Podcorn Review
This article is for members only
🤫
Please do not share outside of the community
❗
This article is for members only 🤫 Please do not share outside of the community ❗
What is Podcorn?
Podcorn.com is a platform that connects podcast creators with brands for sponsorship opportunities. It serves as a marketplace where podcasters can monetize their shows by collaborating with advertisers, while brands can reach niche audiences through podcast sponsorships.
Here are some key features of Podcorn:
Sponsorship Types
Podcorn allows podcasters to offer different types of sponsorships, including host-read ads, product reviews, interview segments, guest appearances, or custom ads integrated into the content.
Self-Serve Marketplace
It provides a self-service marketplace where podcasters can browse available sponsorships, pitch directly to brands, and negotiate terms. It's not based on the podcaster's download numbers, making it accessible to creators at various audience sizes.
Campaign Management
Brands and podcasters can manage campaigns directly on the platform, including pitching, contracting, managing deliverables, and processing payments.
Transparency
Podcorn gives creators control over their content, rates, and the sponsorship format, ensuring transparency and flexibility in how they work with brands.
No Exclusivity
The platform does not require podcasters to sign exclusive agreements, allowing them to work with multiple sponsors and use other monetization strategies alongside Podcorn.
For both podcasters and brands, Podcorn acts as a middleman, simplifying the process of finding relevant sponsorships or collaborations.
Walkthrough of Our Podcorn Account
We set up a Podcorn account for The 80s and 90s Uncensored in the Summer of 2022 and we’ve been at least semi-active on it until our hiatus started in the Summer of 2024. So, we have some account data, statistics and insights to share about the platform. Reminder: This information is for club members only. We don’t share our stats outside the club. Thank you for your maintaining confidentiality.
Home, Create Account and Login
You’ll see from the podcasters home page that the design is pretty clean. From the Common Questions section, we learn three things:
Podcasters do not have to pay to play. If you conduct a successful campaign with a brand, Podcorn will take a 10% commission.
Podcasters do not have to sign any contracts. It is transaction based.
Podcasters do not have to have a download minimum to participate.
This is all good stuff for indie podcasters. Even the smallest podcasts can participate.
Sign Up and Login
When you sign up for as a podcaster, you start with your podcast name. The name box will generate a list of podcasts, so you will have to have a podcast published.
When you sign up, there’s an onboarding process which includes defining your podcast category, publishing frequency and email verification. You then set up your notification preferences and payout method. Podcorn has two methods: PayPal and Stripe.
Tip: If you have multiple podcasts, you can manage them from the same account to make things easier, instead of having multiple Podcorn accounts for each podcast.
Navigation & Dashboard Overview
Once you log in, you see your dashboard by default that includes any active campaigns you have in progress. On the left nav, you have:
Sponsorship: This is where you can search for new sponsorship opportunities and proposals you’ve previously sent.
Workrooms: This is where you collaborate with your sponsors directly on the campaigns.
Completed Ads: This is where you can see the results of your completed ads, the ad spend, and number of listens.
Earnings: This is where you can see your payouts for completed ads.
Settings: This is where you manage your account, podcasts (if you have multiple), sign in method and payout method.
There’s also a support chat box at the lower right. We’ve yet to use this feature but it says that someone will respond within five hours.
Sponsorship & Proposals
From the Sponsorship section, it defaults to New sponsorships. This is important as its where you can look for potential sponsorships and make proposals. The sponsorships include ad format types you can make proposals on:
Pre-Roll: A host-read ad inserted at the beginning of your episode(s).
Mid-Roll: A host-read ad inserted in the middle of your episode(s).
Post-Roll: A host-read ad inserted at the end of your episode(s).
Topical Discussion: Integrate the sponsor into a focused topic that is also relevant to the brand.
Review: An audio review, preview, haul, or explainer of the brand’s product or service.
Guest Interview: Host a Q&A episode or topical conversation with the sponsor as an expert on a topic or interesting guest.
Contest and Giveaway: In addition to integrating the sponsor in the episode, increase engagement and good will with listeners by running a contest or giveaway.
Roundtable Panel: Integrate the sponsor in a group discussion where you and your expert guest/s debate and educate on a chosen topic related to the brand’s industry.
Creative Integration: An original idea like a skit or integration with a relevant upcoming guest, etc.
To date, we’ve only proposed bids for and conducted host-read ads but it would be interesting to try the other types with brands. We’ll have to give it a go and let you know how it goes.
If you find a potential sponsor fit on the New list, you can click More Details for more information from the sponsor. You can also “Star” the campaign to save it for later viewing. Each sponsor campaign has the number of slots available that you have (this is based on your publishing frequency you define in your Settings) and a deadline.
You can click Send Proposal for a sponsor you are interested in and each promotion type will have a box. For host-read ads, you select the number of episodes your host-read ad will be features. Note, your are limited to 4 episodes. Then, you define your fee for each ad and the dates they will publish.
For the other promotion types, you define your fee and the date.
Pricing: There’s a link to Pricing Tips which is useful. We started our pricing pretty low to start but increased over time. We also observed we could charge higher for companies than for other podcasts for the ads. More on that later.
When you make your proposal, you’ll also add your own text to entice the sponsor. I’ve included the generic one we use below, but you’d probably do better if you tailored your message to the specific sponsors needs. We’re just lazy feckers😁.
The 80s and 90s Uncensored is a podcast that takes a light-hearted look into the 80s and 90s and reminisces on pop culture, history, and more. We would like to offer host-read ads during our show as we think our audience would be a good fit for your product.
Episodes are released every Monday with a little over 1k downloads for new episodes in the first month. The ad would be for a lifetime placement.
Note: We are open to revising the dates or add placement.
Anyhoo, once you’ve submitted your proposal, it will move to the Sent Proposals list which is the tab next to New.
Sent Proposals Status
Your Proposals Sent list is similar to the New list. You can view all the proposals, and even make edits to the proposals.
If the sponsor doesn’t think you are a fit, you will see this with a tag Marked as ‘Not a Fit’ by Brand. This may be disheartening at first, but we actually appreciate when this happens now as a majority of the proposals just sit there for past the deadline. Its better to know the sponsor is not interested than nothing at all. Also note that, with anything sales related, you will have far more proposals made than actual jobs. Know this now if you proceed and don’t let it bug you. Fortunately, making proposals is pretty easy so it doesn’t take much time.
Workrooms
If a sponsor accepts your proposal, you will be set up a Workroom. This is where you can collaborate directly with your sponsor with a kind of chat room. the discussion starts with a copy of your proposal text, and is often accompanied by a message from the sponsor and what they are looking for. Here is an initial from one of our sponsors and our response:
During your collaboration, you’ll be able to upload audio files of your host-read ads for them to approve. When the episode the ad is on publishes, the system will put the entire episode in the workroom. Magic right?!
We’ve found so far that most sponsors are pretty easy to work with. Our experience has been that sponsors will give direction but give us leeway to create the host-read ads ourselves. This fits us as we are a duo who can have a kind of mock conversation about the product or service. If you get a sponsor, its a good idea to ask if they want something read from them word-for-word, or if there is creative leeway. We’ve also sometimes provided two ads for them to choose from. I think they like when you give them options. If you have multiple episodes, you can interchange multiple ads so they’re not the same each episode. So far, the sponsors have not rejected any of our audio ads. Here’s an example of an audio ads we did for Staggering Unicorn Winery and (now defunct) Ganso.io. Note, we injected our personality and podcast’s theme into the host-read ads and each have been approximately one minute.
Completed Ads
Once you’ve completed your ads on published episodes, they go into the Completed Ads section. The interesting thing here is you can see how many listens the episode received (at least according to Podcorn). You can also revisit the audio ads themselves here and go back to the workrooms.
Earnings
The Earnings section starts with your total earnings, how many jobs completed, then the earnings for each episode with the ad published less the 10% commission Podcorn takes. If there’s a problem releasing the funds for a job, it will show here. We have not had problems getting funds released or received any issues from clients or Podcorn to date.
Settings
The Settings tab is where you can manage or change account and podcast information such as your name, sign-in method, notification preferences and payout method.
Should You Try Podcorn?
The short answer is… yes! It may seem like you propose for a lot of jobs you don’t get, but it isn’t hard to do and the earnings you do get are as much you might make or more from programmatic ad inserts you might have from you podcast provider. Here are some stats and analysis. Please remember, these numbers are confidential to Pod Chums members!
Best Case Example:
During the two months we published our Staggering Unicorn ad, we made $43.35.
We published four ads for Staggering Unicorn during this time for $36 (after Podcorn took the fees).
So, we almost doubled our podcast ad income and all we had to do was have some fun recording an ad. That’s not bad.
More Stats:
60% of our Podcorn ads were for other podcasts, the other 40% were for small companies.
Companies tend to have a little bit of higher budget.
Our ads started at the minimum $5 per ad, then to $7, and up to $10 per ad.
We haven’t tried to go higher than $10 but we’ll try in the future to see where the maximum tolerance is. If you have lower listen volumes, you might have to stick to the minimum of $5 until your podcast downloads grow more OR you have a specific niche that’s valuable to the sponsor.
So, if you can handle submitting many proposals for the prospect of one, I suggest giving Podcorn a try. Its not a lot of effort but the payout can be a nice littlle injection that it would take a while for your podcast to make with dynamic insertion ads. Plus, its kind of fun. Milo and I have enjoyed coming up with and recording the host-read ads. Its also cool when you get a semi-legit company to sponsor you because it make you look semi-legit too😃! You may also find some interesting opportunities for paid guests, reviews or other creative integrations with sponsors.
Update as of November 9, 2024
We just landed a new 4-episode deal on Podcorn for $15 for each host-read preoll ad and… and it was from another podcast! Here are some details:
The podcast is called “Sports Will Save Us All” hosted by Sasha Graham.
Sasha wanted someone who genuinely checked out her podcast and dug it… we did and it seems our audience and topics aligned well enough.
A requirement was that the advertising podcast was at top 10% on Listen Notes.
So, Sasha is pretty motivated to build her podcast which is why we could charge $15, but its also for preroll ads. We also offered to put a promotional popup on the80sand90s.com and each podcast page would have a permanent placement in the ad section as a supplement and she was thrilled. We will make this part of our offering going forward to entice more advertiser.
So, it looks like we know we can make $15 for a host-read ad, and that’s not bad for a few minutes of recording!
