What is podcast monetization and how do podcasts make money? You’ve probably realized by now that almost everyone and their brother are podcasting. From Michelle Obama to Oprah Winfrey, to the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, it seems like podcasting is the new craze. And it’s paying off.
The intimacy of podcasting creates trust, which spurs listeners to take action when they hear ads… and advertisers are starting to truly uncover this power and invest more.
Now those advertisers are knocking down your organization’s door to be included in your catalog of podcasts, but your team is struggling to manage the campaign and maximize your earnings. Sound familiar? That’s where Spreaker’s Campaign Manager comes in.
Integrated into our CMS, the Campaign Manager is an easy-to-use smart tool that’s built for podcast publishers to traffic their own advertising campaigns; You can seamlessly set-up, configure and analyze your own ads and desired listener targets. It’s for you to insert ads with pinpoint precision, keep your back catalog fresh, and accurately evaluate campaign performance.
We’re so thrilled to announce the initial success of Spreaker Prime, our new white-glove service for talented independent podcasters and networks. In the first three months of the revenue-sharing program, our Spreaker Prime podcasters generated $1 million dollars via programmatic advertising, with sixty-percent of the profits going directly to the podcasters!
So, you have the podcast and you have the listeners – the next obvious step is to start making some money from it. However, before you can start thinking about monetizing your podcast you need to make sure you have a proposal which will knock any potential sponsor’s socks off.
To be well equipped to write that all-important pitch you need to know your podcast inside out – your audience, the hard stats and your value as a marketing channel. To make it as simple as possible for you, we have pulled together a checklist of three points which will guarantee you’re ready to start reaping the rewards from your podcast!
(Updated on April 2019)
Great content has real value: your engagement with your audience is precious. The more you feel empowered and in control of the true value of your podcast, the more you will be able to really give to it and make it thrive. That’s why feeling fully in control of the way your podcast monetizes is important.
Savvy advertisers are already on to the phenomenal potential of audio content and are investing, big time. But there may remain a lingering concern that by accepting ads, you might be ‘handing over reins’ of your episode structure to advertisers. And what kind of money is there to be made, given the potential compromise?
Here at Spreaker, we resolutely believe that you CAN make your podcast steadily and seriously fruitful money-wise, while also keeping full control over your episodes. Earlier this year, we launched our Revenue Sharing program, allowing podcasters to earn money for every listen or impression. We are now delighted to announce that the program has graduated from its beta version, into a fully fledged sophisticated ad revenue system.
(Updated July 2019) We’ve got a mission to provide the most complete, all-in-one podcasting solution out there with our CMS. It’s a professional dashboard that covers editing, feeds, social media distribution, and monetization opportunities (amongst other things) so that you have greater control over your content. Now we’ve ticked one more thing off our list of features: having in-depth statistics on Spreaker’s CMS.
They’re easy to access, and thanks to a beautiful redesign, even easier to read. Plus we’ve added a few extra goodies while we were at it – you’ll have the key to unlocking your audience in no time.
The importance of understanding your statistics cannot be overstated. They offer you a complete reading of your listeners, like who they are and where they’re from. With that insight, you get a clear idea of your podcast’s progress and how to further develop your content; stats function as feedback, encouraging you to keep doing what you’re doing, or pushing you to experiment and improve your process.
Detailed statistics are also crucial data to report to ad agencies and sponsors if you’re looking to monetize your content (if that’s the route you want to take, of course – Spreaker offers an easier, more automatic revenue sharing program, too). Ad providers want to be able to match up products and the audiences they’ll be advertised to as best as possible, and the stats you provide should be leveraged accordingly (for example, they’ll want to be sure that the men’s shaving kits they’re pushing aren’t getting featured on children’s programming). It’s similar in approach to any other type of content monetization – even bloggers have to provide reports of their readership to their sponsors, because why place an ad on your page that isn’t likely to get read or paid attention to? With the help of detailed statistics, you’ll be able to show them the power of your podcast’s reach and the who, what, where, and why of your listeners with one go.
You have to be passionate to podcast. To get a great show up and running you need to invest time, and sometimes even money, into the tech, show production, branding, and marketing. While connecting with audiences can be a reward in itself, wouldn’t it be great to get some monetary returns as well?
Unfortunately, agencies and sponsors are not the easiest to come by. Great podcasts are too often overlooked for big productions backed by even bigger networks. It’s hard to get recognition when you’re competing with well-funded production machines.
But we at Spreaker believe your podcast is worth the chance – why can’t monetizing be easy, and accessible to everyone? And so, we’re excited to introduce our new Revenue Sharing Program! It’s an easy opt-in program where podcasters can earn money for every listen, or impression, they get.
