How To Make $100/Day With Your Podcast – 8 Ways To Monetize Your Podcast

A year before filming this, Alston Godbolt launched the Unemployed Podcast. He recorded episodes in his car, driving to get coffee every day after his wife got home during the pandemic. The plan was simple: talk into a microphone and make money. What he found out fast is that it is not that simple. It takes real time, real energy, and a real plan to come up with topics that actually connect with people.

But the income potential is real, and there are eight distinct ways to turn your podcast into a $100-per-day business. Some are obvious. Some are not. One of them, Alston’s personal favorite, is number five on this list, and it is the one that works across nearly every niche. Here is the full breakdown, straight from the video.

What You’ll Walk Out With

The 8 monetization methods ranked by ease and profit potential
Why Spotify streams are the least profitable option and what to do instead
The exact affiliate math: $1,100 average order x 4% commission = $44 per sale, and how many you need per day
How to sell merchandise with zero inventory using one free platform
Which CPM topics on YouTube pay more and which ones pay less
How to put multiple income streams on one page so your podcast website does the work for you
Which of these 8 methods fits your specific niche and audience, answered at finder.platformproof.com

Method 1: Turn Your Podcast Into YouTube Videos

This is probably the least obvious method on the list, but it is one of the easiest ways to generate additional income from content you have already created. If you are recording audio for your podcast, that same content can live on YouTube, and YouTube pays through the Partner Program once you hit 4,000 watch hours and 1,000 subscribers.

You have two options for the visual component. You can record yourself on camera while you talk, which adds a face and personality to the content. Or you can use an audio equalizer animation with your logo on screen. The second option requires almost no extra work. The audio is already done. You just need to package it with a visual layer and upload it.

The bigger podcasts use a smart scheduling strategy here: they upload the full episode on a Wednesday, then cut clips from that episode and release them on YouTube throughout the rest of the week. That means one recording session generates multiple pieces of content spread across multiple days.

What you earn per view depends on your topic. Business, finance, and Bitcoin topics attract higher CPM (cost per thousand views) advertisers. Vlogging and lifestyle content sits lower. If your podcast covers money, investing, or entrepreneurship, the ad revenue potential on YouTube is meaningfully higher than general entertainment content.

Method 2: Brand Deals and Sponsorships

Brand deals are in-content promotions where a company pays you to mention their product during your episode. The mention can come at the beginning, middle, or end of the show. You are working directly with a business, usually a medium to large-size company, and they are paying based on your reach and the impressions you generate.

The way it typically works is the company gives you a discount code or a coupon code. Your audience uses that code when they buy. The company can track exactly how many sales came from your podcast, and you get paid based on the arrangement you negotiated up front.

Not all audiences are worth the same amount to advertisers. A podcast audience that is interested in investing, personal finance, or making money online is worth more per listener to the brands that want to reach them. A general lifestyle audience is worth less because the purchases are less predictable. If you are in a high-value niche, brand deals can be a strong income stream even with a relatively small audience.

Method 3: Merchandise Through Teespring

Selling merch does not require you to hold inventory, package boxes, or deal with shipping. Teespring handles all of that. You create your store on teespring.com, upload your design, set your price, and put the link in your bio. When someone buys, Teespring collects the payment and ships the product. You split the revenue with them, but you do none of the fulfillment work.

Products you can sell through Teespring include t-shirts, hats, sweaters, mugs, and other branded items. Your logo goes on the product. The more recognizable your brand becomes, the more that merchandise becomes something your audience actually wants to wear or use.

If you do not have a logo or a t-shirt design yet, Fiverr can solve that problem for under $50. Type “t-shirt design” into Fiverr, hand over your logo if you have one or describe your brand, and a designer will come back with several options. You pick the one that fits, and that design becomes your merch catalog. The link in your bio is the only ongoing work required after setup.

Method 4: Digital Products

Digital products include ebooks, courses, templates, and any downloadable resource your audience would pay for. The most important rule with digital products is that what you sell has to match what your audience actually came to hear. If your podcast is about celebrity drama and you try to sell a course on investing, the connection is not there and nobody buys. But if your podcast is about personal finance and you sell a course on budgeting or building a stock portfolio, that is a natural fit.

For courses, Teachable is a clean hosting option. For digital products with instant download, ClickFunnels works well. Etsy is another option, but Alston recommends hosting your own digital products whenever possible so you are not paying Etsy’s fees out of every sale. The more of the sale price you keep, the fewer units you need to sell to hit your daily income target.

Think about what your audience is already asking you. The most common questions you get are signals about what digital product would sell. If you keep answering the same question over and over in your episodes, there is probably an ebook or a mini-course in that answer.

Method 5: Affiliate Marketing (Alston’s Personal Favorite)

Affiliate marketing is the method Alston calls out specifically as his favorite, and the reason is straightforward: you are recommending products that already exist, you do not have to create anything, and the commission can stack up fast once you have the right programs in place.

The model is simple. You find affiliate programs for products that your audience would genuinely buy. You include your affiliate link in the description of your podcast episodes. When someone clicks and makes a purchase, you earn a commission. The key is finding programs that make sense for your niche.

Amazon Associates works for almost every niche because Amazon sells almost everything. If you have a cooking podcast, you link to the kitchen tools you use. If you have a fitness podcast, you link to the equipment or supplements your audience already buys. Amazon is a starting point, but you can often find better commission rates by searching for niche-specific affiliate programs directly.

Here is a real example from the video. BBQ Guys, a grilling and outdoor cooking retailer, runs an affiliate program that pays a 4% commission with a 30-day cookie window. The average order value on their site is $1,100. Run the math: $1,100 multiplied by 4% comes out to $44 per sale. To hit $100 per day, you need roughly three sales. If you have a grilling podcast and your audience trusts your recommendations, three referral purchases in a day is a realistic target.

The cookie window matters almost as much as the commission rate. A 30-day window means that if someone clicks your link today and buys 15 days later, you still get the commission. A 1-day window cuts that off at midnight. When you are evaluating affiliate programs, look at both numbers together: commission rate and cookie window. High commission with a 1-day window is often less valuable than slightly lower commission with 30 or 60 days.

Always add a call to action when you mention affiliate links. Tell your audience to check the description and click the link. People who are interested will not always go looking on their own. A direct instruction to click increases the number of people who actually do.

Method 6: Spotify Stream Revenue

Spotify pays podcasters per stream, the same way it pays musicians. Drake gets paid per play, and so do you, just on a very different scale. Alston is direct about this one: Spotify stream revenue is probably the least profitable method on the list. You are not going to see meaningful money unless you are pulling in millions of streams.

That does not mean you should skip it. Getting your podcast on Spotify costs nothing and takes minimal effort. If you are already distributing to podcast platforms, Spotify is almost certainly already included. The stream revenue that comes in is not going to replace another income stream, but it is money you earn without doing anything extra once you are set up.

Think of Spotify revenue as a background trickle. It is worth having, but it should not be the centerpiece of your monetization plan. Build the other seven streams first, and let the Spotify revenue add to them.

Method 7: Physical Products via AliExpress or Alibaba

Physical products are different from merchandise. Merch is branded apparel with your logo. Physical products are items your audience would buy because of their interest in your topic, not because they love your brand specifically. If you have a podcast about baby fashion, you could source baby clothing in bulk from AliExpress, white label it, and sell it at a retail markup to your audience.

The model works like this: you go to AliExpress or Alibaba, find the type of product that fits your niche, buy in bulk at wholesale prices, then sell individually to your audience at a retail price. The difference between what you paid and what you charged is your margin. If you already have a physical store, this model works especially well because you have both an online audience and a walk-in customer base.

The advantage of selling physical products to a podcast audience is that the audience is already warm. They listen to you regularly. They trust your taste. When you recommend a product and make it available for purchase, you are selling to people who already have a relationship with you, which is a much easier sell than cold traffic from ads.

Method 8: Google AdSense on Your Podcast Website

This one surprises a lot of podcasters who think AdSense is only for bloggers. The method works by embedding your podcast player on your website and placing Google AdSense display ads on the same pages. When visitors come to listen to your episodes on your site, they see the ads. When they click on an ad, you earn money.

The ads that show up are relevant to what your audience is already interested in. Google’s system figures out the context of your page and serves ads that match. A personal finance podcast website will tend to show finance-related ads. A fitness podcast website will see fitness and supplement ads. The relevance increases the likelihood that someone clicks.

The additional benefit is that the same website page can hold your affiliate links, your merch link, your digital product offers, and your sponsor mentions. You are not just getting AdSense clicks. You are building a central hub where every income stream lives together. That page becomes a place where a listener can go deep on whatever you offer.

To get started with Google AdSense, search “Google AdSense” and apply through the official Google site. The approval process requires that you have either a YouTube channel or a blog with enough content to qualify. Once you are approved, you add the ad code to your podcast website and the ads start running.

Which of these 8 podcast monetization methods matches your niche and audience?

Find out in 60 seconds at finder.platformproof.com and get a clear starting point based on what you are already doing.

The Affiliate Math: What $100 Per Day Actually Requires

Affiliate marketing is the method Alston points to as most achievable for most podcasters, so it is worth doing the full math before you set expectations.

The BBQ Guys example from the video shows the math clearly. Four percent commission on an average order of $1,100 gives you $44 per completed sale. Three sales in a day equals $132, which clears the $100/day target. That is three people who clicked your affiliate link within 30 days and bought something from BBQ Guys.

Now scale that up: if you are in a higher-ticket niche with a 10% or 15% commission rate and an average order of $2,000, a single sale can exceed your daily goal. The variables that control your income are commission percentage, cookie window length, average order value, and how many people click your links per day.

Spotify by comparison might pay fractions of a cent per stream. To hit $100 per day from Spotify alone, you would need tens of thousands of daily streams. That is why Alston ranks it last and affiliate marketing at the top of his personal list.

A Simple Framework for Picking Your First Method

If you are just starting out, affiliate marketing gives you the shortest path from zero to first dollar because you have no product to create and no inventory to manage. Pick one program that matches your niche, get the link, and start mentioning it with a clear call to action in your next three episodes.

If you have an audience that is already engaged and asking questions, a digital product is the highest-margin option. You create it once and sell it repeatedly. The upfront time investment pays off as the audience grows.

If you want income that requires no active selling at all, set up Teespring merch and Google AdSense as background streams. They will not make you rich on their own, but they run without you doing anything once the initial setup is done.

Find Your X

Eight methods is a lot of options. The worst thing you can do is try all of them at once and execute none of them well. The better move is to pick the one that matches your current audience size, your niche, and the amount of time you have to set it up. Once that first stream is working, you add the next one.

If you are not sure which one to start with, finder.platformproof.com walks you through a short set of questions about your niche and audience and points you to the method most likely to produce income first. It is a faster way to find your starting point than trying to test everything at once.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many listeners do I need before I can start making money with my podcast?

There is no minimum listener count for affiliate marketing, merch, or digital products. Those methods work as soon as anyone is listening. Brand deals and Spotify revenue typically require a larger, more established audience before the numbers are worth pursuing. Start with affiliate links on day one and add the audience-dependent methods as your numbers grow.

Do I need a website to make money from my podcast?

Not for all eight methods. Affiliate marketing, Spotify, and Teespring can all be linked from your podcast description or your social bio without a dedicated website. Google AdSense does require a website where your podcast is embedded. A website also lets you combine multiple income streams on one page, which makes each visitor more valuable than if you were sending them to a single platform.

What is the best monetization method for a small podcast?

Affiliate marketing is the most accessible starting point for a small podcast. You earn based on conversions, not impressions. A small audience that trusts your recommendations can generate more affiliate income than a large audience that tunes out your mentions. Focus on finding programs that genuinely match your content rather than chasing the highest commission rate on an unrelated product.

How much does Spotify pay per podcast stream?

Spotify stream payouts for podcasts vary and tend to be very small on a per-play basis. As Alston notes in the video, this is the least profitable method on the list unless you are driving millions of streams. The exact rate Spotify pays also depends on your market and how you are distributed on the platform. Do not plan your income around Spotify streams until you have very significant volume.

Can I sell merchandise without dealing with shipping or inventory?

Yes. Teespring handles the entire fulfillment process: payment collection, printing, and shipping. You design the product, set your price above Teespring’s base cost, and put the link in your bio. When a listener buys, Teespring takes care of everything from that point forward. Your only job is to promote the link. The trade-off is that Teespring takes a portion of each sale, but for most podcasters the hands-off model is worth it.

What should I look for when choosing an affiliate program?

Look at two numbers: the commission rate and the cookie window. The commission rate tells you what percentage of each sale you keep. The cookie window tells you how long after a click you can still earn a commission. A longer cookie window (30 days or more) is generally better because it gives potential buyers more time to complete a purchase. Also check the average order value if the program discloses it. High average order value multiplied by a decent commission rate gives you the per-sale income to plan around.

How do I get brand deals for my podcast?

Most early brand deals come from outreach, not inbound requests. Find companies that are already advertising in your niche on other podcasts or platforms. Reach out directly with your listener numbers, your audience demographics, and a rate card. Be specific about what you offer: how many episodes per month, where in the episode you place the mention, and what kind of tracking you can provide through a custom discount code. Companies that already spend on podcast advertising are the easiest to close because they understand the value and have a budget for it.

Should I try all 8 methods at once or start with one?

Start with one and get it working before adding the next. Trying to set up eight income streams simultaneously usually means none of them get the attention needed to produce results. Pick the method that requires the least setup for your current situation, affiliate marketing for most people, and focus on it until you see consistent income. Then layer in the next method on top of a working foundation.

Sources

YouTube Partner Program requirements: 4,000 watch hours and 1,000 subscribers
Teespring.com: print-on-demand merchandise platform
Fiverr.com: freelance marketplace for logo and t-shirt design work
Teachable: course hosting platform for digital products
ClickFunnels: funnel builder for digital product delivery
Amazon Associates: affiliate program covering most product categories
BBQ Guys affiliate program: 4% commission, 30-day cookie window, $1,100 average order value (sourced from Alston’s video walkthrough)
AliExpress / Alibaba: bulk sourcing platforms for physical product businesses
Google AdSense: display ad network for websites and blogs