Chapter Six

Making Money

Selling Merch

WITH JUSTIN MCELROY

Finally, we can get to the real reason anybody starts a podcast.

Or does anything, really.

You’ve waded through the muck and mire of coming up with an original idea and buying microphones and even uploading your show to the internet, but now, finally, the finish line is in sight.

It’s finally time for you to sell some fucking T-shirts.

You’ve probably already found yourself perusing NonDiscountedYachts.com, and I get it, I do, but you’ve got to restrain yourself for a few weeks until the money starts pouring in. If you go in without a plan, you’re not going to become as rich as you possibly could, and you could end up buying a sixty-foot-yacht when you could have afforded a seventy-footer, and what could be sadder than that?

Let’s Get Rich (Eventually)

There’s a pretty easy way to know if you’re ready to start producing merchandise for your show: Has anybody, I mean anybody, actually asked for it? If not, maybe it’s worth holding off and focusing on building your show’s audience.

It’s not as though you’re leaving piles of money on the table by holding off until you’re really ready to open up a storefront. In fact, you might just be saving yourself a ton of headache by waiting for the right time.

When we started My Brother, My Brother and Me, we rushed to start selling T-shirts and mugs with the first independent merch partner who came calling. We were lucky that he ended up doing a good job and didn’t, you know, rob us blind, steal all our designs, and sell our credit card info to Russian hackers. Again, we were lucky.

But soon, as our audience grew, we outgrew our original partner and had to completely reinvent our strategy for merchandising the show. We have now done this multiple times, and it has yet to get less annoying or time consuming.

If you wait until your audience is more consistent before you consider merch, then you’re going to save yourself a couple of reinventions. Also, frankly, it can look a little crass for a brand-new show with no audience to come out of the gate with something to sell. Focus on audience building until the demand for merch exists.

Why Do We Merch?

Merchandise seems like a given for any cultural enterprise at this point, but before you jump in, I think it’s worth considering why you’re making it.

I have heard a lot of people (myself included) espouse its value as a marketing tool, but I’m somewhat suspicious of its usefulness at this point. I did an informal Twitter poll, and of the 6,500 respondents, only 12 percent said that they had ever, even one time, listened to a podcast because they saw its name on a T-shirt. Many of those in that narrow minority said that it was usually just the tipping point for checking out a show. They had heard friends talk it up, they had heard it plugged elsewhere, whatever, and the shirt was just what put them over the edge.

Maybe you’re doing it for profit, but, joking aside, you’re (probably) going to be looking at pretty narrow margins on the stuff you sell. Unless you garner a significant audience, you’ll be lucky to afford a thirty-foot yacht and you’re basically just talking about a cabin cruiser and what’s even the point?

I would argue that the best reason to create merch is to continue to foster a connection between you and your audience. I’m not wearing my Ear Hustle shirt at this exact moment to win over new converts (that would be insane, I don’t leave the house). I’m wearing it because it’s a show I love, and it makes me feel good to wear it, to be a little bit connected to that show as I go about my day. Also, it is soft.

When I wear podcast shirts in public, I rarely find myself pitching a new show to the uninitiated. More commonly, I find that they help me start conversations with existing listeners of the show and make a connection that didn’t already exist.

If you see merch as part of a broader conversation between you and your listeners (and maybe a way to cover your hosting costs), you’re going to fare a lot better.

Okay, Now We Can Get Rich

There are three basic options to consider when you’re going to create merch for your show.

  1. Do it yourself
  2. Let someone else do it
  3. Something in between

Let’s talk pros and cons for each approach. We’ll mostly be talking about T-shirts in this section, but this is pretty much applicable to all merch.

Do It Yourself: This would entail finding a printer in your area who can create shirts for you, paying for a bunch of shirts to be printed, setting up an online storefront using a service like Shopify or Squarespace, and then shipping those orders out yourself as they come in.

This is, by a country mile, the most profitable way of merchandising. It’s also vastly more time consuming than other methods. I got annoyed just writing that paragraph, and I didn’t have to get out of my chair. It’s also—if you’re anything like me—the method with the highest likelihood of orders getting completely screwed up, and then you’ve alienated a listener and created the exact opposite of your intended result.

Did I mention it’s the riskiest? You’ll have to guess at overall demand, then specific demand for different sizing options, and then you’ll have to pay for all of it up front. Guess wrong and you’ll pay for shirts you don’t need or run out of shirts that people want.

I know shows that’ve done it all on their own and I respect them. I just absolutely can’t fathom it.

Let Someone Else Do It: You already feel better, don’t you? Is there any finer feeling than completely passing off responsibility and forgetting it ever existed? I’d wager there is not.

With this approach, you’ll upload a design (let’s start with your show logo) to a service like TeeSpring, Society6, or Zazzle and let listeners order directly from there. The service will print your design on a wide variety of products in a rainbow of colors all on demand. Listeners will get exactly the product they want, and all you have to do is collect the checks.

This is obviously infinitely less hassle than the first method, but it’s also a lot less profitable. If you’re less concerned about making money (and that’s probably sane early on), this would be a great way to start.

Something in Between: At this point, this is where the McElroy family of podcasts finds itself. We have a partnership with a company called DFTBA, and it handles all our printing and fulfillment. We also have a very talented and smart merchandise director who creates a lot of our designs and helps us decide what items would do well.

Another hybrid approach would be doing your printing through an on-demand service like Printful and then selling merch through your own storefront. This method would give you more control and maybe a slightly higher profit than an all-in-one solution, but it would create a little more hassle.

Personally, I doubt most shows need this level of fine control over their merchandise, especially in the early days. My advice: start with an all-in-one service and hope that you outgrow it.

image

Remember that unless you’re creating your own designs, you need to pay someone to make them for you. After plenty of trial and error, we tend to prefer offering a flat licensing fee for the initial design and then a royalty from our partner DFTBA on each item sold. This guarantees that the designer will be paid for their work, with the bonus that they’ll make more if people really love it.

The World Beyond Shirts

We’ve been using T-shirts interchangeably with merchandise up to this point, and there’s good reason for it. Shirts are sort of a default mode for a lot of podcasters getting into merchandise. They’re reasonably priced, allow fans to recognize each other in public, and provide limited protection to the human body from the ravages of nature. Hooray for shirts!

Stickers are also cheap to make and easy to ship, which can make them an appealing early offering. They’re also great giveaways at live events if you end up with more than you can sell.

We’ve also done really well with enamel pins, even going so far as to have a pin-of-the-month design, which allows us to deploy and sunset new designs regularly. Our success with pins may have to do with the fact that our audience is very fun and cool. If you are targeting an audience that is more boring or full of olds (a show about taxes, for example), you may want to consider, like . . . ballpoint pens?

Pins are interesting, because they’ve become a big part of the zeitgeist only in the past couple of years. (That may be because they cost around $2.50 to produce and sell for $10 and up.) Maybe they’re a trend that will have died out by the time you read this, which is a good reminder to look around and see what others are having success with before you launch a new product.

Very broadly speaking, we have found less success with items that won’t be seen in public—postcards and home decor and the like. We still experiment with them, though, especially for items that we think are funny.

We once offered a very folksy cross-stitched wall hanging that read IN THIS HOUSE WE DON’T SAY “HAPPY HOLIDAYS” WE SAY “PODCASTS.” It didn’t move a lot of units, but the people who it connected with seemed to really get a kick out of making it part of their holiday decor.

Quoth the Podcast, “Here’s a Shirt”

So, you started with slapping your logo on shirts: that was smart. But now that you’re a little more established, you may want to get a little bit more esoteric.

Pretty much all of our designs at this point are references to characters or quotes from one of our shows. If listeners seem to really connect with certain parts of your show—favorite jokes, etc.—that may be a good place to start looking for new designs.

While it’s cool if someone has heard of the podcast advertised on your shirt, getting a compliment about a specific gag that you’re referencing can feel like a secret language among fellow fans. It’s powerful stuff. We’ve gone too esoteric, for sure, so try to listen to your gut.

Generally speaking, I prefer designs that connect even if you’ve never heard of a show. My Favorite Murder’s tagline is “Stay Sexy and Don’t Get Murdered,” which makes for a funny T-shirt even if you’ve never heard of the show. We’ve done pro-vaccine pins for Sawbones that connect with both listeners and those who care about public health. (We donate the profits from those items, which . . . well, I can’t say it’s a good business strategy, but it feels good, and what the hell else are we doing here on this planet?)

Wait, What Do You Mean You’re Not Rich?

Sorry we didn’t manage to deliver on our promises of life-changing wealth, we got a little carried away in the beginning.

You can’t blame us for getting excited about merchandise, though. It’s a great way to connect with fans and, more important, help them connect with each other. Plus, one time a guy wore a My Brother, My Brother and Me shirt on Tosh.0, so, you know, there’s that to consider.

That said, we’ll close this section with a solemn promise. If we ever do figure out the secret for getting fabulously wealthy with podcast merchandise, we will share it with you.

In the next edition of this book.

Available in fine bookstores everywhere.

Crowdfunding

WITH TRAVIS MCELROY

Hey, money is pretty cool, right? I’ve heard—and don’t quote me on this—that it makes the world go ’round! Well, I have some bad news for you, friend: it’s hard to make money as an entertainer, and that includes podcasting. In fact, it especially applies to podcasting, because as a newer media it can be hard to convince bigwigs holding bags with dollar signs on them to hand you said moneybags.

So, here’s an idea I just came up with: ignore the bigwigs and get funded by a crowd! I call it “crowdfunding,” and it’s going to change your life!

I (Travis) am of the opinion that crowdfunding is, in almost every way, the superior monetization option for podcasts. Where most options reward audience size, crowdfunding rewards audience dedication, and I think the latter is far more valuable.

Look at it this way: say you have an audience of five hundred dedicated listeners who never miss an episode. Sadly, that’s not a number that would make advertising partners salivate. However, if each one of them gave you $5 a month, you’re making $30k a year off your show!

Now, before you start your crowdfunding campaign, there are some options, factors, and best practices you need to know. First, let’s go over your structure options.

Lump Sum

If you’re thinking about sites like Kickstarter, Indiegogo, GoFundMe, or anything that shares their model, you’re talking about lump sum crowdfunding. Your fund-raising campaign will have a beginning and an end. When it finishes you will (hopefully) get a lump sum payment to help you fund your show. Within the lump sum model, there are also different options. For example, Kickstarter campaigns are all or nothing, which means if you don’t hit your goal, you don’t get any funds. Indiegogo and GoFundMe give you the option of collecting whatever is pledged when the campaign ends whether you’ve hit your goal or not.

“Wait!” I hear you say (because I am always listening). “If that’s the case, why would I not choose to have the option of collecting funds no matter what? Seems like the obvious choice!”

Well, not necessarily. Let’s say you have sat down and figured out that, for example, you can’t afford to buy the equipment you need, hire voice actors, and pay an editor unless you raise $1,500. At the end of your campaign, you have only raised $750. Now you have both not enough money and a bunch of backers who still expect to get what they paid for. If instead you just need some money in order to facilitate working on the project, you might opt for the take-what-you-can-get option.

The other benefit to all or nothing is psychological. Ask anyone who has run a Kickstarter campaign, and they will tell you the same thing: there is a bump as time runs out. If someone is considering donating, seeing that they could be the one who gets you over the finish line might be the motivation they are waiting for.

There are a couple of pros and cons to the lump sum model. Pros: A big influx of funds right at the beginning, and you know you have the money you’ll need to make it work. Also, the campaign itself can serve to get folks excited for your show. Cons: It can be hard to budget in advance for unforeseen expenses. Plus, if after the show has launched, you experience significant audience growth, you will need to wait to run another campaign and receive that financial benefit. And every year/season, you will need to run the campaign again.

Incremental

If you’re considering a Patreon, or a patron-based, model, then you are considering incremental funding. You will get a payment every month, every time an episode goes up, or whatever the increment ends up being. Over the last few years, this model has become more and more popular. Nowadays, it’s rare to find an online creator who doesn’t rely on patrons for funding.

Your patrons will commit to some level of recurring financial support. As I mentioned, this is usually monthly. However, there are lots of creators who aren’t able to produce content on a consistent schedule. In those cases, creators also have the option to charge patrons based on how often they are actually able to publish something.

You’re able to set different levels of support starting as low as $1 and going as high as someone is willing to pay. This has the added benefit of allowing patrons to increase their contribution level as your show becomes a bigger part of their life.

Pros: It allows you to budget monthly. Audience growth and commitment can yield more immediate financial impact. Cons: It can be difficult to see results early on. Maintaining patron relations will become a large part of the job.

Crowdfunding’s Major Con

Let’s talk briefly about donor/patron relations. Remember when I said that I thought crowdfunding was the best monetization option “in almost every way”? We’ve now reached the “almost” bit . . . You see, in both lump sum and incremental models, you offer additional rewards. Take a look at any Kickstarter/Indiegogo/Patreon campaign and you’ll see what I mean. At the $1 level you get blah, at the $5 level you get such-and-such, at the $10 level, etc. Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with this.

The issue comes in the form of additional work and additional cost. Say every $30 donor/patron gets a T-shirt. Now, along with making new episodes of the show, you also need to get T-shirts made and shipped and deal with any issues that arise. With lump sum campaigns, this usually comes with a mountain of work right after the campaign ends. With incremental, the work comes in more manageable chunks, but you have to keep up with it year-round.

With that in mind, I always advise finding rewards based on additional content and access rather than physical goods. It’s a lot easier (and cheaper) to record an extra episode just for patrons rather than printing and shipping a hundred bumper stickers. Personally, if I were the patron/donor, I’d pick the additional content any day. You can also do donor-only live streams, a newsletter, or any kind of bonus access like that. It is still additional work, but it is work you are already doing.

More Than Money

Here is a very important factor that a lot of creators either aren’t aware of or choose to ignore: donors aren’t just giving you money. They are giving you their time, their support, and their trust. I often refer to this as “audience capital,” and it is far more valuable than money.

For example, let’s say that Todd pledges $1 a month. Now, it doesn’t take an economist to tell you that $12 a year isn’t a lot of money. However, any creator who thinks that way is doomed to fail. Todd supports you; the actual dollar amount is inconsequential. Todd is there for you and wants you to know that your work matters. He’s giving you his money, so he expects you to deliver those delicious new episodes.

So, keep that in mind when you are considering whether you should skip putting an episode out because you don’t feel like it. You might be able to skip an episode here and there, but after a while you are going to start burning through your audience capital. Todd might start to wonder why he’s supporting a show that hasn’t put out an episode in a month. Same goes for those added benefits offered to patrons—if you are supposed to do a monthly livestream, you better do that monthly livestream!

One Weird Option

Before we move on, there is one other option for crowdfunding. I’ve held off on mentioning it until now because it’s kind of weird and doesn’t really fit in with the other two models. I think of it as a direct model.

The best example I can think of is to set up a PayPal account and give out the info during the show and on social media.

Let me be clear: in just about every circumstance, I do not advocate for this. First, the lack of overall transparency might scare away donors. Plus, they don’t receive any benefit from supporting your show. Finally, at the risk of sounding like a dowager countess, it just isn’t done.

All that said, I have used this model before in one very specific case. My friend Hal Lublin and I made a couple of episodes of a show called Surprisingly Nice. The idea of the show was to have listeners donate to our PayPal, and then we would donate funds raised to charities of our guests’ choosing. I searched around for a better option, but PayPal was the only thing that worked. Even then, it was clunky and the accounting was a job in and of itself.

Crowdfunding Best Practices

Miscellaneous

There are two other, more complicated monetization options that you are probably wondering about, so I wanted to go ahead and address them here.

First, let’s talk about live shows! Are they an option? Sure they are! However, they can also be extremely complicated to arrange. More often than not, there will also be an up-front cost associated with booking a venue. I would advise holding off on any live show planning until your show has been up and running awhile. If you find you have a dedicated fan base in a fairly centralized area, it may be worth trying. Before you pull the trigger, though, think long and hard about if it is a good move for your show. Not every show translates well to live performance. If you think it works for your podcast, look for smaller, lower-cost venues and keep ticket prices affordable. When deciding on ticket price, the first factor is the cost associated with the show. Say you book a fifty-seat theater and the venue charges a $500 rental fee. Some quick math will inform the lowest price you can charge and not lose money on the show. Once you are ready to sell tickets, talk about it on your show, your social media, and any other avenue you have available to you.

One possibility would be to open for another podcast or comedy show so you can get a feel for how live shows work. If there is a show that regularly performs in your area, or if there is a show coming through your city on tour, reach out and see if the organizers are looking for an opener. There may not be a lot of money in it, but you’ll gain invaluable experience!

It also never hurts to ask someone who has been there before. If, in your podcasting journey, you have made connections with other podcasters who tour, I would recommend asking them what they have found that works and what doesn’t. It’s always better to learn from someone else’s mistakes rather than making your own. Also, they may have people who they work with to facilitate tours that they can put you in touch with. They might even be able to connect you with a booking agency. A booking agent will, for a percentage of profits, take on the majority of the work in regard to scheduling the shows, making deals with theaters, and getting tickets on sale. Partnering with a booking agent is a more advanced strategy than a lot of what we have talked about in this book, but if you’re going to make touring a real priority, it is worth it.

Another possible place to start would be the increasing number of podcast festivals and conventions springing up every year. Even those not focused on podcasting tend to have a couple of live stages. They may not be as financially rewarding as doing it yourself, but being a part of someone else’s show is a whole lot easier! Not to mention that most conventions will also offer the chance to sell merch and autographs and/or photo sessions for additional income. Also, there’s the added benefit of reaching a new audience that may not know anything about your show but will stop by because they were already at the convention. Start by searching for conventions and festivals in your area. Contact them, tell them about your show, and see if they are looking for performers.

My personal favorite part of attending festivals and conventions is the face-to-face interactions you get to have with your audience. Sitting in your house and talking into a microphone can sometimes feel weird and disconnected. Getting the chance to actually interact with listeners, hear their thoughts on your show, and make a real connection with them can recharge your creativity in a major way. Plus, it’s fun!

A couple of notes on submitting your show. Be confident but not boastful. The organizers of the event should be excited to add your show to the lineup. You are not asking them for a favor. This is a mutually beneficial arrangement! They are getting performers, and you are getting to perform. Also, be sure to tell them about your audience. (Size of audience, yes, but also commitment! If your audience is super engaged with the show, let them know!) Don’t be discouraged if your show is not accepted on the first try. Many festivals plan their lineups out more than a year in advance. Keep submitting and stay positive!

Finally, you may be wondering about paywalls. Just in case you are unfamiliar, a paywall is when people need to pay to listen to the content you create. Well, now that you know what it means, forget about it! Fact is, there’s an incalculable amount of free content on the internet. In order to successfully monetize with a paywall, at least one of two conditions needs to be met:

  1. Your show features a very famous/incredibly beloved person whom people will happily pay to listen to; and/or
  2. Your show is super popular and has a large back catalog that people would be willing to pay a reasonable amount to hear.

If you are just starting out, it’s going to be almost impossible to convince someone to pay to find out if they like your show. That said, there is one option you might think about. You could put extended episodes behind a paywall. The sixty-minute episode can be free, but you can make the unedited eighty-minute version available for $0.99—that kind of thing.

However, if you were to go this route, I think it makes more sense to just go the patron route instead of asking for people to pay episode by episode. I tried to do a paywall model once, and it was surprisingly difficult to arrange. Because it is not common for non-network shows to be paywalled, there’s not a lot of options for individual creators to use.

Additional Research

I’m going to be honest with you: this has barely scratched the surface of how to be successful at crowdfunding. It has hopefully given you a place to start, but there are entire books written on the subject. So, if crowdfunding is the path for you, keep researching and preparing! You can do this! I believe in you!

Advertising

WITH GRIFFIN MCELROY

Ah, podcast advertising. Selling out. Shilling for Big Mattress. Hawking website-building platforms to pay the rent. Raking in the big boys, by which I mean money.

Shit. You’re still reading. Shit, shit, shit.

Okay, look. This is probably the most difficult section I’ve written so far, and for two very good reasons: first, I’m not really the ad rep for the McElroy Family of Products. I’m more of an ideas guy, you know? Big-picture stuff. Second, providing any kind of guidance on attracting advertisers to your show when your podcast doesn’t even exist yet—well, friend, that’s a tough putt.

And yet, advertising is how most professional podcast-makers earn their income. Things like crowdfunding and premium memberships are gaining traction, but advertising is the financial backbone of most of the largest shows out there right now. The Interactive Advertising Bureau estimates that podcasting revenue will exceed $1 billion by 2021. Maybe some of that could be yours! (Most of that will be ours. Do not front. We’re happy to have you as our literary pupil, but if you come for the throne, you’d better come correct.)

Here’s where things get complicated. There are a lot of different ways to get ads on your show. There are a lot of different ways to surface those ads. There are a lot of different variables that add up to what advertisers are looking for in a partner podcast. There are a lot of different benefits you might be able to offer to make your show attractive to advertisers.

There isn’t a single path to luring in advertisers, so you probably aren’t going to come out of this section with an especially firm business plan. Instead, I’ll lay out how it works most of the time and give a few tips on what to expect if you decide to go in this particularly fungible direction.

Also, it’s worth noting right here at the top: if your show doesn’t exist yet or is still in its infancy, you’re not going to have any advertisers for a while. Most ad agencies aren’t going to talk to you until your show starts bringing in some thousand downloads a month. If you want to skip ahead and return to this chapter after you become a big, big star, I won’t be offended.

How Podcast Advertising Works

On the micro scale, podcast advertising is when a company pays nerds in order to get them to talk about its artisanal mouthwash or whatever.

Now, let’s zoom out. Who arranged for this transaction between the nerds and the mouthwash company? Almost certainly not the nerds themselves. More than likely a third party representing the podcast arranged the deal, negotiating a fair price based on any number of measurements of the show’s listenership.

For a lot of shows, that means an ad agency. Ad agencies (or ad networks) are the middlemen of the podcast advertising game—though I don’t use that term as a pejorative. Most ad agencies represent a bunch of shows and have relationships with a bunch of advertisers. When a company wants to advertise a product, an ad agency can find the show that’s the exact right fit and facilitate the sale way more easily than, say, myself, a business-averse dipshit.

When I say “right fit,” I’m describing the biggest strength of podcasts as an advertising platform and the fuel for the outrageous growth in advertiser spending on podcasts over the last few years. There are a lot of shows out there about nearly every conceivable topic. A Super Bowl commercial probably isn’t going to achieve a lot of market penetration for your artisanal mouthwash company, but a three-minute spot on Gargle Boys: The Mouthwash Enthusiast Podcast? That’s an absolute slam dunk.

So: the ad agency arranges a deal between Fancylad Mouthwash™ and Gargle Boys and takes a portion of the ad revenue in exchange. But how much revenue did it bring in in the first place? That number changes based on an infinite array of variables, but as a general rule of thumb:

The more money you’re going to pull in for any given ad sale

Tracking listeners is easy enough: most podcast hosting platforms can generate download reports by time period or region, and that’s info that any advertiser is going to want.

On the Subject of Download Counts

How many downloads should your podcast achieve before you start seeking advertising representation? That’s a good, largely unanswerable question. It’s kind of a moving target! If you look around at the different platforms that exist today, most have a minimum before you can apply for them. As a point of reference, if you use Libsyn as your host, it can sell ads for you—once your show reaches five thousand downloads in the United States per month. Midroll, one of the largest podcast ad reps, suggests thirty thousand downloads per episode for eligibility. Note that those caps usually only apply to traditional ad agencies—more peer-to-peer stuff like Anchor typically doesn’t have a bar to clear.

Tracking podcast engagement isn’t as clear-cut as tracking downloads. Instead of discovering how many people like your show, you’re trying to figure out how much they like your show. Some hosting services can provide data on how much of each episode folks listen to on average, which is certainly useful. For most other cases, audience engagement is measured in likes, reviews, and subscriptions. If you’ve got a favorable ratio of listeners to subscribers, you’re in good shape.

How related your show’s subject is to the advertisement itself is fairly self-explanatory. Mouthwash companies will pay a premium to have the hosts of Gargle Boys read their copy, provided that the eponymous Gargle Boys are okay with such a flagrant breach of mouthwash enthusiast ethical standards.

I’m goofing, of course, but endemic advertising is something you should take seriously just in case it’s a bridge you’re ever faced with crossing. Is it possible (or even important) for your show to remain completely objective if you’ve been paid to advertise something related to the subject matter of the show? There are a few schools of thought on this, but we’ve always been fairly conservative when approached by endemic advertisers. When in doubt, lean on the old adage: the appearance of impropriety is as bad as impropriety itself.

Which brings us to our last point: What are you willing to offer, content-wise, to the advertisers themselves?

There are three types of traditional podcast ads, differentiated by where they land in the show’s running time. Pre-roll ads run before the podcast and are usually the shortest of the bunch, running around fifteen to thirty seconds. Mid-roll ads are the most common, usually run for longer, and are interspersed throughout the main body of an episode. Post-roll ads are placed at the very end of an episode and are often paired with pre-roll ads to serve as bookends.

There’s a ton of different philosophies and value propositions for these three types of ads, but the traditional breakdown is that post-roll ads are the least valued, as folks are more likely to turn off the show before they run, while pre-roll and mid-roll ads are more sought after.

Pre-roll ads can, on paper, guarantee a listener hears the advertisement, as it leads into the rest of the show. On the other hand, it’s arguably the most skippable advertisement; it’s not difficult for a listener to press Play, hear an ad start, then move their thumb over to the Fast-Forward button in one swift motion. Mid-roll ads are less likely to get skipped in this method, provided they don’t overstay their welcome.

Another, more extreme advertising deal may entail you creating a sponsored episode, which is by far the most lucrative arrangement you can snag. It is also the most difficult needle to thread, content-wise. To make an episode where you vociferously endorse a product while still remaining entertaining and listenable is no small feat.

At the time of this writing, we’ve done two sponsored episodes of My Brother, My Brother and Me. One was a Totino’s Pizza Roll–fueled fever dream, and the other was a profoundly quiet ASMR episode for Casper mattresses. We’ve been approached to do others but couldn’t think of ways to make them enjoyable to record and listen to—those two lent themselves to concepts we thought we could have fun with, so we took them on.

And, on that note, the other thing you can negotiate is the copy you’ll be asked to read as part of the deal. A good ad agency or network won’t force you into any kind of endorsement that you’re not comfortable with, but the harder you’re willing to go—reading a scripted call to action, guaranteeing a discussion of personal experience with the product, etc.—the more lucrative a deal your agency will be able to snag.

image

Dynamic Ad Insertion

This sounds like a really fancy term, but it’s fairly basic. In the early years of podcasting, hosts would either read ads or download them from a sponsor and edit them into their show. Some shows still do; some always will. No matter when someone downloads an episode, they’ll always hear the same ads. This is bad for the podcaster, because you only get paid to put an ad in once, and no matter how popular an episode gets, you don’t get more cash.

With dynamic ad insertion, ads aren’t edited into the show from the beginning, they’re automatically slipped in at the moment the listener downloads the episode. This means that even if a listener gets a three-year-old episode, they will still hear a new ad. This is good because you can earn revenue on older episodes, but the trade-off is that it’s harder to fold ads naturally into the context of the show. It’s a little more stilted.

The other negative, from a listener’s point of view, is that if they’re binging a show, they could end up hearing the same ad a lot of times. I listened to the entirety of Reply All in two weeks and can still recite word for word the ad copy for the Netflix movie being advertised.

What All This Means for Your New Show

The traditional advertising model isn’t necessarily a great fit for a podcast that’s just starting out and seeking its first dozen die-hard fans to build a community out of. Advertising is, inherently, when companies pay to get a message out to lots of people. If your show doesn’t reach lots of people, you’re probably not going to get in on the advertising game at the moment.

image

Unless you sign up with a hosting platform like Anchor, which, if you opt into advertising, matches you with potential advertisers directly through the app. You can see how much said ad will pay, check out the copy and instructions, record and plop it into an episode with relative ease, and then track how much you’ve earned, which pays out whenever you want. It’s designed with the hobbyist in mind, and if you’re eager to start making (some) money earlyish in the lifespan of your show, it’s worth considering.

That doesn’t mean your show can’t be a lucrative exercise during its early days! Crowdfunding platforms are way more conducive for supporting a smaller show. And, once your show hits that magic, indefinable threshold, you can find an ad network you’re comfortable with and start slinging mouthwash!

If advertising does manage to become a consideration for your show, make sure you find ways to keep your content relatively entertaining for your listeners and not, you know, dry as a popcorn fart. We’ve handled ads on My Brother, My Brother and Me with the same general tone as the rest of the show, which is, you know, that twisted South Park humor. Some of our most memorable bits have come out of those ad spots, which is good not only because we didn’t bore our audience to tears, but also because damn, advertisers like when folks still talk about those ad bits.

Which brings me to my last tip with regard to advertising: figure out what you’re willing to give away, how hard in the paint you’re willing to go when talking about goods and services, and then stick to it. It’s a really tricky needle to thread, and having a good, trustworthy ad agency in your corner makes it immeasurably easier.

Oh, and once you’re getting that mattress money and trying to decide which turbo yacht you want to buy first: you can’t go wrong with a Bertram 61. The sportfishing deck, it’s just . . . you gotta ride it to believe it. Beautiful.