Podcasting for Latina CEOs with Podcast Coach Heidy De La Cruz

How to Make Money Podcasting From Episode One! - Ep. 24

• Heidy De La Cruz • Episode 24

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Learn how to monetize your podcast effectively in this episode. Today, I share 7 different ways you can make money from your podcast starting on episode one! Discover how to turn your podcast into a thriving business funnel.


💬 In This Episode, You'll Learn:

  • All the avenues for making money podcasting. 
  • How podcasting can work as a business funnel to get clients. 
  • How to set up the systems to make money from episode one. 


🔥 Key Takeaways:

  • Integrate monetization strategies from the start, such as email list sign-ups, digital product stores, and clear calls to action.
  • Repurpose content across platforms like YouTube to expand reach and create additional passive income opportunities.
  • Clearly define your podcast’s purpose: Is it a passion project, an interview platform, or a business funnel for client acquisition and sales?

📌 Resources Mentioned:

✨ Connect with Heidy:

P.S. Do you know what is actually holding you back from starting your podcast? Take the quiz and find out! 

🎧 If this episode inspired you, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a fellow Latina ready to start her own podcast.

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to Podcasting for Latina CEOs, the go-to podcast for passionpreneurs Latinas ready to launch and grow their online businesses and own their voice with podcasting. I'm Heidi de la Cruz, writer, two-time award-winning podcaster, and podcast launch coach on a mission to help you build a life of freedom, wealth, and impact by turning your ideas into income. If you're a Latina ready to break generational cycles and create your own table, this show is for you. Let's build our dreams on that. Hello, welcome back to another episode of Podcasting for Latina CEOs. I am your host and your coach, Heidi de la Cruz. And today I want to talk to you about how do you actually make money podcasting. But before we get into it, I do want to give a little shout out to one of my editing clients from The Upper Flame. So please go check out the podcast. I have been editing their videos and it's been so much fun. I've been learning so much, and it's a faith-based podcast. And we have a little group chat where we obviously communicate and things like that. And I just love just like our work dynamic and just how like God really brought us together. And it's just really just been such a blessing to have them as editing clients, but then they always say the same thing about me as an editor. And I just I just love it. So I just wanted to share that with you guys. Shout out to the upper flame. Go ahead and check out that podcast. And yes, if you are needing an editor, I do have a few spots available that you can, you know, we can talk about. So send me an email, Heidi at heididelacruz.com or a text message. In the show notes, you can see the send a text option and we can talk about editing options. Now, let's get into how to make money from your podcast. Funny enough, earlier today, I was actually on a panel talking about the same thing, how to monetize your podcast. And I was like, let me take advantage that I still have my makeup done from earlier today and record the solo episode for Podcasting for Latina CEOs about the same thing, about how to make money with your podcast. So I had another episode talking all about like how to treat your podcast as an online business. But now I want to talk about like the actual ways that you can make money with your podcast. All right, let's get started. Again, the first thing that you want to get clear on is your goal with your podcast. Is this a passion project? Is this just to interview people? Or are you using this as a business funnel, as a way to nurture your future clients and as a way to get people into your ecosystem and then as a way to get sales, right? So you really have to hone in on your goals because that way you can set up the systems right from episode one and how to get people into your ecosystem. So, for example, you can have people sign up for your email list. Just like again, I have an email list at the end, a link to my email list at the end of each episode where you can go sign up, and every Wednesday I send out more in-depth podcasting tips, more behind the scenes of what it takes to run two podcasts, be a speaker, be a coach, do all the things, right? And all the lessons learned. I share all of that in that newsletter. Or you can also have a store to sell digital products, right? So Stan Store is my favorite, it's the one that I use. You I have an affiliate link with Stan Store, so you can definitely use that to open yours. But you want to have that set and ready from episode one. So then at the end of your episode and your call to action, you can tell people exactly where to go. Let's get into this. First way that you can make money from your podcast is sponsorship and ads. So sponsorship and ads are the first thing that people that comes to mind when people think about monetizing their podcasts. And how this works is that a sponsor pays you to promote their business, their product, their service during your episodes. So if you go to and listen to my immigration podcast, I have dynamic ads because that podcast is part of a network. So I have dynamic ads. So I got to choose the type of ads that I wanted to be played on the podcast and which ones I didn't want, right? And so each time that people download the episode and they listen to those ads, I get paid. So that's the advertisement parts. And then I also have sponsorships for that podcast. So if you go to the show notes of my first podcast, you will see a list of the sponsors, and those are people that have paid me to advertise their business on the show. Now, you can go two way about this. The dynamic ads, I don't set those prices. That is done by the network. They do the negotiations with people who want to do dynamic ads on podcasts. I just get paid per the download. And the sponsorship, I actually do set my rate. So I have different packages with different deliverables that I offer. And depending on the package that the sponsor wants to do, then depends on where I promote their business. So the highest paying package is doing an ad, like either they can do the recording of the ad for 60 seconds, or I could do the recording of the ads, and then I would put that in each episode. So you can definitely do your own rates. Um, and usually will depend, you know, on your audience size, engagements, and things like that. So you can definitely pitch your podcast to different brands and businesses. You set your rates, and then you know, you send out the pitch and let them know, like, hey, I'm looking for sponsors for the podcast. This is what I talk about, this is our my listeners, and things like that. So you can do ads or sponsorships within your episodes. You can either do it before your episode starts, during the middle of your episodes, or at the end. So the dynamic ads, I do have them in the beginning and towards the end, like right before I ask the guest, like what does the American dream mean to you? I insert an ad there, and then towards the end of the episode, there is the the last ads. Now, when a sponsor picks the highest package, then I will do a mid-roll ad, meaning um, they could record the ad or I will, and that will be in the middle. I haven't gotten a sponsor to do that package yet, but I'm very hopeful that we'll get there. And so, yeah, so those are the different places where you can put it on your episode. Now, I do want you to keep in mind listener experience, right? I understand that you're trying to make money with the podcast, but you also have to think about the listener experience for your audience. Like, you don't want to do a 15-minute episode and there's 10 ads in that episode. Another thing to keep in mind is that sponsors value niche audience, even a small audience, as long as you they're engaged, you can secure sponsorship. This is how I got sponsorships with my first podcast because it is very niche specific. So, one of the myths that people think about with sponsorship and monetization is that like you need like thousands and thousands and thousands of downloads. Um, you actually don't. You just have to know your numbers, you have to know how engaged your audience is, and you have to be like really intentional and know your goals with the podcast and pitch to brands that align with your audience, and your values align, your mission aligns, and that's the best way that you can secure sponsorship if that is a way that you want to monetize your podcast. All right, another way to monetize is by listener donations. So sometimes you can get your listeners to support your work. Um, they love your content, they see the value that you're bringing, and they're willing to make a donation. I have gotten a few donations for my first podcast, which has been amazing. Um, but again, that's not something that is, you know, always reoccurring, right? But it can happen for you, even though if it's not happening for me, but this is another way that you can make money. So you can set up donations by PayPal, buy me coffee or kofi. And then I do have it set up with PayPal. So I actually have a link with PayPal where people can donate to the podcast, and yeah, so I set that up with PayPal, and there's also this Christian organization. Um, I think it's called Waygiver. No, I can't remember what the name is, but there's a Christian organization that also does donation base. Um, you could do like different, so they're there are different ways to look at it from GoFundMe campaigns, right? So people can do it for like different reasons. And one of the things that I liked about the way that they're set up is like they also donate to nonprofit organizations, like part of like from your your campaign, right? So like they get a they get a percentage of the campaign that you set up, and then from there they also donate a percentage to nonprofit organizations. What I think it's really cool. I think that's the I gotta remember, I gotta look up the name and I'll include the link in the show notes and show description. Building a listener-supported show creates community loyalty, and every dollar will support your show. So that's one of the good things about setting up listener donations and getting money that way with your podcast. All right, another way that we can monetize is by having premium content and membership. So think of like Netflix, right? It's like a Netflix model for your podcast. You offer exclusive content that is only available for those paid members, and like they can pay monthly or annual memberships. And then within this membership, you can offer bonus interviews or content, early access to new content, ad-free options for the episodes, and a private QA session or live streams with you. You can set this up with platforms like Patreon, Substack, Beehive, and what else is some other ones. I think, yeah, there's some more out there, but those are like the big major ones. Those platforms make it easy to create premium content behind a paywall. I actually have a pay subscription for my immigration podcast on Substack, so it's$10 a month. And what I do is that I send on Monday, so they get a day early access to ad-free episodes. I also do behind the scenes content for them. And then I also have like QA sessions with me. Um, so that is exclusive for the paid subscribers on SubSec for my immigration podcast. So once you build a solid relationship with your audience and they want more of what you're creating, this is the best way to make money from your show, and then just you know, continue to build that community, that loyalty with your audience. All right, another way that you can make money off your podcast is by selling your own products and services. So that's pretty much what I'm doing on this podcast. This one is mostly talking about, you know, podcasting tips, um, how to how to monetize your podcast, how to make a podcast your business, and then also offering my services to you. So here is where I am talking about my digital products, I'm talking about my editing services, I'm talking about one-on-one coaching with me, my course. Um, so yeah, so this is exactly what you can do with your show as well. So you can sell podcast merch, like t-shirts, pens, notebooks, journals, things like that. You can sell your own books. So if you are a published author, you can use a podcast to sell your own book or ebook, right? Digital products. Next thing e online courses or digital products. So again, like a webinar, an audio summit, um, PDF, workbooks, like there's so many digital products that you can sell based off your podcast. Oh, there's also private podcasts. So you can set up a private podcast um where people pay. So it's like an exclusive, right? Exclusive content. So set up a private podcast where people pay to listen to that content, and then you can use that as like an audio course, right? Instead of just having instead of having only like video and audio, like it's just an audio course, and like people can binge and listen to that. So that's another way that you can make money with podcasting, but then that would be like another podcast, right? You can also sell consultation and coaching sessions again. Like I said, I have my one-on-one coaching that you can sign up either to start a podcast or to build an online business with the UBC course, and I have all of this available in my stand store, and so I include the link to my stand store in every single one of my show notes and show description so it's easy access for you guys so you guys can take a look at all the offers and see what works best for you. Once again, there's also the option of one-on-one coaching with me. So I do have a link so you can sign up to see if we are compatible, right? Because again, I want to make sure that we are a good fit to work on one-on-one coaching because it's a longer term offer than you know, the six-week launching the podcast and things like that. So that is available as well. Don't think that you have to be super salesy either on your episodes. You know, you just share your story, you share your tips, you share your experience, but then also share case studies. Like, right, for example, I am sharing with you guys the testimonials that I have gotten with my clients and the success that I have gotten with my clients. And I'm also sharing my experience as well with selling digital products on here. Just last week, I actually had someone buy the digital product that I created on starting a blog. And so I'm super excited that someone wants to start a blog. They downloaded the digital product and they send me a message and they were like, Yeah, I can't wait to share with you once I start this blog. So I'm really excited for that. And again, that digital product is just 10 9.99. I was gonna say$10.99. No, that digital product is just$9.99. So it for$9.99, you can buy the template that I created to help you start your blog, make money from your blog, and how to format your blog post with SEO, right? Because you need SEO to be able to rank on Google. And then, so going back to like not feeling salesy, so just share your story, share your tips, share case studies, share your clients' experience, and then sprinkle in how your listeners can go in deeper by purchasing a digital product or downloading your freebie and things like that. Another way to make money with your podcast is with affiliate marketing. So you I have a whole episode on the tools and the equipment and that I use with both of my podcasts. And when you download that list, all of those links are affiliate links from the mics, the headphones, everything. Those are all affiliate links. I use Whisper Transcribe for my podcast, that's an affiliate link. You can do the same. So when you talk about tools, books, or products on your show, you can sign up for the affiliate program to join and use that affiliate link on your show so people can when they purchase, they you will get a percentage pack commission. Or another way to do this is if you're going to do an interview-based show and someone is coming on to talk about their service or their product, ask them if they have an affiliate link. And then use your affiliate link from their product or their service on the show notes, and then you can get a percentage of the sales from your listeners. Like that is another way to use affiliate marketing, and that is another way to make money off your podcast. I also have a referral program for my podcast course. So when you refer someone to sign up for my podcast course or for one-on-one podcasting with me, I will send you$50 as a thank you for referring that client to me. And that is another way that you can also set up affiliate marketing for your audience as well. Stand store also has an affiliate marketing program. So that's why I say, like, I love Stand Store and I include that link in my show notes and show description. So if you also want to set up your Stand Store to sell digital products and sell courses, you can go ahead and do that. And then you can use your affiliate link with them, with your audience, and so on and so forth. All right. Another way to make money with your podcast is by hosting live events or virtual summits. So if you want to help other people launch their podcasts or, you know, your coaching services or your service provider, why not have a live event or a virtual summit talking about how you help people? Because again, this is another way that you can make money with your podcast. So you make money from this event by the ticket sales, if you have a VIP access, if you sell the event replay, if you have sponsors for the event, or you can sell um merchandise or have exclusive content for the people there. So when I hosted my first event for my immigration podcast, um it was a networking event and it was celebrating three years of the podcast. And for the event, I was able to get sponsors and I was able to sell tickets. So I actually did make money from that event, which was really, really cool. Um, and I've also hosted virtual webinars as well. Again, teaching people how to start their podcast, podcast SEO. Um I've also done like workshops and things like that. Again, teaching all things podcasting. So yeah, you can do the same for you and your services. Lastly, YouTube. Repurpose your podcast on YouTube is another way that podcasting can make money. So using if you want to do video for your podcast, you can repurpose a video on YouTube, and YouTube has its own monetization requirements. So it's like 4,000, what is it, 4,000 hours, viewed hours, and then it's a thousand subscribers. So you can definitely make money on YouTube. Many people do. It just takes a while to get there, but once you are monetized, you can make money from again passive income. So, like you one video can make you money like years down the line. So YouTube is another way that you can make money, either through their ads, um, channel membership, and then affiliate links again in the description. So make sure that you are set up from day one if you are looking to make money from your podcast again from digital products, having people go on your email list, setting up your stand store if that's where you want to sell your digital products, um, having people do a consultation for one-on-one coaching, having that link in all the show notes and show description. And then at the end of each episode, tell people where they where you want to go. And at the end of each episode, tell people what to do, right? Have one or two call to actions because if you have too many, then people are gonna get overwhelmed and they're not gonna end up doing anything, right? So at the end of each episode, depending on what I'm talking about, will depend on the call to action. So, for example, if you do want to set up your stand store, then the link to that is in the show notes and show description. I mean, this episode is gonna have a whole bunch of links because I talked about so many different resources, but yeah, just check out the links. However, it is that you want to start off making money, I can help you. If you want to do a consultation call with me, I'll include that link as well. And yeah, so each of your episodes should focus on one topic and then you're teaching on that topic. You are telling a client case study or a client sharing a client testimonial, and then at the end you have a call to action. So if you want to make money with your podcast, set up the systems the right way from the very beginning. And if you want to do a strategy call with me, let's schedule that strategy call. It's one hour, it's$70, and we can plan out how to make money with your podcast from day one. That's the call to action. If you have any questions, you can always send me an email, Heidi at heidedelacruz.com, or you can send me a text message. Use a text message feature that that BuzzBrow has. You'll see it in the show notes. It says send a text. You can send me a message through there, any questions, and I will answer. And let's schedule that one-on-one strategy call to set up your podcast correctly and how to make money from day one. So it is one hour, it is$70. I will include that in the show notes and show description. And oh my gosh, I am breaking my own rule because I'm having so many call to actions. Oh my goodness. Um, lastly, is sign up for the email list. The show the link to that is also in the show notes and show description. In the um for the newsletter, again, um, I send it out every Wednesday, and it's more in depth, more behind the scenes content of like how do I balance it all? How do I balance two? Podcast, how am I a speaker and a content creator, and all the things. So all the lessons learned throughout this journey, you can get more behind the scenes there. So, yes, now again, I'm rambling on. Let me wrap this up. Thank you again for being here. Thank you again for trusting me to walk with you in this podcasting journey. Thank you so much just for your support and for listening. And yeah, until next time. Thank you for listening to Mami Bacas.