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One of my biggest pet peeves in the podcasting community, or digital marketing community in general is how easy everyone wants you to think it is to make money. There’s a big name content creator that’s launching a podcasting course right now and I heard them telling their audience podcasting was the reason they could be a stay at home parent and make multiple six-figures. While I don’t doubt that’s true, I do doubt the ease at which they’re trying to sell their course to you to achieve these same results.

The past few months I’ve had multiple questions from podcasters that are trying to monetize their podcast, but it’s still not getting them anywhere. I can relate to this, it took me years to make money off my podcasts, and I’m still working on strategies to consistently create revenue from my podcasts.

In this episode we’ll talk about five reasons you still aren’t making money with your podcast. How to fix it and what you need to know moving forward if you want your podcast to be a sustainable source of income for you and your brand.

1. You Don’t Have a Clear Offer

 Whether it’s selling ad slots on your podcast to advertisers, trying to drive listeners to your email list to begin a sales funnel or selling directly from your podcast with your own products, you need to know what the offer is. What are you trying to sell and how will the buyer buy?

We get so caught up in trying to be creative with our offer strategy we forget the importance of having a simple objective. What is the offer?

👉 How to fix it: Write down your offer. What problem does it solve? Why should your audience buy it now? Where can they buy it? Keep it simple and specific.

2. You’re Not Speaking to Your Target Audience

We know it’s important to know who we’re talking to. But do we really know? When you’re pitching a product of your own or reading an ad copy from another company are you speaking directly to that listener?

This was something I struggled with for years when I started podcasting, because I was scared. I was scared if I spoke directly to an audience I’d alienate everyone else. We all get afraid of this. Whether it’s podcasting, or running a business, it’s scary to feel like you’re putting all your eggs in one basket for one specific listener or buyer, but it’s critical. Especially today, especially when there’s ads coming at us from every angle. If you’re not speaking directly to someone’s problems, or their goals, or aspirations, or their desires, you’re speaking to no one. 

👉 How to fix it: Define your ideal listener. Write a profile of who they are, what they need, and why they’re listening to your podcast. Tailor every piece of content to them. Tailor every call to action to them.

3. You’re Not Telling Listeners How to Buy

I could make an entire podcast episode on this and maybe I will, but you need to have a clear path to buying. What do I mean when I say that? I mean, you need links in every episode description telling people where to go. Make it so crystal clear where people need to go and how they buy.

The hardest part of selling on a podcast is that people are usually listening while they’re doing something else and they’re more than likely not fully engaged with their phone. This is a problem for us if we’re telling people to go to a website or look at something in the episode description or generally pointing them away from the podcast, because they aren’t looking at the podcast in the first place.

👉 How to fix it:

• Include purchase links everywhere: in your episode description, social media, and follow-up emails.
• Create a blog post for each episode, highlighting your offer and linking to it at least three times.
• Check your links to ensure they work.
• Make sure your listener never has to search for what you’re selling!

Remember, buyers need 8–12 touchpoints before making a purchase. Are you giving them enough?

4. Your Call to Action Isn’t Compelling

You need a call to action. You talking about what you do isn’t enough. You giving free information isn’t enough. You need to give me the offer, but also, tell me why I need to buy it today. 

This can look like a lot of different things. I think we normally think about limited time discounts as being a call to action, where-as I’d argue if you’re looking for first time buyers or people that’d be purchasing from you for the first time you shouldn’t do a discount code. It cheapens the brand and they’ll think you do this all the time. Pick 2-4 times a year you’re going to use coupons and the rest of the year find calls to action that are driven by the person purchasing.

Focus on solution based calls to action. For example, if I was selling a social media template for podcasters my call to action might be “Buy this template before you make your next social media post to turn followers into listeners.”

👉 How to fix it: Create CTAs that emphasize urgency and align with your audience’s goals. Use phrases like:

• “Buy this before…”
• “Start now to…”
• “Don’t wait if you want to…”

5. You Don’t Have Clear Goals and a Plan

If you don’t know where you’re going you’ll never get there.

This is probably the scariest one, because it will involve you sitting down and being honest with yourself and where you are. Do you want to make $50,000 through your podcast next year? Okay, great. That’s do-able, that’s so do-able but it’s impossible without a plan. It’s impossible without everything we’ve talked about in this episode.

You need SMART goals. If you’ve never heard of this, smart goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound. You need to know what you’re trying to achieve to make a plan on how to achieve it. Sounds simple enough right? 

My best advice is to write everything down on paper. Write down how many episodes you’ll have next year, let’s say you have an episode every week, that’s 52 episodes next year. If we go with the example from earlier that you want to make $50,000 that’s about $1,000 per episode, then from there we break down how we can make money, do we have ads or partnerships? Do we have any kind of affiliate codes or promotional offers? What kind of products are we selling? Is there another option to make money like patreon or a subscriber only component to your podcast? 

When we break down this $1,000 per episode how can we get there? How can we consistently get there every week? What do we need to do? 

👉 How to fix it: Use SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) to create a detailed plan. Write it down, and map out your revenue streams and content calendar.

If you’re interested in working with me 1:1 you can book a complimentary discovery call here or you an email me at morgan@morganfranklin.media.

I have a template store with my most used customizable templates including a podcast media kit I’ve used to secure more than 6-figures in sponsorships. Visit podcastsforprofit.com.