Making A Living as a Successful Podcaster: Are Your Podcast Expectations Substantially Out of Line?

A study has come out showing the results of 1700 new podcasters, and 41% saw their new podcast as an opportunity for additional income, with 29% of those wanting to be their main source of income. There are people who will charge you THOUSANDS of dollars (in three easy payments) who will GUARANTEE a top spot in podcasts apps. They quote their listennotes stats (even when they know they are bogus, see and ) and promote affiliate products - not because they are good - but because they have the highest commission.  I'm not them. Today I reveal the truth - even if it is not what you want to hear.  So The Plan is Start a Podcast and Get Advertisers? Less than 10% of podcasters get the number of downloads per episode after 30 days to get a host ready from a "big sponsor." Programmatic ads have a CPM that may be  around $12 CPM (cost per thousand downloads) The median number of podcasters is around 150 (per libsyn)and the average is around 1500. The median on Buzzsprout is 30.  The aver CPM for Advertisecast is $24ish and they require 10,000 downloads per episode. Please note, I'm not saying smaller shows with 1000 downloads an episode can't get a sponsor. With podcasting, it always "Depends" on your topic. If you DO have a hyper niche or hyper-local podcast you can charge more than the rates above.  Bruce Chamoff from the NYC Podcast Network I first ran into Bruce when he invited me to be a speaker at his . I wanted to talk to Bruce because I don't see eye to eye on some of the things he does, and I wanted to no more. One was having a network where the topics weren't related.  Brice started the back in 2005 (it was the Long Island Podcast Network back then). He has slowly broadened the scope and plans on rebranding it to the Global Podcast Network.  Bruce is monetizing by having podcaster pay to be promoted on his site, which gets 20-25 thousand unique visitors a month. That would put him in the top 20% ().  You can join for free or pay a small monthly fee to be featured on the site. Bruce monitors all the activity on the website so you can evaluate your traffic from the site and decide if it's worth the fee, or just stay with a free plan (or leave - I'm somewhat worried about having another site competing with YOUR website) Certain plans on the site allow you to link to our show on popular podcast platforms, as well as monetization links, and link to your website (which you can do on your own site for free). Bruce likens it to a social media site based around podcasting. What makes his site different is his level of categorization.  You can , try it, and check your stats to see if this works for you.    My "Thanks Dave" Engagement Experiment For three weeks, I swapped out my typical School of Podcasting Advertisement and askws people if they felt I had given value over the years (and they had never joined the School of Podcasting) if they would give some of that value back by going to Six people said "Thanks" and gave some value back (Ranging from $5-$25).  Steve at James Cridland From Craig Wealand from DR from Mouthy Broad Media Try Price from Front Porch Studios If you take 6/1500 that is .04% (not 4% POINT ZERO 4) I've mentioned in the past that I've heard the VERY popular show Radiolab do a "Fundraiser" type episode trying to get UP TO 1% of their audience to donate. When I've spoken to other people in the industry, a good engagement level is 2-3%.  If I count the people who are and , I'm somewhere near that ballpark. Mentioned in This Episode