sell music online

Sell Podcasts

Great News! You invested some money into a microphone & head-set and are now ready to start broadcasting and sell podcasts to your audience. Congratulations! Now the question is, do you want to keep this simply as a hobby or do you want to go further and try to make your podcast profitable? Here’s a couple ways to sell podcasts and start making a living at doing what you love.

1) Sell Podcasts through Sponsorships

If you are interested in trying to sell podcasts to your listeners, sponsors are usually the way to go. They provide a quick and easy way for you to leverage your niche and provide products and content your listeners want to buy. Even at a local level, reach out to a few business friends in town and let them know what you’re doing & see if they would like to be a sponsor on your program for $10/mo. Perhaps you just feature their business on your podcast website or give them a shout out in your stream. The key element here is people like attention and validation. Even if you’re just starting out, being on the “Air” is exciting.

I mentioned local because it’s always good to try things out on a local level before you decide to go big. This will give you time to try things out, run some marketing tests and see what works. Secondly, local is great because you’re working with people you know who are much more likely to support your dreams and tell their friends. Word of mouth is one of the most powerful marketing tools and if your friends are anything like my Mom, you will have a social network on your hands in no time! Once you have a clear vision of where you are going reach out online and start finding brands that compliment the message you are sending to your listeners.

2) Sell Podcasts with Affiliates

To sell podcasts and make an income on a residual/monthly basis, focus on building your affiliate network. Click Funnels is a good way to go. Keep it consistent with your message and make sure these companies have a legit product/service you can offer your customers. There’s a lot of scams out there so take your time and do diligent research, your business will be much better off for it.

3) Sell podcasts on iTunes

The go-to for selling podcasts is the iTunes market-place, however as you know with our blog, we focus on being your own boss and owning your stuff. Here’s why: While iTunes does list your podcast in their store it doesn’t help you find new traffic to download your tracks, in other words selling podcasts on iTunes might look good, but the results are fairly poor. Even with purchased downloads of your work, as a creator you will not receive that person’s contact info to follow-up & build your podcast contact list. With that being said, it does get your work out there and that’s something. To truly capitalize on selling podcasts you will need to get your own store.

4) Sell Podcasts with your Podcast Store

While many podcasters prefer to list one or two tracks on their website with the Simple Podcast WordPress Player, with the TunePort Podcast Store, you can feature all of your tracks in a store catalog on your home-page, making your podcast episodes the star of your website. While most podcasters prefer to not sell podcasts and provide their tracks for free to listeners, here’s a more lucrative strategy which will still keep your listeners happy and make you money so you can continue to scale your business. With your podcast store, offer your customers the opportunity to download tracks for free with an email. Make sure to upload at least 10 tracks in your store & list them for free then offer the opportunity to buy all your podcasts in bulk for $5.00. By doing this, you have a win-win situation for you & your listeners.

A)If your listeners download instead of buy, you will receive their email to add to your Podcast Newsletter.

B)While it’s nice to download stuff for free, it takes time! By offering your purchase in Bulk, you’re providing a very convenient and easy way to save time and get your stuff downloaded at once.

Finally, many podcasters use live SKYPE video and you can upload these files in your Podcast Store and share them as an incentive along with a purchase to your listeners. In other words, having your own podcast store you can place on your website and facebook page is guaranteed to help you sell podcasts & make more money doing what you love.

5) Sell Podcasts by Creating Your Own Product

While this might not be the easiest way to build your podcast business, offering products to customers (drop-shipping) on e-bay or putting time & investment into finding products on Amazon that fit your niche, have a good buying ratio and fit in with your customers’ needs could be a game-changer for you. Instead of finding a sponsor or affiliate, find and build an online business that is yours & turn them into your sponsor you share with your audience. Again, this approach will take a lot of work and might take you away from building your podcast business, so choose whatever works best for you.

Finally, your product can be YOUR WORK. In general, podcasters are usually very knowledgeable about their topics/subjects, so why not take this knowledge and write a quick e-book you can offer your listeners. Give this to your listeners on your home-page of your website in exchange for an email. Then build out a second product with more key-content (Example: Offer your listeners the golden nuggets from each of the 10 interviews you had with guests) at an affordable price and sell it. Now you’re making a stream of income from your products, establishing yourself as an expert in your niche and building a trusting relationship with your listeners.

sell music online