324 Podcasting As An Occupation? How Long Before My Podcast Will Start Generating Income? My Thoughts On This And More!




The Cliff Ravenscraft Show - Mindset Answer Man show

Summary: Show Me The Money! (Topic starts at 00:03:44) There are times when I feel like Jerry Maguire in this scene from the movie (WARNING: Strong language in clip). Okay, so this is a bit of an exaggeration. The fact is that I have made it a point to not yet enter into a relationship where clients are expecting me to "show them the money." I've stopped counting the number of times that folks have come to me, expecting me to teach them how to turn their podcast into their full-time career or how to create a podcast that will begin providing them a significant income. The common theme among all these requests has been that these individuals see their podcast as "a product" or "a service" and that they can turn their podcast into a lucrative business. One person sent me an email asking, "Does a well-done, interesting daily financial podcast have the potential to generate perhaps $3k per month of income within 12 to 24 months if I hammer it and work my butt off on it?" Another person, who was thinking about signing up for my Podcasting A to Z course, asked "What the payback period is for the investment in your course?  On average, how long does it take for your students to earn their investment back?" Yet another person wrote to tell me, "I've lost my job. So naturally, I want to figure out a way to make the podcast and my youtube channel more lucrative and make it my occupation." Please understand that I do believe that it is possible to generate income directly from your podcasting efforts. In fact, I did a lengthy blog post back in August 2011 where I shared some very personal details about how much income I was generating from my own podcasting efforts. You can read that post by clicking here. I also gave a one hour presentation at BlogWorld LA 2011 (Now known as New Media Expo), titled "Proven Strategies For Generating Serious Income From Your Podcasting Efforts. I'll post it below. As you can see, I do not shy away from the topic of monetization and I have no issues with folks generating income directly from their podcasts. However, in this episode, I share some pretty strong feelings on putting too much pressure on your podcast to directly generate income. I do not believe that a podcast should be looked at as a business or a career. Are there exceptions to this? Yep! However, I have found it easier to succeed when you actually develop a genuine business where you offer products and/or services that provide value to your target audience. As people come to know, like and trust you, they can then make a decision to purchase your products and/or services, or the products and services of those you recommend. I do directly generate a few thousand dollars a month from sponsorship of a few podcasts and from affiliate commissions that I earn from recommending products and services in my podcast. Only a very small percentage of my income, however, is generated in this way. I want to point out that I've been podcasting since 2005 and have produced more than 3,100 podcast episodes and have a following that is in the hundreds of thousands of people at this point in my journey. This is not something I built within 12 to 18 months. Even today, I do not see any of my podcasts as my "business." Instead, I have a business model that is made of of many different streams of income from many different products and services that I offer. Here are a few things that I do that generate income for my actual business. - Coaching & Consulting, Including Podcasting A to Z. - Facilitating The Podcast Mastermind which I founded in March 2012. - Equipment sales made at http://PodcastAnswerMan.com/equipment. - Video Training Tutorial Sales made at http://PodcastAnswerMan.com/products. - A referral network where I earn commission on referring clients for podcast artwork, one-on-one consulting, etc. - Public Speaking. I started out speaking for free. However, I am now paid well to speak at events.