✊ Is your monetization strategy killing your growth?

This issue is presented by: ​A Step-By-Step Playbook to Your First 500 Subscribers​

​

396 WORDS | READ TIME: 1.5 MIN

Happy Friday friends,

Imagine you’re presented with two potential sponsor agreements.

Sponsor 1 is willing to offer you $100/month—starting today—on an ongoing basis.

Sponsor 2 isn’t ready to pay you anything today, but has promised you a $2,500/month ongoing deal in 3 years if you can hit a couple of ambitious—but totally attainable—audience benchmarks.

Which do you take?

On the one hand, the math is pretty clear.

Over the next 5 years, Sponsor 1 would net you $6,000 total.

Sponsor 2 would net you $60,000—even though you have to wait 3 years to earn the first dollar.

On the other hand, however, Sponsor 1 is a sure thing...

And you could certainly use the money—modest though it may be—now to offset your production costs.

So which option do you choose?

Though it might not always be obvious, every show faces some version of this choice on a daily basis.

There are plenty of programmatic ad or affiliate opportunities you could sign up for and start inserting into your show immediately to start generating income.

But what most creators don't realize is this:

Your choice of when and how to monetize has repercussions that extend beyond monetization, often having a significant impact on the growth potential of your show.

So in addition to the typical packaging teardown, in today’s roast, featuring Daily Sports History, Justin and I explore the question of “How soon is too soon to monetize?”

Because while it’s hard to turn down guaranteed cash in hand, pulling the trigger on monetizing too soon almost always brings with it some unintended consequences.

​Check out the roast on YouTube here.

In addition to discussing ads, we also break down:

• Product ideas this show could create to monetize more effectively
• How to align your title with your show’s Job to Be Done to improve discovery
• Cover art design recommendations
• How good does your audio quality really need to be?
• And more

If you're feeling brave enough to submit your own show for a roast, here's how to do it:

1. ​Subscribe to Podcast Marketing Trends Explained​
2. Leave us a review that includes your show name
3. Wait nervously on pins and needles, hoping that we don't (or do) pick you

Shaping up to be a rainy weekend here in Barcelona. Hope you have a great one wherever you are, and as always...

Stay Scrappy, If you're looking for an honest, no-punches-pulled assessment of why your show isn't growing and/or converting clients & customers, followed by a personalized step-by-step gameplan for your show, I have 2 spots left before my wedding break this summer. On these audits, I spend 10-15 hours studying every aspect of your show and then put together a 1.5–2-hour video report of the precise issues that are stifling your growth. Following the audit, we meet up to discuss the findings and next steps, then I build you a hyper-actionable growth plan showing you exactly what to do to get moving in the right direction. There's currently a 6-week waitlist to get started, but if you're curious about grabbing one of the last couple spots, reply to this email with "Interested!" and I'll send you all the info. ​Eight secrets to living a (fairly) fulfilled life.

​

​

​