30: John Lee Dumas on How to Launch & Monetize Your Podcast

What this episode covers

Here to present at our VIP mastermind retreat on one of the most burning questions when it comes to starting a podcast, “How will you monetize it?”, is 7—figure per year podcaster, John Lee Dumas! When John first started his podcast, it was the question everyone around him asked, “How are you going to generate revenue, how are you going to monetize it?” John’s answer was, “My audience is going to tell me how.” And, that’s exactly what happened. As he began to add email subscribers to his email list a few at a time, he would reach out and ask them a very important question, “What are you struggling with?”. From there, he began to categorize answers that he started to receive and saw trends begin to emerge. What helped John tremendously in that process was knowing his “avatar”. He created an exact profile of who his ideal podcast listener was all the way down to giving his avatar a name, an age, the number of children his avatar has, what his frustrations are, and even how long his commute is too and from work every day. Once you become clear on your avatar, you know exactly who you are serving and can allow that to assist in decision-making in your business. Next, once you have determined how to monetize your podcast, you can look for additional and ongoing monetization opportunities. It’s possible that the initial way you started monetizing may not last forever. Some additional tips to a successful podcast launch are, JUST START. We all feel some level of anxiety around starting something new. But, the reality of delaying something that you are for sure planning to do is that you’re simply delaying your results. When you start, make sure you have at least 3 episodes in iTunes so people have a reason to subscribe (vs just downloading 1 episode). Also notable, is the “New and Noteworthy” stage in iTunes. The first 56 days your podcast is in iTunes, it is eligible to be featured in the top of iTunes software under the heading New and Noteworthy, which has the potential to generate a tremendous amount of organic (free) listeners. The opportunity with podcasting is only growing. Get out there and establish yourself in the world of podcasting! What was your favorite takeaway from this episode? Please give us a 5-star rating and write us a review in iTunes! Thanks so much for subscribing! You are amazing!

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