When & How to Monetize Your Podcast!

Hey Friend!

In today’s quick tip Tuesday I’m answering a question from Brenda! “Hey Stef, when should I monetize my podcast? And how?”. I love this question and I can’t wait to dig into my advice on whether you should wait to monetize while you build up superfans, or if you should leap!

I actually give you a SPECIFIC POINT in time to KNOW when it’s time to create ‘the thing’ and how it can best be presented to your audience for maximum impact and impact. Whoop! I hope you’re ready to get your learn on!

Wanna be featured on a quick tip Tuesday episode? Head to www.stefaniegass.com and record your question on the home page.

I pray this blesses you!

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION:

(00:00):
What’s up, girl? Today, we are digging into a quick tip Tuesday question from Brenda and Brenda is truly looking into when to monetize her show. What would be the best time to do this? And I am super excited to answer this question, and I think it’s gonna bless you. If you are a podcaster, you’re thinking about podcasting, listen in, because my answer may surprise you.

(01:25):
Hi, Stef! It’s Brenda from The Little Kingdom Warriors Podcast. I just wanted to ask you when you would start monetizing a show and how long you would serve for free before you would actually create a course or some sort of monetization.

(01:39):
I don’t want to get caught up too much in trying to monetize it and lose the reason I started everything in the first place, but I would love your thoughts around this, cuz obviously hosting and podcasting and everything, all of that and the website and the email host, all of that adds up with money. So I would love to know what your thoughts are around that. Thank you!

(02:00):
What’s up, Brenda? Thank you for this awesome question and congrats on having your podcast and knowing who you serve and what you do. That’s obviously step one of this entire thing is having clarity, knowing what the heck you do, knowing who you serve and then going out and starting that podcast, which you have done.

(02:19):
So the next step that I really truly believe is creating a solution for your listeners that helps them implement all of the things that you talk about on your show. And one of the biggest mistakes that I ever made was creating courses and products based on what I thought people needed.

(02:38):
If you guys have been hanging out with me for like four or five years, you remember I had and even three years ago, I had an Instagram course. I had a Facebook course, like I had a funnel course, which is funny like none of those things were what people needed. None of those things were what they were asking for. It was just me trying to figure out what the heck to create, to monetize the show.

(03:04):
So don’t do that. If I would’ve known what I know now, what I would’ve done is get into my listener’s brain. And I would’ve looked for recurring themes around their pain points. So sending mass emails to my listeners, asking them like some really triggering questions, like what is the number one thing you’re struggling with when it comes to, and maybe for your brand, Brenda, I don’t know a ton about it, but raising kids or instilling a kingdom mindset into your children, or like whatever those things are, like, what are your biggest struggles and what are your pain points and what are you searching for?

(03:40):
Ask them, what are you searching for in the Google search bar? And as you begin to collect this data and this information, look at what you have to offer, what your pillars are for your podcast, and then see, do one of these pillars or one of your solution systems solve their number one problem.

(04:01):
And I highly discourage starting with a tiny offer or a mini course. I actually recommend that you figure out what the number one problem is. And you go all in on creating a course that solves that problem and let it be like the thing for like a whole year.

(04:21):
Now, another tip here is if you can’t seem to figure out what the number one problem is, start with coaching and coaching is such an easy, fun way to monetize that takes zero overhead. It just takes your time. So throwing out right onto the show.

(04:37):
And as far as when you can start this from episode one like, Hey, you know, this podcast is all about blank. So if you’re struggling with blank, I would love to grab a session with you where we can do blank, like just put out there that you coach and see what comes in. And I would just send them straight to an email address to ask you for the coaching prices sent to book, you don’t need a fancy sales page. You don’t need all the things.

(05:02):
Simply have someone email you to book. And as you sit down with three, five, maybe 10, but really by that fifth client, you’re gonna have so much breakthrough clarity and revelation around what are they actually need? Like what are they saying to me in these calls? And what is the verbiage and what is the actual problem that we’re solving here? That’s what you then create your course around.

(05:26):
Now, you guys, why am I saying to create a course? I mean, there’s a million ways, not a million, there’s probably hundreds of ways that you could monetize your show. You could create an e-book. You could affiliate market. You could have sponsorships, like there’s so many different ways to monetize, but at the end of the day, you created this show because you know your person.

(05:51):
And you created the content that you have here because you have these solutions in your heart. So why wouldn’t you create the course that helps them implement the free things that you’re already teaching. And it doesn’t need to be a big deal. It doesn’t need to have huge sales goals attached to it, but it does need to be there because before you know it, when you hit 10,000 downloads, 50,000, a hundred thousand people will be knocking on your internet door going, excuse me, where is the program that helps me implement all of these amazing things that you’ve taught me right here on the show.

(06:27):
Plus it’s a 95% profit margin to do courses versus anything else that I just mentioned. You know, if you are an affiliate marketer, which this is still great, and I’m not bashing affiliate marketing, I’m an affiliate marketer. I make thousands of dollars a month by affiliate marketing. So this is not to bash that. It’s just to think outside the box, but affiliate marketing is gonna make you between 10 and typically 30% commission.

(06:51):
Doing sponsorship slots on your podcast are like super low profit. You get like pennies or nickels on the download. So it’s like not much, plus you’re kind of marketing a product or something random. So it’s like whiplash for your audience. If you’re like, we cut to this short commercial to sell you this purified drinking water. But yet you’re here to learn about parenting your child, you know, like random.

(07:20):
Anyway. So let’s recap. When should you monetize? You should monetize as soon as you know your person’s number one problem. How can you monetize? Start with coaching. I think that’s a great way to get to know your person, to really test viable solutions and find out proof of concept what’s working for these clients. And what are they saying to you? What’s the verbiage.

(07:41):
It’s a checks and balances between what you think their number one problem is and what it actually is. Plus it helps you flush out your system. What are you doing on a coaching call? That becomes your framework. And then the next thing you can do is start creating your course. Now, obviously, I do not want you to go throw spaghetti at the wall and try to figure this out all on your own and fumble and bumble your way forward.

(08:06):
I do want you to know that for the next 10 days, 11 days, you can still purchase Course Crafter. It will be taken down off of the purchase options and off of my website on January 1st, because it’s becoming a 100% perk of being part of Podcast to Profit, because I truly believe that you need to be part of P2P to know all of the sales psychology and the sales page optimization and the pitching and all the incredible pieces of sales and marketing that go with having a course in order to make your course successful.

(08:41):
So I actually feel like it’s doing you a disservice to go buy Course Crafter without being part of Podcast to Profit, but wink, wink. If you wanna go there and do this on your own, stefaniegass.com/courses, and you can still grab that for 11 days.

(08:56):
Now, if that is not on your heart and you’re like, no, I wanna do this right. I want to take my show next level. I wanna monetize this podcast. I wanna rank, I wanna get found organically, evergreen. I wanna understand how to build a scalable evergreen business, just like you, Stef. I wanna use my podcast to generate endless leads that sell things on my behalf that send them to my courses and programs on a daily basis.

(09:21):
We sell multiple courses a week. Most of the time, multiple courses a day, 100% organically from the show. And that is what Podcast to Profit teaches you how to do. Now, you’re not gonna do that in 90 days, but you’re gonna know how to do that. We’re gonna optimize your show, set up your keywords. We’re gonna teach you big visibility strategies like podcast pitching and growth.

(09:44):
I’m also gonna teach you how to create your course program or coaching offer how to set it up, how to organize it, how to market it, how to launch it. You’re gonna get my sales page template. You’re going to learn how to pitch properly. This thing is so legit. You’re just gonna have to not quit because it’s gonna bring you so much success in 2022.

(10:04):
And at the time of recording this, we have two spots left for a Podcast to Profit January 2022 session. So if you want to scale your show, having 90 day immersion experience with other faith led podcasts, have my eyes all over your podcast, your business, your message, strategy. You have office hours with my program facilitators. It’s so great. Go to podcasttoprofitmastermind.com.

(10:31):
We will be shutting down all applications and we will not be taking anyone else after December 25th. So this is your opportunity. This is your chance podcasttoprofitmastermind.com. And last but not least, if you wanna be featured in a Quick Tip Tuesday episode, just like this, go to stefaniegass.com. Scroll down on that homepage and leave me a SpeakPipe question. And we will feature you. Let’s get those questions answered my friend. God bless. See you soon!