Joe Fier: How to Make Money Podcasting (Without Even Charting On iTunes) – Business Lunch With Roland Frasier

Check out the Business Lunch Episode Page & Show Notes

Key Takeaways

• Starting a podcast:
  • The most important step is to just get started
  • Find an area that you’re absolutely fascinated by and start talking about it
  • Don’t worry about competition, everyone has a unique voice
• Growing your podcast:
  • Find out what social media platform your audience uses most and run ads on it
  • Create a group for your fans that you own (a Facebook group or an email list) and message them whenever a new episode of your podcast gets released
  • Engage your audience both through audio and visual mediums, not just one or the other
    • Use the Headliner app and Repurpose.io to promote your podcast on social media
• Monetizing your podcast:
  • If you’re going to use affiliate links to promote a product, make sure you’ve actually used it and genuinely have positive things to say
• Recommended podcast services:
  • Libsyn for podcasting hosting
  • Podnews for research and updates about the podcasting industry
  • ClickMagick to track and optimize ads
  • Headliner app to add texts, animations, images and more to your podcast audio
  • Repurpose.io to share your podcast on different platforms
  • True Native Media to find an advertiser for your podcast
  • Chartable for analytics and attribution tools

Intro

• Joe Fier (@joefier) is an entrepreneur (Evergreen Profits), investor, podcaster (Hustle & Flowchart), foster dad, and husband

About Joe Fier

• Joe has been in the podcast space since 2010 but has been running Hustle & Flowchart for the last 3 years
  • He’s developing a course that teaches people how to get into the podcast space

Starting A Podcast

• The most important step is to just get started
  • Use whatever mic, laptop, headphones and software you have at your disposal
• Find an area that you’re absolutely fascinated by and start talking about it
  • Give value and share lessons you’re learning along the way – you don’t have to be an expert, just share what you’ve found to work and what doesn’t
    • Don’t worry about competition, everyone has a unique voice
• Joe recommends people use Libsyn as a podcasting hosting service
  • And Podnews for research and updates about the podcasting industry

Growing Your Podcast

• Figure out where your audience lives and who they are:
  • What platform does the majority of your audience use to get their podcasts?
  • How old is your audience?
• Create a group for your fans that you own (a Facebook group or an email list) and message them whenever a new episode of your podcast gets released
• Find out what social media platform your audience uses the most and run ads on it
  • Joe recommends using ClickMagick to track and optimize ads – it also allows you to customize ad links so you can send Andriod users to an Andriod type podcast platform while sending iOS users to Apple’s podcast app
    • ClickMagick also allows you to add affiliate links so you earn a commission from each purchase the user makes
  • Joe is a huge fan of running ads on Facebook and Google, he’s currently experimenting with ads on YouTube
• When using Instagram to grow your brand, make sure to use popular hashtags and tags to gain new visitors
  • Even if your podcast is audio only, after you record a podcast – get out your phone and record a short video where you recap the podcast and share cool takeaways – if you or your guest is short on time, just take a photo and share the takeaways in the caption
• The goal is to engage your audience both through audio and visual mediums, not just one or the other
  • Joe recommends using the Headliner app and Repurpose.io to promote your podcast on social media
    • Repurpose your podcast episodes into smaller bites (YouTube and IGTV videos) and even smaller bites (Twitter, Instagram, Twitter)

Monetizing Your Podcast

• If you’re going to use affiliate links to promote a product, make sure you’ve actually used it and genuinely have positive things to say
  • Joe uses retargeting on his podcast website so even if a person listens to his podcast but isn’t interested in the affiliate product he’s promoting, the listener will be retargeted with ads for other affiliate items
    • A lot of Joe’s listeners were interested in learning about retargeting so he created a course where he teaches how to do it (course here)
• Joe usually earns 50% per affiliate commission – the bigger you get the more you can negotiate the commission
  • But remember, you earn 100% commission on the products you sell yourself
• Podcasters that sell ads usually earn $25-35 CPM (cost per thousand guaranteed downloads)
  • Another good metric is getting $1-1.50 per subscriber – check out True Native Media to find an advertiser match for your podcast
• Since Apple’s podcast app doesn’t share data about listeners, Joe recommends using Chartable – it also helps if you send listeners to your website so you can gather more data on their listening habits and engagement
• Joe creates a show notes page for each podcast that requires people to enter their email in order to gain access to the notes – the more emails you have, the more you can directly communicate with your audience (and sell them products)

For more on starting a podcast, check out these Podcast Notes