Audio and speech are probably the most difficult of all the creativity income streams. I wouldn’t advise starting with audio because it will require an audience. You see what I am talking about soon.
Welcome back to the Passive Income from Creativity series (101, 102, 103, 104), where our passion pays the bills. Today, we will look at an additional passive income stream—audio and speech. Let’s start talking.
Podcasts. The most prominent form of passive income concerning audio is podcasting. There are many flavors of podcasts, and they can be time-consuming, depending on how you edit them.
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The problem with podcasting is how you monetize them. The only way to earn money from podcasts is through sponsorships. This means that once you are big enough, a company will ask you to advertise their business on your podcast.
Therein lies the rub, “once you are big enough,” which translates to when you have enough weekly downloads. Growing this big can take a long time to build, especially if all you offer are podcasts.
That is why I consider podcasts as a supplemental source of passive income. You truly have to love podcasting to keep it afloat. However, you can use your podcast to build your brand.
Branding. Now, once you have a semi-established brand, podcasting adds more value to the mix. If you have a blog, books, and YouTube channel, your podcasts can help people get to know you.
There’s evidence that people search for more than a mega-brand when shopping. They want to know, like, and trust the brand and the people behind the curtain. A podcast will help you reach your target audience and gain followers outside that cohort.
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Also, most people listen to podcasts on their daily commute and while doing housework, allowing them to multitask. This will enable people to consume more of your content once you prove yourself worthy.
Podcasting + video. To maximize your podcasting time, you can film your sessions. It may take more work to edit and upload, but you will greatly expand your audience. Now, you can have your audio podcast on all podcast apps, and your video can exist on YouTube and your blog.
Giving your audience more options is never a bad thing. The good part of shooting videos is hiring someone to build compilations on specific topics. You can have guests come on as well. Releasing video also opens you up to making Google ad revenue from YouTube. You can also package together with your best episodes into a commemorative Bluray package—limited edition, of course.
Podcasting + Writing. Another good idea is to use podcasts as a reason to bring your books and articles to life. I have 700+ articles. I can take each piece and create a podcast about it. My stash already is 14 years of weekly podcasts. Even if they are short episodes, I won’t have to prepare too much because I already have a script.
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If you are a mystery fiction writer, you can make your podcasts suspenseful. It takes more time to edit, but I am sure you will be rewarded with a larger audience. Podcasting and speech can enhance your passive income streams if you are a writer.
Speech + Writing. The best way to leverage speech and writing is by narrating your own audiobooks. Converting a standard book to an audiobook is expensive, let’s say $200-$300 for a 30,000-page book.
You would need to sell a fair amount of books to recoup your money. However, if you got good at speech and narration, you could do it yourself. You may need to buy a microphone and a nice setup, but long term, you could make your money back very quickly.
Audiobooks are completely separate income streams from books. They are akin to podcasts but still have a different audience. Audio is a space I want to get into, but I don’t have the time to create my own audiobooks.
If you become a talented narrator, you can leverage that to make even more income. You can narrate someone’s book for a low upfront fee (say $50) but ask for 5% of all the book’s royalties. Most book services have a “split royalty” feature.
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Can you imagine having 500-1000 audiobooks floating in the universe, waiting to pay you royalties? Obviously, that is a couple of years grinding out audiobooks, but hopefully, you are building your library simultaneously.
Audio + Speech + Video. Now I am going to really blow your mind. Many people don’t want to start a YouTube channel because they fear public speaking. They say that the fear of public speaking is greater than death for most people.
What if I told you that you could do YouTube without showing your face? You could take your library of articles, build-out powerpoints, and narrate through them over video. Basically, you could narrate your blog posts.
You could add some color commentary at the end of the episode, and people could go back to the article to reference or follow along. Many people are visual learners, which could help them understand the content more thoroughly.
Even better, you could turn these episodes into podcasts as well. Talk about repurposing content—you could hit all the wickets and build a great audience.
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Conclusion. As you can see, everything we do with speech and audio starts from pre-existing content—this is why I consider it a supplemental income stream.
Podcasting is a lot of work so that I wouldn’t enter the space without deep consideration. My goal is to limit my workload once I retire in 5-8 years. That’s why I became a writer.
Writing gives me the freedom of time and movement that I desire. However, if you love talking, hosting, or speaking, audio may be a great stream of passive income for you.
Determine your final destination (not the movie) before you start podcasting. It may be a lot of work for a bit of benefit. However, if you want to build a huge brand, it may be a requirement because podcasts and audiobooks help you gain a massive following. Good Luck.
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