I’ve been podcasting in South Africa for over 10 years now and I have seen the podcasting landscape change dramatically over the last decade. The question I get asked the most after how do you start a podcast in South Africa is can you make money out of a podcast in South Africa?
As with any business, the answer depends but you can definitely make money from podcasting in South Africa. Where the money to be made comes from may surprise you but there is definitely an opportunity to turn a podcast or your podcasting skills into a fully-fledged business in South Africa.
You’re probably wondering what I mean by ‘where the money comes from’ so let me unpack the myth that you aren’t able to make money off podcasting in South Africa.
In this article, I’m also going to share the 4 ways you can start making money online right now through podcasting in South Africa.Before I do that, let’s make sure we’re on the same page…
What exactly is a podcast you ask?
I don’t want to get into too much technical detail here, but I think it’s important that we define what a podcast is so that later in this post when I explain how you can make money from podcasting in South Africa the concepts are fully understood…
In it’s very basic form a podcast is a piece of recorded audio or audio file that is published via a rss feed that is picked up various pod catchers which enables the end user to listen to it on their chosen device.
In even simpler terms, think of someone recording a song and sending you the audio file as an mp3 to listen to. That is what a podcast is.
It’s like radio shows that you can subscribe to and listen to when you want to. It’s simply audion on demand. Think DSTV catch up.
Now that we have the technical side of things out of the way, let’s look what it takes to make money from podcasting in South Africa…
Starting your podcast in South Africa to make some money online
People get into podcasting in various ways. For most people, their first exposure to the medium of podcasting is by listening to their favourite podcasts. At some point, they think “I can do that”…
…and before they know it they’re so deep down the rabbit hole that there is no turning back. (If you’re thinking about going down that rabbit hole, this is how to start a podcast in South Africa)
I always encourage new podcasters to have a plan in place on how to make money from your podcast before you actually start. What I mean by that is start with the end goal in mind before getting going…
…know how you are going to make money from your podcast before recording and publishing your first episode.
4 ways to make money from podcasting in South Africa
For many podcasters, it boils down to this. The Million Rand question, how do you make money from podcasting in South Africa?
I’m now going to share the 4 simplest ways to generate an income from your podcast in South Africa:
I’m going to dig into each one of these in a bit more detail so that you understand the business model fully.
Selling advertising on your podcast in South Africa
This is the first way most podcasters think of making money off their podcast. It’s the most common and widely know way of doing it.
Just like an advertiser pays a radio station or television channel to get access to their audience, there are advertisers that are prepared to pay you to run an ad for their product or service on your podcast.
These ads can come in two forms. They are either pre recored ads that the advertiser will give you to include as part of the final recording or what is known in the industry as a ‘live read’. Live reads are generally favoured more by advertisers on podcasts as it makes the sales message more relatable to the end listener.
When an advertiser buys space on your podcast, they pay upfront regardless of the result that comes from the advertising.
Making money with affiliate marketing on a podcast
The second way to make money off podcasting in South Africa is very similar to selling advertising but the difference comes in the mechanics and that is through affiliate marketing.
An affiliate marketer is someone who promotes a product or service and if someone purchases as a result of that promotion, the service provider pay the affiliate a commission for promoting their brand. (If this is something you’d like to find out more about then this post about affiliate marketing in South Africa will be helpful)
You can find many products and services online that you can promote on your podcast as a South African affiliate marketer. (I’ve made a very extensive list of affiliate programs in South Africa here)
Sell your own products through your podcast
The third way to make money from podcasting in South Africa is to sell your own products and services. Creating a podcast for your business is a great marketing tool to get your messaging in front of potential customers.
Promoting our own products and services on the podcasts we create has been the biggest revenue generator from our podcasts for our various online businesses. This way of making money leads nicely into the next way to make money from podcasts in South Africa.
Creating podcasts for clients in South Africa
There are many companies and organisations in South Africa that would love to start a podcast to promote what they do but they just don’t have the technical know how, skills or staff to do it themselves.
I personally believe that there is a massive opportunity to do this in South Africa today. If you are great at recording and producing podcasts then there are a number of clients looking for someone like you to take on the task of creating their podcast for them.
I hope this post gives you some insight into what it takes to make money from podcasting in South Africa.
If you’d like to learn more about starting your own podcast or other ways to make money from your podcast then check out my online course called The Podcasting Academy.
The Podcasting Academy is a step-by-step online course that will walk you through the entire process of choosing a topic, researching, recording and editing your podcast episodes and publishing them.
Also included in The Podcasting Academy is a bonus module on how to make money off your podcast in South Africa.
In future posts, I will be digging into each of these topics in more detail in the coming weeks and moths. I’ll also be showing you exactly how to build these platforms in various video tutorials that I’ll be uploading to my YouTube channel.
If you have any questions about generating an income online in South Africa today feel free to be in touch via Facebook or Twitter.