500 Downloads Per Episode = $20K/Year Podcast

Pat Flynn recently interviewed Wojciech Wegrzynski, a Professor of Fire Engineering at a university in Poland 🇵🇱

Wojciech also runs the Fire Science Show podcast 🔥

He gets about ~500 downloads per episode and apparently…

He’s making more with his podcast than in his day job, despite having relatively smaller numbers.

The average salary of a Fire Engineer in Poland is 77,120 PLN ($19,000) per year. 

So it sounds like Wojciech is earning at least $20,000/year from his podcast 🤑

He says in the interview…

I knew what I’m jumping into, you know, I understood that the niche I am in is small… And I thought we need something else in the communication between the scientists and the benefactor of the science. And the podcast appeared to be a brilliant route to find them.

So I didn’t really care how many people by the number will listen because I knew that there’s a good chance whoever listens, I can really make a big change for the everyday work of that single person in every single episode.

💰 How Wojciech monetised the podcast…

I didn’t want the hassle of selling episode by episode. So when I reached out to a sponsor, I reached out for a long term partnership… very, very openly…

Podcasting is a hard job and it takes time and it takes resources. So for something like 80 episodes, I was doing all that on my own without any financial support. And then eventually I found somebody that shares the view of the world that I have, an engineering company from the UK.

Wojciech is at ~130 episodes now.

Those first 80 episodes without a sponsor must have been a tough grind, especially given that he was working the university job and parenting his 4 kids 😱

But because he was willing to push through the difficulty of all that, he’s emerged with a successful podcast he’s passionate about that provides a good income.

And I love that he’s done it in such a small and unusual niche.

Do you have good knowledge of a niche topic? 🤔

Even if it’s a tiny niche, there may be an opportunity there to build a successful podcast.

Or a blog, or a YouTube channel.

Wojciech’s advice for anyone new to podcasting…

It’s not about the interview. It’s about an honest conversation… listening, asking meaningful questions, following up, really digging into it with a real curiosity… I set them up. For communicating not only with knowledge but also emotion.

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