I just finished listening to Project 24’s Podcasting Course and felt the strong urge to share this incredible passive income opportunity with our Beginners Passive Income Audience. It’s no secret we are huge fans of Project 24 (read why here), and I can’t believe this Podcasting course was also included in our membership. The thing that caught my attention was the opportunity to make $1,700 per episode. And with an episode per week, that comes to a potential of $6,800 per month. Doing something you love and that doesn’t take 160 hours per month to create, even if it’s partially active income, it could be worth it!
Can you make passive income podcasting? Posting a single podcast episode every week is fairly passive and according to Project 24 by Income School, a well monetized podcast can make $1,700 per episode. That comes to a fairly passive income of $6,800 per month (if you release 4 well-monetized episodes every month).
A lot of online businesses and individuals are cashing in on passive income from podcasting. In some cases, donations from loyal listeners can be enough to make at least a couple of hundred dollars every month, which is not bad considering the minimal effort required to earn this money if you know your topic well.
What we loved about the Project 24 course on Podcasting is that they don’t talk about how to create a Podcast, but specifically focus on monetization and driving traffic. Here are some takeaways that are public on their YouTube channel (if you want more exclusive tips, get a Project24 membership here).
Note Keep in mind that, like any other passive income idea, it can take months to years to get to such a passive income from podcasting.
How to Make Passive Income Podcasting
Starting a podcast is a lot easier than you might think. The key is driving traffic to it and monetizing it. That is where most people fail and abandon their podcasting dream. Here are some guidelines on how to push through to make yourself money passively through podcasting.
1. Picking The Right Niche
Getting into a podcast business is a long term commitment. That means you have to choose a topic you can easily commit to and are passionate about. Make a list of the podcast ideas you have. Now answer the following questions:
- “Would I have enough material to make over 100 episodes with this topic”? Even if you don’t want to make 100 episodes, you should have enough episode ideas to keep the door open to making that much content if you want to.
- “Would I want to make 100 episodes on this topic”? The answer may be that you only want to make 30 episodes, but the purpose is to know if you are passionate enough about the topic to follow through to the end.
- “Is this topic popular?” One way to know this is by using Google Trends. Head over to the site and search your topic. If you see an upward trend, then people are looking for it online more and more.
2. Creating Your Podcasting “Hitlist”
Creating a hitlist is something Ricky and Jim teach in Project 24. It consists in creating a list categories, and then topics within those categories that you would like to cover. This method is specifically for creating a passive income blog in their course, but it is a great approach to create your list of podcast episodes. Try to aim for at least 30 episodes to start. Once you have a list of categories and topics, you can start creating your podcast titles. Make sure to keep them short and interesting. To get the Hitlist Excel spreadsheet, join Project24 here.
Note A hitlist template is available in Project 24.
3. Learning How to Make a Podcast
To give your podcasts the best chance of making you passive income, you have to make sure they are properly made. That means learning to create and publish a podcast. For instance, you should learn to set up your mic properly, and even edit the podcast so that your audience actually gets quality content. Watch the video above where Jim Harmer from Project 24 explains how to start podcasting in just 10 minutes.
Getting The Right Sound Equipment
Your podcast business will be off to a very poor start if your listeners cannot hear what you are talking about. One thing to help with this is a good setup. Of course, to get started you can record directly to your phone (especially if you have no budget and are alone on the podcast).
Audio quality, however, is an extremely important aspect of podcasting, and if you have a bit of a budget it’s worth investing in a mic. We have an awesome resource on our site that shows you our favourite options for any budget to get started podcasting or making videos online. Just click on this link to learn more about what we use in our videos and love.
Adding Meta Information
Meta information consists of all the information that you add to your file once it is created. This includes the name, description, tags and other information. You should name your files in the most effective manner. For instance, the title should be as natural and as descriptive as possible, but also pique people’s interest so they actually click and listen. The title of the file should also be the title of the podcast (and not audio01.mp3 for example). This will help your content get found in the search engines.
Preparing Your Files for Upload
In addition to this, you should also add a description to every podcast you post. For instance, if you intend to promote your podcasts through iTunes, then you will have 4,000 characters to describe your podcast. Having nice artwork representing your podcast is also an essential part of promoting your content. Even though a podcast is an audio file, you need to have a graphic that represents your brand so that people can notice it easily. This artwork will appear on various devices including laptops and mobile devices. You can use Canva to create your cover artwork for free.
4. Monetize Your Podcasts For Passive Income
If you don’t monetize your podcasts, you will be working hard for free. Luckily, there are a couple of ways to make excellent passive income from podcasting. Even though having 10,000 attentive listeners is cool, you need to know how to actually monetize that audience. Here are some excellent options to monetize your Podcast.
Ads
In their podcasting course, Ricky and Jim provide detailed numbers of what you can charge and make with ads and how to place them strategically in a podcast. The amount you make may vary depending on the audience and niche but the numbers are attainable with the right strategies and effort. To get the full details on what you can make and how to strategically place ads with smart tips and tricks, check out their full Podcasting course in Project 24.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing, as you know, involves promoting other people’s products for a commission. This is also one of the best ways to make money off your podcasts. Podcasting is an excellent fit for affiliate marketing, since you can easily hype up the product and build trust so that your audience can act on your recommendation. You can even share your personal stories and offer a more convincing context for the product you are promoting to make it sell faster. Learn more in our affiliate marketing guide for beginners.
See Our Affiliate Marketing Guide
Paid Interviews
Podcasts usually focus on a certain niche market. Chances are that there are plenty of businesses in that line of work. Even though you can promote products and earn an affiliate income, you can also interview business people who make and sell such products and make some money off the exposure you give them as well. This is usually a very convincing way to market a product since the listeners get to know the person behind it and their story.
Donations
Some podcast businesses earn money exclusively through donations. This is especially great for podcasts that have thousands of listeners. Many devoted fans are willing to offer support to their favorite podcasters by making some donations from time to time. If you can end up creating such a great podcast business, you can also make hundreds of dollars every month or more through donations that your listeners make to you.
Sponsorships
Sponsorships are an excellent way to monetize a podcast because they provide upfront revenue. All you have to do within your podcast is talk about the product, service or company that is sponsoring you. If you do get a sponsor, make sure it is relevant to your niche and audience. Also make sure that it’s actually something that you’re passionate about. Otherwise your ads will not instill trust.
Memberships
Making your podcast available behind a membership paywall is an excellent way to monetize your podcast. You may already have a membership website (if you don’t learn more in our membership guide). Offering a podcast can be an excellent way to interact with your audience on a regular basis and provide that extra value they expect from their membership. If your podcast is provided within a membership, there should be no ads since people are paying for your content.
Sell Your Own Products
You can create and promote your own products if you have them (learn how to on our site here). For instance, if your podcasts are about weight loss, you can promote a book or a video you have prepared on the subject. This can actually be a very effective way to make money off your podcasts since you would already have a lot of credibility among your listeners. With podcasts, you can go all out and really promote your product instead of just mentioning it in passing.
5. Generating Traffic to Your Podcasts
After you have decided what niche to get into, and have acquired the right equipment and mastered the technique to make a good podcast, you can go ahead and begin making them public. But after you have made the podcast, you have to get it out there so that you can use it to make money. Some of your options include iTunes, Google Play, Soundcloud and Stitcher. According to Ricky and Jim in Project 24, you should build up your subscriber base to actually make money. They provide more tips and numbers so check out their course for more.
As with any other business, not many people might know about your great weekly podcasts if you don’t make an effort to promote them. Luckily, there are many cheap and effective ways to promote your podcasts so that you get a reasonable following. One of your best online marketing options today is by blogging and YouTube. The cool thing is that Project24 also contains two courses on blogging and YouTubing! Combining these passive income ideas can help you generate multiple passive income streams.
We highly recommend joining Project 24 to learn more on both, but what Ricky and Jim explain in their public videos is that you can’t just rely on people searching for your podcast within iTunes. You should use other means of driving traffic and YouTube and blogging are great for that. It isn’t much more complicated with regards to YouTube, you can record your podcast in video format and upload it like that. YouTube being the world’s second largest search engine after Google, and actually even belonging to Google, YouTube provides an incredible platform for your content to be found. Learn more about project 24 on this page on our site.
Learn More About Passive Income Podcasting
Now that you have a way to make and post podcasts, you can go ahead and start creating a series of them. All you need is to put out a single podcast every week and you will be good to go. By any standards, that is a pretty passive way to make an extra income. We highly recommend Ricky and Jim’s podcasting course in Project24 for more details, stats, tips, and tricks on how to make passive income from Podcasting.
How Passive are Podcasts?
All things considered, podcasts fairly passive. Once you are over the initial effort of setting up your podcast business, making a podcast every week should demand just a couple hours per week. So, the effort required to keep this business going is minimal, and that is a huge benefit to anyone looking to supplement or replace their income.
Scalability
In some ways, the podcast business is very scalable. For instance, you can promote it more to get more fans, which would give you a better chance of improving the income you get off this business. Other ways to scale the business is to introduce additional income generation options to your operation. For instance, you can start to engage in affiliate marketing, in addition to selling your own products through the podcasts you post.
Startup Costs
Compared to many other passive online businesses, starting a podcast business is pretty inexpensive. You can even get started without having to purchase any additional hardware or software as long as you have a computer or a phone with a good internet connection. But for the best results, you might need special software and a better quality mic. But that does not cost a fortune either.
Difficulty
Making podcasts is fairly easy, and making money off these digital products is not that hard as long as you monetize them well. As we have seen, there are platforms on which you can start promoting your podcasts and from there, you can build an audience around your brand and start making money in the easiest of ways.
Time
Starting out will be long if you have never created voice recordings before. Create your first episodes quickly so that you can get into the flow of things. Creating podcasts on a topic you are passionate about is pretty fun, and you only need to do it once every week. Some people make a podcast every week, and that has proven more than adequate for their audiences. You don’t have to spend a lot of time creating podcasts in order to make some money off this business once you get things rolling.
Risks
With any business, there is always a risk that it will never really take off. Choose the right niche to get into, promote and monetize your podcasts effectively. The financial risks of getting into this business are minimal since you don’t need to make a huge investment in order to get into the podcast business.
Seasonality
You can make podcasts all year long and still have your devoted fans listen in whenever you put out a new podcast. Therefore, seasons have very little to do with how well your podcast business goes (unless your content is very seasons, about Christmas for example). So, you have little to be concerned about as you get into this business because loyal audiences will always want a regular dose of what you offer through your podcasts all year long.
Return on Investment
Making podcasts can give you a very good return on your investment. To begin with, you don’t need a lot of money to get into this business. Therefore, most of your revenue will consist of profits. And so, if you were looking for a business where you can make a decent amount of money with little effort, then you can try this passive income method. Learn more about how to in Project 24.
Related Questions
How do you ensure your podcast business gets off to a great start? You have a lot of options here. For instance, you should have some podcasts ready before the launch and then advertise the launch date. You can also promote the podcasts by sharing some quotes they contain.
How long should a podcast be? According to PopupPodCasting 70% of the top podcasts on iTunes have at least one episode over 40 minutes long, 26% are 20-40 minutes, and just 4% are shorter than 20 minutes. Longer podcasts with engaging content do better on this platform, however, keep it short if your content lacks quality after a certain length.
