5 ways to monetize your podcast for 2024 and 2025

With 2025 just around the corner, we hear from podcasters all the time, how much they want to monetize their shows. Podcast episodes are one of the most overlooked ways of making money online. It’s easy to get into and also easy to maintain. The biggest questions are always not just if they can monetize, but how they can monetize. In this article we’re going to share with you the most popular ways podcasters can make money today with their shows. Keep in mind that new monetization opportunities always surface and we are always offering as many opportunities to our podcaster membership as possible.

What are the most popular ways for podcasts to monetize their shows?

The five most popular ways for podcasts to monetize are audio advertisements, host-read-ads, podsafe music, sponsorships, and affiliate programs. To be successful with these, podcasters can select from playing audio to reading scripts as well as adding links to their show notes.

Audio ads inserted right into each episode.

Advertising has always been the most traditional way of marketing both online and offline. Traditional forms of advertising just don’t work anymore which include newspapers, magazines, radio and even television commercials. With some venues like television, advertising is still lucrative to the actual TV network. A good example is advertising during the super bowl which is the last football game of this season of the National football League (NFL) in the United States. The super bowl contains the two best teams in football for that year. A 30-second commercial is still around the range of $500,000 to over $1 million USD. Most podcasters are not television networks and probably couldn’t charge that much, but they can still make a lot of money with their shows from advertising. There are companies who are advertising more than ever now on podcasts, both audio and video podcasts. It’s very easy for podcasters to implement. They simply take an MP3 or a WAV file and put it right into their episode. They can charge any price they want to the advertiser. The placements are 30 or 60 seconds long on average. Podcasters also get to decide where to insert the advertisement.

What are the three places where podcasts can place audio ads in order to monetize their shows?

Pre-Roll Pre-roll is the beginning of the episode.
Mid-Roll The middle of the episode.
Post-Roll An audio file or host-read-ad placed at the end of the podcast episode

The best place for an advertisement is as early as possible in your episode, pre-roll. You can charge more money for pre-roll placements and the least amount of money from post-roll. That is because of the demand of your subscribers and how they drop off before the end of the episode. When you place an advertisement post-roll, you assure that everybody who listens to your episodes will hear that commercial regardless. However, by the end of your episode, it’s possible that your listeners may not listen to the very end, so the demand might not be there. For post-roll ads, you can charge a lot less if the advertiser has a limited budget. The World Podcast Network currently has over 25 audio advertisements available to distribute to podcasters. Members can log into the “My Podcast” portal and click on the Monetization link. From there, they can apply to play those ads. More about how the process of applying for monetization opportunities works is below towards the end of this article.

Host-Read Ads

This was started by Anchor (now Spotify For Podcasters). Host-read ads are easier to implement than audio commercials for podcasters. With a host-read advertisement, the podcaster reads a predetermined script word for word. The advertiser writes the script, but if the podcaster wants to make more money, the advertiser can hire the podcaster to write the script too. So there are multiple ways to make money with your podcast with host-read ads. Host-read ads are usually recited pre-roll. That is not a hard and fast rule. Podcasters can read them anywhere in the episode. Again, there could be a higher charge for a pre-roll placement. You can make a lot of money with these as well. If the advertiser has a limited budget, again, you can place it post-roll. These types of ads are even better to target customers of the advertiser. Advertisers can decide the type of audience to whom they want. They can target a specific gender, age group, marital status, nationality, and even education level. This is where knowing your demographics of your audience members comes very important. Demographics include all of those types of classifications and advertisers for your particular podcast, because it matches the target market that they want to reach. That’s why it is a very good idea to publish the details on your podcast About Page the type of demographics your audience covers. This might make you more money from targeted and host-read ads. The World Podcast Network has several host-read ads available to provide automatically to our podcasters. Podcasters can log in and preview the host-read ads script and decide if they want to apply to read those ads. We do prefer pre-roll placements.

Podsafe Music

This is a less utilized form of podcast monetization as it is often overlooked. It is very lucrative and fun for your audience members.

What Is Podsafe Music For Your Podcast?

Podsafe music is the type of music that’s legal to play on your podcast without any worries of lawsuits from the actual artist or copyright holder. When artists themselves put up their music and mark it as podsafe, they cannot take legal action if a podcaster plays it on their shows. This is great news for podcasters, because they can select songs that are perfect for their audience and break up boring episodes that might be all talk. Most podcast episodes are usually one or two hosts and all talk can become tiresome soon for Arnie’s members. Podsafe music solves that problem. Podsafe music comes in all genres but the most popular ones are rock, pop, country, hip, hop, metal, and alternative. It also makes it easy to start an all music podcast just with podsafe music alone. It is formatted just like an audio advertisement or even a podcast file. They are usually distributed as MP3s, which is the most popular format for music distribution online. Podcasters simply drop the MP3 right into their episodes. You can easily add it to a digital audio workstation like audacity. They usually played at the end of the episode, post-roll.

Sponsorships

Just like any website or advertising campaign, sponsorships are very popular in podcasts. They have an exclusive contract with a company to either play their audio advertisements or their host-read ads on episodes. Sponsorships are very lubricant. In 2006, Mommycast had a very lucrative sponsorship with Pampers and Dixie brands. Joe Rogan also has sponsorships with his podcast with Squarespace as of this writing. Again, just as we mentioned in the section on host-read ads, it is important to know your podcast demographics. This way you select the sponsorships that resonate with your audience. The Pampers and Dixie sponsorships were perfect for Mommycast as it targeted mothers. A perfect match!!!

How Can Podcasters Create Sponsorships For Their Shows?

Podcasters can think of companies to sell products that match the demographics of their audience members. I encourage you to think of three potential companies who would do a sponsorship with you right now for your podcast. Consider the age range, nationality, gender, social class, and educational level of your audience members. Then, look for sponsorships whose customers match that demographic. This is a surefire way of getting the exact sponsorship you need and also is a perfect selling point for your podcast.

Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs have long been a staple in online monetization. There are thousands of companies offering affiliate programs. This is probably another underutilized method of monetizing your podcast.

What Is The Best Way For Podcasters To Make Money From Affiliate Programs?

The best way is to insert the affiliate link to your podcast’s show notes. Since show notes are plain text, a hyperlink to the product or service you want to sell is perfect. Your show notes can talk about the product and then link to it. Affiliate program links contain a unique, personal ID that identifies your podcast to the affiliate program’s website. You can visit the affiliate hubs like Commission Junction and Share A Sale. Those hubs have thousands of affiliate programs each. Some of those affiliate programs are big companies and brands. Some are lesser-known. You can search through the various affiliate programs and find the best one for your podcast. There are over 75 different categories of affiliate programs that we are sure will match your podcast’s theme. Affiliate programs are very simply structured. When one of your subscribers clicks the affiliate link, you get a commission for every sale. You probably cannot insert links into your audio. You can definitely put it into your website ‘s blog. You may want to look into the policies of your podcast hosting platform to maybe add them to your show notes, but some hosting platforms may not allow it, which is why most podcasters do not use affiliate links. However, if you have a blog for your podcast, you are free to put any affiliate links you like.

A conclusion

Those are the five most popular ways of monetizing your podcast for the end of 2024 and all throughout 2025. Our best suggestion is to experiment with each one of them. Use one at a time and analyze the results. The World Podcast Network automatically provides monetization opportunities for its podcasters. When podcasters sign up and become a professional-level podcaster, they get access to host-read ads, audio advertisements, and even podsafe music.

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