Making money from podcasting (2019)

Some fascinating insights in this 2019 podcast report from Andreessen Horowitz.

They note that it’s notoriously difficult to make money from podcasts.

The average podcast apparently monetizes at only $0.01 per active user per hour. That’s 10x less than radio, 23x less than the rest of the web, and 71x less than newspapers.

That said, there are a few big winners out there:

• The New York Times’ The Daily podcast was projected to earn at least $10 million in revenue from ads last year (that’s $2 minimum per monthly listener).
• The top podcaster on Patreon, Chapo Trap House, earns more than $131,000/month from almost 30k patrons. (You can get a taste of their content here.)
• Back in 2016, podcaster Tim Ferriss wrote: “If I wanted to fully monetize the show at my current rates, I could make between $2-4M per year, depending on how many episodes and spots I offer.”

Quoting the Andreessen Horowitz report:

Some back-of-the-envelope calculations around how much podcasters are making: Assuming CPMs of $25-50, if a podcast is in the top 1% in terms of downloads episode, or has 35,000 downloads per episode, each episode could generate about $4,000 per episode with two ad slots.

(Related: Why No One Should Ever Start A Podcast)