You are a comedy podcaster and have a certain amount of listeners too but how you can monetize those listeners, but how can earn you money as a comedy podcaster?
It should be very clear from the beginning that don’t expect to make a million dollars overnight through your comedy podcast. Podcasting may seem very easy to many of us but go talk to one podcaster and ask him how difficult it was to earn from your podcast.
Most probably he will laugh at first. Then he’ll probably crack a joke and then he’ll make you realise how hard it is to make money out of your podcast.
How many of you reading this article right now remember Joe Rogan? Yeah, the one who started his first comedy podcast named “The Joe Rogan Experience” back in 2009.
The interesting part is that it took him several years to start making money from his first comedy podcast. He had to strive for 10 years to get his first earning from his comedy podcast. But now what is more interesting is that his podcast gets more than 1.5 billion views per year generating a massive revenue of $25-$50M/year.
Many of us now focus on just the money that he earns and completely forget the hard work and determination that helped him succeed.
A lesson from this real life example is that you need to be patient. Don’t expect to make tons out of it in a short duration. However if you keep yourself calm and be regular with it you can definitely earn a reasonable amount that is sufficient to feed the stomach.
You may have wondered how these podcasters make money. In the article to follow we will be discussing some genuine ways to make money from your comedy podcasts.
Ok, now, let’s come back to the topic, here are the various ways you can earn money as a comedy podcaster.
1. Patreon
Let us first understand the term Patreon. Patreon helps you build direct relationships with your most engaged fans. You offer them benefits like exclusive content, community, or insight into your creative process in exchange for a monthly subscription.
You may now put up the question that in what ways is Patreon going to help you?
Patreon not only helps you make money but also helps you build meaningful relations as you are able to interact with your audience directly in an ad-free and toll-free environment. Patreon will also help you widen your horizon for creativity as you have to create something that you and your audience loves.
You don’t have to restrict yourself to something that is popular in our surroundings.
Coming back to how you can make money from Patreons. Through patreons you are able to generate predictable income from your work through members who pay you a monthly subscription.
This method of making money has now become very traditional. People have now come up with new ways of making money. To know more about them keep reading.
2. Membership Site
Another way of earning is by starting a membership site. This will make you some good amount of money independently without the intervention of a middle man.
A membership site focuses on generating revenue from your listeners by providing them exclusive benefits, like access to private forums, slack chat, and downloads.
Consider you prepared an extra audio file on which you have worked really hard and the audio shares something that is unique.
Now you could sell this work of yours on your membership website. But make sure that the content should be genuine and worther otherwise your audience might lose faith in you.
Creating your own membership site is an easy task. A decent membership site can be prepared using tools like Podia, Memberful, and PodFan. These sites will allow you to either provide a monthly or yearly subscription.
It is worth giving a try to this method of making some money.
3. Advertisers/Sponsors
A very common thing that one could observe on popular comedy podcasts is advertisements. Many flourishing podcasts hope to earn with the help of podcast sponsorships.
Although getting a sponsorship for your show is not that easy. The key to attracting advertisers to your show is creating a large audience.
How many downloads does your podcast need to lure advertisers?
You would have probably heard of some advertisers including Squarespace, MailChimp, and Stamps. They will pay you between $20-$40 for every 1000 downloads to sponsor you.
You should target at least 50,000 downloads per month. Only then will big advertisers be interested in sponsoring your podcast. If you are unable to get to this number then might fail in getting sponsors.
A suggestion to you all at this point of time is to concentrate on building up a large audience who listens to you and cares for what you have to say.
4. Donations
This appears to be the simplest for one to monetize a comedy podcast. For asking your audience to donate you need to plan. You can add a payment option on your website. Another impressive method of asking for donations is to make use of campaigns.
On your website you can create a campaign which aims at collecting some funds. You need to let your audience know what you will be doing out of this money. Let them know that you are preparing something big which might amuse your audience. Campaigns with titles like “GoFundMe” or “FundForFun” could be really attractive to your audience.
Keep in mind that your audience has faith in you and for that reason they are donating a part of their wealth. Never play to the emotions of your audience.
5. Restrict Old Content
If you are into comedy podcasting for a long time now, you can probably use this means of getting funds.
If I am a new audience of your podcast and I start liking your podcast I will want to listen to your older episodes as well. So you could make your previous episodes paid. This will show you good results in a short duration.
Let people track your previous episodes as well. Make use of the hard work you had put in.
6. Publish On YouTube
This is another easy way to make up for some money. You already have the content, you just need to convert it into a visual format. YouTube is a reliable platform where you will be able to attract more audience and definitely make some money.
You don’t need a lot of video editing. You could just bring in a single image and let your words reach the listeners ears. No need to make it very fancy, let it be simple.
These were some of the most relevant ways of making money from your comedy podcast and should help you take your podcast from hobby to business.
