How I Made $4,000 My First Week Podcasting

If you’re looking to make money with your podcast you don’t need to have a big audience, get sponsorships, do affiliate marketing, or ask for donations.

In this video, I’m giving you a simple mindset shift that allowed me to make $4,000 my first week of podcasting this way.

Full disclosure, I’ve actually been podcasting for about 4 years… BUT I wasn’t making any money from the podcast until I did what I’m about to share with you.

It wasn’t until AFTER I made this shift that I made $4,000 in a week and I thought, “Why haven’t I been doing this the whole time!?”

I started podcasting because I figured that, as a coach, that’s what we should do, have a podcast!

(Btw... You can check out my podcast by clicking here.)

I dreamed of making money online and having an audience but even more than that, I wanted freedom from doing work that I genuinely enjoyed and that allowed me to show up as my authentic self.

In the effort of growing my podcast, I tried a ton of things: I did solo episodes, interviews, collaborations, tried getting sponsorships, I even did daily episodes for a few months and still made $0.

Plus, I realized that it’s really hard to grow an audience on a podcast unless you're a celebrity or Joe Rogan.

But I never gave up because I figured it was just a matter of time and that you had to be patient if you wanted to win. So I stayed in the game.

It wasn’t until I met a guy named Josh Tapp who invited me to come onto his podcast “The Lucky Titan.”

We had a great conversation and afterwards talked a bit more about podcasting.

Little did I know that in this moment, I was about to get the mental shift that changed everything for me.

I told Josh about my frustration with podcasting and he asked if I had ever thought about interviewing my target audience.

“Interview my target audience?” I thought.

He said, “Yeah! That’s what we do and we have no shortage of clients. We use podcasting because there’s no faster way to build rapport than to have a conversation together, especially when that conversation is about them. Plus, who doesn’t want to be on a podcast?!”

That was the mental shift.

It’s the time AFTER you stop recording the interview that you get the Golden Window. It is your opportunity to ask, “What are you working on, and how can I support you?”

And it’s asking this question with a genuine intention of helping the other person.

Then Josh looked at me and said, “You just have to do a crap-ton of interviews.”

After that call, I decided to give it a shot.

I started by making a post inside of a Facebook group called “Podcast Guest Collaboration Community - Find a Guest, Be a Guest”

Here’s the post I made:

I ended up getting FLOODED with messages from my target audience (creators) coming to me! Because what do Creators want to do? CREATE CONTENT!!

This meant no more cold outreach or playing the game of “Who’s gonna pitch first?” in DM’s.

With that first set of interviews, I practiced asking my guests how I can support them after we stopped recording. 

If they said they were trying to build a digital product, get more clients, or automate their online business I’d ask them this question… 

“Do you want some help with that?”

If they said “YES”, I’d give them a strategy, resource, or idea that would both help them AND show them that I’m legit.

A great question to ask is, “Have you thought about ____?”

If they loved what I shared, and were inspired by it, I’d invite them to ANOTHER call where I’d just focus on helping them reach their goals (AKA a Strategy Session).

In the first week of doing this, I made $4,000 from my podcast.

After making that money, I was blown away by how easy and authentic that felt on both ends.

But I also wondered… “Was that just luck?”

I decided to keep doing this and for the next 2-3 weeks I didn’t make a dime. But I kept trying, curious how long it would take to make another sale.

Business is a series of experiments, and that’s all that I was doing here.

But it wasn’t just about making money, it was about working with the right people AND still keeping a good reputation for my podcast. 

I genuinely wanted this podcast to be a killer resource for anyone looking to start & grow their online business, regardless of what stage they're at.

Then something really cool happened.

I looked at my calendar and saw a handful of Strategy Sessions booked from people I had never met before.

When I got on the call and asked where they found me, they said they’d heard me on someone elses podcast and loved what I was doing, so they booked a call.

From that batch of calls, I had an $8,000 day.

In those 2-3 weeks where I didn’t book any calls after I made the first $4,000, I was getting booked on other people’s podcasts who had a similar audience!

So now, when I do my podcast, I look for 3 things in a guest:

1. Are they going to bring value to my podcast audience?
2. Could they be a potential client?
3. Do they have an audience that would be interested in my message as well?

If they can bring value to my audience, and check at least one of the other boxes, they’re a good guest.

Now, if you’re thinking you’d like to try this strategy, but don’t have a signature coaching program to offer and you want to create your own signature coaching program, I break it down step-by-step in this video here.

If you got value from this, give it a like. And if you have any questions about how you can use this strategy for YOUR podcast, let me know in a comment below.

Take what you learned here, get out there, and start interviewing!

See you in the next one.

James