The Money Chase

Sarah Burke (Voiceover)  0:01  
Music. Welcome to the podcast. Super Friends, five podcast producers from across North America get together to discuss podcasting.

Jon Gay  0:13  
Money talks. So we're talking about money today. See what I did there. Okay, so a lot of people, when they get into podcasts, next Joe Rogan, they want to be the next big star and make all these millions of dollars of podcasting. I think I speak for all four of us when I say that that's typically not how it works. We're going to get into the smaller podcaster piece of this in a moment, but I want to start with some big names in podcasting, three large podcasts that caught our attention this month. We're really trying to do, for lack of a better term, a money grab. And those would be, we're gonna be equal opportunity here. We'll start with POD save America. They have a couple shows that are paid to subscribe. They're promoting on their main pod save America show. I only did hear one promo for the show. The promo was not very good. It did not make me want to spend a lot of money, but I suppose there are people who may want to spend money in an election cycle. On the other end of the spectrum, Tucker Carlson's podcast is riddled with ads, ads and ads and ads and ads and ads, and then somewhat closer to the middle, I mean, not quite the middle of the New York Times, The Daily from the New York Times, one of the top podcasts out as well. They are going to make put their archive behind a paywall so you can still subscribe. You can still listen to that morning's show, but if you want to go back into the archives, say you were working on a report, wanted to hear their deep dive on a particular topic from 2019 you would have to pay to access that. So it seems people are really trying to find more ways to monetize podcasting. So hive, where do we start with all this information.

Johnny Podcasts  1:41  
Well, part of me wonders is this because, like, we're looking down, depending on how you look at it, we're looking off the cliff at a recession right now. So they're trying to just grab as much money as they can right now. Because it seems really recent that a lot of this, like advertising pop, is happening. I feel like six months ago, this wasn't a conversation we were having.

Jon Gay  1:58  
I'll push back on that, Johnny, because I feel like, you know this, we're recording this now on august 6, and of course, we had the big dip in the market yesterday, which is some people concerned. But this has been going on for a few weeks, a few months, and I kind of feel like it's that whole beholden to the stockholders thing, where you've got to make more money. Always make more money, regardless of the financial you know, the economy true, because

Johnny Podcasts  2:17  
they did spend, you know, all these companies have spent so much money on podcasting, whether it's acquiring IP or developing shows in house, that they're realizing, Oh, these are actually a lot harder to monetize. Spotify.

Jon Gay  2:27  
The biggest example of that where they spend hundreds of millions of dollars throwing money at celebrities, for example, William and Kate, and it never went anywhere. So they've since pulled back on their podcasting strategy. So whether folks are trying to find other ways to do it.

Matt Cundill  2:42  
I thought we were through, I'm sorry. I thought we just came through a recession. I thought we just had the big economic downturn in podcasting for the last year. And I know the markets all opened up funny yesterday, but in Canada, we were closed. We took the day off yesterday because there was a holiday, so we didn't feel the wrath of whatever was, you know, going on around the world, but that the downturn. Let's just talk about not necessarily recession, but downturn in podcasting. And I think after a year of down money, and whether that was in the form of ads, or whatever your business strategy was for your podcast, that as we move into, you know, a new year. And I think a lot of people do consider September to be a new year in the media world, that new strategies need to come into play in order to make more money. And as you pointed out, to appease shareholders. Catherine,

Catherine O'Brien  3:31  
I think that we need to look at this from a little bit of a multiple streams of income kind of approach. So let's talk about some of the examples that we have thrown out there already. First of all, one name that comes to mind when we think about Spotify is Joe Rogan, and he had an exclusive deal with Spotify. Now that seems to be less exclusive. He's back on YouTube as well, so that is going to be another form of revenue, as long as he's being monetized by YouTube. So I'm kind of interested to see some of the other names I know. For example, Tucker Carlson. He's got his audio only, but he also is on not only YouTube, but I believe some of the other alternative video streaming platforms as well. A lot of these shows are now moving to where they're having a little bit, they're they're tapping into multiple streams. They're not just locking themselves to one platform, and I'm wondering how much that is to their overall strategy. So YouTube can be a form of revenue, Spotify can be a form of revenue, Rumble can be a form of revenue. Super chats for YouTube, if you're going to be doing live streaming, or there's sort of like live streaming kinds of situations. So I think that maybe some of the bigger podcasters are reading the writing on the wall, and they're trying to diversify where the money's coming in from.

Johnny Podcasts  4:52  
Be everywhere.

Jon Gay  4:54  
I'd be everywhere. The Joe Rogan is a great example, because he prevented himself from making. Some revenue when he was exclusive, exclusive at Spotify, as you were saying, and now he's saying, Okay, I'm gonna open it back up to more of these sources, right? I'm

Matt Cundill  5:07  
not sure if this sort of speaks to to I think a lot of people hung their hats on one or two ways to make money. And I think somehow, over the last six months to a year, everybody is looking at every different way to make money and going to use every method in the box to do it. And so when somebody talks about in Canada, which is, you know, you know, 1/10 the size of the US, you know, is there a podcast industry here? No, I heard Jesse Brown from Canada and say that, you know, for them to really stay afloat. They need to take membership money. They need to take some Patreon money. They need to take some programmatic money. They need to take some direct sales money. And I think there was probably, there's probably one or one more in that mix. But they have to, they have to take it all in order to, in order to make their their company go so let's add that

Catherine O'Brien  6:03  
to the let another layer of the multiple streams of income, so that is not only advertising, which is different than sponsorship, money, which is different than membership, and maybe some premium content as well. So that those are even more pieces to those multiple streams, I would be really curious to if somebody could peel back the curtain on one of the bigger shows on, you know, is this really a case of just lots of littler streams of income coming in or, you know, one is really paying all the bills, and the other ones are gravy on top. It would be kind of interesting to get a breakdown of that situation.

Matt Cundill  6:37  
Well, I'll start with the Tucker Carlson one, because I know that shows on megaphone, and megaphone took out their price flooring on July one. And that, man, can

Jon Gay  6:46  
you explain that to our audience?

Johnny Podcasts  6:49  
What you mean by they?

Matt Cundill  6:50  
Yeah. So when you, when you're in megaphone, you can accept ads, but you're gonna say, oh, you know what? I only want somebody who's gonna pay me about a $20 CPM, so $20 for every 1000 times the ad plays. And I think a lot of people had price floors of about 15, $20 and Spotify is looking around at all this inventory of all these ads, and all the inventory of in all the shows. And like, you know what? We're not going to do price flooring anymore. You're just going to take the ads and that will be the end of it. And so what happened on July 1 was that if you had a lot of ad spots in your show, and then something like Tucker Carlson, more traditional broadcasters are totally fine to go and put lots of 1112, commercials over 90 minutes into a show. Well, Spotify is finding a way to fill that because they've got lots of customers who they can go and fill and so now people are hearing more commercials on megaphone shows, and I saw on Twitter that, sorry, x, people were responding with, I don't understand why I'm getting so many ads I pay for Spotify Premium. So without really knowing it, Spotify kind of created a little problem for themselves. And a lot of people didn't understand that the ads were coming from the podcaster themselves, and not necessarily from Spotify. So it was, it was the podcaster who would put the ad marker in there,

Jon Gay  8:11  
right? So coming from the host, as if you were consuming the same show on Apple or another platform, you would still be getting the same ads. Yeah,

Matt Cundill  8:18  
yeah, totally. So I think a lot of people had their listening experience changed over the last little while, and especially if you were listening to a show that was on megaphone. So that's definitely one thing that has happened in the last few weeks.

Johnny Podcasts  8:30  
Sadly, I think it's going to drive a lot of people away from places like Spotify, because I know just in my own personal listening habits, I've migrated almost totally to YouTube for consuming podcasts. Because if I'm paying for YouTube premium, which means no ads on there ever, that's the same as paying for Spotify Premium, except I don't get, you know, screwed over by still having to listen to the megaphone ads. I only have to listen to the hosts. Host red baked in an episode. Yeah. So like I did a, I did a, an, AB test between on one of Tucker's podcasts of the YouTube listening experience and the Spotify listening experience, the YouTube was vastly better because it was just, you know, three or four ads of whatever he had baked into an episode, versus, like Matt said, 1012, sometimes 14 ads that's constantly happening where you it totally takes you out of the flow but different voices, different set, different audio quality, products that are just not relevant to me in the slightest. And it was just, it was, it was a dumpster fire. And I now, I rarely listen listen to stuff on Spotify,

Matt Cundill  9:33  
by the way, as commercials that are not relevant to me. That's come up a few times.

Jon Gay  9:38  
You know, it's a problem if there's an ad for Kamala Harris lawn signs on Tucker Carlson's show, then you're gonna have a real, a real issue there, you know? And this speaks to the issue with radio. The same thing happened to radio. One of the biggest complaints to radio, aside from getting rid of a lot of personality and music, radio, is these 10 minute ad breaks, these 10 minute stop sets, especially when you're. Up against Spotify, Apple, music, Pandora, you name it. Who is going to sit through 10 minutes of ads on a commercial radio station when they could get far less, if any, on one of the streaming services? It's one of the ways that radio has shot itself in the foot, and I hate to see podcasts fall down the same pitfall. It's

Johnny Podcasts  10:16  
hilarious. You mentioned that Jack because I just just had this experience with a new client that I just started working with. So they wrote out an entire show flow for how each episode would go, you know, introduction, background, things like that. And then right in the middle of it was ad break, and in the parentheticals on it said three to five minutes of ads. And so they were like, what's your feedback on this? And granted, they, you know, they're, they're new to podcasting. They don't know any of this stuff. So that's, that's that's why I'm there. So my immediate feedback on that was, we can't have a five minute ad break. You can't do it. It will just it will just deplete. Everyone will leave. It doesn't matter if it's the most relevant. Just hits your audience right in the courts, exactly what they need. Five minutes is way too long. Two minutes is way too long. It's got to be 60 to 90 seconds. It's got to be really punchy. Get to the point, and it's got to be quick. And it's it just reminded me of that. So don't, please don't do that. If you're starting a podcast,

Jon Gay  11:10  
Johnny, you're actually making a perfect segue, because I wanted to have Matt chime in on this. One of my favorite pieces of advice that I share with new clients that came directly from that condo in the sound off media company, is when you're starting a podcast, and the idea is that you want to monetize. You want to sell ads, unless you are starting from having a large presence on social media, if you have some celebrity to you, or some notoriety, or something like that. Matt's advice to me a while back, I'll be curious if you still subscribe to this number, Matt is you've really got to be added if you're starting from zero to anywhere from one to three years before you're going to really start selling ads on your show. Ads on your show based on download numbers. Yeah,

Matt Cundill  11:45  
one year, I think, is a good one. That's a lap around the track to really see where you're at, because even if you think that this is your audience, you don't really know, but you will discover your audience. I mean, the first year of your podcast, you are in a discovery phase, and you're trying to find out who you are, who your show is, who your audience is, and once you get there, maybe even somebody will come to you and say, Well, I'd like to partner with you, and maybe we could do a little something together. And maybe it's maybe it is an ad, maybe it's a direct sale, maybe it's some sort of partnership. I sometimes recommend that the first stuff you should do when it comes to doing ads, maybe it's Contra. So if you've got a podcast, and let's say it's you know about basket weaving, maybe take out an ad in the basket weaving magazine and say, I'll give you a mention in my podcast, and you give me some ad space in your magazine. That's all part of marketing, and build up. And I know we've talked about multiple methods of how to do ads. Oh, we can do ads, but look at that. We can also do ad free over there. Well, you can't do ad free unless you have ads to begin with in the first place, right? So it's, it's still the it's still a long game, it's still a long process for you to get, to get going. And I think the first things you should be doing whenever you think about ads is something involving your marketing. So maybe it's an ad for whatever it is you do. For a newsletter. Maybe it's an ad for your website. Maybe it's an ad for, you know, the Contra example that I that I said, where you maybe trade a little bit of ad space, maybe on a traditional radio station, maybe in a magazine, maybe in on a website, whatever works for you, in a newsletter, especially somebody else's newsletter about basket weaving,

Jon Gay  13:21  
or even other podcasters, or because radio is going to put you smack dab in the middle of that 10 minute stop set,

Matt Cundill  13:26  
yeah, promo swaps, exactly.

Catherine O'Brien  13:28  
I have an example that is from way, way, way back in the early days when I was starting to podcast. And part of this does play to people not being as familiar with podcasting. But one thing that I did was I did some free basically, I would say, let's call it sponsorship. So some sponsored content, free sponsored content for a nonprofit organization that I was I felt really good about. And let me tell you when other people that we were approaching other real sponsors, and they heard the job that we did for this nonprofit that we wanted to it was it became like a calling card. It sounded so professional. It sounded so great. They could hear the connection that comes from podcasting. So it was a really great chance. We got to do something nice for a group that we felt good about, and then we also used that to bring in other paying sponsors. And that was sort of a win win situation. So getting creative like that is there's an opportunity there as well.

Jon Gay  14:27  
You bounce it over to Johnny. Johnny has worked out five different types of monetization methods for smaller podcasters. So I'd love to hear what's in your list here.

Johnny Podcasts  14:36  
Yeah, when we would, when we decided on the topic for today, chase the money. My immediate thought was okay, the person that's probably watching this show is someone who is newer to podcasting and has a small podcast. You know, Joe Rogan, not watching this show, leaning in for our expertise. He has Jamie from Spotify for that. So what I thought would be beneficial to someone listening or watching would be okay. I have my podcast. I feel like. I could monetize it, but it does. It just have to be ads. No, not necessarily. So basically, what I did is I wrote out, you know, the five different types that came to my head immediately, you know, the an hour or so before the show, of what you can do to try and monetize your podcast. And again, this, take this all with a grain of salt. This is all under the concept or the umbrella that Matt talked about, you're a year or so into your podcast, you found out who you are, who your show is, who your general audience is going to be. Now we can kind of take the next step forward of I have an audience built up. What can I now do to benefit from this, besides the benefit of fulfilling your passion of being a podcaster? Uh, Number one would be just what we've talked about this entire time advertising, and within that bucket of advertising, I break it down into two different types of ads. You have your private ad sales, and then you have your marketplace CPM. So like what Matt was saying with the megaphone price flooring being Verizon can jump onto this podcast and promote their new cell phone deal if we were to have dynamic ad insertion. That's not necessarily what my audience is looking for, but it's throwing a few bucks in my pocket, what I always encourage my clients to do, and I'd be curious to hear everybody else's thoughts on this, is to promote the private ad sales, and that's for a couple of reasons. One, your show is probably not big enough to have, you know, Honda ads on there running dynamic ads, and have it put significant money in your pocket. The private ad sales. You can sell those for however much you want. What matters to the to the person that you're selling them to is my audience is extremely relevant to what you're selling and what you're offering. So I have 10,000 CPAs listening to my financial advice podcast. I don't need to sell better help ads. You need to sell your accounting software to my 10,000 instead of having 10 people that might be relevant, you have 10,000 people that are extremely relevant and have the disposable income to pay for your software and a genuine need for it.

Jon Gay  16:53  
Those CPAs might need better help if you're advertising in April. But I didn't

Johnny Podcasts  17:01  
major in finance. I didn't really get that joke. Tax deadline, private, private ads versus marketplace, CPM. The second thing idea on that sky, What's up, buddy? How are you? The second thing would be, you know, you have your podcast, but no one's contacting me about ads. I know I have this great audience of CPAs, but none of the accounting software companies are calling. Companies are calling me. What the hell they don't know about you. Don't be afraid to cold call. People make out an entire list of 15 or 20 different companies that you feel like would be a great partnership. Get your pitch together. Don't be afraid to cold call. You will never get the answer is always zero or no if you never ask. So you always have to put your foot in the door and you have to ask. But before I, before I go on, do you guys have any thoughts on the private ad sales? What's your experience been with that? Matt probably has more experience with the public CPM stuff.

Matt Cundill  17:49  
Very positive. I think it's, I mean, that's the relationships area, and I think it's the first, first way I started to do ads, long before like programmatic came along, that was really the key. So go to where your audience is and go to where the business people are. So again, if your show is about basket weaving, you should be front and center at the basket weaving convention, getting cards from everybody and making your partnerships there. I

Jon Gay  18:12  
completely agree. I completely agree with that you're saying, too, Johnny, where it's sell it based on relationships. You're not going to sell it off download numbers out of the gate because you don't have the download numbers. My favorite, my favorite story with that is Joe Sal see high, who runs the Stacking Benjamins podcast, very successful financial advice podcast. He told us at a podcasting event here in Detroit, when he was living here, that he started this podcast didn't have any sponsors. He was at a convention, and he went up to the fidelity booth, and he asked the folks at Fidelity, Hey, would you be interested in sponsoring my podcast? And the fidelity representative said, Okay, how much? I don't know, 100 bucks an episode, which to Fidelity is nothing, and it and he made a couple bucks. But more importantly, it became the stacking Benjamin's podcast sponsored by fidelity. Now he has the street cred, and it's gone on to become one of the most you know, successful financial podcasts around. So same thing, target people in your niche,

Johnny Podcasts  19:07  
and if you can't sell them on the download numbers or the relationship, the one thing that we hit on a ton is audience survey, if you can show the advertiser who your audience actually is in black and white on paper, not just, Oh, I think it's a it's CPAs. Here's the actual data of listeners filling out a survey telling me how much they make, where they are in the country, what they do for work, and why they listen to the podcast. So always encouraging those

Catherine O'Brien  19:31  
and just to throw in one last thing, the podcast audience members are passionate. They love their podcast, and if you have a raving fan audience, they will respond to those kinds of ads and sponsorships because they know that is supporting the show. And we all know that lots of the podcasts say the best way to support the show is to support our sponsors, and that's really true. So they there is a relationship there, and the audience member can participate by supporting and doing business with the sponsors. It's

Jon Gay  19:59  
so. Easy to brag about Facebook likes and Instagram likes and followers and things like that. The effort it takes to like a post or follow somebody is a fraction of a second, but somebody who is listening to your podcast and giving you that much there of your attention, because they care that much what you're talking about, just one of those listeners is worth their weight in gold.

Johnny Podcasts  20:18  
I absolutely agree. Another thought that I had on the advertising, this is sort of getting it Okay, so now you got your advertiser. How do we want to do the best ad possible within our show? So something I wrote down is, the better the host, the better the salesman. So what people hate is the, you know, we're listening to the conversation. We're talking and then, by the way, if you haven't heard about Express VPN, you should go check out and use my code, Johnny podcast. It's not a real code,

Jon Gay  20:46  
but thanks for the disclaimer, although it should be. But if you

Johnny Podcasts  20:50  
can become the type, if you're a really good podcast host, you can work in these ads that make them relevant to the content. The best, the best example of this is from David senra of the founders podcast. He is able to work his ads into the episode and make it totally relevant to the person or to the episodes content. And you don't even it doesn't even sound like it's an ad. And what this this sounds really contradictory, but what better way to have an ad stick in your mind than something that's so good that you don't even notice it's there. You'll remember that. You'll go, wow, I didn't even notice that was an ad, but you'll remember exactly what the ad was about. But if it cuts directly to an ad, doesn't matter. I've already tuned out. I've skipped ahead. It doesn't matter that the ad is gone. So if you're if you have that skill combined with actually selling the ad, you you're way ahead of the pack. Any other thoughts? I can move on to numbers. No one.

Jon Gay  21:42  
Johnny, yeah, the power of the live read versus the recorded AD. The recorded ad is obviously an ad, and if somebody is, you know, listening in an area where they have access to punch on their phone, skip, skip, skip, skip, skip. But if you can really, really work it into the show, it's not, it's not going to be as noticeable and therefore skippable.

Johnny Podcasts  22:01  
And sky Kingdom makes a great comment. The ad going viral is just, that's what more could you ask for?

Catherine O'Brien  22:09  
And we've seen a lot of podcasters that really make the ads their own. And that's kind of and just, they make the ads their own. They they develop their own style. They develop jokes around the ads that come in and running gags that keep going. There's, there's plenty of examples of that, and it's at that, to me, still is one of the different or different differentiators between podcasts and other mediums, is there is a lot of room for that kind of fun and viral content.

Matt Cundill  22:36  
I know a lot of people are going to listen to this and think, Okay, well, this sounds like the exact same thing we were doing, like in, you know, 2010 and it's because it works. It's also the way you make the most money, right? You know, programmatic is gonna, you know, fill your pockets with a few, a few coins. And this way you negotiate your price. It's a one on one relationship, and you can play this in the most valuable position, the most you know, the best mid role, and give your client the best space on your website. And by the way, one more thing about the website I know, Johnny you said survey, don't forget your Google Analytics of your website. Your Podcast website is a treasure trove of data in there. The people who go to your podcast website are most likely your listeners, and there's demographic information, all sorts of information in there that you can use to resell to

Jon Gay  23:29  
clients before you move on to another great example is the guys from pod save America. Catherine mentioned, you know, those insight jokes on ads, one of their sponsors, it might have been simply say, if I don't remember offhand who it was, but which, I guess, defeat the purpose of the argument. But one of the lines in the copy was that they offer a great suite of tools. And these guys from pod save America could never say the phrase suite of tools without laughing through it. And so it became a running joke every time the ad ran. Yeah, it's a whole suite of tools. He's a tool, he's a tool, he's a tool. And it stuck, and it stuck, and it was number one. Let's, let's, just for the sake of argument, state was simply safe, and pretend I remember

Sarah Burke (Voiceover)  24:11  
the advertiser, the podcast Super Friends support podcasting 2.0 so feel free to send us a boost if you're listening on a newer podcast app. Find the full list at new podcast apps.com,

Johnny Podcasts  24:23  
the last wrinkle within the advertising bucket is the difference between your host, red baked in AD and your D dynamically inserted ad. So when we talk about the CPM, Honda, better help. AG, one those are going to be dynamically inserted. Mean they're put in after the fact, after the recording is done, after we fully produce the episode, a baked in one is where you take one of us, four producers, and you say, Hey, here's the ad for this week. It's going to be on the episode forever. Can't be changed out unless we actually go grab that audio file, cut it out, and re upload the episode

Jon Gay  24:55  
and pay your editor to do so, yes, but

Matt Cundill  24:57  
if you have the right podcast host, you can have a host ready. Ad and have it dynamically inserted.

Johnny Podcasts  25:01  
You stole the words right out of my mouth, Matt, that is right there. So you do not have this. You do not Slide and hold around here like this. Do not have to be beholden exactly to the baked in ad model. The platforms are so advanced. Now it used to be just one platform could do this. Now almost every podcasting host can do this, offer some kind of dynamic ad insertion where you can say, okay, look, maybe you don't want to sell, maybe you don't want to pay a grand to just be on one ad, or one ad on one episode that someone you know, only the people who consume that episode are going to hear. What if I gave you access to my entire catalog of episodes, and it's going to be the very first thing somebody hears the first 30 seconds is going to be the advertising for your accounting software. That is something else that you can offer as well. So you can get really, you can get really into the weeds on this stuff. But advertising, again, like we talked about, is the number one model. The second one that I wrote down is selling your own products and services. Now this is the field that I play in a lot I work on a lot of business podcasts where the goal is to drive attention to the company, not necessarily sell ads, but to get dollars in the door of the business. That's the reason the podcast exists. The one thing I want to make very clear is that this cannot be the primary reason your podcast exists. I'm not starting a podcast because I want you to sign up for my for my coaching course, your podcast won't succeed. You have to want to podcast. And if content has to be good, the content has to be good. And if something were to come of that in the form of advertising or people buying your product or services, great. The second thing on that is you can't pummel your audience. We're not here. I'm not listening to your podcast because I care about this t shirt that you're selling. It's great that you sell a t shirt. And if I love you and I love your podcast. I'll probably buy the t shirt, but I don't need to hear it every seven minutes. Tell me once or twice during the episode, put it in the show notes, but you need to spread those out. It cannot be just hitting you over the head all the time, trying to sell me this stuff over and over, because that will drive someone away quicker than anything else could.

Catherine O'Brien  26:57  
And can I throw in a little PS on that, that last bit you gave there, Johnny is remember that people still buy from an email list. A list is incredibly important to businesses. So even if you just have a simple link in your show notes or your show description or a pin comment somewhere, that is a great way to start to get people who are at least interested into the front door. You can definitely have just have a way for people to get on your list and stay in contact with you. I think that that's very important. Don't overlook that. The email list still is a selling vehicle for businesses.

Jon Gay  27:32  
So glad you brought that up Catherine, because you're not relying on a social media algorithm to show for someone to see your content. You are right in their inbox every time you send it out.

Unknown Speaker  27:41  
That's right.

Matt Cundill  27:42  
I love the selling your services part. I've got numerous clients who have done really, really well with it over the last couple years, and don't have any need to talk about anything else. There's no need for the Honda ads. There's no need for anything. This is just what it is. We're exchanging content, and here's a pitch. Perhaps you want to join us for more later.

Johnny Podcasts  28:00  
But the key is the keys. You got to let them know. Some people, you'd be surprised at how many people who start podcasts that go wait they don't already know what to do. You have to tell your audience what to do. You can't go there's the opposite ends of the extreme. The one extreme is you're telling them too much, and the other extreme is you're just assuming they know what to do. It's got to be somewhere in the episode, assume your audience knows nothing and tell them what you want them to do, whether it's to go to the email list, to the product or service, to the website.

Matt Cundill  28:26  
And in the show notes, too, there's, I've seen a lot of clicks go through the show notes,

Catherine O'Brien  28:31  
I do notice that it's some like, I would say, authors. I've listened to a lot of podcasts where authors are featured, and they do a great job. They must have all been trained up by the same book. PR, people, they're really great about saying in my book, title of book, available place or two. That is, it is available. You know, I one of the things I talk about is x, y and z. So even having that kind of just a pre made, a little prepared spiel that you can do on the on the fly to let people know about the things that you're doing. It doesn't necessarily have to be a book, but just being able to say, oh, in the private coaching that I offer, oh, in the the group coaching that we offer, I don't know, in the private cooking classes we offer, whatever it is, you're able to just be prepared to reel that off to your audience. That's a that's an easy way to kind of get that in the in the process. There great

Jon Gay  29:22  
example. There are some financial advisors I do podcasts for, and that's and the they're not, they're not selling ads, but at the end of the podcast, hey, if you want to learn more, if you want to me to take a look at your finances, it's totally free for me to do. We can have a conversation. Here's my contact info and I and I think one other point that we've made prior on this podcast is, if you're going to do the plug, do it maybe in the middle, do it the end. Do not do it at the beginning. The most important 30 seconds of your podcast is the first 30 seconds of your most recent episode. You'll get one chance at a first impression. If I've never heard your podcast before and you start with, hey, follow me on social. Here's my email. One. I, I don't know you. I don't know if you're if your content is any good. I don't know if your services are any good. Give me something as a listener of value before you turn around and ask me for something in return. I can't stress that enough.

Johnny Podcasts  30:15  
Okay, number three is a really quick one, and it's something because I need to you know, when you change your thinking on stuff, we've all changed the way we approach podcasting and what we think is successful in podcasting. So when I first started out doing this, one of the things I would say is, oh, you can have your guests become customers or clients, and it's just the kind of way of getting your foot in the door with them, which has some has some merit. But I've completely flipped on that. And in my notes, I say I have flipped on this due to c2, A, two, a being this cannot be the primary reason you have the podcast. So if you're just starting a podcast thinking that the guest is just going to come on and it's going to eventually buy your services from you, and you're sort of just buttering them up, it just feels really slimy. It feels wrong. It feels wrong to the audience, especially because it's like, I don't really give a shit that no one's listening to this podcast, or that you're listening to this podcast. I'm trying to get something from this person across the desk from me right now, and I'm trying to get their money. And it's just, I don't know it feels wrong.

Jon Gay  31:13  
I have seen it work for some podcasters loving counterpoint to use Catherine, secret phrase. I've seen it work. I've seen it work. It really depends on what you're looking to do, full disclosure. I've used that strategy so I on trade do a podcast for a local Chamber of Commerce, and we interview two guests every month about themselves and their businesses, and I use it as a lead gen tool. If they had a good time on the podcast, they're happy how it came out. And you want to have a podcast for your business, then, then give you a call. Now, it's not quite the same as exactly the same as what you're describing, Johnny, but there, I have seen it work for some people, but I would not, I would not go in with that as the primary objective. You've got to be right. Good content. Yeah.

Johnny Podcasts  31:56  
There's nuance to all of this. The the extreme that I'm curious that what jag is describing everyone listening and watching is the most appropriate way to approach this. You have the podcast, you feel like it's relevant them becoming a potential customer or client is sort of an added benefit on the very back end of things, the extreme that I'm painting is, how do I need to build up lead generation? Oh, I'll start a podcast. That's how I that way that people answer my cold calls like that. That's sort of what I'm describing. Interesting. Okay, I said it was a quick one. Any other thoughts there?

Jon Gay  32:29  
Number four is that we went to four now, yeah, yeah,

Johnny Podcasts  32:31  
we have four. So number four everyone's favorite YouTube. So YouTube is the long game. We've been saying it for years. You have to have your podcast on YouTube. Get comfortable in front of the mic for the first few months. Nail down the audio. But at some point, we got to click on that camera right there. We got to show your pretty face to the world. We got to get thumbnails. We got to get it out on YouTube. YouTube is the long game, because it's already difficult enough to build up your audience on audio. It's even harder, if not, you know, the most difficult thing to build up a monetizable audience on YouTube. So the way that I kind of look at it is think of it like you're putting your money in the mutual funds. I know, with the recent stock market activity, this may not be

Jon Gay  33:09  
the most apt analogy. You shot down my CPA reference, and now you're talking about mutual funds. What is happening today. Think

Johnny Podcasts  33:19  
of it like you're putting your money in the mutual funds. I'm getting whiplash over here. You're putting your money in there, you're putting your content on YouTube, you're promoting it, you're making great video. You're not expecting it to monetize right away, but it might at some point, and if your content is good, it probably will. And so you check back in on in a few months, still, you're still looking at the impressions. You're looking at the views growing, and once it hits that hits that monetize button, great, but this is not something you're expecting to churn right out of the gate. But if, again, if you have really good content, you get 1012, 15,000 subscribers. You can rake in a few 1000 bucks a month just by putting your stuff on YouTube and people watching it. There's really nothing else you have to do,

Jon Gay  33:59  
and it's different for every podcaster. There are some podcasters who are monetizing and getting most of their views and downloads on the from their audio host. And there are some who are getting more attention on YouTube. Some of that is how you promote it. Some of that might be the nature of your show. To women that I'm friends with, have a Taylor Swift podcast that that the the the Taylor Swift Fan army is on YouTube, and they've monetized YouTube before. They were even getting real, solid traction on their audio platform.

Matt Cundill  34:26  
That's a client of yours, friend, not

Jon Gay  34:29  
a client. I wish they were a client. Yeah, should have

Johnny Podcasts  34:32  
them on your podcast. Make them a client.

Jon Gay  34:36  
It's called hits, different a Taylor Swift podcast. I'll give them a plug,

Matt Cundill  34:40  
just to give like a media example to that journey in 1981 don't stop believing. I think we all know that song.

Jon Gay  34:47  
You know that here in Detroit?

Matt Cundill  34:49  
I'll bet you do. It was a lot of people figured it was the number one song, but it wasn't. It did marginally well when it was released in 1981 and you. You know, I think went to number eight, maybe, but has been a number one you iTunes, download, you know, perpetuated forward by Glee and sopranos and a whole bunch of other things. So, I mean, to what I think, what Johnny, you know, saying here is, we don't know what the future holds here, and your content may just take off. Is that, right? Johnny, that's exactly what I was saying. Make sure it's everywhere.

Jon Gay  35:22  
You never. Everywhere. You never know where you're gonna get traction. Number five, Johnny, number

Johnny Podcasts  35:27  
five paywalls. And what's ironic is our friend of ours, who's been commenting on the stream all hour long, is Sky King. And if you go to my YouTube channel, you can watch a deep dive interview on the inside the world of paywalled and private podcastings with Sky King, because sky has a paywall podcast. It is called Sky King's mental playground, if you guys want to go check that out. So I thought that was a funny coincidence there. But with paywalls, I don't have a ton of experience with those. We all know what they are, so I would look to the rest of the group to chat about this a little bit more. The few notes that I have on there is, if you're going to pay all your content, be sure you're teasing out the free stuff to people. If people don't know what it is, I'm not going to sign it up. Sign up for it with my credit card right away. So half the episode put that out for free. 15 minutes of the episode put that out for free. Make sure you're just spamming your social medias with it. If you want more, go to WebSite X, Y and Z,

Jon Gay  36:20  
and then the second that 15 minutes, damn well better be something better, awesome.

Johnny Podcasts  36:24  
Yeah, better be fantastic. And honestly, that leads right into my second point on that jag is, if I'm a listener, I you have to know that they're asking themselves, why is your content so special that it deserves to pop up on my credit card bill every month? What is it that you're offering that nobody else is that's so special that it needs to be behind the paywall, and it could be a different thing for everybody, but you need to make sure that you have a clearly defined thing, whether it's extra content, extra long episodes, ad free is fine. That seems to, in my opinion, that's kind of the base model. I think that you can't just live on that alone. Hey, if you want this ad free, go pay for this. I think that works if you have a massive audience, massive audience, right? But if we're look, if we're playing in the niche podcast sandbox here, there needs to be extra stuff that you're giving people that they cannot get simply anywhere else, other than because I can still skip through the ads. It doesn't cost me anything.

Jon Gay  37:22  
What? What? What is so special about sky King's content? I don't mean that to sound negative, but What? What? What is, what is Sky King's niche? What is his genes say qua that, that he's able to put behind the paywall?

Johnny Podcasts  37:35  
Sky, you're gonna kill me for this. We interviewed him so long ago that I cannot remember. So podcast. So you killed me there, Jack, thank you for that. Sky everybody.

Catherine O'Brien  37:45  
We could, we could have spun that to be more exclusive, but you know, we can't actually share what sky is talking about. You're gonna have to pay up, Jack to see. That's the whole point. There.

Jon Gay  37:55  
Fair enough. Fair enough.

Johnny Podcasts  37:57  
No Sky. Sky is a big promote proponent of the private podcasting world. I think, I think he works in that area. There is a reason there's a sky if you're still watching, please comment and save me here, because I'm dying up here. Sky

Jon Gay  38:12  
King was actually my dad's CB radio name. When we were we had a CB radio in the 1980s his moniker. So that's funny. That name came back in my world here, you know, I have a couple of Go ahead again.

Catherine O'Brien  38:25  
I didn't realize you're gonna go. I have a couple of comments, actually, as on the pay, on the paywall topic in general. Because as an audience member, you know, we all, not only do we make podcasts for our clients, but we're podcast listening fans as well. So I have a couple of examples as an audience member, the paywall model creeping into some shows that I have listened to. And I just kind of wanted to give a couple of little overviews. I also maybe, before we go into this, for people who are producing podcasts, this is going to be really I think this is probably a more critical topic for everybody to be thinking about, because so few podcasts get to the audience size where the advertising discussion that we had previously is going to make sense. So the paywall might make a lot more sense for people, because even at $5 a month, you could get to, you know, $500 pretty quickly with a size, you know, with a a even a modest sized audience for your podcast, you can start really seeing some returns relatively quickly, as opposed to the pennies for 1000s of listeners that you would get in a CPM model. Would you all say that's pretty fair?

Johnny Podcasts  39:37  
Can I save myself that I just, you know, totally drowned in front of everybody.

Catherine O'Brien  39:42  
Okay, let's, let's do. We're gonna do a do over, Hey Johnny, before we go tell us about Sky King.

Johnny Podcasts  39:48  
The reason why I couldn't remember it is because it's so, basically, it's so it's so reasonable and makes so much sense that you you know it wasn't this outlying reason. It's his philosophy. If you go to his website and you look at his podcast, he basically says, I think that my show is worth paying for, and content isn't free. I don't think media should be free if you want to listen to great stuff. I think you should pay for it, pretty straightforward stuff. So

Matt Cundill  40:17  
do you know what the I see the podcast is on sub stack.

Johnny Podcasts  40:20  
It's on Super Cast, Super Cast.

Matt Cundill  40:24  
I know that one, yeah,

Jon Gay  40:26  
respect for just being out there like that. Yeah, we're paying for

Johnny Podcasts  40:30  
it was such an honest take that it completely just, you know, faded out of my memory. So sky, I appreciate you coming on the show. And again, if you guys do want to check on that, that is on the YouTube channel there.

Catherine O'Brien  40:42  
This episode of this podcast, Super Friends, has been brought to you by Sky King podcast. Sky King podcast.com, anyway, as I was saying. So, back to the idea just the pay wall. So as an audience member, I've gone through with I can just talk about three shows. One is I was listening to a show they had it completely free, totally free. Just a normal, no ads, just a it almost seemed like a hobby podcast, but I know that they had a, you know, a decent audience. They because of the content that they wanted to talk about, and because of their positions in life, they thought, you know what we we just would like the sort of the extra security of a paywall to have people who are a little bit more invested in us. We want to build a community, and so we're going to put up a paywall. They went to sub stack, and they put they put up a paywall, and they completely disappeared off my feed, completely. There's no teasers. There's no nothing. It's like they they had their they had gathered their people, and that's who they're taking a sub stack. And whoever came came, and if you didn't, that's, that's they might be promoting, still on social media that to come on in. But really, for me, they, they disappeared completely off of the scene maybe a year after they went behind a pay wall, a 32nd teaser came up in my in my podcast feed. And I was like, Oh, I had forgotten about these guys. So it was just kind of a one interesting take. That's one example. They went completely pay wall and never looked back. Another example is kind of what Johnny was describing. I would call maybe the more classic podcasting model, which is you give more to those who want more. So this is where you have a free feed, and then you have additional content for the people who are super fans and they want to be more involved. Again, they use sub stack. And I'll just give you a spoiler alert all the examples that I'm going to use, they use sub stack. So not only do you get this extra content from being a paid member, you get to do other things, like comment on posts on sub stack, you get exclusive blogs and articles written that you the that are not available to the free public. So they do a really good job of putting out a lot of extra things. A lot of the things podcasters do is they have the ad free experience. They give out the podcast episodes early. They give things like you're able to comment and interact with other people who are fans of the show. Those are all pretty standard. Now, one thing I'll just point out in this example of the give more to those who want more. I have noticed as being a listener to this particular show over the years, as they have built up their paid audience, there has been a philosophical switch, if you will, to where it is. They clearly are speaking to their paid audience. First, they consider their paid audience their main audience, and they kind of have a fun, joking way of talking about the non paying myself included the non paying audience, and we are the free dealers. But of course, we do have to listen to ads. We don't get the episodes early, and they use it as sort of a jovial way to say, you know, you can change that anytime by coming on becoming a paid come on in, become a paid, paid member. Let me final exam. Good, yeah, it does, yeah, well, and, but, but what I guess the sort of the point I want to make as a producer is, it was over time. So they, they reached some point where they had enough paid listeners, where that their a switch happened. And I just want to kind of, it was not immediate. It took a lot of time that I know that they were building their audio, their paid audience, very diligently over over years. And then the switch happened after that long plow, let's say. And the final example I want to say is the the teaser model that Johnny talked about. Now this is the show I'm thinking again they I'm guessing sub stack must have a setting that says, offer teaser 30 minutes and 30 seconds. So I, every week, I get a 30 minute and 32nd teaser. They've got a huge audience. They, they barely promote the the become a paid member, because I know. So overwhelmingly, their audience is already in that camp. But you they they still put out that teaser on a free feed. And you know, they say, at the beginning, the middle and the end, sorry, Jack, at the beginning, the middle and the end, they say, become a paid member and get the full story at our you know URL. They give the the URL. So those are just some three examples of the pay wall that and just sort of as an audience member, kind of seeing, seeing how those work. The end,

Jon Gay  45:30  
well said Catherine. I know another example I think of is rich Davis and Steve covid. Know they are jocks our DJs on Sirius XM satellite radio. They originally had a morning show on what was then Maxim radio, and then had it elsewhere. They're both still DJs on various music channels, on Sirius XM. And I talked to rich about this rich and Steve covid, they still do the covid or rich show, which is no longer on Sirius XM. It is now on how I can't think the name of the platform, but it is on a paid podcast service. It's one of the big ones. I can't think of the name top my head. I top my head, Patreon. They do a show on Patreon, and they get up in the morning and they do their morning show on Patreon. And then they which is for pay people only, and they're tapping into the audience they built up over the years on their Sirius XM show. And then they do they voice track some music shows, and then they go on Fox Sports Radio together in the afternoon. I don't know how either one of them either one of them has a voice at the end of the day, but, but they're, but they're making money from Patreon doing their podcast after building the audience on Sirius XM. And

Catherine O'Brien  46:33  
I'll just put in a pitch here too. So I mentioned sub stack Jack. Just mentioned Patreon. There's also locals, there's also gum Road offers membership. There's, there's lots of sites you don't, you're not locked into one option. There's lots of places in set up a member community and get distribute your content, your bonus material, and build that community. There's lots of places you can do it. So

Matt Cundill  46:54  
I was wondering how long it would be before somebody said Patreon. It took a took a little way, but a lot of people use it, you know, in in so many different ways. Does anybody have any examples of, you know, maybe they've got clients who are using Patreon in a particular way?

Johnny Podcasts  47:10  
No, but I did pull up the top Patreon creators on my screen because

Matt Cundill  47:18  
Catherine Jack, either you guys work with anyone that's doing it. Yeah, I do. Okay, go ahead. Matt, well, writing class radio is one, one of my first clients, but they, you know, for $25 a month you can join them for a writing class, and for $35 a month you can join them for a second draft, where they will do a second offering. And this is on top of some of the other things that they have, like live events that they do. They also do some group trips, writing retreats and those sort of things that are a little bit outside of Patreon. But for you know, I think it's like 25 bucks a month and 35 bucks a month people get together on zoom right to a prompt, and it's a writing class.

Jon Gay  47:55  
Live Events is another great revenue opportunity once you start building your audience. For sure,

Catherine O'Brien  48:00  
high hassle factor, I'm sure. But probably I

Johnny Podcasts  48:03  
will say this is so little this one's a little dicey, but I did a podcast where the guest was the CFO of this company that is falls under the Patreon category. That is another option as well. However, it has been co opted by a certain type of content. Only fans is an option out there from the episode that we did with him. He said that primarily what is culturally known, you know, what only fans is culturally known for is not, you know, only makes up a minute amount of the creators on there. So they have people that do all types of content on on only fans. So it's probably not your first choice, but it is an option out there,

Jon Gay  48:44  
not just those deep seated corners of the internet. Guys, yes, yes. So

Johnny Podcasts  48:48  
the reason I brought up the top Patreon creators, though, was to just give everyone an idea that you're probably thinking yourself if you're listening to, like, well, I have a really small podcast, and I really even start a Patreon. It's like the YouTube thing. If you're capable of putting that extra content out there and you have something extra valuable to be on there, it can be pretty lucrative for you. I'm not saying you're gonna hit these types of numbers, but the number one Patreon creator is Shane Gillis podcast, and they already have one of the biggest public podcasts out there. They have 93,551 paid members, wow. Oh, gee. They're giving out an extra episode, however long. You know, they're doing a Patreon episode as well as the regular public episode. And I believe that their episodes are ad free. So I want to say it's five bucks a month.

Jon Gay  49:36  
Do the math on that one, wow.

Johnny Podcasts  49:37  
Do the math on that one. That's a pretty sustainable lifestyle. Now I'm not saying that. You know we're hitting that tomorrow, okay, but don't write it off as my audience isn't big enough. I don't have the if you can create the extra content and create that extra value five people paying five bucks a month, that's 30 bucks a month. 30 bucks a month becomes 60 bucks a month becomes 100 bucks becomes. 200 you do the math here, so don't, don't, don't think of yourself as too small to do something extra like that. If you really love what you're doing and you really want to monetize it, this is gives you a chance to create extra content for the people that love what you're doing the most. And

Catherine O'Brien  50:16  
I think the examples that Matt gave were just That's so great. It's so catered to that audience and something that that's an experience. It's not You're not just giving an extra episode, you're giving something so different, a class kind of feeling, I could totally see that being so appealing to lots of different people who are passionate about the podcast that they listen to. We started

Matt Cundill  50:38  
with talking about the ads and the programmatic ads and those sort of flooding into the inventory that's out there. And we talk about, you know, advertising and podcasting, you know, 1.7 billion, maybe it'll be 2 billion. And I think we throw a party when that happens, because this has been promised for many years, but Patreon has managed to move $350 million to podcasters in in 2023 That's pretty significant.

Jon Gay  51:04  
Not an insect mane or we are almost out of time today. So before we wrap up, let's go around the room for any final thoughts when it comes to monetization of podcasts. Johnny, I'll start with

Johnny Podcasts  51:16  
you. Jack says. Jack's joke was about tax season. Just Got it. That's my final thought, tax season, Catherine.

Catherine O'Brien  51:23  
I even said tax deadline. I just want to say, as a paid member of the Sky King community, I just want to thank you all for being here today.

Matt Cundill  51:35  
Of Matt, all these options, I'm afraid. I'm afraid to go, and it's what Catherine said earlier. Like, if I go and create memberships and put up walls, I'm afraid that I will be forgotten. That is why I don't do it, but probably why I should do it. If you're

Jon Gay  51:54  
going to do it, you get to Catherine made that made such a great point earlier, that if you're going to have paid content, you better be putting something over free to stay top of mind for the folks that haven't paid for you yet, my final thought is, it's a high bar if I'm already paying for Netflix and the Disney Hulu, you know, ESPN bundle and, you know, peacock or whatever I'm going to spend for football season, if you want me to spend an extra 1015, bucks a month, it better be worth it. It real, but there are ways that it can be worth it, and you can make money off it, but you've you. It's a high bar for me, as far as content for me to pay for it.

Catherine O'Brien  52:29  
Wait before we sign off. I have a quick question. I support a podcast. I support a podcast financially, just as a as a member, does anybody else

Jon Gay  52:39  
I Do? Not? Johnny.

Unknown Speaker  52:41  
I do, yeah, I

Matt Cundill  52:42  
support a YouTube channel.

Speaker 1  52:46  
Okay with donations or $5 a month. Okay?

Catherine O'Brien  52:52  
Is that more like a tip situation, or is that more or like a Patreon?

Johnny Podcasts  52:56  
You can do private memberships on on with that channel. You can have a private

Matt Cundill  53:00  
$5 a month. It goes to Spain revealed. So, I mean, I'm using some of the things that he's talking about, where you know, where to eat, what to do and how to behave in in Spain. So I'm using that stuff. So my thanks is $5 a month,

Catherine O'Brien  53:14  
and that's the subscribe function. Yeah, you see, because that's, that's the other thing too, is, I thought, huh, I am voting with my dollars for a show I like, and there are plenty of other shows, even some of the shows that I mentioned, who that pay wall, I like them. But it is like you're saying Jack, you know, at some point I at some point, you know, the budget has to kick in.

Jon Gay  53:35  
Thank you for not asking who on the call supports and only fans. Channel.

Unknown Speaker  53:41  
I either. I think that guy's

Jon Gay  53:45  
up his wedding ring for those of you listening,

Catherine O'Brien  53:49  
yeah, I couldn't, there's,

Johnny Podcasts  53:50  
I swear. Look at the credit card statement. It's

Catherine O'Brien  53:54  
not on, and you couldn't say, oh, it's, it's, they're talking about cars, really, I swear, it's only fans. Corvair. Corvair, classic, classic cars. It's about

Jon Gay  54:05  
ceiling fans. I swear. All right. Final plugs around the room, starting with Catherine.

Catherine O'Brien  54:12  
Hey, it's been my pleasure being here with everybody. I'm Catherine O'Brien, branch app programs. I'll see you on Twitter at hello. Catherine. Oh, Matt.

Matt Cundill  54:21  
Matt Kendall, the sound off media company, Winnipeg, Manitoba, we will see you at Podcast Movement. Find me on the app. We can set up a meeting. We can have a drink or a coffee or

Jon Gay  54:30  
something. Johnny,

Johnny Podcasts  54:31  
it's too hot to follow me to Texas. Go north. Go check out the sound off media company,

Jon Gay  54:37  
pretty hot here in Detroit, too. John Gay Jack, in Detroit, podcast, Matt and I will both be a Podcast Movement coming up in DC in a couple of weeks. And I believe, should we tease next month? Matt? I think we'll probably have a little bit of recap with some stuff we gleaned from Podcast Movement. So we'll let Johnny and Catherine, and if Dave's here as well, put us in the hot seat about what we learned in DC.

Matt Cundill  54:56  
I'll be taking notes. We'll see what I remember. That's

Jon Gay  54:59  
why. I take the notes that I can't remember at this point in my life. So All right, thanks everybody for joining us this month for the podcast, Super Friends. I'm John Gay from jaggin trip podcast. We'll talk to you next

Sarah Burke (Voiceover)  55:09  
month. Thanks for listening to the podcast, Super Friends, for a transcript of the show, or to connect with the Super Friends, go to the show notes of this episode, or go to sound off dot network

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  55:21  
Produced and distributed by the sound off media company.