Starting a "Local" Podcast

Going "local" with your podcast is, by far, the easiest way to attract an audience and high-paying advertisers.

The highest-paying podcast I've ever done, per listener, was produced 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.

Which would be a better podcast on which to advertise? A podcast with 1000 people who could use what either of these specialty 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 to advertisers. Yeah, you don't have a lot of people listening, but you have the right people listening.

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