Whenever I’ve made a post about podcasts and monetisation, I’ve always mentioned sponsorships. Understanding sponsorships and what they entail can be confusing, especially if you are a beginner. Whenever I’ve mentioned them, I’ve only ever given a brief overview of how they work and whilst that’s good in general, I thought something more detailed would be way more helpful.
This is the in-depth guide to sponsorships, how they work, how they advertise and how to pick the best one for your content and genre of the podcast.
What is a sponsorship?
Sponsorship is where a company in the local community or a big international one pays for you to advertise their business on your podcast. They can also agree to sponsor other types of content, but we’ll focus on podcasts for this post.
When to find sponsorships
I believe it’s best to start when you get 1000 listeners to get bigger, more well-known businesses to pay attention to you and make the sponsorship more beneficial. Even if you join a network, you should consider how many people will listen, affecting your rates and how reasonable the monetisation effort is.
How to find one
It might seem like a mammoth task finding a sponsorship (especially if you have only just started being popular.) However, there are many ways to get support from companies.
The first way is to look at local businesses in the area where you record. Are there any small or local businesses that would benefit from being sponsored? If so, send them an email or, if possible, speak to the manager (not in a Karen like way.) And pitch to them why you would be a great sponsor. Once they agree, communicate what you’ll be sponsored by, the rates, and how long.
Once everything has been confirmed, create a contract, READ it and sign it so no one gets mucked about, and the conditions are clear for both parties.
Would this work with more prominent brands?
You can do this with big businesses too. If you have smaller numbers, then you are more likely to get rejected. If your pitch is good enough, they’ll accept you. The other way is that companies get in contact with you. However, this is more likely to happen if you are super popular, so I would learn to network.
The final option is to join a podcast network where they’ll find the sponsors for you. The only downside is they will take some revenue!
My tips are to work on a good pitch as that is the first thing a business will know about you, and it is your only time to ‘sell’ your podcast. No matter what, it s that to always get the best rate possible as you don’t want to be underpaid for your time.
I also recommend getting a sponsorship linked to your content, as your audience will be more likely to see the connection and go to that business. However, the linking to your podcast genre is not the be-all and end-all as there are a ton of podcasts out there sponsored by companies that provide services utterly unrelated to their genre//type of content.
Ways you can advertise.
There are plenty of ways sponsorships can advertise their products or business on your podcast. However, it all depends on the way you present the podcast.
For example, if it’s an audio one, it’ll be something similar to an ad you hear on the radio.
If you upload it to Youtube as a video, you may get additional products to advertise with, like mugs and hoodies o the company logo, or you may have to insert a clip of you using a product from the company.
Why are sponsorships beneficial?
Sponsorships are a great way to monetise your content without having to create different products.
Sponsors decide payment on the size of the audience and CRM. If you get 1000 downloads, you are in a good position, and because of how valuable they are, you’ll get paid between 30-40 dollars. However, this is dependant on the type of ad and model.
Model and pre-roll ads
There are three different types of sponsorship models.
CPM- You get paid per 1000 listeners and can be between 20-25 dollars, depending on your ad placement. This is known as Cost Per Mile.
Affiliate/CPA- You get compensated on every sale made with an affiliate link. This is known as cost per acquisition.
Value-based- A flat rate is given for you to promote something.
There are also two types of sponsorship placements
Pre-roll ad: which happens before the podcast
Mid-roll ad: Is placed in the middle
Mid-roll ads tend to pay more, and end roll ads are rarely used as not many people listen to the tail end.
Can I use sponsorships only?
I wouldn’t recommend having just sponsorships as you want the highest income possible; however, it should be one of the ways to monetise what you create. And there are a ton of ways to monetise a podcast!
Whilst getting and understanding how getting a sponsor for a podcast seems complicated. Once you start breaking down the steps, it becomes easier to figure out and start working on!
Thanks for reading this article:
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