Welcome to the KULT Kreator Experience: Successful content creation to build powerful connections, a podcast designed to help passionate experts and entrepreneurs launch a podcasting platform, successfully build a following and become industry leaders. 

Hi, I’m Matt and I’m the founder of KULT Media and the host of this podcast.

I’ll be sharing my experience and insights from over 15 years of content creation. And along the way, I’ll be seeking out other KULT Kreators to learn from their wisdom and expertise. 

In today’s episode, we are jumping ahead to the last phase of my KULT Kreator Experience: the different ways you can create Podcast Profit. Now, this might seem a little odd addressing the final phase first, but with any project or opportunity, you need a vision before you can determine the mission and the goals.

And in my experience in media and television, understanding a long-term outcome for content can massively affect how it’s created. 

So today I’m going to share with you my five profit pillars of podcasting. They are Community, Career, Social, Physical, and the most discussed, Financial. But before we deep dive into the profit pillars, please take a second to follow us on Instagram @kult.media and on your podcasting app of choice.

So let’s jump into my first podcast profit pillar, and that is the physical benefits of becoming a KULT Kreator. This includes practical skills or hard skills, soft skills of engaging with others and the mental and physiological benefits of becoming a KULT Kreator. 

The modern expert and entrepreneur need to wear many hats in their business: strategy, marketing, sales, product development, PR, recruitment and HR. And being a content creator is no different.

You need to learn hard skills, like copywriting and project management, scripting, public speaking, recording and editing. All of these skills are required of a cult leader and further to these hard skills, learning to take your purpose and vision and translate it into succinct content is a skill that needs to be practised, but it can have a huge impact on your brand or business.

Then there are the soft skills that are developed when you become a KULT Kreator. Learning to interview and really utilize active listening is the key to a good podcast, but also the key to being a great leader. 

Also learning to self-review and constructively criticise to continually improve your content, and as a leader. And the final, physical benefit is the mental and physiological effect of being a cult leader. 

Utilizing your experience and focusing on your knowledge can give you a sense of accomplishment and strengthen your belief in your own ability. 

Successful creation of your brand and platform can make you feel awesome, and even more so when you know that you’re helping others. That feel-good feeling from being proactive and taking action can reap wonderful rewards mentally. And that has a positive repercussion on you physiologically. You start to feel like you’re accomplishing things, your stress lowers, you increase the happy hormones, and your cardiovascular system adjusts to this positive body attitude.

The next podcast profit pillar is Career. And this breaks down into loving what you do, building dream teams and influencing change. 

So, how can being a KULT Kreator impact your career? Well, if you say something stupid on a podcast, you could definitely lose your job. That’s not to be overlooked. But let’s consider how we can profit in our careers from podcasting.

First of all, it can be about just loving what you do. You can be creating content about your passions, and that could lead to you becoming a full-time creator and podcast host. Creating content can require help and guidance. And this can result in the formation of incredible teams. 

They say it does not work if you love what you do. And I think it’s even better if you do it with those that you actually enjoy working with. So, build your dream team. 

And the greatest impact a podcast can have is to position you as a leader within your industry or niche. And from my experience in TV and radio, I know the first port of call for any researcher when looking for information or a contributor is to head to Google. And with a body of valuable content, you will be the person to be discovered over those without. And this can lead to press opportunities, speaking engagements, and affiliations that can boost your career. 

More and more, employers are vetting potential candidates by searching them online. Now, if you have a body of work behind you, like a podcast or blog, or social media presence that demonstrates you’re helping people and demonstrates your passion and knowledge, it’s really going to strengthen your chances of getting that dream job.

Our third profit pillar is Social. This is about the emotional, meaningful relationships, impact and opportunities. It’s about how you interact with people, how you present yourself to the world, and it builds on those physical skills that you learn in the first pillar. 

So emotional, what does it mean for you to accomplish your goals, be true to your purpose and make the world a better place?

Often I hear experts say, I don’t know how to tell people what I can do to help. Well, using content creation can give you that platform without feeling like you’re behaving like a walking billboard or an advertisement. 

Providing your followers with purposeful podcast content will forge meaningful relationships with your co-creators, your guests, your team and your listeners. It changes how you interact with those around you. And in combination with the Career pillar, you can build a network that can lead to opportunities for you, and for you to help others.

Our fourth profit pillar is Community. It’s about making a difference, solving a problem and building a tribe. 

So how can you solve a problem and make a difference in the world around you and to your subscribers? You could be looking to educate or affect change, and those changes being discussed, or even action can be considered a huge profit from successful content creation.

And this can help you build a tribe of like-minded individuals that can collaborate to create a greater impact. And as a creator, you build a community and a sense of belonging for your followers. This also highlights the importance of using great leadership qualities through your content. Lead by example, be the change you want to see.

And our fifth and final profit pillar, the financial side of things, the connections, the leads and the sales. So this is the biggie, Financial, Ooh, money, money, money! 

But let’s be serious. Podcasting and any content creation take time and money. And as demonstrated by the vast amount of Google searches daily, podcast monetization is a hot topic.

Now let me be really honest at this point. This is not the next digital gold rush. I work with passionate experts and entrepreneurs to create a platform, build an audience, to make a positive impact on those followers’ lives through a successful podcast. Not to create a golden goose that will net millions in months.

For me, it’s about building a legacy and reaching greater audiences in order to make the world a better place.

And that being said, nobody wants to be out of pocket and ideally, we can turn a financial profit. By creating, engaging, and authentic content, you can build connections with potential partners, collaborators, sponsors, or even other producers. And once your listeners know you, understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and they like and trust you, they can become leads and warm leads too, because they know all about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.

And this can lead to more sales for your business. For less than a thousand dollars, you could create a great podcast. How many sales or conversions would you need to turn a profit? 

So, directly monetise your podcast. We’ll go into this in greater detail in a later podcast, but here are some ways that you can monetize your podcast.

Firstly, podcast advertising your own products and services; tell people what you do and how you can help them. Too many podcasters forget to have strong calls to action regarding what they do, their products and their services. Don’t forget to tell people why you’re there. 

Next, there’s the big one: Sponsorship. Now people think this is important, sponsorship is the best way of making money in podcasting. It really isn’t. The first one is the best way of making money in podcasting: selling what you sell to your podcast listeners.

Podcast sponsorship or podcast ad revenue can be done in many ways, and we will talk about that in another episode, but fundamentally, there’s CPM, which is paid per thousand downloads, or there is a direct partnership sponsorship where a sponsor sees a value in what you’re doing and they give you an amount for that.

Next, we’ve got affiliate sales. Affiliate marketing has been done for years. Really simple, you sign up to be an affiliate for a product or service you use, you tell people, Hey, I use this product or service, click this link to get 10% off and you get a kickback. 

Another way you can monetize your podcast is by having events. Listeners can come to a live recording or watch a live recording, or a live stream, and have people pay to attend those. 

There are even opportunities to get funding from grants and investment schemes. Depending on what your podcast is about, you might be eligible for some funding. 

There is paid content, or you might have a full interview behind a paywall, which could be a form of membership, which is another way of monetizing your podcast.

There’s the classic merchandise, t-shirts, hats, mugs, mouse mats, and keyrings. 

Another big one is crowdfunding and podcast subscriptions. Although the people are using Patreon and they ask people to donate a little bit of money and those people get access to premium content, an extra podcast episode & bonus features. 

Some people don’t even do that. They just say, Donate a coffee to me, and they get a few bucks and away they go.

And the last way that I want to just touch on a little bit is IP. If you’re producing a podcast, you own that IP, that intellectual property. You could sell that, it could become a book, it could become a television show, a film, you might give people the rights to recreate it in other languages and other countries. 

Just remember, whatever you create, that’s yours. That’s your voice, that’s your entity, that’s your idea. And those monetization ideas are just scraping the surface.

I feel at this point, I should point out another potential profit pillar. And that is more content. 

If you have a strong repurposing strategy, you can make a single podcast become hundreds of other pieces of content. And this can save you time, money, stress, and the overuse of your ideas factory.

So in summary, my five profit pillars are: 

Physical: the practical hard skills, the soft skills of learning to engage with people and the physiological or mental benefits of creating content. 

Career: the ability to build a network, become a key person of influence and do what you love. 

Social: how you present yourself to the world, what it means to you and how to build emotion and a brand.

And then there’s Community: how you make the world a better place by helping others and solving problems. 

And finally, the biggie, Financial: the monetization of your podcast, the connections that can come from your podcast and the leads and sales that could generate from that. 

So what is your measurement of success?

As a podcaster what do you want to achieve? Why do you want to achieve it? Don’t worry if you don’t have the answers yet, we will cover this in the next episode, where we head back to the start of my KULT Kreator Experience and the beginning of the Coaching step, starting with the personal phase of development.

So join me next time to continue our journey of successful content creation to build powerful connections. And I’d like to thank you for being part of the KULT Kreator experience once again. And I’m always happy to get your feedback and any questions or topics you’d like me to discuss. Please reach out, and drop me a message.

And if you want to start your own KULT Kreator Experience and become a cult leader in your industry head to kult.media for your free strategy session. Until next time, be good!