Making Money with a Small Podcast

Going "local" is, by far, the easiest way to attract an audience as well as high-paying advertisers.

The highest-paying podcast I've ever done, per listener, was for a neighborhood of about 1500 houses. But it's not just geography that makes something "local"—you can use these same techniques with any podcast that caters to a very specific audience. For example, many of the things that apply to a geographically local podcast also apply to my broadcast radio show, Music Business Radio.

Think about this ...

A "guitar string" company, like a local coffee shop, isn't selling to everybody—they want to reach a very specific group of people, in this case either musicians or people within a few blocks of the coffee shop. Anybody else isn't a match for these companies.

Which would be a better podcast on which to advertise? A podcast with 1000 people who could use what either of these companies had to offer or a podcast with 100,000 "general" listeners?

If you're got a small, but focused audience, this should be your pitch. Yeah, you don't have a lot of people listening, but you have the right people listening.

For advertisers, the only listeners that matter are the ones who buy. This is how you can get "100,000 money" for a podcast with just 1000 listeners.

Again, going local is an easy option to do this. And there are similarly powerful segments for most podcasters (probably yours).