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)
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