3 Surprising Strategies to Monetize Your Podcast – Hear It From Patrick Hill at Disctopia! | Ep. 224

Intro/Outro: You know what it is? That's right. It's time to talk money with your money nerd and financial coach. Now tighten those purse strings and open those ears. It's the Money Talk with Tiff podcast.

Tiffany Grant: Hey everyone, I am so excited because I have Patrick Hill here now Patrick, I met at Podcast Movement and he has a unique brand that I wanna make sure that we talk about, but they are the only black.

Founded streaming platform for music and podcasts. So thank you so much Patrick for coming in, um, and talking about this, your brand dystopia, and you know more about monetizing podcasts.

Patrick Hill: I'm, uh, thank you. I'm happy to be here.

Tiffany Grant: Perfect, perfect. So let's jump right in because Patrick is here to talk about some moneys y'all.

So, um, just different ways to get monetized as a podcaster that, you know, usually we don't think about. So with that being said, Let's just hop right in. What are some ways that US podcasters can get monetized outside of the typical ads that everybody defaults to? Yeah,

Patrick Hill: so there's, uh, there's typical ways.

There's about five or six different ways and, um, I try to speak on this as many times as possible. Um, a lot of people who start podcasting don't really understand. They need to understand that podcasting is a. Uh, a block by block mentality. If you, if you, if you live in New York or Chicago, you gotta understand that your greatest supporters are literally right there on your block.

They're literally right around you. And if you are doing, um, anywhere from a hundred downloads or a hundred plays per month, that's a hundred different people. That are listening to you, that, um, that are, that, that are consistently listening to you and no one else. So you gotta actually take that to your advantage because we all know a hundred plays and a hundred downloads, an advertising game is nowhere near anywhere to get, um, an actual.

Uh, paycheck or a pay or some sort of payday that you're looking for. Um, a great example is right here in Charlotte. There was a podcast that only focused on Charlotte, and they were getting somewhere between a hundred and 150 consistent plays weekly. You add that up, that's almost about 800. To 900, uh, plays per month, depending on the month, you know?

Mm-hmm. Um, but definitely more than 600, consistently more than a month. And they literally just went down to a local bar and grill and said, Hey, you know, I guarantee you 600 plays right here locally of customers that you can, that you can talk to. I just need you to, can I, can I just throw your name around at the beginning and the end of the podcast for 50 bucks?

Mm. The restaurant owners said 50 bucks. He's the cheapest advertisement I ever had. Um, to, to get a audience of 600 consistent customers. Um, I mean, he slapped a, like, um, free coffee or free beer when you mention the podcast. And two months later, the guy said, you know, you, you've been bringing me customers because people who listen to your podcast literally live on the other side of town, but have been driving here, um, just to watch the game or anything like that.

And within three months, he upped that to 500 a month, and I believe that was a year ago. So he's doing way more than that now. And he's, and he hasn't like, broken some special. 1000, 10,000 plays per month. So sponsorship, so that ties back into the word sponsorship. You can literally get someone that is within a one mile, two mile radius of your podcast and.

Ask them to sponsor you and start low. You know, some people are like, my podcast is worth 10 grand. Like, no, it's not. Start low and then kind of work your way up from there. Mm-hmm. Um, so sponsorship is like the very first, easiest way to actually get, um, some sort of monetization. Nice.

Tiffany Grant: And you know what, this is not the first time I've heard of this.

I need to do better, um, because I've heard that as well from some other podcasting friends that they just go to local businesses. You know, maybe since we're in the finance field, local credit unions, you know, local, uh, regional banks or what have you, um, and get some sponsorship dollars from there. And it's just easier to do versus going towards some of these bigger companies that are looking for those big, uh, podcasts.

You know, you can kind of start small, like you said, so I'm so glad you brought that up. Now, that's one way. What's another way that people can, uh, monetize their podcast? Um,

Patrick Hill: another easy way is merch. You won't believe. Well, let's be, let's be honest, your family and friends actually do love you, okay? You might not think they don't, but they actually do love you.

So you heard it here first, y'all.

Tiffany Grant: Yeah, exactly.

Patrick Hill: So believe it or not, they may not buy a t-shirt every month, but every other month, as long as you're kind of refreshing it, a mug or a shirt, or a pillow or a poster. Or something like that. Um, definitely encourage them to buy merch from you. Um, our platform integrates merch automatically for you.

It puts it right there on your podcast page within our apps and then our, in our websites. But, you know, if, if that doesn't suit your, um, your billing, then definitely make sure you're selling merch. Definitely make sure that you're doing something with your logo, your face, something, maybe your maybe funny sayings, quotes that you actually put out and put that on some sort of t-shirt, like I said, mug or even a pillow so that people actually who wanna support you actually can't support you and you'll be.

Especially in the wintertime, you'll be surprised, you know, four sweatshirts at $50 a pop. You know, next thing you know that's revenue of 200 plus, you're down the block sponsorship. Now you're at, you know, 3, 3 50, $400 per month in revenue. And that's what keeps you going cuz you, as you know, as I know, consistency is the game in podcasting.

A lot of people quit at the episode seven and that's because they haven't seen not a penny from what they're doing, and it's very hard. For people to keep going, especially if journalism and communication is not their number one passion could be their number three. So when you get down to number three passions, you gotta start, uh, showing some roi.

Tiffany Grant: Yes, definitely agree with that. And we've talked about that on the podcast. Just having a strong why, because that's how you're gonna keep going. Um, and I'm not gonna say that I haven't made it. Any money, but um, I ha it has been very minimal. Now here's a question that I have for you, uh, cuz I do merch, but I don't even think the people on my podcast know about it.

So what are your thoughts on doing just ads for yourself as a podcaster? Um, yeah,

Patrick Hill: you should have been doing that day one, like just even mentioning it. Like, especially if it's pre-recorded. Pre-recorded is the king of app because you can actually listen back to your podcast, figure out something that you said that was catchy, um, and put that on the shirt and then insert your own ad and say, Hey.

Go to my website. Did you like what we just said? You can buy, you know, money doesn't grow on trees and stuff like that. Saying, or get it while you can. Or some as funny, we said stay in the game. You know, staying in the game is something that people would just put on their shirt, you know, and a quote that you said and should really, um, at least say that, um, in the middle.

I think you should go in the middle and at the end and just let people know where your merch is. Um, especially this time of year, you have people just buying gifts, um, just like little knickknacks people have a little extra spending money around the holidays. Uh, but I would always mention that one, um, until you at least get someone to pay you to not mention it and mention their stuff.

You know, someone told me years ago, there's two ways to make money. Um, either get paid or do something or get paid not to do something. Mm-hmm. So that's usually what the goal is. People want to get paid enough not to go to their corporate job or some job they're doing. So yeah. Yeah.

Tiffany Grant: Well, with that being said, y'all check out my merch on fc.com, the money Talk with Tiff store.

Um, I have like a full catalog about like 13 different designs, um, and hoodies and t-shirts and stuff. So anyway, there goes my ad,

Patrick Hill: probably, probably right at the same time as like we just probably hit minimum right there.

Tiffany Grant: That is funny. Um, so let's give the audience one more way, uh, that they could potentially monetize their podcast, um, if they're listening.

Patrick Hill: Um, the last way that we, it's a new way. So this is trending and, uh, electric went off in my office cause we tried to save around here. Okay. Try to see. Um, but. The last way to make money in podcasting is a trending new way, and I want everyone to understand it's called value for value. Value for value is setting a value on your content.

On the Lightning Network, which is backed by Bitcoin. So there are a few hosts, ac uh, Accor, um, including us. There are a few hosts, including us, that allow you to put your Bitcoin wallet in your RSS feed. And as you being a podcaster, you understand the RSS feed has your name, your title, your episode information, even your email if you want people to contact you.

But there's a new way of actually inserting a safe way of inserting your digital wallet. Directly in that RSS feed. And as you know, every time a app calls your RSS feed, it can call that, that, uh, Bitcoin wallet. And you can say, Hey, if you call this Bitcoin wallet, you gotta gimme at least one fraction of a Bitcoin and you can actually set that fraction.

Now, I wouldn't hop out there and say, you gotta gimme a Bitcoin because that's really expensive. That's like, I think last time you looked it was like 12 grand, but. Typically people ask for one Satoshi, and that's 100th of a Bitcoin, which is very, very comparable to a least play at dystopia. We give you one Satoshi, um, and s to be starting very soon.

Probably in a few weeks. We give you one Satoshi for every play, no matter where it's coming from. Spotify. Um, anywhere Google Play, uh, apple Podcast. If it's, if it's played and we can count it, we'll give you one toto sheet and that's on top of any other paywall that you deem that's necessary for your digital wallet.

So we're literally up in the Annie on our paper play. We really wanna treat podcasters like musicians, um, and artists. In the music industry who automatically gets some sort of revenue, might not be fair, but it's some sort of revenue, some sort of paper play mechanism. And we see that we can do that using the value for value, um, technology, which allows you to insert your Bitcoin wallet in your RSS fee.

And we're continuing to improve that technology. It's actually an open source community, um, of a couple guys who came up with it and we're trying to improve that day by day. Uh, where it helps is creators that don't have stable financial institutions such as Africa, south America, and some countries where you have creators who actually want to create content in podcasting, but they literally do not have even, they could be in the most popular podcast in the country, but maybe they're having.

Um, conversion issues from u s D to their native currency or getting a sponsor to sponsor them, because even though you may get a, like, we met a podcast that was literally getting, I think 27, 30,000 plays a month. But they were in Kenya and so the big advertisers were like, there's none of our products sold in Kenya.

Mm-hmm. So how does that person get paid? And they're really killing it. They literally have the voice or the ears of Kenyans. So they need to really add a value for value integration or go to a host that allows that so they can get paid per play and keep going.

Tiffany Grant: Mm, that's good. That's good. And I had no idea about this, so thank you so much for bringing this up.

Um, cuz it's something that I definitely will look into. And with the, with your platform dystopia, you are, um, well you all are having creators get paid instantly on your platform, correct? Yeah, yeah.

Patrick Hill: Currently, right now we pay podcast for up to 5 cent per play. If they leave it exclusive. But in a few weeks, even if they don't leave it exclusive and they put it everywhere else, as long as you're hosted with us and we can actually count the plays cuz your file is sitting on our server, we're gonna start paying you at at least once a Toshi per play.

Um, and that's coming directly from us. And, um, it's kind of almost like you're hosted with us, so we're gonna pay you for that so that that news will be coming out soon. Um, and we'll be dropping so, That's exactly what, and the Lightning Network is literally, instantly. Um, you actually, you'll see this, or you'll probably have saw this demo at podcast at Pod Fest, where we actually brung up a demonstration of, Hey, open up this podcast and hit play.

And we literally put the counter on the big screen and it was just ticking, ticking, ticking, ticking, counting to Toshi and counting pennies in real time. Hmm.

Tiffany Grant: Interesting. And so, but just to be clear, you would have to host on dystopia, not just stream on dystopia. That is

Patrick Hill: absolutely correct. You'll have to host it with us, but you can still distribute it everywhere.

Everyone who's in podcasting understands are taking that R S S P and submit it around. We actually submit to most of the big directories for you, any other big ones. But you know, there's some, some still some small ones that you still have to mainly submit to. Um, Apple is still being a little big bully.

About accepting RSS feeds, but we still love

Tiffany Grant: them. Yes. Yes. And y'all, um, if you are currently podcasting, it's a good chance that your stream is already on dystopia, because I know when I met Patrick, um, at the conference, he was like, what's your podcast? And I told him, he was like, oh, you already on our platform.

And I was like, okay. Yeah. Uh, so definitely check them out and, you know, we're all about supporting black, buying, black and all that stuff, so. Please, please, please check out this platform, and if you are starting a podcast, maybe this might be your, your host, or if you need to move over, this might be your host.

So thank you so much, Patrick for joining me on the podcast today. If people were interested in learning more about dystopia or you, where would they find you?

Patrick Hill: Um, just dystopia.com. D I S c. T O P I a.com. All our social media handles are at dystopia, so it's always me. For right now anyway, we're a small team.

We're growing rapidly, but for right now, I kind of see, I see y'all. So just, uh, just definitely, um, you know, hit us up on those thi on on those channels. Uh, or you can email me, um, directly@patrickdystopia.com.

Tiffany Grant: Perfect. Well, thank you so much. I'll have all of that in the show notes for you all. So if you're doing something else, you couldn't write that down.

If you're driving, doing some chores, whatever, um, please check out the show notes and you can check out Patrick there. So thank you so much again for joining me on the show, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.

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