters struggled with was “monetizing”.

When this beast walked into the room, every one of the Podcasters in the room seemed to know how to conquer it and had the plan ready.

Albeit, the only problem with this plan was that none of us had got an opportunity to try out this plan to see if it really works.

And the ones who did, hadn’t quite seen the kind of results that they were expecting.

Podcast Advertising — What is that and How effective is it?

We have a few agencies through which we get advertisements for our blog. When one such agency was negotiating on a requirement, they happened to ask me, if I had any other “assets” that I would like to negotiate for some ads.

I told them about our podcast @thetastesofindia, which had a decent number of listens. The marketing guy was slightly stumped at that proposal because he had no clue about what advertising on a podcast meant. Probably that was new for him.

This was the case with a couple of other agencies as well. Maybe, we were speaking to the wrong agencies. But whatever the case may be, I knew one thing for a fact that advertising on podcasts wasn’t really a known thing at least in India.

Now, I have heard a lot of advertisements on successful podcasts like Entrepreneur on Fire and as per his income reports his last declared sponsorship earnings were at around $45,000.

So that means that there could be other agencies out there who would be negotiating advertisements on Podcasts. But those agencies wouldn’t have opportunities for a Podcast that has “decent number of listens”. Instead they would be on the lookout for podcast with a lot of listens or, downloads as the case may be, just as in the case of Entrepreneur on Fire.

One such advertisement placement service is offered by Stitcher through their brand named Midroll.

But we are yet to see something like that at least in India.

Another pertinent question to ask at this point is — how effective is Podcast advertising?

Again we wouldn’t have a lot of data for the Indian market. But Nielsen had done a study some time back about the effectiveness of Podcast advertising.

Here are just some of the things that the study inferred —

1. 57% of the podcast ads Nielsen tested outperformed the video pre-rolls for intent to purchase.
2. Almost 70% of respondents said that podcast ads increased the listeners’ brand awareness.
3. Reactions to podcast ads were generally positive among the respondents, with 78% saying they don’t mind ads or sponsors because the listener knows they support the podcast.
4. Eighty-three percent said show hosts are authentic and natural in reading the spots, and
5. 74% said sponsors were a good match for show content.

All of this means that Podcast advertising is indeed effective. And hence it would be safe to assume that it is just a matter of time before we see advertisement agencies like Midroll, in India.

But, will it be effective in India, is a different thing altogether and something that we will have to wait and see.

A dipstick that we did with a small group of listeners wasn’t very encouraging. But I would like to dismiss this conveniently at this point and say that we are a little too early to do that kind of a study in India.

So what about the Podcasters? What are their options in terms of monetization, if not advertisements?

Monetizing a Podcast — Alternatives

I remember this nice tip from one of the webinars that I had attended, which was hosted by Pat Flynn.

He said that, “it was important to look at alternative ways of monetizing your podcasts, instead of focusing on sponsorships and advertisements”.

If you are a regular reader of his blog or, a listener of his podcast you will know that he doesn’t earn a lot from podcast sponsorships.

His last income report showed his earnings from podcast sponsorships at around $3400.

Pat Flynn’s “Smart Passive Income” podcast is one of the top podcasts in the business and marketing niche. It gets a ton of downloads every month per episode.

And hence in that context, his suggestion to look at other avenues of monetizing a podcast carries a lot of weightage.

But, then the big question is what are these alternative avenues?

We tried an experiment in one of our episodes, where we recommended a specific product and gave a link out, to order it. The link was a cloaked affiliate link that we had shortened for the sake of easy communication and ease-of-remembering.

We were surprised to see that about 14 people actually visited that link and 2 bought the product for which we earned commissions.

This small experiment proved one thing from Nielsen’s study — that mentions during a podcast increased the brand awareness of the listeners.

It also proved another point — that affiliate marketing was a good alternative option for Podcasters.

Another good option that Podcasters can explore is to promote your products and services, if you have one. If you don’t, then you might want to consider creating one.

And both of these would yield better results than advertisements.

Why?

Because advertisements in the current scenario, unless they are fixed sponsorship amounts, payout on a CPM basis. And for any podcast that has a “decent listens” like ours, it would be months before we will see any decent amount being accumulated.

Compare that to affiliate income and depending upon the kind of products that you promote in your podcast, the commissions could be extremely good.

It really did make sense to look for alternative monetization methods rather than relying on advertisements or, Patreon.

But, then again there is another point that needs to be looked at here — is there an affiliate opportunity in the niche that your podcast is in?

If not affiliate marketing, then what other monetization opportunities do you see for your podcast?

The answer to these questions is what would define, if a podcast still exists and continues to release new episodes, about 2–3 years from now.