Ep 46: 10 Ways to Monetise Your Podcast – for FREE!

[00:00:00] Welcome Back to The Lazy Girls Guide to Podcasting

[00:00:00] Verity: Hello there and welcome back to another episode of the Lazy Girls Guide to Podcasting.
[00:00:04] Verity: As ever, it is great to have you here and welcome to everyone who’s listened to the podcast before.
[00:00:11] Verity: And if you are new to the podcast or the YouTube channel, then welcome back.
[00:00:14] Verity: It is great to have you here.
[00:00:15] Verity: I’m Verity, and on this channel and podcast, I talk about all things podcasting.
[00:00:20] Verity: It really could not get any simpler than that.

[00:00:22] 10 Ways to Monetize Your Podcast For Free

[00:00:22] Verity: For this episode, I am going to be giving you ten ways that you can monetize your podcast for free, where you don’t need to spend a single penny to get started.
[00:00:33] Verity: If you have not watched or listened to part one of this series, then I would go back.
[00:00:37] Verity: It is the episode before this where I talk about the three things that you need to do before you monetize your podcast.
[00:00:44] Verity: So do check that out because there are some key steps that you want to be putting in place before you look at monetizing your podcast.
[00:00:50] Verity: But otherwise, let’s dive straight in with the ten ways that you can monetize your podcast for free.
[00:00:57] Verity: The first way that you can monetize your podcast is through sponsorship opportunities.
[00:01:02] Verity: Now, sponsorships are probably one of the most common ways of monetizing your podcast.
[00:01:08] Verity: It’s essentially where you promote a product or a service from a company and then the company pays you for the airtime on your podcast.
[00:01:18] Verity: The great thing about this is that you can start pitching sponsorships really, really early on in your podcast, even with a really small audience, because once you’ve put those podcast ads in your podcast, they’re there forever.
[00:01:32] Verity: So you can essentially turn around to brands and say, this is the cheapest that I will ever be able to offer you a sponsorship opportunity to include ads about your products within my podcast.
[00:01:43] Verity: And then you can get into negotiations as to whether or not you’re going to mention that service or product once, if it’s going to be five episodes, ten episodes, or whatever.
[00:01:53] Verity: Number two is affiliate marketing.
[00:01:56] Verity: Now, affiliate marketing is where you promote a product, hopefully something you like.
[00:02:01] Verity: Don’t go and promote a load of rubbish, please.
[00:02:03] Verity: You will give your listeners or your viewers a little code or you will give them a link to follow when they purchase using that link, then you will be paid a certain percentage of commission for the individual buying the product using your link.
[00:02:20] Verity: Really, really easy, really simple to set up.
[00:02:22] Verity: There are so many affiliate marketing programs out there.
[00:02:25] Verity: So I’d just say have a little look at what it is that your podcast is about and start to look at products and services in your niche that you can be an affiliate for and promote to your audience.
[00:02:37] Verity: Number three is merchandise sales.
[00:02:39] Verity: Now, this is a really, really fun one because you could get really creative with creating merchandise.
[00:02:46] Verity: You can go on somewhere like printful.
[00:02:48] Verity: Printify.
[00:02:48] Verity: There’s so many of them out there.
[00:02:50] Verity: You can set up an account for free and you can start designing either within the platform itself or you can create some designs on something like Cricut or Canva, and then you can use those designs in printful.
[00:03:04] Verity: The great thing is you can create all of these designs absolutely for free.
[00:03:07] Verity: You can use something like the free version of WooCommerce to then sell them through your own website.
[00:03:13] Verity: And if you’re not using WooCommerce, you can use wix.
[00:03:15] Verity: There’s loads of integrations to use them and sell your merchandise absolutely for free.
[00:03:21] Verity: Now, I say it’s free.
[00:03:23] Verity: I would recommend getting a couple of sample versions of your products just so that you know that what you are selling is 100% what you want to be putting out there.
[00:03:33] Verity: But in principle, you can start selling merchandise for your podcast for free.
[00:03:37] Verity: Number four is selling premium content.
[00:03:40] Verity: So, for example, you might have noticed within this podcast that there are ads, depending on where you’re listening, where you are located in the world.
[00:03:48] Verity: But I am aware that there are a number of my listeners who are not interested in listening to the podcast episodes with ads included.
[00:03:56] Verity: And therefore I am in the process of setting up a patreon whereby listeners to the podcast can pay a couple of pounds a month to be able to listen to the content ad free.
[00:04:09] Verity: So that’s something that you can look at as well.
[00:04:11] Verity: Setting up a patreon.
[00:04:12] Verity: Buy me a coffee, kofi.
[00:04:14] Verity: There’s so many out there.
[00:04:15] Verity: Is absolutely free to set up and to get started.
[00:04:19] Verity: Number five is tipping.
[00:04:21] Verity: I love this option.
[00:04:23] Verity: If you go to buy me a coffee or Ko Fi, then you can set up tipping options for your podcast or YouTube channel.
[00:04:31] Verity: I personally love Ko Fi.
[00:04:34] Verity: If you go on my website, then you will notice a little icon where you can click and you can donate a couple of pounds.
[00:04:41] Verity: If you are enjoying the blog post and the work that I am doing.
[00:04:44] Verity: And what’s great about this is that somebody might think, actually, I don’t want to subscribe to a patreon every single month.
[00:04:50] Verity: I don’t want to subscribe to a membership.
[00:04:52] Verity: But I really like the work that they’re doing, and I just want to give them a few quid just to show my appreciation and help them to continue growing.
[00:05:00] Verity: Number six is live events.
[00:05:02] Verity: This is not something that I have got into yet, but it is something that I have seen a lot of podcasters do.
[00:05:08] Verity: Now, you might be thinking, but Verity, a live event sounds really, really expensive.
[00:05:12] Verity: I have to hire somewhere, I have to get all the equipment, I have to sell seats and all this kind of thing.
[00:05:17] Verity: And yes, you could go down that route.
[00:05:19] Verity: But if you want to do it for free, then a live event that you can set up is right through Zoom.
[00:05:24] Verity: Or if you’re using Riverside, which is something that I love and I am using right now to record this podcast, then you can actually set up live streaming or YouTube live, but you can sell tickets to the live event and you can set that up completely for free.
[00:05:38] Verity: Number seven is consulting or coaching services.
[00:05:41] Verity: So if you are producing your podcast, then I’m guessing you’re probably an expert on something.
[00:05:46] Verity: I e whatever it is that you’re talking about on your podcast.
[00:05:50] Verity: You can monetize that expertise and that knowledge and you can start selling courses about your expertise.
[00:05:56] Verity: You could start coaching people in whatever it is that you are an expert in.
[00:06:02] Verity: And again, you can set this up 100% from free.
[00:06:05] Verity: You can set up a stripe account or a PayPal account and bill your clients through that way and it doesn’t have to cost you anything to get started.
[00:06:14] Verity: Number eight is public speaking.
[00:06:16] Verity: Now, this links in quite heavily to consultancy and coaching, but essentially you can get yourself booked as a public speaker on whichever topic it is that you are an expert in that you talk about on your podcast.
[00:06:30] Verity: And then you can get paid to be that public speaker, but essentially you’re not spending anything to speak publicly.
[00:06:37] Verity: Now, to get booked as a public speaker can require a little bit of legwork.
[00:06:41] Verity: You might need to be contacting different organizations to pitch yourself as a guest speaker.
[00:06:46] Verity: But equally what you can do is on your website set up a page that explains that you do public speaking, what you public speak about.
[00:06:53] Verity: And then also you might have your rates on your website page, but you might also want to keep your rates back to share with people in like a kind of little welcome pack when they reach out to you and ask you to come and public speak at their event.
[00:07:05] Verity: Number nine is brand partnership.
[00:07:07] Verity: Our brand wants to sponsor X amount of episodes.
[00:07:10] Verity: Brand partnerships tend to last a lot longer and you are promoting the brand.
[00:07:15] Verity: But not just that, you could actually be creating content that the brand uses to promote themselves.
[00:07:22] Verity: Brand partnerships.
[00:07:23] Verity: In my experience, a lot of those opportunities come down to networking.
[00:07:27] Verity: It’s about being open to conversation and also just really wanting to build genuine relationships.
[00:07:33] Verity: That’s how I’ve ended up doing different brand partnerships.
[00:07:36] Verity: Generally speaking, the upfront cost of brand partnerships is to do with your time.
[00:07:42] Verity: It’s about, as I said, making the connections, reaching out to brands that you are interested in partnering with and building those connections as well and seeing what comes of it.

[00:07:51] Tips on How to Monetize Your Podcast

[00:07:51] Verity: And finally, tip number ten is to join an advertising network.
[00:07:56] Verity: Now, depending where you are in the world, when you listen to this episode in podcast format, you may find that you end up hearing adverts both mid roll and post roll.
[00:08:06] Verity: And that is because I am fortunate enough that this podcast is part of an advertising network and that was completely free for me to set up and for me to join the network.
[00:08:17] Verity: What that then means is that the ad network enables me to insert ads within to this podcast.
[00:08:25] Verity: When you listen via podcast audio, YouTube is obviously completely separate.
[00:08:29] Verity: But when you listen to the podcast audio you will, depending on where you are in the world, hear different mid and post roll ads.
[00:08:36] Verity: And as I said, it is being part of an ad network that has enabled me to go down that monetization route.
[00:08:43] Verity: It was completely free to set up and it means that I get a cut or a percentage of any of the monies made through ads placed in this podcast.
[00:08:52] Verity: Those are my ten ways that you can start monetizing your podcast for absolutely $0.00 pounds, zero pennies.
[00:09:00] Verity: You can get started with quite a few of them today.
[00:09:03] Verity: Now I would not say go in on all of them, what I would say is choose one or two that work best for you and if you feel like after a few months that they are not working very well then maybe experiment with something else.
[00:09:16] Verity: But what is important about monetization, as I said in my previous video, is that you do not just go in and just have no strategy behind your monetization because that’s just not going to work.
[00:09:30] Verity: You need to make sure that any monetization that you put in place is aligned with you, your podcast and most importantly your audience because your audience are going to see straight through you if your monetization strategies are fake and are just not aligned with their own values.
[00:09:46] Verity: So on that note, good luck with monetizing your podcast.
[00:09:49] Verity: I hope as ever you have found this episode useful.
[00:09:53] Verity: If you are listening to the podcast audio, make sure that you are subscribed wherever you listen to your podcast.
[00:09:59] Verity: Drop me a DM on Instagram or Twitter at very songon.
[00:10:02] Verity: Let me know how much you’ve enjoyed this episode.
[00:10:04] Verity: And if you’re on YouTube, make sure that you subscribe and you hit the notification bell as well so that you are alerted when new episodes come out.
[00:10:11] Verity: Otherwise, thank you so much for spending your time with me and I will see you next episode.