Most podcasters don’t start their shows with the sole purpose of making money. They do it to have fun with friends, explore a new creative outlet, or to create a community of like-minded individuals. 

But at the same time, if you are putting hours of work into a project every week, it’s nice to get paid for your efforts. The most popular way to make money podcasting is through corporate sponsorship. Podcast advertising has become a colossal industry, with advertisers spending over a billion dollars every year.

In this article we’ll dive deeper into how you can get podcast sponsors to earn your share of those billions, plus a few more methods you can use to make money podcasting.

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Table of Contents:

• Prerequisites – Grow Your Audience. Know the Advertising Rates.
• How to Get Podcast Sponsors: 3 Methods
  • Join a Podcast Network
  • Pitch with a Personal Touch
  • Choose a Hosting Service
• Final Thoughts – How to Make Money Podcasting Without Sponsors

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Prerequisites – Grow Your Audience. Know the Advertising Rates.

Grow Your Audience

This is a bitter pill to swallow, but there’s really no way around it—if you don’t have an audience—nobody will want to advertise on your show. So Step 0 before you can get podcast sponsors is to grow your podcast’s audience.

To get your show sponsored, you’ll need around 2,000 downloads per episode before anybody shows interest in working with you. If you have less than that, don’t sweat! We’ve written a few articles with tips on how to grow your audience.

• How to Promote and Grow Your Podcast
• 7 Ways to Grow Your Podcast with Podchaser
• How to Start a Podcast with No Audience

2023 Podcast Advertising Rates

Before you can get podcast sponsors, you need to learn about podcast advertising rates. The following represents the average CPM rates for standard, host-read pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll ads. Note that CPM, “cost per mille,” in this instance refers to the ad cost per 1,000 listeners.

Podcast Pre-roll Ad CPM

• The average 15-25 second pre-roll ad spot will have a $15 CPM.
• It’ll cost approximately $1,500 to purchase a pre-roll ad on a podcast that generates 100,000 listens.

Podcast Mid-roll Ad CPM

• The average 30-60 second mid-roll ad spot will have a $30 CPM.
• It’ll cost approximately $3,000 to purchase a mid-roll ad on a podcast that generates 100,000 listens.

Podcast Post-roll Ad CPM

• The average 15-25 second post-roll (also known as an “end-roll”) ad spot will have a $10 CPM.
• It’ll cost approximately $1,000 to purchase a post-roll ad on a podcast that generates 100,000 listens.

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How to Get Podcast Sponsors: 3 Methods

Join a Podcast Network

One of the major benefits of joining a podcast network is getting podcast sponsors. Networks likely already have relationships with top advertisers, making it incredibly easy to find a sponsor for your show.

The downside of this option is that podcast networks want to be rewarded for their efforts, which means that they will take a significant chunk of the ad revenue your show earns. And because podcast networks make their money from this commission, they are mostly interested in more popular podcasts.

Here are few larger podcast networks that find advertising for their affiliated shows:

• Earwolf

• Headgum

• Maximum Fun

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Pitch with a Personal Touch

If you don’t want anyone else to take a cut of your ad revenue, the more direct option is to contact podcast advertisers yourself.

Podcast advertisers aren’t only interested in reaching the largest audience, but the most receptive audience. So find a brand within your podcasts niche to sponsor your show. For example, the movie podcast Blank Check is often sponsored by Mubi, a curated movie streaming platform.

If you can prove to a brand that your audience would be receptive to their message, and that your audience trusts your opinion, pitching them directly might be a great option for you to try.

To find brands to work with, go to Podchaser’s brand page, where we highlight the top 30 advertisers from the last month, including how much they’ve spent and how many podcast episodes they’ve sponsored. You can even search for a specific brand that you might be interested in to see what kinds of shows they advertise on.

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Choose a Hosting Service

Podcast hosting services are companies that will host your podcasts RSS feed and provide statistics on your show’s performance. Over the years, the podcast hosting service industry has gotten extremely competitive, forcing companies to come up with innovative features to attract podcasters to their platform. 

As part of this, many hosting providers enable their clients to connect with podcast advertisers. Here are a few:

Acast:

Acast is the world’s largest independent podcast company. And they’ve gained that reputation by connecting advertisers and podcasters. As part of their suite of tools, you can automatically insert programmatic advertisements into your podcast episode. That means you can get connected with advertisers with just a few clicks, swipes, or taps.

 Anchor:

Anchor is a podcast hosting service owned by Spotify, the world’s most popular platform for listening to podcasts. They have three levels of monetization options for podcasters. The first, for podcasts with lower listenership is “ambassador ads”, where Anchor will pay you to promote their platform. Once you have a larger audience, you gain access to automatically inserted ads. And finally, Premium Sponsorships are available to the most popular podcasts, where Anchor’s team connects you with brands directly.

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Final Thoughts – How to Make Money Podcasting Without Sponsors

Brand sponsorship isn’t the only way to make money podcasting. If you have a smaller audience and you’re willing to get creative,there are tons of opportunities opportunities out there, including::

• Walled/Paid Communities
• Subscriptions/Donations
• Crowdfunding
• Merchandise
• Public Speaking 
• And More!

If you want to learn more about earning with podcasting, check out our article, 9 Ways to Make Money Podcasting.