6 C’s
The 6 C’s:
Coaching
Consulting
Courses
Community
Crowdfunding
Content Upgrades
If you are a coach or consultant, having a podcast is a great way to display your expertise and get new customers and clients. There are a couple of ways to do this: listeners or guests. Listeners are having time to get to know, like, and trust you through your podcast, and may hire you as their coach or consultant at some point. A quicker option would be to have a coaching call and record it (get permission, of course) and release it as a podcast episode. This way your listeners are hearing how you process and handle issues, but also so the guest themselves experience firsthand how you can help them with their problems, and they may turn into a client.
If you don’t wish to do one-on-one coaching or consulting, but have a lot of expertise in a particular subject, then creating a course is a great option. Instead of being one-on-one, this is one-to-many. It is also passive once you have recorded all your videos. It is learning-on-demand for your listeners and customers. Aside from coaching and consulting, offering a course is one of the most common ways to monetize a podcast. Of course, this isn’t direct monetization as some other options, but in these cases, the podcast serves as the front end of your sales funnel.
Recommend Resource for Course Software: Systeme.io (affiliate link - they have a free plan). I have included a “free + shipping” share funnel inside Podcast Profit Pro.
If you like the idea of these, but don’t feel comfortable charging the rates that coaching, consulting, and courses warrant, then just having a conversational community may work for you. This could serve the purpose of group coaching, or just to communicate with your listeners.
Another way to monetize a podcast is through crowdfunding or content upgrades. The way this works in the podcast world is that you provide some exclusive content such as behind-the-scenes, bonus episodes, private RSS feeds, podcast shoutouts, or merchandise to customers who pay you a monthly “membership” fee or a simple onetime donation. This usually ranges anywhere from $1 - $25 and beyond. They do this through a third-party site. I use and recommend PodInbox (affiliate link). Tip: you can have a section of your podcast involve listener questions and you can send your listeners to your PodInbox (affiliate link) page to leave their voicemail that you can then download and splice into your podcast episodes. I have an extensive list inside Podcast Profit Pro.