Monetizing a podcast: Sponsorship

The pinnacle of ‘success’ as a podcaster is sponsorship. I believe sponsorship to be a flawed and misunderstood form of monetization. The industry standard rates are quite pathetic.

Depending on whether you drop sponsorship mid-roll (midway through your show), pre-roll (upfront in the beginning) or end-roll (after you wrap up) you’re looking at somewhere between $10–30 a spot per 1000 downloads. Now these are not concrete. There’s always room to negotiate. Your rate is really what someone is willing to pay you. And that is based on so many factors: including how engaged your audience is, and how niche your message is.

When we come back to what the average podcast is getting in terms of downloads… if you are getting more than around 150 downloads, per episode, after the first 30 days you are in the top 50% of podcasts. Check out Libsyn’s podcast, The Feed, for more solid and up to date data on this.

You do the math. $10–30 per 1000 downloads when the average podcaster is getting less 150 downloads per ep. Yeah, it’s just not worth it. You’d literally be better off sitting in front of your local supermarket with a hat and a sign that says ‘feed this podcaster’.

There are exceptions to every ‘rule’, however, as a vast generalisation sponsors will be interested in talking with you once you sit above the magic number of 5000 downloads per episode. That’s the top 7% of podcasters.

For the top 1% of podcasters sponsorship could make sense (top 1% is greater than 38000 downloads per episode).

The other 92% or so of us are not making anything or a least, not directly.

I believe the majority of podcasters are way better off monetizing a podcast in more indirect ways than sponsorship. I’ve broken down a stack of options in this epically long post on all the ways you can make money indirectly through podcasting.

Having now considered sponsorship there may be a better option for you to make some $$$ from your podcast. Here are a few:

• Patreon
• Books
• Retreats and events
• Online courses
• Memberships
• Coaching, consulting or mentoring
• Public speaking
• Crowdfunding
• Donations
• Affiliate Marketing
• Merchandise
• Podcasting services
• Partnership and branded content

You can read the full epic post covering all these and more, here.

Go listen to more of Karly’s thoughts and insights on podcasting at Rock Your Mic Right and you can find out more about her work at karlynimmo.com.