Most people assume podcasting works like music streaming.
Someone presses play. The creator gets paid.
That’s not how it works.
Podcasts don’t get paid for listens. They get paid for ads, and only under specific conditions.
The listen has to be long enough.
The episode has to be new enough.
The ad has to actually exist.
A million listens on an old episode can generate nothing.
What surprised me digging into this wasn’t the ad model itself, but how much discovery quietly controls income.
If an episode isn’t surfaced in the short window advertisers care about, it effectively never monetizes.
Chronology matters more than popularity, but most podcast apps don’t make chronology easy to reason about across shows.
From the listener side, everything looks equal.
From the creator side, value decays fast and invisibly.
This creates a long tail of shows that feel popular but never really earn, while platforms still benefit from engagement.
johnnyfived•1mo ago
I wonder how much of this is "getting too good that they can't ignore you anymore". If your content has great production and attention from a decent amount of viewers, will you get found by top-tier sponsors and agencies? Or will a mid podcast with outreach hustle outperform much higher? Seems like there exists gaps for popular content that's underutilized in sponsorship.
erezT•1mo ago
That’s not how it works.
Podcasts don’t get paid for listens. They get paid for ads, and only under specific conditions. The listen has to be long enough. The episode has to be new enough. The ad has to actually exist.
A million listens on an old episode can generate nothing.
What surprised me digging into this wasn’t the ad model itself, but how much discovery quietly controls income. If an episode isn’t surfaced in the short window advertisers care about, it effectively never monetizes. Chronology matters more than popularity, but most podcast apps don’t make chronology easy to reason about across shows.
From the listener side, everything looks equal. From the creator side, value decays fast and invisibly.
This creates a long tail of shows that feel popular but never really earn, while platforms still benefit from engagement.
johnnyfived•1mo ago