As you probably know, very few people make a full-time living podcasting. Don’t worry though – hardly anyone makes a full-time living on one single platform anymore. This is especially true for entrepreneurial content creators. 

Creating multiple revenue streams is the trick to making a full-time income as a content creator. Find the thing you’re truly great at (in this case, podcasting) and leverage it across multiple platforms. This way, you cast the widest possible net to capture audience members, business partners, and sponsorship opportunities.

Today we’re going to focus on monetizing your podcast with Youtube. Youtube, like nearly every other website on the internet, makes money from ads. Advertisers pay Youtube to put their ads on videos created by the Youtube community. While Youtube keeps a good portion of this ad revenue, it compensates its creators by giving them a slice.

What is the potential for monetizing podcast content on Youtube? Apparently, Joe Rogan makes $6 million a year from Youtube revenue. All he does is record video of his wildly popular podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, and publishes it to Youtube. All he has to do is pay an editor to cut between two or three camera angles and put in title cards.

Sounds good to you? Next time you record a podcast episode, set up a camera, capture the conversation, and upload it to Youtube while following these five monetization tips and tricks.    

Upload Segments That Are at Least 10 Minutes Long

Did you know that Youtube distributes higher payouts on clips that run 10 minutes or longer? Given that the average podcast is 43 minutes and 24 seconds, you should have no problem hitting this benchmark.

What’s the reason for this 10-minute cutoff?

According to Wetheunicorns.com, “The logic is simple: in theory, the longer a viewer is watching a video, the longer they are able to see the ads on the video. This means the advertisers pay more money to YouTube, and YouTube passes a slice of that money onto the YouTuber.”

Use Popular Keywords in Youtube Titles

Google owns Youtube, and Google is the world's largest search engine. If you want to be found online, you have to take keyword optimization and SEO seriously. You should already be writing search-friendly podcast titles, so this shouldn’t be a big leap. Another strategy is to type phrases related to your content into the Youtube search bar. The autofill feature will then give you ideas for full titles.Include Youtube Links in Your Podcast Episode Outros and Credits

Make sure to link your Youtube channel, podcast episode outro, or credits with keywords that are relevant to the content of the video so people can find it when they search for those terms. It's also a good idea to have links on all social media platforms since plenty of people don't use YouTube!

Link to Your Channel from Social Media

Don’t let your video content go to waste. Post it to social media whenever possible. Your social media followers are much more likely to click on a video than a still image or plain text post. In addition, your social media followers are much more likely to share videos, too. 

Live Your Truth Media also loves podcast audio But we know that streamable audio files aren’t particularly optimized for social. Video helps your content live in a more “natural habitat.”

Create Calls to Action Linking to Your Website

Do not rely on Youtube to make you rich. We talk about this at the end of the post, but direct Youtube ad revenue should only be one source of your total income. You’re going to have to sell products that you actually own. 

In fact, most successful podcasters use their podcasts to sell a product. This product might be business coaching, online courses, or a line of physical products. For example, many health and wellness podcasts feature product lines that include body lotions, vitamins, essential oils, and other wellness items.

Always be thinking of ways to move viewers from Youtube to your landing pages.  

Create Calls to Action Linking to Your Patreon Account

Many of your subscribers want to support your podcast directly through online donations. A popular way of facilitating this is through Patreon. If you decide to use Patreon, you should already be listing that link in your podcast’s show notes. Copy and paste those show notes into your Youtube video descriptions! 

Follow these five tips, and you’ll be well on your way to creating another stable revenue stream for your business.

However, maximizing your monetization potential won’t happen overnight. At the very least, it will take some work to qualify as a Youtube Partner (a requirement for monetizing your videos). YouTube’s 2019 monetization requirements include a minimum annual view time of 4000 hours and at least 1000 subscribers within a 12 month period. But as we mentioned above, even if you can’t monetize immediately, setting up a Youtube channel is still a great way to introduce more listeners to your podcast and drive traffic to your website.

And even if you do qualify for monetization... you probably won’t become the next Joe Rogan. Let’s say you’re pulling 5,000 views a day, and you have a Click-Through-Rate of 4%. With these numbers, you’re going to make about $700 in yearly revenue. Not a lot of money. However, if you grow your channel to 10,000 views a day, you’ll be seeing about $1,000 for the year. If you want to play around with numbers, check out this online Youtube Monetization Calculator.

Finally, remember what we said at the beginning of this post: Hardly anyone makes a full-time living doing one single platform. Your goal should be leveraging your podcast to create multiple revenue streams. If you can grow your Youtube channel to bring in $500 a month, then that can supplement a $1000-a month podcast sponsorship, $2000 in website sales, and $5000 in client engagement. Altogether, you’re looking at a very healthy business.

Want to learn how to create a badass podcast?

Sign up for our 7 days to Launch Your Podcast Course. This email only course includes a lesson each day plus resources, templates, and strategies you can use to help bring your show to life. Whether you are wanting to do all the aspects of your show yourself or have a team of people to help, this course will give you the tools to create a show you’re proud of.