This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hello, hello, what's up and welcome to Side Hustle School. This is your host, Chris Guillebeau. All year I've been answering listener questions. I was gonna say answering listener questions and answers, but there's a two-part process. Listeners ask the questions.
I attempt to provide some sort of answer and it's been really fun to hear of all the different projects people out there are starting. Today's listener has a pretty wild idea. They actually want to start a podcast. Now, why would anybody want to do that? Well, as an active podcast listener, you might know the answer to reach people like you.
Millions of people now use podcasts as a primary medium for their news, education, and entertainment, and millions more use it as a secondary medium. There are also a lot of people who don't listen to podcasts, which just means that the market has a lot more room to grow, even despite all the people who are listening. So when it comes to doing it as a side hustle, a money-making project specifically, what do you need to know in terms of attracting sponsors? Do you do it on the front end? Do you do it a bit later as you build an audience?
That's what we're gonna talk about in this episode. So here is a message from our sponsor. Hey, thank you so much, sponsor. Thanks for your support and allowing us to bring this program to our listeners completely free. And then we'll jump into the question.
How can I find companies to sponsor my podcast? [Music]
Hi, Chris. This is Rod from Omaha, and I've been listening to this show for over a year. Thanks for the helpful content. I'm planning to start a podcast, and I wanna do it seriously.
Well, maybe not professionally, but I wanna plan well and do everything I can to recruit an active audience that will be attractive to sponsors. What do I need to know and how do I find those sponsors? Do I find them in advance? Or only after the audience is more established? Thanks.
- Rod, what's up? Thank you so much for listening. Thanks for the question. And I am excited about your podcast. Really glad to know that you're planning to take it seriously.
Not everything has to be professionally, as you said, but to take it seriously, I think that is admirable. So let us talk a bit about sponsorship. Your question specifically is, what do you need to know? How do you find the sponsors? Do you find them in advance or later?
So on that last point, if it's important to you to have sponsors right when the show launches, most likely you'll need to partner with a podcast network or distributor who will license and distribute your show. Now, this is changing by the month because I realized the follow-up question is, okay, who are those people? Where do I find them? Well, it's changing by the month. It's a very fast-moving industry, but a few well-known podcast networks at the moment include Wondery, Pushkin Industries, and Cadence 13, where Side Hustle School is hosted.
Now, in recent times, streaming services like Spotify have also gotten in the game by producing and distributing their own podcasts as well. Now, I just named a few of the bigger ones there, but there's also a lot of others as well. Assuming you aren't going through a company like that, which is kind of like working with a traditional publisher for your book, like there are pros and cons to it. So assuming you're not doing that, then you'll really need to focus more on building up your subscriber base before sponsors will be interested. And then once that audience is established, that's when you wanna start looking for the sponsors.
A great place to start once you have a good number of downloads, let's say, you know, five to 10,000 per episode or more, is Midroll. So you can look at midroll.com, they produce podcasts of their own, but also sell ads on a commission basis for lots of other podcasts. And as with the other companies I mentioned, Midroll is not the only option. So when you search find podcast sponsors in Google or wherever, you might find several other networks that do the same thing. Now, lastly, in addition to those networks, because let's say you're starting off and podcast is going well, but you don't have really big numbers, well, you can still approach brands directly.
If there's companies that might be a good fit, or you can invite them to approach you directly. So how do you do that? Well, on your podcast website, which you should have a website by the way, include a prominent page called sponsor info or sponsor this podcast, something like that. And I think if you don't have a ton of downloads, this is a good entry point because you can try to sell some other unique characteristic about your podcast. You know, for example, it might be a small tight-knit community that isn't ever going to have a huge listenership in terms of just the raw numbers, but this community is very loyal and it's in need of services that a sponsor could provide.
So I've known a lot of smaller podcasters who have had the same sponsors often for years who have just really believed in the podcasts and they have kind of forged this good relationship between the company, the podcaster and the audience and all without going through a network, which of course, by nature, a network is a middleman and there's commission involved and all that kind of stuff. So a few different options there, but I think overall, whatever you do, the most important thing is building that audience. Like focus always on your audience. Focus on what can I do to create a great podcast? What can I do to provide valuable, helpful content?
Because that is the foundation for any other relationship, whether you're trying to work with a network, trying to get your ads sold by a distributor or trying to connect with sponsors directly. Focus on your audience. All right, listeners, if you have a question, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. We will continue to feature them throughout the rest of the year, along with updates from other listeners as they launch their projects. I look forward to hearing about Rod's project and maybe even yours as well.
Thank you so much for listening. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Sidusleschool." [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
