Should I Try to Get Sponsors for My Podcast?

For most businesses, most of the time, trying to get sponsors for the podcast is one of the biggest mistakes they’re going to make in the whole project.

Most of the Time Chasing Sponsors Is the Wrong Goal.

It’s a really common story. Company thinks – I’m going to start a podcast. It’s going to be great. We’re going to build our audience. Everyone’s going to listen to it. We’re going to get sponsors that are going to cover the cost of production, we’re going to get clients from it, and we’re going to just make money hand over fist with this media that we’re creating.

And it’s a beautiful dream. I understand it. I really get the appeal. But it’s almost never going to happen for a business podcast. The shows that are sponsored were designed to be sponsored. They were set from the ground up to build big audiences and connect those audiences with companies that were willing to pay for the privilege. And there was usually a lot of planning, a lot of budget, and more staff than you would imagine involved in that process.

For most smaller business owners, that doesn’t make sense. And it’s for one really, really, really important reason – you already have a business. You don’t need another one. Your business is the primary monetization strategy for your podcast, and the podcast is just a tool to help you achieve it. When you have products and services that you sell, or maybe a speaking career or books that you want to make available, these are the things that are really important for you to get in front of other people. Your podcast is just one of the ways that you’re doing it, not something that you monetize in itself.

The sponsorship math is not very tilted in favor of smaller businesses that don’t have existing, really huge audiences. When you get a sponsor – whether it’s through a personal negotiation or ads through a marketplace – you’re going to be getting something in the range of typically $15 to $30 per thousand downloads. And those are great rates. If you can get them.

But when you look at what your actual downloads are, if you’re getting $2,000 – $3,000 a month, that’s not a lot of money for your downloads and all of that work that you’re putting in. And in order to get the audience size that is going to command the prices, or have the scale where that money is going to make sense, is basically another full time job.

You’ve already got a business to run that is ideally already making money. So what you want to do, instead of trying to get sponsors for your podcast, is think about the different ways that your podcast can help make your business better, more efficient, and more profitable.

And ultimately, that is going to make you a lot more money, a lot faster, than trying to build a whole new revenue generating stream from the ground up in a hyper competitive marketplace.

Watch: Should I Try to Get Sponsors for My Podcast?

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