Convert Listeners into Customers: How to Grow and Monetize Your Podcast with Kevin Chemidlin

In this episode I interviewed Kevin Chemidlin, a podcast growth coach, about strategies to grow and monetize a podcast. We discussed the importance of audience growth, the misconceptions about podcast charts, and the effectiveness of lead magnets in driving listener action. Kevin emphasizes the significance of building a strong email list and offering valuable products or services to your audience.   KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST Focus on Audience Growth, Not Just Downloads: Instead of solely focusing on download numbers, aim to build a loyal and engaged audience. Understand that the goal is to increase total audience reach over time. Monetization is About Listener Value, Not Ads: Reframe the question from "How do I monetize my podcast?" to "What do my listeners want to buy?" Monetization comes from offering value to your audience, whether it's a direct product, a sponsored product, or building a business around the podcast. Leverage Multiple Platforms: A successful podcast-driven business requires a multi-faceted approach. Combine your podcast with short-form content (social media), email marketing, and a compelling offer to maximize your reach and revenue.   If you enjoyed this episode then please feel free to go and share it on your social media or head over to Apple podcasts or Spotify and give me a review, I would be so very grateful.   LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE Connect with Kevin Chemidlin on Instagram, Website, Email Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list,  Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter   Transcript Teresa: Having a podcast for your business is becoming hugely popular with more and more business owners choosing to start and learn how to grow a podcast. But having a weekly podcast, as I well know, is hard work. Is it worth all the effort? that you put in and how do we make it work for our businesses to ensure that it is worth all the effort you put in. In today's episode, I interview the amazing Kevin from Grow the Show and he shares with us how to build and grow your podcast using his podcast ladder. He also talks about monetization and what that looks like for your podcast. He shares with us the four things that you need to do to make money from your podcast. Including how you can sell your own stuff, not just through sponsorship. If you have a podcast, if you're thinking about having a podcast, if you're trying to grow a podcast, then this [00:01:00] episode is going to be absolute gold. I took so much from it and I know you will too. Hello, and a really warm welcome to this week's episode of the Your Dream Business Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Teresa [00:02:00] Heath -Wareing and I hope. You are having a great start to the week. If you're listening at the start, obviously you might be listening this halfway through anyway. Wherever you are in your week, I hope it's going well. This week, I have got an awesome interview for you. Now, I love it when I do interviews where I can pick their brain for me, which sounds really selfish, but actually I find it makes a such a better episode because I'm really making them dive deep into Explaining something or helping me with something. And today's episode is a perfect example of that. I'm interviewing the very lovely and very talented Kevin from Grow the Show. He is talking all about podcasting. Now, obviously. Don't know whether you know, but I have a podcast. This episode is 329, no 359, get it right. And I've had my podcast for a long time and everything is worth reviewing. So I love it. I don't want to change [00:03:00] it or not I don't want to change it. I don't want to not do my podcast, but it's always good to get someone really smart on the podcast to have a conversation about what I can do better, how I can improve it, how I can, increase the money it makes and all that good stuff. And this episode was so good. He not only is lovely to talk to him. We had a really, really awesome conversation, but he's so knowledgeable about this. And it really was like, I just got to pick his brains for an entire 50 minutes or whatever it was. So if you have a podcast, if you are thinking about having a podcast, or if you just want to listen to a really awesome conversation. This is going to be perfect. So without further ado, please welcome the very lovely, Kevin. Kevin, welcome to the podcast. Kevin: Teresa, so excited to be here. Teresa: I'm excited, very selfishly, because as I just said to you before we got going, one of my main objectives this year is to kind of re, not reinvigorate the podcast. The podcast is doing fine and lovely and great, [00:04:00] but you can always do more. So the fact that we're going to have you on to talk about. podcast and podcast growth and all that sort of good stuff. And also I know there's so many other people who are starting podcasts. So I'm excited for today's conversation, but I always thought the podcast same way. Maybe this is something you should tell me not to do, but by getting you to introduce yourself and say who you are and how you got to do the thing that you do today. Kevin: Yeah. So happy to do so. And then later I can tell you my thoughts on whether to do that or not, as always happens when I'm on a show, we do tons of meta speak, which is awesome. So yes, my name is Kevin Chemidlin. I am a podcast growth coach. I'm the founder and host of grow the show, grow the show is the podcast to help you grow your podcast. My very brief background is I used to be a software developer at a big health insurance company in the U S. Not super passionate about writing software or health insurance, but I am super passionate about my hometown of Philadelphia. So in 2018, I launched a podcast that tells the success stories of Philadelphians. And I was way better at that [00:05:00] than writing software. So really quickly and probably prematurely. Got quit, gave notice at the full time job, uh, to go all in on being a content creator, which back in 2018, we didn't even say creator, like everybody around me in my life was just very confused. A lot, and a lot of people hadn't even heard of podcasts yet. So I said I was leaving, you know, my six figure job to be a podcaster. I got a lot of funny looks. At first it was a horrible move because while I had launched a show, what I didn't know was that I didn't know how to grow and monetize a show. I thought, oh, you just put out great episodes and the show grows and then you make money, right? Absolutely not. So the first eight months was actually pretty brutal. Eventually, I ran out of savings. My back kind of went up against the wall a little bit. I came this close to going back to the corporate gig. But had made such a big stink to everybody in my life that, that I had, that I'm an entrepreneur now that I just couldn't handle the thought of going back, you know, with my tail between my legs. So I took a pause on publishing the show for six weeks, just full time, studied the top podcasts on the Apple [00:06:00] 100 charts, got in touch with a few, you know, successful podcasters to ask for their advice. What I learned is that growing a podcast and making money from a podcast is a skill and there are activities that you have to perform in order to make that happen. Simply publishing an episode is not enough. So once I learned this, I learned what those skills are, how to do it. Brought the Philly show back. And within a year made about 120, 140, somewhere between there thousand dollars in just a year in monetization, the show had grown past a hundred thousand downloads. And so for that year, I basically was a full time content creator. Although I really worked on the show part time, I did a lot of travel, that sort of thing. And once COVID hit, couldn't travel anymore. I spent, uh, basically three months