How to make money from a small podcast. Podcasting Tips for entrepreneurs. Ep. 171

If you have a podcast and want to monetize it but don't qualify for ads or sponsorships, this episode will help you understand what you can do today. Your podcast can be a great lead generator and nurturing tool for your business. You can make money from your podcast, whether you qualify for ads or sponsorships or not. 

Transcript

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If you have a small podcast and you are looking to monetize it and you are afraid that you can't because it's small, I wanna assure you, a small podcast can actually make you money. So let's jump right into today's topic. I am your host, Rachel Lindteigen, and I am. So glad that you are here with me today, because today we're going to talk about ways that you can make money podcasting, even if you have a small show. So generally when people say, I have a podcast, but it doesn't do anything for my business, I don't make any money. Um, it's just something that costs me money. I hear that like I have to pay my bill for Buzz Sprout. I have to pay for script. I'm paying my podcast manager, but I'm not making any money from it, or I'm not big enough to make money from it. They're often thinking like they don't yet qualify for ads or sponsorships, and that's really the goal that they're looking for is to get to that point. And so they feel like they've got to get to the point of having this big show. So they're just investing and investing and investing in their show, but they're not monetizing it yet because they don't think they're at that point that they can monetize. And I want to assure you. That a small podcast can be very profitable for you, even if you don't qualify for monetization. You don't have ads, you don't have, uh, sponsorships. Like this podcast right here, 100% qualifies for monetization. It is an option, and I have not turned it on. Yes, I could take ads. Yes, I could take sponsors, and no, I have not done that because. I don't want to, and I want you to realize that your podcast, even if it gets to the point, that it does qualify for all of that, does not have to have that in order to help your business make money. So that's really the biggest misconception I see is that people think that the podcast has to be a big show with a big audience and get sponsorships. Thousands of downloads and run ads and all of that, and. That's not the case. So there are so many other ways that you can use a podcast to help grow your business. Now, if you are just looking to have a podcast, it's a niche podcast. It's fun, it's a a side hobby, whatever, then it's gonna be different. But this is what we're talking about today is a. Strategy for a podcast to help support and grow your business because that really is what's important is business podcast. So what I want you to think about are how do I generate leads from my podcast? How do I make. Sales from my podcast. How do I make money from my podcast without ads or sponsorships? How do I grow my small podcast? So what I want you to really think about is your ideal customer. What podcast episodes are you making? What topics are you talking about? What are you adding to the conversation? How are you helping them? Because your podcast should be a nurturing tool. For your business, it should be helping you bring in leads. Because if we have it optimized for podcast SEO, then it should be visible in the search apps. When people are searching for podcasts related to yours, it should then be able to nurture people. They should listen to the episodes, they should find them helpful. They should then hopefully want to work with you. Now I know that this happens. I was talking to a student the other day and she was sharing with me that she has a new one-on-one client. She's a life coach. She has a new one-on-one client who initially found her through chat, GPT. So chat, GPT recommended. Her podcast and her as a coach for this particular person. So they came and they listened to the podcast and they fell in love with her teaching style and her and her voice, and they reached out to her and asked, do you take one-on-one clients? Are you open? Do you have spots for new clients right now? And she said she sure did. And she got that new client because Chat, GPT told them about her, and then they listened to all the podcast episodes. Fell in love and reached out and were ready to enroll to work with her one-on-one for several months. The same life coach also had another new student who, a new client who came in recently. Same thing. That new client came through. Podcast app. They went in and searched a keyword related to the podcast title. This podcast ranked at the top of the search app for that keyword. They then found it, listened to it, liked the content because it was very applicable to what they were looking for. They also reached out and asked. Do you have openings right now? Are you working with people one-on-one? Because I want to work with you. I like you. So that is what your podcast can do for you. If you are being strategic with your content and you are creating topics and talking about things that would be helpful to your audience and things that they are searching for and you've optimized it. So that they can find you, and we do wanna talk about optimization on your website and on your podcast because having the right optimization on your website, especially AI focused optimization, is gonna help like show up where somebody's searching in chat GPT and asking questions. Then we also wanna make sure that we're optimizing the podcast itself so that if somebody is searching in the podcast app, it can start to have your show show up more often and bring more people in. What I want you to really understand here is that you don't need to wait for your show to grow, to turn it into both a lead generator and a nurturing tool for your business. So you want to make sure you have a funnel set up. Make sure that on your podcast you are letting people know that you do work one-on-one. You do have. Your group coaching program, you do have whatever product it is that you have in your community or that you help people with. Let them know how they can work with you. Or recommend or offer or share about your opt-ins, help them get on your email list, help them become part of your ecosystem. And then each week when you release your new podcast episode, it's another way. To help them nurture and answer their questions and help them move through the sales funnel so that they get to the point they're ready to work with you. Whether it's one-on-one group coaching program, your realtor and somebody decides they want to work with you to find a new home. You are an insurance agent and you're working with clients in your community. There are so many different ways that a podcast can help your business. You just wanna make sure that you are focusing on content that's gonna be helpful to your ideal customer and optimizing that content for the search engines, Google AI, and your podcast apps. If you have questions about how to do this, you want help, you wanna figure out how to monetize your podcast, I have the podcast group program that you can join. There's currently a self-study version of Simple, SEO, simple podcast, SEO, sorry. That is available. I am working on developing a group program where we're really gonna get into that lead generation, the nurturing, the content strategy, all of that. I am working on that. That should come out, I'm thinking in 2026. Um, so if you're interested in, you know, learning about that and in the interim. There. This is something that I help my one-on-one clients with as well. So if you have a podcast, you need to put all of this together. You want some help and some guidance, you're not sure how to put together the podcast funnel, all of that, that's something that we can work on, one-on-one as well. So lots of ways that we can work together. For now, if you wanna get started, there's the Beginner's Guide to Podcast, SEO. There also are beginner's guides to traditional SEO, as well as ai, SEO. Those will all kind of help you start to understand what to do from an optimization standpoint. I've got some other blog posts that'll help you with podcasting. If you just go to. Website, go to the blog page and just click on the podcasting button. You'll be able to see lots of other podcast blog posts, and also some other podcast episodes. I usually talk about this once a month. It's one of my content pillars we all talk about. We've gotta have content pillars. This is one of mine. So take a look at it and start playing around with it and seeing how you can make money. You don't need thousands of downloads to make money. You just need the right strategy and you can start making money from your podcast long before you qualify for ads or sponsorships. And you may be like me, you may decide you don't want them. Because sometimes the ads turn people off. I know we had that happen with a podcast that my son absolutely used to love, and I understand they wanna monetize it. I get that a hundred percent. However, the ads that are on that podcast now, it's a children's podcast, and the ads that are on that podcast are not necessarily kid friendly. And so we fast forward through them and it's very annoying because the entire first two minutes of the podcast are ads. And they're so irrelevant for the audience that it just turns us off and we're fast forwarding through it. And now he's kind of lost interest and doesn't even really wanna talk. Listen to the podcast because he finds the ads so annoying. So something to think about as well as you're looking at growing your show ads. Could actually hurt you in the long run. It's better to do it this way where you're using it to help nurture your audience, to bring new people into your world. So lead generation and nurturing is better, at least from my experience. Alright, that is it for today. I hope you have a great day, and I'll see you back here next week. Bye for now.