![Podcast Sponsorships During COVID [Day 18 30 Days of Podcast Notes]](https://images.beamly.com/fetch/https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.rss.com%2Fstreamlined-podcaster%2Fpodcast_cover_20260916_122857_a7aaeae9723ee3f8a0758f9d13809543.jpg?w=365)
When events got cancelled in 2020, companies were sitting on events, travel, and marketing budgets they didn't want to lose the following year. My pitch was straightforward: you were going to sponsor a conference, so sponsor digital content instead and keep the spend justified. It worked — ExpressVPN, Hover, and FreshBooks all came through around then, and renewals were easier than they'd ever been. I think of it in three stages: the Wild West, where I had a podcast and a smile and my network said yes; the COVID stretch, when brands had money and were testing whether podcasts worked; and everything after 2022, when the tests came back and the money concentrated at the top.
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Disclosure: this episode description was generated with AI.
00:00:00 --> 00:00:04 Hey everybody and welcome to day 18 of 30 days
00:00:04 --> 00:00:07 of podcast notes. I believe I switched at some
00:00:07 --> 00:00:11 point between day and episode. Same difference,
00:00:11 --> 00:00:14 right? But, uh, it won't be the same difference
00:00:14 --> 00:00:17 actually once we get into October, but that is,
00:00:17 --> 00:00:22 that is a future Joe problem. So, uh, day 18
00:00:22 --> 00:00:26 yesterday, I talked about the market fundamentally
00:00:26 --> 00:00:30 changing with the COVID -19 pandemic. And so
00:00:30 --> 00:00:33 today I want to talk about my experience, at
00:00:33 --> 00:00:36 least, with podcast sponsorships. I get the idea
00:00:36 --> 00:00:41 that this was a lot of people's experience and
00:00:41 --> 00:00:46 things fell off a cliff shortly after, but everything
00:00:46 --> 00:00:50 gets cancelled and stopped and closed in 2020.
00:00:51 --> 00:00:54 And so we all went virtual, right? Which meant
00:00:54 --> 00:00:58 that virtual summits exploded. the number of
00:00:58 --> 00:01:01 podcasts exploded. The ones who were established
00:01:01 --> 00:01:05 and had an audience had sort of a leg up here,
00:01:05 --> 00:01:08 but there were companies with events budget and
00:01:08 --> 00:01:13 marketing budget and travel budget that they
00:01:13 --> 00:01:18 didn't want to lose when things opened up again.
00:01:18 --> 00:01:22 And yes, marketing budgets, from what I understand,
00:01:22 --> 00:01:27 are usually the first thing to go in times of
00:01:27 --> 00:01:31 economic uncertainty because that is a lagging
00:01:31 --> 00:01:33 indicator. You can cut your marketing and you
00:01:33 --> 00:01:35 won't feel the effects for six months or so.
00:01:36 --> 00:01:41 But I generally made the argument, hey, if you
00:01:41 --> 00:01:43 have an events budget, let's say you're sponsoring
00:01:43 --> 00:01:48 events, you should sponsor podcasts instead.
00:01:49 --> 00:01:51 Sponsor the digital content. That way you're
00:01:51 --> 00:01:53 still spending that money that's been allocated.
00:01:54 --> 00:01:58 So you can justify it for the next year and you're
00:01:58 --> 00:02:00 getting something probably a lot more long -lasting.
00:02:01 --> 00:02:06 So as far as I like kind of hate to say this,
00:02:06 --> 00:02:08 I mean, I guess I don't hate to say it, but things
00:02:08 --> 00:02:11 were good for my business, you know, in the,
00:02:11 --> 00:02:14 at least in the early part of the pandemic where
00:02:14 --> 00:02:18 I was able to kind of capture some of that marketing
00:02:18 --> 00:02:19 budget. And I still had a very strong niche in
00:02:19 --> 00:02:22 the WordPress space at the time I hadn't fully
00:02:23 --> 00:02:26 started to shift the goals of my podcast, the
00:02:26 --> 00:02:29 Streamline Solopreneur. And so I was able to
00:02:29 --> 00:02:32 land a few big sponsors who had big marketing
00:02:32 --> 00:02:34 budgets for a fraction of what they had, but
00:02:34 --> 00:02:38 still wanted to spend some of it. And so I feel
00:02:38 --> 00:02:44 like I saw that a lot. In my mind, there are
00:02:44 --> 00:02:47 kind of like three stages of podcast sponsorship.
00:02:48 --> 00:02:51 There was kind of like the Wild West. of the
00:02:51 --> 00:02:54 early days. And for me, that was basically like,
00:02:54 --> 00:02:58 hey, I have a I have a podcast and a smile. Do
00:02:58 --> 00:03:01 you want to sponsor me? And people who knew me
00:03:01 --> 00:03:02 were like, yeah, sure. Like, we trust what you
00:03:02 --> 00:03:05 do. You're doing good stuff. We'll support you.
00:03:06 --> 00:03:11 And then there was post pandemic, which it got
00:03:11 --> 00:03:15 really hard. And it still, I think, is really
00:03:15 --> 00:03:21 hard to Get podcast sponsorships like it's I
00:03:21 --> 00:03:29 think for the last few years I Was able to get
00:03:29 --> 00:03:34 podcast sponsorships by bundling with More prefer
00:03:34 --> 00:03:38 more preferable properties like my newsletter
00:03:38 --> 00:03:42 like my YouTube channel And so I think now we're
00:03:42 --> 00:03:44 seeing a shift towards there's budget for big
00:03:44 --> 00:03:48 shows But indie pot, you know, and again, this
00:03:48 --> 00:03:51 is my observation, but I've I'm in it and I'm
00:03:51 --> 00:03:56 seeing things and and I think that kind of is
00:03:56 --> 00:04:02 the case. I've also shifted my show. So I haven't
00:04:02 --> 00:04:04 had a lot of sponsors on this show because I'm
00:04:04 --> 00:04:06 talking about my own stuff, not this show, Street
00:04:06 --> 00:04:09 of My Solopreneur. And I'm talking about a lot
00:04:09 --> 00:04:13 of my own stuff and my own products, but. In
00:04:13 --> 00:04:17 during covid. I think we probably saw a small
00:04:17 --> 00:04:21 boom. And again, this is not researched. If you
00:04:21 --> 00:04:25 look at something like Edison research or maybe
00:04:25 --> 00:04:27 sounds profitable, I don't think they were around
00:04:27 --> 00:04:29 during the pandemic or that it was around that
00:04:29 --> 00:04:31 time, but they weren't really doing that sort
00:04:31 --> 00:04:37 of research, I would say. I feel like there was
00:04:37 --> 00:04:40 just money to go around for podcast sponsorship.
00:04:40 --> 00:04:44 Like this was a really good time to test. and
00:04:44 --> 00:04:48 companies that had money for marketing were testing.
00:04:49 --> 00:04:52 And it was during this time that I got a lot
00:04:52 --> 00:04:57 of big names on my show. I got ExpressVPN, Hover
00:04:57 --> 00:04:59 was one of my early ones, but FreshBooks came
00:04:59 --> 00:05:03 around. The sort of people who were trying to
00:05:03 --> 00:05:09 reach indie folks were definitely using this
00:05:09 --> 00:05:14 time to test if podcasting was a good channel
00:05:14 --> 00:05:18 for them. And so as far as sponsorship during
00:05:18 --> 00:05:21 COVID, at least during the early months of COVID,
00:05:22 --> 00:05:25 sponsorship was pretty good for me. I didn't
00:05:25 --> 00:05:28 feel like I had to work that hard. I was able
00:05:28 --> 00:05:31 to get renewing sponsorships for a while. Things
00:05:31 --> 00:05:33 really slowed down in 2022, I think, because
00:05:33 --> 00:05:35 people were starting to see the results of those
00:05:35 --> 00:05:41 tests and realized that, like, just podcast sponsorships
00:05:41 --> 00:05:43 may, unless you had a massive audience, maybe
00:05:43 --> 00:05:46 weren't working or maybe things just got more
00:05:46 --> 00:05:49 sophisticated and bigger podcasts. You know,
00:05:49 --> 00:05:52 it's like most of the podcast sponsorship money
00:05:52 --> 00:05:55 or advertising money isn't like the top 1 % of
00:05:55 --> 00:06:00 podcasts. And so those things, I'm not quite,
00:06:00 --> 00:06:03 you know, I can't, I can only guess because I'm
00:06:03 --> 00:06:05 not really in the thick of that. I'm helping
00:06:05 --> 00:06:09 independent solo freelance people. with their
00:06:09 --> 00:06:11 business and their podcast and their content.
00:06:12 --> 00:06:20 But from my standpoint, during the pandemic,
00:06:21 --> 00:06:24 podcast sponsorship was really good. And I know
00:06:24 --> 00:06:27 that fundamentally changed, and I'll talk about
00:06:27 --> 00:06:31 monetizing more today and in the future. But
00:06:31 --> 00:06:37 that's my recollection from the COVID -19 pandemic.
00:06:37 --> 00:06:42 for podcast sponsorships. So that's it for day
00:06:42 --> 00:06:45 18, episode 18 of 30 days of podcast notes here
00:06:45 --> 00:06:47 on the Streamline podcaster. If you are enjoying
00:06:47 --> 00:06:50 this series, be sure to subscribe wherever you
00:06:50 --> 00:06:53 are listening. Hey, and while you're at it, rate
00:06:53 --> 00:06:55 and review. I hear rate and review is still a
00:06:55 --> 00:07:00 good thing to do. If you are a solopreneur, a
00:07:00 --> 00:07:02 solo business owner, and you're doing everything
00:07:02 --> 00:07:04 yourself and you don't want to do everything
00:07:04 --> 00:07:09 yourself, I can help because I also don't want
00:07:09 --> 00:07:11 to do everything myself and I don't want to hire
00:07:11 --> 00:07:13 a team and I have strong opinions about using
00:07:13 --> 00:07:16 AI for any sort of thinking work. And if that's
00:07:16 --> 00:07:19 you, you're running your business by yourself,
00:07:19 --> 00:07:22 you don't want to do everything yourself, but
00:07:22 --> 00:07:25 you don't want to hire a team or rely too much
00:07:25 --> 00:07:27 on AI, you should join my newsletter over at
00:07:27 --> 00:07:30 streamlined .fm slash join. I will teach you
00:07:30 --> 00:07:34 about solo ops, which is building systems. so
00:07:34 --> 00:07:38 that you can stop doing everything yourself while
00:07:38 --> 00:07:42 still remaining a solo business owner. All right,
00:07:42 --> 00:07:45 that's it for this episode of the Streamlined
00:07:45 --> 00:07:48 Podcaster. Thanks so much for listening and I
00:07:48 --> 00:07:49 will see you tomorrow.