Everyone is starting a podcast thinking it's their golden ticket, but is a podcast really the right way for you to expand and scale your business. In this video, we're going to give you all the information you need to make the right decision. Podcasts can be a great source of information and entertainment. But they may not always be a good fit for your business. Here's some general thoughts on who podcasts are good for and who they're not. Podcasts are an ideal tool for building trust with your audience and expanding your content ecosystem. They're an incredible way for your audience to take your content on the go and continue building that relationship in an audio based format. They're also a wonderful way to reuse content, whether that's taking existing content from your courses or videos and repurposing it as a podcast. Or if you have a clear strategy to create a podcast and reuse that content in another way. Ultimately, starting a podcast is best fit for people who already have an audience or a large wealth of content that they're looking to package in a different way and figure out a different monetization channel that they can incorporate into their multiple streams of income podcasts in themselves are not an ideal way to build an audience or to monetize your existing audience. Using a podcast to acquire new customers or build an audience in itself is going to take a really long time, podcasts are not optimized for discovery and ultimately grow through word of mouth. Now, if you wanted to create a series of YouTube videos that you then reuse the audio as a podcast, that's a strategy we've seen many creators use and have great success with podcasts themselves are also not a reliable way to make money. People making money off of podcasts primarily do that, through sponsorships, or through deals with Spotify or the like that requires having a huge audience. And once again, that takes a long time to build with a podcast over on the podcast is a fantastic way to generate or reuse content. But you have to be very clear about your goals and make sure that it fits into your overall content ecosystem and it serves your business. So make sure before you devote a whole lot of time to creating a podcast that you understand it's only a piece of your business and will not be your path to success alone. That said if you're still driven to start a podcast or it does make sense within your business, keep watching and we'll give you some valuable tips to help make sure you succeed. Although there are many forms of successful podcasts from short five minute episodes to long two hour episodes, it's important to dig deep into your passion and focus your podcast around a topic or topics that you'll be thrilled to dig into regularly. That could be your skill set your knowledge or your expertise or something you're excited to learn about. And you want to take the audience on that journey with you. And when you commit to leaning into your passion through creating content, products, and conversation around the things you love, your community will find you and if you're operating strategically for your business, do a little research around what topics or guests you can have on your podcast that appeal to an audience advertisers would be interested in having access to this will increase the likelihood that down the road. As your podcast grows, you can get sponsors, and you can monetize it in every way you need to. For example, if you're a health and fitness enthusiast consider topics around nutrition or food. Or if you're an artist and ice cream maker, you could consider topics around the art or science or history of your skill. If you use your passion to speak to the people you want to help, your niche will become clearer in time. Now if you're looking to properly fit your podcast into your greater business ecosystem, here's some tips you should follow. Define your podcasts purpose, that means defining the goals and objectives of your podcast. Will it be used to promote your products? Or is it a place for you to show off your expertise? Maybe it's just a way for you to develop a closer relationship with your customers and not sell them anything at all. Or maybe it's purely there as a tool to let your audience know more about who you are and build their trust and you'll sell to them in other formats. Make sure to align your podcast audience with your existing audience. Are they the same? Is there crossover? Are they different? And why is this helping your business this will help you make sure that you're creating content that is helpful and relevant for them. As well as ensuring that your messaging is consistent across all the content. You may also track your podcast performance and measure those results against your goals. This will help you understand how your podcast is fitting into your business ecosystem and where you can change things up or improve. So if you make sure to be clear about the goal of your podcast and set out with a mission, then track and measure your results. As you go, you will be able to incorporate a podcast into your business's ecosystem. And it can be a powerful tool for scaling and expanding the reach of your audience. Technically, you could start a podcast just with your phone, maybe a laptop and some access to the internet. You can record pretty decent audio just with your phone's built in microphone. And with the selection of apps available, you can edit, publish and monitor your podcast all from a phone. However, when you're ready to take the leap and ensure that your podcast has professional level audio quality, you're going to need a couple of things. You're going to need a decent quality USB microphone, potentially a pop filter and a stand a laptop capable of running basic editing software and some tool like Canva or otherwise, you can use to create graphics, you could find any of these things at pretty much any level of budget you might have. But the thing we recommend is just to get started with what you have and focus on the content of your podcast. Make sure that it's riveting. Make sure that it's entertaining, that it's helpful for your audience. And moreover, that it fits the goals of your business. If you find success, you can always upgrade your equipment down the line. And what better time to make that investment than when you already know the podcast is valuable and worth continuing. Here are three ways you can monetize your podcast sponsorships are by far the number one way most podcasters make money. This is simply someone like a company or brand paying you money to include an advertisement for their products or services on your podcast. This can take the form of a pre roll or mid roll ad sometimes the company will record it themselves and you just have to edit it in other times you'll be asked to record it yourself so that it connects more with your audience. Alternatively, you can also just incorporate the product into the actual content of your podcast, we've seen some podcasters get very creative with the content of their podcast, so you don't even know that the sponsor is paying them to make that content. Either way, it's important when working with sponsors to make sure that they are relevant for your audience, a sponsor is going to want to know that your audience might actually be interested in their products. And it's important to market products to your audience that they actually will like so that you don't hurt the trust you've worked so hard to build with them. Affiliate marketing is similar but a little bit different. In this case, it's commission based so you are promoting a product or service of a brand or company within your podcast but you only get paid when someone uses a specific link to go and purchase that product. This is a great way to get started monetizing your podcast as most of the tools or companies you already use have affiliate programs and you just need to search for it in Google. By far the most sustainable system in the long run is to be selling premium content. This can be exclusive episodes or the behind the scenes or additional content that goes deeper into the value you're providing. We see creators using teachable to do this all the time selling memberships to their exclusive content or promoting their online courses when they're relevant within the podcast the most profitable but rare way to make money with a podcast is with a paid deal. This is when a company like Spotify or Apple pays you to exclusively host your podcast on their platform. This can be a goal of yours in the long term. But it is very difficult to land a deal like this if you don't have a large audience or an extremely refined niche that's profitable for a company to pay for podcasts are a fantastic place to repurpose content in either direction. Whether you're taking existing content and utilizing it for your podcast, or strategically building your podcast to be used in other content. Making sure you're set to reuse content from the get go is a powerful way to build a sustainable business. You can do this to provide additional value for your existing audience or to repackage that content to reach a wider audience that may not be on the platforms you're already on. One of the most creative ways we've seen creators do this is taking chunks of their podcast and repurposing it as a digital download. This is a great way to take your podcast and turn it into a tangible sellable product, or to create lead magnets that you can use to help grow your audience. Here's some steps you can take to make that happen. First, determine the problem you're trying to solve for your audience with your digital download, then review your podcast content through the lens of selecting the pieces that logically walk your audience through the steps it takes to achieve that transformation. You can now take those steps and package them together into a digital download. You can include one or two PDFs that adds additional value providing additional resources like a template they can walk through while listening to it. Most importantly, however you package this product, make sure to include a clear next step, whether that's a call to action to follow you on your social media or to subscribe to your podcast or to buy another one of your products. Make sure you give them a clear way to continue engaging with your platform and become a loyal customer down the road. By following these tips. You can leverage the content of your podcasts to become powerful products that you can sell to your audience and help grow your audience over time. No matter how large your audience is. This is a powerful tool to make sure you are not completely reliant on sponsorships or other companies for your income. Now before we wrap up, I just want to acknowledge that there may be A variety of mindset blocks between you and a successful podcast that serves your business fear, fear of being judged by others fear of failure, fear of what your life could look like if you achieve your goals. There are so many reasons to be afraid, but most of them live in the future. They don't exist yet. And they're not real until you let them take over feeling unsure of one's abilities, questioning if anyone would even want to listen to your podcast thinking that you're not qualified to speak about your passions, this feeling of imposter syndrome is going to accompany you throughout your journey. It's something to get comfortable with and make sure that it doesn't stop you from getting started. Once you get started, you'll see results. And once you get feedback, it'll all feel worth it. Perfectionism is a another one. If you're someone who wants everything to be perfect, and you want to do it all yourself and control every little entity, this is going to be difficult for you over time, you will create that product that you're desperate to create. But start by focusing on just one aspect of a product every time you create a new one. If you can improve one thing every time along the way, you will eventually create something that is as close to perfect as anyone could make. Feeling overwhelmed by the amount of work that is involved in creating a podcast or an online course is very common. Burnout is something that most creators feel at some point. And that burnout can start with just the concept of getting started, it's important to start with the little tasks involved with each part of the process. Tackle them one by one, and eventually you will have a functioning podcast that is making you money. Confidence in general can be a hard thing to muster when you're starting something new start from that place of passion and the confidence you have in that passion and let that carry you through. It's important to acknowledge all of these emotions live in them for a while, but don't let them stop you from getting started. All of the many elements required to build a successful business require practice. And if you can start by practicing breaking down these challenges into the smaller challenges that exist within them and tackling and solving those problems one at a time. You can carry that practice throughout your entire career and it'll serve you no matter what comes your way. Also look to your community, your friends, your mentors, your family, your role models, other creators and look at how they overcome these challenges model your content your systems and your process off of other successful people. And you will eventually make it your own roadblocks are exactly this. They are things in between you and your goals but you can overcome them. You can jump over them and the more you practice, the easier it'll become. Thank you so much for watching and don't forget to like and subscribe to our channel. There's a wealth of additional resources here that can help you build a thriving online business. As always, it's a pleasure being with you and don't forget everything is teachable.
