How To Make Money Podcasting in 2025: 8 Proven Monetization Strategies

Whether you’re already hosting a podcast with a small, dedicated audience or thinking about starting one, monetization brings up plenty of questions: Do you need a certain number of followers? Is there one strategy that works better than others? Can you actually make money podcasting?

This guide breaks down everything you need to know about making money from your podcast.

Want to make extra cash but unsure where to begin? Dive into dropshipping or explore the latest trending products in ecommerce. Then let Shopify take care of the rest.

What types of podcasts make money?

Podcasting can be a lucrative business idea. Some top podcasters have signed multimillion-dollar deals for their shows. Take Alex Cooper, who signed a $125 million deal with SiriusXM for her Call Her Daddy podcast in August 2024.

But here’s the reality: Not all podcasts make money. There are more than 3.5 million podcasts worldwide, but most don’t make it past a handful of episodes. It’s tough to stay consistent when you don’t see immediate traction or a clear path to monetization.

The good news? Almost any type of podcast can become profitable if it builds a loyal audience. Whether you’re covering true crime, business advice, comedy, or even highly specific hobbies like vintage typewriter repair, there’s potential for monetization. The key isn’t your topic—it’s how well you serve your listeners and how consistently you show up.

The most profitable podcasts usually fit one of these profiles:

• Podcasts with established followings: Three of the highest-earning podcasts—The Joe Rogan Experience, Crime Junkie, and The Daily—each reach more than 10 million monthly downloads. This makes sense: Brands pay more to advertise on shows that expose them to larger audiences.

• Podcasts that target niche audiences: You don’t need to appeal to everyone with your podcast. With ultra-specific topics, you can charge brands more money to reach smaller but highly targeted audiences. The comedy political show Chapo Trap House, for example, brings in around $180,000 per month.

8 ways to make money podcasting

1. Affiliate marketing
2. Open a merch store
3. Start dropshipping
4. Sell ads and sponsorships
5. Get audience support
6. Write and self-publish a book
7. Offer consulting services
8. Sell online courses

When it comes to monetization, you can pick one strategy or mix and match several. Here are a few ways you can monetize your podcast:

1. Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a type of performance marketing where businesses pay affiliates who bring them customers. Businesses only pay after customers complete an agreed-upon action—usually making a purchase, but some affiliate programs pay out for email signups, page clicks, downloads, or content engagement.

For example, a podcaster might talk about a product they love on their show and share a unique discount code with their audience. Every time a customer checks out with that code, the creator earns a commission.

Affiliate marketing via podcasts is versatile. Beyond mentioning discount codes, you can add affiliate links to show notes, include them on your podcast’s RSS feed, email them to your mailing list, and add them to your social media bio or link-in-bio page.

If you’re just starting out, focus on broad-ranging affiliate programs (those that reach different audiences) and affiliate marketing networks (platforms that give you access to many different brands and opportunities).

Here are some popular places to start:

• Amazon Associates: Recommend products across various categories and earn up to 20% in commissions.

• Rakuten Advertising: Connect with luxury, finance, retail, and travel brands to find brand partners for your podcast.

• ClickBank: Choose commissions either by revenue sharing (a percentage of each sale) or cost per action (a set dollar amount each time a listener completes the agreed-upon action).

• CJ Affiliate: Find affiliate partner recommendations based on location, audience size, and vertical.

• Awin: Awin features affiliate programs for different types of publishers, including influencer, media sites, and tech partners.

If your podcast covers entrepreneurship—like starting a business, ecommerce, marketing, web design, social media, or tech—the Shopify Affiliate Program is a great fit. You can refer people to sign up for Shopify or Shopify POS Pro and receive commissions.

Each affiliate program has pros and cons, so don’t be afraid to try different affiliates. That way, it’s easy to drop underperforming affiliate programs and double down on the ones that perform best.

Learn more: Affiliate Marketing For Beginners: Everything You Need to Know to Succeed

2. Open a merch store

Let fans support your podcast by selling custom merchandise like t-shirts, stickers, posters, mugs, tote bags, and journals.

The Viral Podcast hosts Chelcie Lynn and Paige Ginn sell funny t-shirts and sweatshirts they wear in video clips of their podcast. If you record video and share clips on social media, wearing your merch becomes free advertising.

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A post shared by Chelcie & Paige (@theviralpodcast)

Print on demand makes running a merch store simple. Third-party companies print and ship products when customers order them, without you needing to handle any inventory. No overhead, no shipping headaches, and minimal financial risk make it a great fit for podcasters—you can run a fully automated merch store in the background while you focus on your podcast. You’ll spend some time upfront creating an online store and adding products, but then it runs itself.

Several print-on-demand apps integrate with Shopify. Compare pricing and product options to find what fits your podcast:

• Printful

• Printify

• Teelaunch

• Spreadconnect

• Apliiq

• CustomCat

3. Start dropshipping

Merch isn’t the only thing you can sell as a podcaster. Sara Banta hosts the Accelerated Health TV & Radio Show and sells supplements, the perfect complement for her wellness-focused podcast.

“The most lucrative way to make money is to have a product you can sell,” Sara says. She recommends using content marketing to drive sales: “Ensure you have a website that promotes your product and a stand-alone podcast website with blogs that reference your product, even if it’s just transcripts from your podcast.”

If you don’t have the budget or interest to develop your own products, dropshipping could work for you. You sell products without keeping inventory—when a customer places an order, you forward it to a dropshipping supplier who ships the product directly to the customer.

Think about what types of products you could naturally promote on your show. For example, if your podcast covers the costume design industry, you might dropship sewing supplies. A true crime podcast could sell mystery books. A business podcast might offer productivity planners. The key is choosing products that make sense for your audience—not random items that feel like obvious cash grabs.

4. Sell ads and sponsorships

Advertising networks connect brands with podcasts that share a target audience. The network acts as a go-between for companies looking to advertise to podcast listeners and podcasters looking for sponsors. Here are a few popular networks:

• Megaphone: Spotify’s platform offers dynamic ad insertion (you choose how ads appear).

• Libsyn Ads: Get help creating your listings with talking points to help you fulfill your orders.

• Acast: Match with the right brands and use prerecorded ads, host-read ads, and branded content.

Advertising can be a great monetization method for podcasters, but it takes time to develop a large enough audience to qualify. Most networks require a certain number of regular listeners, though this varies. Libsyn, for example, requires 20,000 downloads, while others require closer to 50,000.

If your audience is still too small, consider reaching out directly to brands to pitch sponsorship opportunities. Focus on brands with a direct connection to your topic or audience, or products you already know and love. This will make your ads more authentic, boosting trust with listeners and maximizing your chances of success.

5. Get audience support

Your listeners already love what you do—why not let them pay you for it? Asking your audience for direct support is one of the most straightforward ways to monetize your podcast. Crowdfunding your podcast builds community in a way that ads and affiliate networks can’t. Here are your options:

Subscriber-exclusive episodes

Subscription models let you create steady income without stealing your focus from growing your audience.

Patreon lets fans (called patrons) support you with monthly payments in exchange for perks—usually subscriber-only episodes. Maintenance Phase, a podcast that debunks wellness trends, offers monthly “MP After Dark” bonus episodes to patrons who pledge at least $3 each month. Comedians Kate Berlant and Jacqueline Novak use Supercast to sell subscriptions to their premium podcast Berlant & Novak Premium—an ad-free version plus bonus episodes starting at $5 a month.

Go live

Sell tickets to live podcast recordings or stream on platforms like Twitch or YouTube Live. Livestreaming reaches new audiences, and most platforms let you collect tips and revenue during streams if you meet their requirements.

Ask for tips

Add tip links to your social media, website, and show notes. Apps like Venmo, Buy Me a Coffee, and Ko-fi make it easy for fans to show support. Tips work great as supplemental income while you build toward a paid subscription model.

6. Write and self-publish a book

Podcast hosts are typically authorities on their topics, making the jump from host to author almost natural. No matter what topic your podcast covers, writing a book strengthens your credibility and adds weight to your premium content. Many popular podcasts have spun off into books written by their creators—the scripted science-fiction podcast The Bright Sessions, for example, became a series of novels.

Here’s the best part: If you’re podcasting regularly, you might already have a head start on your book without realizing it. Transcribed podcast content can serve as a rough outline for your work (though it’ll need editing). If you produce a scripted podcast, you could self-publish a book of scripts for interested fans.

7. Offer consulting services

If you have a few spare hours per week, consider offering consulting or freelance services like coaching, writing, design, photography, or teaching. You should have specialized skills or knowledge in whatever service you’re selling.

If you host an entrepreneurial podcast, for example, your audience likely wants to start or grow businesses. You might offer coaching sessions to share your experience and help them work through common startup challenges like pricing, building teams, or developing marketing strategies.

8. Sell online courses

Online courses package skills, knowledge, and personal stories into step-by-step guides. They can include videos, text, or audio (like bonus podcast episodes) behind a paywall on platforms like Kajabi, Teachable, or Skillshare. You can also sell digital products like courses on your Shopify store.

Online courses can sell for anywhere between $50 and $5,000—just a handful of listeners buying your course can make a noticeable impact on your annual revenue. Digital products also build stronger connections with your listeners because you’re providing added value.

5 tips to make your podcast monetizable

1. Get clear on your audience
2. Follow a consistent publishing schedule
3. Grow your audience
4. Get feedback from your audience
5. Podcasts make money when they have multiple monetization methods

Building a profitable podcast takes much more than just hitting Record. Even if you have years of episodes under your belt, turning your show into a revenue stream requires strategy and consistency.

Here are a few tips that can set you up for success:

Get clear on your audience

The most successful podcasts know exactly who they’re talking to. Research your target audience to understand what they want to know, then record podcast episodes that address their goals, present solutions to their challenges, or cover topics that interest them.

Understanding your audience goes beyond basic demographics. What keeps them up at night? What are they trying to achieve? What other podcasts do they listen to? The more specific you can get about who you’re serving, the easier it becomes to create content that resonates.

When it comes time to monetize, knowing your listeners helps you find brands that will pay to reach them. A podcast about personal finance will attract different sponsors than one about home cooking, even if both have similar audience sizes.

Follow a consistent publishing schedule

Consistency builds trust with your audience. Whether you publish weekly, biweekly, or monthly, stick to your schedule so listeners know when to expect new content. This reliability helps your show become part of their routine.

“Say you’re publishing once a week: Do you have enough things to talk about for half an hour, for an hour every single week?” says Shuang Esther Shan, senior producer and host of Shopify Masters. “Would you be able to get guests to appear on your show every single week for the foreseeable future?” If the answer is no, you may need to rethink your schedule—it’s better to publish less frequently and maintain quality than to burn out trying to meet an unrealistic schedule.

Grow your audience

Most sponsorship opportunities require significant audience size—often 10,000 or more monthly downloads. The more people tuning into your show, the better chance you have at selling sponsorship packages and commanding higher rates.

One way to grow your listenership is creating content people want to discuss with others. “Focus on creating compelling content that a listener would want to share with their friends and family,” says Toronto Mike Boon, host of the Toronto Mike’d podcast. “People love telling their circle about that new indie podcast they’ve discovered. Build your audience authentically and sustainably, engage with your listeners as a community, and businesses will want to be a part of it.”

You can also turn to video, which is becoming increasingly popular. On Spotify, average daily streams of video podcasts increased more than 39% from 2023 to 2024. YouTube can also offer a boost. “Right now, being on YouTube offers more discoverability than the audio channels,” Shuang says. Film your podcast episodes and post short clips on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts. Video snippets are highly shareable and can turn casual viewers into regular subscribers.

While monthly downloads matter to sponsors, don’t forget other metrics—like engagement rate, listener retention, and review ratings—to gauge how your audience interacts with your content.

Get feedback from your audience

The last thing you want is to start monetizing your podcast and turn off your audience. As you begin advertising, selling merch, or otherwise monetizing your show, pay attention to negative feedback: Does an ad feel off-brand to a longtime listener? Are fans disappointed in your t-shirt quality? You don’t need to please everyone, but listener feedback offers valuable learning opportunities.

Podcasts make money when they have multiple monetization methods

The best time to start monetizing your podcast is when you have the fundamentals in place. Once you’ve built a loyal audience, established a consistent publishing schedule, and gathered feedback from your listeners, the most effective monetization strategies will become obvious.

Remember: The most profitable independent podcasts use multiple revenue streams to create steady income while focusing on growing their audience.

Since most of these methods can run automatically in the background, they’re perfect for podcasters who want to spend most of their time creating content and building their community.