Susan Bratton, CEO of Personal Life Media and host of DishyMix 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.

Build your own media network of programming and sell advertising against it

When the idea of generating revenue from podcasts first came about, podcast ad networks such as Kiptronic (now Limelight), Podtrac, and PodShow (now Mevio) sprung up offering to sell advertising for any show that could grab an audience.

Interview (Time: 8:26)

[audio:http://media.libsyn.com/media/davidspark/Making_Money_From_Podcasting-Personal_Life_Media.mp3]

Download the MP3 file

These ad networks build up a stable of random programs and then group them together by category (e.g. sports, entertainment, health and fitness) so that they can sell advertising against the programming. For example, an advertiser with an energy drink could buy ads across all of the podcast network’s health and fitness programming.

It’s a model that works for some, but it also requires a revenue share with the ad network and in some cases you’re forced to sign long term contracts. For the advertisers, they’re not getting any level of consistency. These programs for which they’re purchasing advertising are not all being produced or authorized by one organization, like a media network, and therefore the quality of an ad’s presence may vary drastically.

When an advertiser purchases advertising across a media network, such as a TV network like NBC, ABC, CBS, they know they’re going to get some level of consistency because all the programming is being produced by the network. Susan Bratton, host of DishyMix podcast is mimicking this very same network programming sales model with Personal Life Media, an online network of blogs and podcasts that cover personal life issues such as career, love, health, and finance.

As CEO of Personal Life Media, Bratton controls the overall programming, brand, and ad distribution of her network thereby creating a consistent experience for her audience and advertisers. She similarly sells programming by category, but unlike purchasing through a podcast ad network, advertisers know they’ll get a consistent experience with programming and audience. Bratton says they get about a million downloads a month across all their forty shows. With that much exposure, she can sell packages of programming by category that get from 100,000-250,000 downloads per month.

For more, listen to my interview with Bratton as we talk about her online media network business model, plus tricks for podcast advertising, such as how to best do in show incentives with promo codes.

More episodes of “Making Money from Podcasting”

• Never Not Funny (Technique: “Partial show for free – full show paid”)
• Pregtastic (Technique: “Get your own sponsors”)
• 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”)