Digital & audience · Less obvious
Podcasts and patronage
A show, a listener who returns, and a mix of ads, members, and live dates.
Podcasts pay slowly, then sometimes all at once. Advertising requires numbers; patronage (Patreon, Members, bonus episodes) requires devotion; live recordings and tours require a show that works in a room. For a writer, a podcast is often a research engine and a calling card that happens to have a tip jar. The writers who make a living at it treat it as a broadcast, not as a chat they forgot to stop.
- Typical pay
- Most shows earn nothing. The ones that earn do it via a blend of ads (dynamic or host-read), memberships, live events, and the books they sell off the back. Dynamic-ad CPMs are not a novelist's fortune until the downloads are.
- Ceiling
- Uncapped
- Speed
- A long game
- Effort
- A job in itself
- Needs
- Needs an audience
How it works
- 01
You record a show on a promise and a cadence. Listeners subscribe in an app you do not own.
- 02
Money arrives from ads inserted by a host or network, from members paying for extras, and from whatever you sell in the show notes.
- 03
A network deal can add money and subtract control. Read it as carefully as a book contract.
How to start
- 01
One subject, one format, a decent microphone, and ten episodes in the bank before you announce anything.
- 02
Transcripts are an accessibility duty and a way for the work to be found by search.
- 03
Invite guests when they serve the subject, not when you need a break from having to have thoughts.
Watch out
- 01
A weekly hour of radio is a part-time job before editing.
- 02
Patreon fatigue is real. Members want a reason to stay that is not guilt.
- 03
Do not sign a network deal that takes your back catalogue in perpetuity because they bought you a better mic.
Radio taught me that a voice in someone's ear is an intimate way to sell a sentence. A podcast is radio without the commissioner. That is freedom, and it is also the reason so many shows vanish at episode seven. If you start one, start it like a column: with a run in mind.