Royce Hidreth, pro­ducer of the Preg­tas­tic podcast

This inter­view is part of a series “Mak­ing Money from Pod­cast­ing” (read sum­mary “9 Suc­cess­ful Tech­niques for Mak­ing Money from Pod­cast­ing”) where I inter­view pod­cast­ers who are actu­ally gen­er­at­ing rev­enue from their pod­casts. There are many tech­niques, and here’s one person’s tale of how they’re mak­ing money from podcasting.

Get your own sponsors

Royce Hil­dreth is the pro­ducer of the Preg­tas­tic pod­cast, the weekly audio pod­cast by preg­nant women, for preg­nant women. While he works with Wiz­zard Media, a pod­cast­ing ad net­work, which can sell adver­tis­ing for his show, he pri­mar­ily seeks out his own spon­sor­ships. Hil­dreth and I talked about how he goes about land­ing adver­tis­ers and what tech­niques work the best.

In gen­eral, adver­tis­ers want exclu­siv­ity on the pod­cast, and they want more pres­ence than just a pre-roll ad or an in-show insert ad. Podcasting’s inter­ac­tiv­ity is often what attracts adver­tis­ers to the medium. The for­mat allows for some give-and-take play with the hosts, and that adds dynamic value for the spon­sor. It’s unlike other stream­ing media such as radio or TV, which are still often stuck on just sell­ing inter­sti­tial advertisements.

Inter­view (Time: 12:44)

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Hil­dreth says he’s look­ing to build long term part­ner­ships, ide­ally as long as a year. He wants to move beyond the sim­ple CPM (cost per thou­sand) model and offer more value to adver­tis­ers such as putting employ­ees on the pod­cast, and pos­si­bly pro­duce videos of the sponsor’s prod­ucts that would live along­side the podcast.

Beyond seek­ing spon­sors, Hil­dreth also uses the beg­ware model, which used to gen­er­ate $150 a month in rev­enue. Unfor­tu­nately, and pos­si­bly because of the econ­omy, that’s dropped to a much lower level. In an effort to bring those dol­lars back up, hosts have stopped say­ing the show is free and they’re now say­ing that the show costs a donation.

Hil­dreth doesn’t make much money from the pod­cast. The spon­sor­ships and dona­tions are only off­set­ting costs, such as Web host­ing and hir­ing a baby sit­ter for when he and his wife need to go to the stu­dio to pro­duce the podcast.

Lis­ten to my inter­view with Hil­dreth as he talks about main­tain­ing the cred­i­bil­ity of the con­tent of Preg­tas­tic while also seek­ing out sponsorships.

More episodes of “Mak­ing Money from Podcasting”

• Never Not Funny (Tech­nique: “Par­tial show for free – full show paid”)
• Per­sonal Life Media (Tech­nique: “Build your own media net­work of pro­gram­ming and sell adver­tis­ing against it”)
• Elsie’s Yoga Class (Tech­nique: “Sell an iPhone appli­ca­tion along with your podcast”)
• Mac OS Ken (Tech­nique: “Give away five shows for free, make them pay for the sixth”)
• Alaska HDTV (Tech­nique: “Get your own sponsors”)
• Duct Tape Mar­ket­ing (Tech­nique: “Build your brand to sell your services”)
• Screen­Cast­sOn­line (Tech­nique: “Give away every other episode. Make them pay for the rest.”)
• Izzy Video (Tech­nique: “Give away every other episode. Make them pay for the rest.”)
• Slate Gabfests (Tech­nique: “Inte­grat­ing spon­sor­ship with the show’s editorial”)
• Wiz­zard Media (Tech­nique: “Got audi­ence? We’ll get you spon­sors. Or, get spon­sors on your own and we’ll insert the ads” PLUS “Sell an iPhone appli­ca­tion along with your podcast”)
• Premiumcast.com (Tech­nique: “Build an audi­ence and sell pre­mium podcasts”)
• Man­ager Tools (Tech­nique: “Build your brand to sell your services”)
• ESPN (“Build your own media net­work of pro­gram­ming and sell adver­tis­ing against it”)
• Mevio (Tech­nique: “Moti­vate your audience”)

David Spark helps busi­nesses grow by devel­op­ing thought lead­er­ship through sto­ry­telling and cov­er­ing live events at Spark Media Solu­tions. He blogs at The Spark Minute and can be heard and seen reg­u­larly on ABC Radio, Cranky Geeks with John C. Dvo­rak, and KQED in San Fran­cisco. See his busi­ness pro­file, con­tact David, or leave a com­ment below.

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