I've always jokingly said, and in a way, kind of not jokingly said, that babies are the ultimate enemy of podcasts.

They're very self centered.

It's all about wipe me, feed me.

They don't care that daddy's trying to do a podcast.

But there's another potential enemy that is sucking the life out of people.

And I was really surprised.

And again, maybe not about what it was.

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This is one of those ones that makes you go, hmm.

Because I've often asked, when should I start trying to monetize my podcast?

And there's the one answer, like, hey, go grab an affiliate link and use it as a sponsor and get the audience used to hearing you doing ads.

And that makes sense.

And then there is this side of the story.

So I was working with a client this week.

It's a new client and they have been podcasting for almost four years.

And so I run them through my typical questions.

I go, why are you doing this?

And I hear this a lot.

This is the heart of a great podcaster.

And that is I just wanted to pay it forward.

It's someone who's got a few years under their belt.

They've got some time and they want to pay it forward.

And that fueled their tank for years.

And then someone asked them, well, are you making any money with your podcast?

And this person didn't even know you could make money with your podcast.

And so they invested in a better website.

They were trying a couple of things, I can tell you.

One, it is a way to monetize, but boy does it.

It's just nasty.

And that is Google AdSense.

You're going to make somewhere around $2 per 1,000 views of your website.

So that's like.0002 cents per view.

And it just wrecks your website, makes it look horrendous and you got all these pop ups.

And so this person had tried AdSense and discovered what I just said, like, wow, that really kind of ruins your website.

And I'm sure there are ways you can customize that.

But in the end you're not going to get rich unless you have a really, really, really.

And by that I mean really popular website.

And because they weren't making any money, all of a sudden, a podcast that used to give them Joy as they were giving back turned into something that was sucking the life out of them, that made them feel like their work wasn't any good.

That thought of, if I can only help one person, it would be worth it is now focused on you.

I'm not making any money.

This is costing me a lot of time.

And that is both true.

But it's interesting how when you have a goal and there are times when you start to run out of steam and you find maybe a different variant.

So maybe instead of counting downloads, you start looking at your completion percentage.

When you change your goal, you can sometimes get new energy.

I just did this on a bike ride.

I was going to ride 15 miles.

I used to be able to do that on a routine basis, but that is not the case anymore.

I was six miles in and I saw a sign that said, hey, there's some waterfalls to the right.

And I had never seen this.

I'd heard about it and I was like, hmm, do I wanna do this?

Because I was six miles in and I was already really tired.

But I was like, no, I've never seen.

It's called Brandywine Falls here in Ohio.

And so I turned right.

And it was very strange that 10 seconds ago I was thinking of turning around.

I changed my goal and got more energy.

I also paid more attention to my surrounding area, so there was tall grass and I had to pay more attention.

And it really gave me new gas.

So sometimes picking a new goal can give you more energy, but you also have to have the right attitude.

I'll give you a quick example.

In my 20s, I lost a fair amount of weight and got down to really where I wanted to be.

And fast forward 40 years now, and I'm trying to lose weight.

And I'm here to tell you youngins, if you're in your 20s and you need to lose a little weight, do it now.

Because it's so much harder when you're older.

But I weigh myself every morning.

And depending on who you talk to, many fitness gurus will say, don't do that.

Well, why?

Because your weight naturally fluctuates up and down.

And so what might happen us all be like, wow, I'm down three pounds.

This is amazing.

And I step on the scale the next day and I'm like, hey, I did the exact same thing I did yesterday and I'm up two pounds.

And that can really wreck your attitude.

You can be like, forget it, I'm done doing this.

It's not working.

You've got to have the right attitude.

And I know that my body fluctuates.

And I just do that because on those days that, like, hey, I shouldn't have gained any weight, and I did, it inspires me to do even more that day.

I know I'm not going to give it up.

So you have to have the right attitude.

And so in this case, this person had spent four years not doing a single call to action.

So if you listen to their back catalog, you don't hear them going, hey, if you enjoyed the show, buy me a coffee, join my Patreon, buy something from my partner.

There's nothing in the back catalog.

And granted, hopefully you have an engaged audience.

That is yet to be proven yet.

But you could start with a new sponsor.

But you could always, for me, sponsorship.

Especially when you get into these places that are like, hey, you can make money from day one.

I have a show on Libsyn.

And to make a long story short, where it used to be, I would kind of go, ugh.

When you got paid $5 per 1000 downloads, my last report, I did the math, was basically a dollar per 1000 downloads.

So that's horrendous.

And I know it's better than a poke in the eye, but is it really for your audience for you to make a dollar?

Just think about it.

If you had somebody buy you a coffee and they gave you, I don't know, five bucks, that would be 5,000 downloads.

What's easier?

Getting one person to give you $5 or getting 5,000 downloads?

And so what has me somewhat worried, and this again, if we go back to talking about when you're first starting off, should I try to monetize?

And I'm gonna go back to the scale example.

If you have the right attitude, because you don't monetize a podcast, you monetize an audience, and you don't have one yet.

And so what happens is your goal is to monetize.

And again, you don't have an audience yet.

And so you look at your download numbers, and they're not as high as you want them to be.

And punch number two, you're not making any money.

So if you're going to monetize at the beginning, go ahead and go through the steps and go through the process.

But remember, you don't really have an audience yet, and only about 3% of your audience is going to take action.

And I hate that stat.

But the more and more I research it, the more I find it to be true.

Now, if you need help with your attitude or getting your podcast up and going.

Come and visit me over@schoolofpodcasting.com use the coupon code listnr when you sign up for either a monthly, quarterly or yearly subscription and you can join worry free because there's a 30 day money back guarantee.

I'm Dave Jackson.

I help podcasters.

It's what I do.

I've been doing it for over 20 years and I can't wait to see what we're going to do together because I want to be your podcast consultant.