Help Me Podcast

Welcome to Help Me Podcast, a show designed to help you

launch and grow your podcast. I am your host, Gino, and twice

a week, I will release a new episode with different tips and tricks

for launching and growing your podcast. From audio engineering to planning

intentionally to growth tactics, each episode will be a bite sized

tip to help you podcast.

Hey. Welcome back to help me. Podcast. This is episode 68,

and in today's episode, I want to talk about something that I heard

recently in the podcasting news realm.

So there's this comedian that I like and I listen to. His name is

Theo Vaughn, very popular comedian, very funny. And

he has a podcast called this past weekend. And it's a

very popular podcast, not just within the comedy world, but also just in

overall podcasts. I think he's like kind of around near number

five most popular. So it's a very big

podcast. And recently he had an episode come out this week

where he exploited a situation that has

been happening to him. And I guess based off of what

he said, he has a company called Cast

Media that helps him fill his ads

and then owes him the money for those ads based off of what

he said. Again, this is just his side of the story that they

haven't been paying him in a year or something like that.

So they basically just stole a bunch of money from him. And

he wasn't that upset about it. He was mostly

talking about this because I guess this Cast Media has been

doing this to a bunch of other people. And a bunch of other people don't

necessarily have the luxury to talk about that or to

exploit them on their show. But since Theo, he

also has his comedy and a bunch of other things. He kind of came forward

and talked about this, but it just

kind of got me thinking about how even a show that's very

independent and he makes his own stuff, but something like the

ad buys is something that he doesn't do and he doesn't sell ads and

doesn't do the ad placement or anything like that. And that's mostly how he makes

money with his podcast. He also has a merchandise line. It just kind of got

me thinking about the idea of getting paid ads

on your show and especially any of the popular ads that you

hear. I don't know. I think a lot of times some

podcasters who start out dream of that when they can

start making money and put these ads on their shows. But I don't

know, I guess I'm questioning whether

that should be a goal or not. It certainly isn't

fair the way that they place these ads

and the agencies that you need in order to be placing these ads.

I'm actually kind of going through something a little similar, not

necessarily as much fraud as what happened to Theo, but I do have a

client that hasn't been getting paid for ads recently on their

podcast. And we put ad markers in the show and the

people that we are associated with just haven't been filling the ads.

And it's kind of a sketchy thing. It's like,

well, we're doing this. We were told we were going to get paid for ads

and now we're not. But technically there's no ads on the show.

So it's like a weird situation of, yeah, I guess

you aren't stealing from me because you aren't putting any ads on, but you're also

not paying for the ads that we said that we were going to put

on. So now we're moving to a different agency and they want all these different

kinds of rules in order to just put these ads on. And

it's interesting the amount of effort, I guess that it is to

try to get paid for these ads. And at the end of the day, it's

like you're pushing products that maybe sometimes you don't have a say in

and it could be a product that you don't like or don't enjoy and

I don't know. It makes me ask, is there a better way to

monetize your podcast? Right? And there are certainly other ways to monetize your

podcast. You can do merch, you can have your own products, you can have your

own services, you can have your own communities. So

I don't really know what the conclusion of this podcast

is going to be. I think it's more so just kind of asking, is

the end goal really trying to get with

agencies that can fill ad spots on my show, to basically

exploit my show for its listeners, and is that

what I want to do to my listeners? And is that how I want to

make money with my listeners? And I think that there's just a better way

to be able to make money off of what you're

doing, but also not in such a crude

way of just forcing these ads of these large companies

down people's throats. And most of us might not even be in

a position where we even have enough listens to get to that point. But

I think there's other ways of doing it and

hey, I'll be honest, I haven't been successful in making

money in my podcast, so maybe I'm not the person to speak about this,

but I do think that it is worth discussing

and it is worth trying to think of a better way to

do things. And some things that I've thought about recently with

my own podcast is like, okay, sometimes just

brainstorming and spitballing here. Sometimes I have a podcast, I hit

record. You usually have a conversation beforehand with a guest

because my other podcast, working towards a purpose, is an interview style

podcast. I usually have a conversation before with the guest to kind of warm

up, see where they're at. We do the interview and then we usually have some

conversation afterwards and sometimes that conversation is really good afterwards

and sometimes after the quote

unquote record button is off, it loosens up the conversation a little

bit more and maybe some more conversation flows. I'm always recording it just

because I don't stop until the end, but I don't really do anything with it.

Maybe one way could be to start some sort of patreon or to start some

sort of fan group that gets more

access to certain parts of your podcast or maybe

they get access to the video parts of your podcast or something like

that. That in an ideal world it would be nice if you could offer more

value to your listeners in exchange for

some money or some subscription service or something like that. Because

at the end of the day, if you look at like paid ads, you're not

really offering any value to your listener by

forcing them to listen to a paid ad. It's like listening to a TV commercial.

You're not getting really any value out of listening to a commercial. It's kind of

just like, oh, we have to listen to this thing now and maybe you'll find

something you like, but chances are you're just going to be annoyed by it. So

I don't know, I think it's a bigger discussion as far as how can we

start making a living and making some money off of our podcast

without just selling to corporations that want

to utilize our listeners. Another idea would

be like a newsletter. Maybe you can start a newsletter for

your podcast and get your listeners to

transfer over to the newsletter. And maybe your newsletter you have some

local sponsors or something like that, something of benefit to your

community or to your niche. I don't know. Like I said, I don't have

really the answer for this. It's just hearing the story about Theo

has really questioned

why a lot of people are striving for that, right? Because he

got there, he's got the big ads on his show, he makes money on those

ads. But now someone stole all that money because the

organization that he was with, that he entrusted to

place the ads and pay him for the ads basically didn't do that.

And I don't know, it just makes me think about

is there a better way to do this or is there a better way to

monetize your podcast? And I guess it's going to be an ever growing question

and something that I'm just thinking about more often. I would love to

further this discussion with somebody. If you want to send me an

email, my email is always in the show notes. If you've

ever been able to successfully monetize your podcast without

selling big ads, drop me a line and tell me what

you did, and I could share that with the community and

we can all kind of reach for

maybe a little bit more ethical way to start getting

some money from your podcast, because I realize that money is important, and money

will keep you going. And we all need money to survive. So

hopefully there are some better ways out there than just

selling Squarespace ads. So thank you for listening.

I hope this maybe sparked a bigger conversation

and I will see you on the next episode. Thanks for tuning in.

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