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Today on the School of Podcasting, I'm going to walk you through the exact tools I use for affiliate marketing on my podcast. So if you've ever wondered how to earn a little extra income from your show without needing a giant audience, well then stick around. I'm going to share how I track my links. I try to stay almost sane with Amazon's rules because there's lots of them and make adding affiliate links to my show notes almost automatically. Hit it, ladies.
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The School of Podcasting with Dave Jackson.
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Podcasting since 2005, I am your award winning hall of Fame podcast coach, Dave Jackson. Thanking you so much for tuning in. If you're new to the show, I help you plan, launch, grow, and sometimes, like today, monetize your podcast. The website schoolofpodcasting.com use the coupon code listnr when you sign up for either a monthly, quarterly or yearly subscription. So let's start off from the beginning. What the heck is affiliate marketing? Well, affiliate marketing is where you get approved to promote a product. You're then given a special link and whenever someone buys through that link, you earn a commission. It's pretty simple in concept, but the tools you can use can make a big difference on how effective and how easy it is. Also, I want to say right up front, this is not quit your day job kind of money. Typically there's always exceptions, but this is where I say the more hoses you have filling the pool, the quicker the pool gets filled up. And so I've had times where I've made way more money with affiliate marketing than I have via ads. In fact, I used to do a weight loss show. I was promoting an app called Chronometer because at the time my fitness pal was like the number one app. I found Chronometer. I started using it key point. So I talked about it from a firsthand perspective and and I explained how I thought it was better and cheaper than my fitness pal. And I ended up doing the math. Now with ads, host red ads right now are somewhere from 15 to $25 per 1000. Listens, if you get the programmatic ads that you can make money from day one, those pay, if you're lucky, $5 per 1,000 downloads. So just to put that into a little better understanding, that is.005 cents a download. And using Chronometer because I had the right product for the right audience, I was making $51 per 1000 downloads. So as always, it depends. But let's go on. Why is it available for people that don't have Big audience? Well, you don't have to have a huge audience. You have to have the right audience. And most affiliate programs don't care about your download numbers. Having some sort of web presence helps you get approved because they are going to check that. They might check to see how many people you have on Instagram and Facebook and all the other socials. But you don't have to have a top 10 podcast to be involved in affiliate marketing. And I'll give you some places to check and how to do that a little later. But again, before we dive into the tools, it's. It is a stream of income, it's not the stream. People always say, what should I do? Should I do, you know, ad? Should I do crowdfunding? Should I do this? Should I do them all? It's another hose filling the pool. So keep that in mind. Now let's talk about some of these tools that make this manageable and trackable. And the reason I brought this up is I do a show every Saturday called Ask the Podcast Coach. If you want some free consulting, just get up at 10:30 Eastern Time, it's 10:30 to noon, and join myself, Jim Collison and the world's greatest chat room. And somebody said something about a product and they said, I bet Dave has an affiliate link for this. And I did. And I put it in the chat room within seconds. And they were like, how'd you do that? So I was like, there's a question, let's turn this into an episode. So my biggest tool that I use, and if you're a member of the school of podcasting right now, you're like, oh, Dave's going to talk about Switchy because I use Switchy a lot. It's a tool that right now is available on Appsumo and has been for quite some time for a one time fee, which is a beautiful thing. It's a whole $39. Yeah. And why I like this is number one. Like for example, if I go to supportthisshow.com switchy, that is my Switchy link for, you guessed it, Switchy. It's very meta here. Now when you go to that link, I get to track that so I can see how many people have used my Switchy link. And let's do the we'll do it live so I can go into my Switchy website. I type in the word switchy and it shows me all this and I can say ever since I've been using it, I have sent 10, 11 clicks to Switchy because I love this tool. So when people ask me about it, that's that. So right there I can say, hey, what's the most thing that people have clicked on? And right now, as I go into that, there is Switchy is coming in at 10, 11 clicks. And the second one is the voice in my head, which is a, when I click on that, that is a link to a guest that was on my show that doesn't really have a website. And so I needed to send him somewhere. So I sent him to Pod News where his show was listed. The third link down, and this will be the last one, is the content creators accountant, my good buddy Ralph. I've sent 47 people to his, to his website and that does not count the people I've sent because he's also one of my patrons. But you get the idea without going, you know, and here's the fifth most clicked on link. That's always exciting, but you get the idea. Now, besides tracking links, I can get a QR code. So if you've ever seen me talk and there's a QR code in a slide somewhere that leads you to some sort of lead magnet, well, that is Switchy. So I can go in and see, hey, look, I talked to, you know, a room full of 50 people and 10 of them whipped out their phones and scanned my QR code. Now the point of all of this is to find out what works and in some cases point them to affiliate links that then convert to money. Another thing it does is I'm not a fan of link tree websites. And it's not because I work at PodPage, it's because there's zero. And by that I mean none, not a zip. I'm sorry, yeah, there's no SEO for a link tree app. But if you want to make a link tree where it's just like, hey, go to this particular website and it's just a tree of links, you can create one of those as well. So that's why I like Switchy, mainly because I can see what people are clicking on. So if I decide to try kind of a different product that I'm going to promote and nobody clicks on it, I can go, oh, my audience isn't interested in that. So that's one of the tools I really like. A it's cheap, it tracks links, it makes a simple link tree, although I never really use that feature. It makes QR codes. Oh, and I forgot to mention, it has stats so you can see where people are coming from. It's pretty cool. So I love the tracking But I also like all the other tools as well. So now the moment you start doing affiliate marketing, a big name comes up and that is Amazon. And that's where things get a lot tricky. They have the weirdest terms of service. For instance, I, I'm not saying it now, I'm saying this as an example. If I said go to, you know, website, blah blah, Amazon, that would get me kicked out. If I said, well, Jay Moore used to say if you'd like to contribute to my child's college fund, use the Amazon link on my website. That's against the rules. And so I interviewed the co founder of Genius Link, Jesse Lakes on my Profit from youm podcast show. And he's got nine different ways you can get booted out of Amazon. Here's that list. But here are some things that'll get you kicked out. Number one, cloaking links. People didn't know they were going to Amazon. Number two, links in ebooks. Three, mentioning prices or availability using their star ratings and reviews. Asking for a click or bookmark is directly against the affiliate program. Linking to not products. And what they mean here is let's say you take your affiliate little code there and link to like how to get a refund. Yeah, that'll get you kicked out. Too many ebooks is another one not including your disclaimer. And per the ftc, the FTC is cutting down on this. You have to do those disclaimers at the beginning. You can't at the end of the article go oh, by the way, you know, parentheses aff. You have to do that up front. If you go to ftc.govinfluencer they even made a video about this. So the government's kind of, we have the government's attention. And, and then number nine, old products. I'll have a link to this again in schoolofpodcasting.com 1031. I'll also have a link to that episode where you can hear Jesse Lakes from Genius Link. But what I love about this is the fact that you have to disclose, hey, this is a link and I may earn a commission if you buy something. But what Genius Link does is it takes care of that message. But then if you have other places you are affiliate links. So for example, I make commissions on microphones from Amazon, but I also have a Sweetwater account. I also have an affiliate with Best Buy and Walmart and B and H and a couple other ones. And I can say here, make a page with links to all those places which makes it easy for the visitor to do some Quick price shopping and order. And the beauty of that is it's like, would you like door number one, door number two, or door number three? And you earn a commission on whichever one they choose. Now the cool thing about this is just like with Switchy IO, in fact, I got in trouble once with Switchy IO because you are not letting people know you're going to Amazon. That's what they call cloaking. So now if I'm doing an affiliate link that might include Amazon, I will make the link in Genius link. And that also lets me see how many times somebody has clicked on that link. In some cases, it's kind of weird. It's a double whammy. I will put my Genius link in my Switchy website. So I give somebody the Switchy link, they click on it. It goes to Genius link where it then says, hey, this might be an affiliate link, Dave might make some income. And then they click on it. Now the other thing that Switchy does is you can sign up. When I first signed up, it was like, hey, you're getting a fair amount of traffic from, I think it was Italy or something like that. Like, you should sign up for the Italy Amazon Associates program so that if somebody buys from the Italian version of Amazon, you earn a commission. It took all of, I don't know, five, ten minutes and then you are good to go. Just to give you some real data, I pulled up my Amazon Associates account. That's the name of their affiliate program. And then the last 30 days I've had 585 people click on something. I had 17 people order something and that resulted in $9.95 of commission. And of course, what's that conversion rate? You know the one I always say, well, that's what I got, 2.9% or if we round up, 3%. So I always say about 3% of your audience will take action on things. And that's when you have things targeted. You can actually go in and see what people ordered, which is sometimes cool and disturbing. And that's actually one of the beautiful things. They might go over to Amazon to buy your favorite, I don't know, tea kettle that you talked about in your show. And while they're there, they make up a flat screen tv. That's kind of fun. So for to get around the fact, even in my book, profit from your podcast, I say go ahead and read the Amazon terms of service and just realize that they, they don't. There's not a lot of common sense in there. Because for me, if I tell You. If you use my Amazon link, it helps me. I know people that are like, oh, where's your link? And so would actually send more traffic to Amazon, but I'm not allowed to say that. So I didn't say that. I'm using that as an example. But how I get around the. Sometimes what might be perceived as a headache from Amazon is I use Genius Link. It is a whopping $6 a month, and it's worth having that headache go away. Now, how did I get kicked out? They. There was one type of link you're not allowed to use, and I used it. They emailed me, and I was like, oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to use that. It really was an honest mistake. And I was actually on the phone with someone from Amazon. I'm like, hey, I fixed it. You can see it. And he goes, oh, yeah, you're good. And I go, great. So I'm back in. And he's like, nope, you got to get approved by Gary. And. And Gary gave me the old. And I was like, what? But I fixed it. And then I forget. I think I was doing the support this show, use my Amazon link. And they were like, you know, and that was the end of that. And I thought at the time you had to sneak back in. No, I used the exact same name, the exact same email address. And they let me back in. They just kept the, you know, $60 of commissions that I had earned. And I'm like, can I. Can I have that since I earned. No. Okay. So that's the tricky thing. The good news is Amazon sells everything. And I mean everything. And you might be thinking like that. And I'm like, yeah, they sell stuff like that.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Another reason you want to use something like Switchy or Genius Link or. Or both is in doing this episode, Genius Link said, hey, remember when you made that link to that inexpensive kitchen timer? Because I did an episode about timing everything you do. Yeah. That particular item is out of stock. And so I went and found a different one, updated the link because you can't earn a commission on something that's out of stock. So that's another one. Same thing with Switchy. I could go in, change that link, and everywhere my Switchy link is, it automatically updates. Now, that's all fun. You got your links and you've got your headache of Amazon away. But, Dave, how do you have these at the tip of your fingers? And this is a tool that's great for affiliate marketing, and it's also just straight up Great for everything. And I'll tell you what that is right after this.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Adam Curry, the co inventor of podcasting was on decentralized TV and the host said this. I feel like if I'm a podcaster or a listener, I want some clear, simple instructions to follow. And Adam said this.
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I gotta interrupt. I got you now. I should have promoted the place to go. There's one guy who's taught more people how to podcast than anybody I know. That's Dave Jackson, School of podcasting. So schoolofpodcast.com and Dave Jackson can take you from zero all the way through value for value. He's done it all. He knows it all. The guy is amazing.
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Check out Adam's show@noagendashow.com and remember, you can join Worry Free with a 30 day money back guarantee and use the coupon code listener when you go to schoolofpodcasting.com if you don't believe me, believe the co inventor of podcasting. When you look at the pieces of a podcast, your media host is the engine, but your website is the home. It's where your audience learns who you are, explores your episodes, and decides to follow your show. At PodPage, we build podcast websites that are fast, reliable and designed to convert video visitors into listeners. Every episode is automatically published, SEO optimized and structured for growth so you can focus on creating your podcast, not managing your website. If your media host powers your podcast, PodPage gives it a place to live and a place to grow. Give your podcast the home it deserves. Start building your podcast website today by going to podpage.com/preview and enjoy a 14 day free trial. Podpage.com preview.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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The tool that I use that speeds this whole thing up and I've used this for years and it's amazing. It's called text expander. And what you do is if there's something you type all the time, you put it in and say, here is the text bloop. And you put it in there. Now that could be just a link. It could be whatever you want. And then at the bottom you say, I'm going to name this. And it's usually for me, something that kind of describes what that is so I don't have to go, wait, what is that linking to? I can see it right there. And then you put what they call the abbreviation. So instead of typing, how do I set up my domain? With PodPage, I can just type in domain and it types out a message. Hey, here's how you have to do it. Yada, yada yada. Here's a link to the tutorial we have on that. And here's a link to the video. Saves me a huge amount of time in tech support. Now, I have to be careful with that. I don't want to come across like a robot. But on a question like that, where it's how do I do this? And then answer never changes, then you can do that. The key is you always, always, always, when you're dealing with people, read, read what they said. So that's one. But if somebody says, hey, what's your favorite microphone? Under $100, I can say, oh, the Samson Q2U. I go to my keyboard, I type in hashtag, and I just put the hashtag there so that it's not an abbreviation that I type by accident. So I type in Q2U and it spits out the link to my genius link, I believe, or maybe my switchy link. And when people click on that, it takes them to my affiliate link. So it's always there. Now anytime I go, oh, wait a minute, it's the Rode podmic. And I type in podmic. If it's not there, I know I have an affiliate link for that. And we'll talk about where do you get these? But if I go, hmm, I forgot to set up the text expander. If I did it once, I'm going to do it again. So I will go find my affiliate link, I will put it into switchy. I will do that whole process. I just said, because again, it takes all of five minutes if that, probably closer to three. And then I will set up my text expander abbreviation. So the next time somebody says, hey, Dave, what's your link to captivate? I. I go, oh, captivate. And it goes, and here's that link that if somebody clicks on it, I earn a commission. I do have a link. I'll put it on the show notes out@schoolofpodcasting.com 1031 to a page where I have a link of all my affiliates. Now why do I have that? Because somebody said, hey, I know you have a lot of affiliate links. Is there a page when I can just go shopping and know that anything on that page is going to benefit you? And if I remember right, that was Mark Lawley from practicalprepping.info and so I made that page and it's now on the website. It's under Free Resources. So if you ever want to go shopping, it's there. But that's how I am able to Quickly. So if I'm typing show notes, and I mentioned buzzsprout, or I mentioned blueberry, or I mention a microphone, or I mentioned sweet water, or I mentioned whatever, I can actually just type a few keystrokes and there is the link. And that is super simple. And the longer you do it, the better the chance that somebody's going to start clicking on these. And again, with things like Amazon, then they might buy something besides that one thing. And again, this isn't going to give you enough money to retire, but there are times when this has been a considerable amount of income. It's a fluke, but I'll take it. And so the next question is, well, how do I start with this? You gave me the tools, but you didn't tell me how to get affiliate links.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Some companies have their own affiliate program. Case in point, podpage, where I'm the head of podcasting over there. Before I was an employee, I was one of their top affiliates. Why? Because I love the product. I got in trouble at Libsyn for promoting PodPage because we owned a web hosting company and the CEO was like, hey, why aren't you promoting our stuff? And I said, because this other thing is better. You should buy it. And they tried, but they, you know, it was a crappy deal where you got shares of the company or something like that. But I love that product. And if you go to PodPage and you'll see this a lot with companies at the bottom down in their footer, they'll have a link to either. Like podpage says affiliate program. Sometimes it'll say partners, but that's something you can look into. And if you go down there and you're like, hey, there's no link to affiliate program, what you might do is find the contact button and say, hey, do you have an affiliate program? Because I'm not sure why, but some companies have an affiliate program, but kind of keep it under wraps a little bit. But you might ask them, and that will almost always get you approved because you went through the extra step of asking them, hey, do you have an affiliate program? And again, usually it's at the bottom of their page under the word affiliate, affiliate program, or partners. And again, if you really want to partner with them, then maybe reach out to them via email.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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But, Dave, where do you find these links? Well, I just said if there's a product you use. Because the thing here is you have to really understand who your audience is. And so if you're doing a show about technology, Maybe it's a technology company, but you want it to fit like a glove. So for me, I was doing a weight loss show and I found a calorie tracking software. You know, for this show, I have links to Amazon, I have links to Sweetwater, because people buy microphones. These are things that I'm not guessing. Do you need a microphone to have a podcast? Yes. You do. Here's the link I want you to use. Do you need a media host? Yes. Well, here's a link to Captivate and Buzzsprout and Blueberry and all, you know, RSS.com and Transistor, all those companies have affiliate programs. Spotify does not, because there's no commission on Xero. And even if they had the world's biggest commission, I don't think so. So look at your audience. Look at what they need. But there are places that you can look. In fact, many times you will like. For instance, Sweetwater is my favorite place to buy equipment. And people are like, oh, you just say that because you get an affiliate commission. No, because it's the same price as Amazon. It's still free shipping. And they add a year of warranty to whatever you buy. And they often can help you with tech support. They're amazing. And there's candy. Come on. They give you candy. So here are some places that I use. One is Awin. This used to be shareasale. They just got bought not too long ago. There's some interesting. That's where I found Chronometer. CJ is short for Commission Junction. This is one of the oldest kind of websites that just. It's like a farm for affiliate programs and people use their software. So there's that Rakuten. I see a lot of commercials for Rakuten, getting people to shop there. And all they're doing is they're going, hey, shop here and you can earn income. Yeah, they're just giving them the affiliate commission. There's Partner stack, and I'll put a link to all of these in the show notes. In fact, as I've been doing the research on this, I'm using a tool in Captivate where you can basically say, hey, save this link and add it to my show notes. So when you look at the show notes for this, you should see that. Along with, of course, my affiliate link to Captivate.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Now the last step is, hey, you found a product that you love. It fits your audience like a glove. Boy, I wish I had something else that rhymed here, but I don't. What do I Do. How do I get like, okay, how does this work? You have to talk about it. And you could do an episode on it and mention it and then pretend you work for the company. So now you could treat it like a sponsor. Hey, today's, remember you got to disclose today's affiliate link is blah, blah, blah. You can find them. And this is where on podpage we have these things called short links. So I can say, hey, if you, if you're interested in, I don't know, Buzzsprout or Captivate, just go to my website.com captivate right? You could do those. And if you're on the Elite plan here again, you get to track how many times that was used. And B, you can change the link. So it's kind of a built in switchy. It's not going to do the thing where it lets you know that it's out of stock. But it's an easy way to track your affiliate links if you're using PodPage. So keep that in mind that that's basically what short links are. It shortens the links. And if you're on the Elite plan, you can see how many times that link was used. But that does come up. I remember I have pointed at T shirts that then whoever made the T shirt just pulled it off their website. Well, now I want to point it at a different website. So that is something you want to do, but you have to talk about it. So one of the things I did when I found PodPage back in 2020, the very first question I asked Brendan Mulligan is, do you have an affiliate program? And he did. And if he didn't, he made money quickly, but I think he did already. And I made a course that was free to show people how great podpages. And at the end of every lesson, it was like, hey, if you want to use PodPage for real, click here to use my affiliate link. And I earned hundreds of dollars from doing that. And it's all about finding the right product for your audience. So there is that. When I was doing a show about Jillian Michaels. Yeah, I know it sounds weird, but Jillian had created a great opportunity. She was on the Biggest Loser, very popular TV show back in the day, and then she quit and started a podcast. And then she quit the podcast and went back to the TV show and everybody was looking for the Jillian Michaels podcast because she had quit it. So I started one where I would talk about what Jillian was up to. And God bless Gillian, she put her name on everything. And there was an affiliate program for it. And when her latest book came out and it was the first time that she had ever read her own audiobook and I made a nice four figure income from that. Now that's only once. That's the thing that's kind of like, oh, but if I could find a product that fit my audience all the time, that can add up. But you do have to talk about it. It's not just like, hey, go to our resource section and check out the stuff. You've got to treat it almost like a sponsor when you do mention it. So if I say, hey, you know, today we talked about Captivate, check out the show notes for my affiliate link to Captivate because you always want to disclose you do have to talk about it. It's not just a case of if I sign up as an affiliate, I will just earn money. A case in point. I was just looking at a link for something called Northfield, which I realized came out, I don't know, not too long ago it was announced. It's kind of an organizer for podcasters. And I instantly went over, looked at it at North Flow. I'm sorry, not Northfield. North Flow. And I have seen where so far I've had two people click on this, probably mentioned it in my newsletter, Podcasting Observations. But because I haven't talked about it much and the reason I haven't talked about it much is because I haven't seen it, I haven't used it yet. But I set it up so that in the event this was a good product, I was going to be set to be already approved and that whole nine yards. So that's just an example of I didn't talk about this. And consequently I didn't earn any commissions and I didn't get any clicks. You have to talk about it if you want people to actually click on it. And just keep in mind, get that link in front of as many people as you can. So if you're using something like Captivator, Buzzsprout or Blueberry or transistor, RSS.com that has chapters, when you talk about that product, put their logo on the screen and put your affiliate link in the link so that if somebody, as they're listening, clicks on that, this is one of the reasons why I love Chapters. That link is your affiliate link and it's just another way of promoting it. Now here's another one. If you talk about a company in your episode, be sure to tag them on social media. Hey, I'm saying nice things about your product. You might Want to retweet this or whatever you do on Blue sky or Insta, whatever. You might want to share this, because here's someone who's basically doing a testimonial on their show, and they can then share it with their thousands of people. Now, again, it's not going to translate to a ton of downloads, but it will get your name in front of people who may not have ever heard about you before. So that's something else. A bonus you can do when you're doing affiliate marketing is. Is a. You have to talk about it, and don't forget to mention your episode to whoever you mention, and that's if they're an affiliate or not. That's just good old marketing 101. Hey, I'm talking about your stuff. Want to look cool? Let people know that people are talking about your stuff, and they might retweet, re, share, share it in a newsletter, whatever's going on. Think of it that way as well. But those are some ways that you can avoid some headaches.
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Ooh.
C
Now that's a good question.
A
Oh, we're going into the deep end of the pool. Where do you think podcasting is going? Or you might view it as, what do you feel the future of podcasting is? Are you optimistic about the future, or are you kind of going? And if so, why? In both cases, I would love to hear it. I need your answer by April 24, 2026. Simply go to schoolofpodcasting.com? and don't forget to tell us a little bit about your show and your website address. Again, I need that by April 24, 2026. Want more podcasting tips? Join the 1700 people who read my newsletter at podcastingobservations.com that's podcastingobservations.com. ah, where am I gonna be August 21st through the 23rd? Charlotte, North Carolina. Empowered podcasting 3. 3. I went last year, and the minute it was over, I'm like, I'm going back to this one. You gotta check out this one. Especially designed for independent podcasters with the maximum capacity of 250 people. I love that because I get to meet everyone. Check it out. Empowered podcasting.com Now, I know you might be thinking here again, Dave, you. You mentioned all these links and copy this and paste. That sounds like a lot of work and that you said you don't make a lot of money. And I looked. I'm. One month I made 10 bucks. Next month I made 15. I've had other months that are three figures and things like that. But there are plenty of months that I'm like, but I hear so many people say I'm just trying to break even on my podcast. And this is a way to potentially earn money that's going to help pay for that bill. And literally you spend maybe 10 minutes on it when you first sign up and then you get the link, you put it into Textexpander. Oh, I didn't mention how much Textexpander is. It is $4.16 a month. So both Textexpander, the genius link and then Switchy is a one time fee via AppSumo as we speak. So it's not much and it makes it really easy then to do this. And when Mark Knopfler back in the 80s, it's your money for nothing. This is kind of money for nothing. Once you get it up and going. Every time you mention it, you can actually have that be a link in your show notes. You can. If you're using PodPage, we have a sponsor section. You could list them as a sponsor and then easily put them in the sidebar. There's all sorts of cool ways of doing this. And yeah, it's not going to bring in thousands of dollars and enable you to quit your day job, but it can easily pay for a dinner out with your spouse. It can easily pay for your, you know, you're hosting things like that. Because there are times when I'll look at my now again, there are plenty of months when I'm like, oh, Look, I made $7.27. But there are other months. I'm like, wow, 42 bucks. Who knew? And I didn't do anything different. It's just for whatever reason, the wind changes and all of a sudden you have a whole bunch of people that need a microphone and they find your link. So I know it might sound like a lot, but you're looking at what, less than 10 bucks a month to make it easy. And then once as your audience grows. Because keep in mind that the link you put in episode three is not going to get a lot of clicks today because, well, it's episode three. But 80 episodes from now, when you're starting to grow your audience and people are going through your back catalog and those links are affiliate links, you're going to be glad they're there and you're going to be glad you use something like Genius Link or Switchy so that if you go, oh crap, that company went out of business. Now I've got 37 episodes with a dead link on it. You update the link and now you're pointing it at something else that can earn some income. If you want to learn more about earning income with your show, check out my book, Profit from youm Podcast. You know, I would have to plug this eventually, right in this episode. It's available at profitfromyourpodcast.com if you go to profitfromyourpodcast.com book. And yes, that's a short link from PodPage. You can see where you can buy it on Amazon. And yes, that's my affiliate link. So I get paid because I'm the author and I get paid for referring people to my own book. And. And it's also available as an audiobook which has some bonus content in it. It is not in Audible. I was going to put it there and right now I'm just going to leave it where you have to listen on a website. There's an app that you can download to listen to it. Because I make multiple, multiple, multiple times more money than if I go through Amazon where they're like, here, enjoy your crumb. So I will eventually move it to Audible. I might do that in a couple months, but it is there. If you're looking to make money with your podcast, one last tool I forgot to mention is 1Password. Because you're going to forget your password that you signed up with for these affiliate programs. And with 1Password, you have to remember, you guessed it, 1Password. And then it logs you in. It's a great tool. I trust it. Put a link to it in the show notes.
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
A
I just wanted to take a quick second to say thanks so much for checking out the show. If you found value in this and you know somebody who's like, we're not making any money with our podcast, you might want to go down to your phone there, click on the share button and send it over to them. That would mean the world to me. Or you can just say, oh, go to schoolofpodcasting.com 1031. That's there. You could say, hey, go over to profitfromyourpodcast.com as well and have them buy the book. Next week I'm going to be doing a brief because I realized these are as entertaining as dried toast. But it turns out I looked around, I'm like, hey, I've got four lapel mics here that I've just randomly bought this one and played with it for a bit. And, you know, six months goes by, buy another one. So I think I have Four different lapel mics. We're going to talk about those. And I bought a new pair of in ear monitors. So, right. If you see me, most people don't realize I actually have ears because I always have headphones on. And I found a pair and it said it was made for musicians. And I was like, huh? Because I've got a pair of shure in earbuds, and they're not bad. I've always found in earbuds. So it's those, you know, the cables and you string it down the back of your shirt and that whole nine yards. And I've always found them slightly like they're very clear, right on the edge of being shrill. And so I found a pair and I was actually really surprised. So I'll be talking about some gear next week along with whatever you would like me to talk about. If you've got an idea for a show, I know I just got one from Randy Black. Thank you, Randy. And you can go over to schoolofpodcasting.com voicemail that is built in courtesy of our friends over at PodPage, where I'm the head of podcasting. But if you want to send in any kind of idea or just feedback, if you just want to say, hey, Dave, I'm glad for you to go to schoolofpodcasting.com voicemail always happy to hear from you. Until next week. Take care. God bless. Class is dismissed. Thank you, fellas. Yeah, behind the show. Just thought I would share something. I did a little different today because I have to do my taxes. So what I did was I did a brain dump into otter. Otter is a tool I always have in my back pocket for transcriptions. And I said, hey, here's what I want to talk about about affiliate marketing. And I just spewed the knowledge you just heard. And then I said, take this and organize it in a way that makes sense. And it said, okay, blah, blah, blah. And then I said, great, that looks good. Put it into an outline. Which topic should I do first? And it said, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, perfect. And it said, do you want to script? And I said, no, I do not want a word for word script. I just wanted something to keep me on task so I didn't have to play the Dave's doing another tangent jingle because I'm not in a giant hurry, but I gotta get going to pay Uncle Sam. And so normally I don't do stuff like this, but being that this is a podcast about podcasting, I'm always trying new stuff. And that did seem to speed things up, because there's no bloopers today. Because I kind of knew what I was gonna say, which I always do, but I wasn't quite. See, now we have bloopers. Now the part I'm making up, I can't see. This is what happens. So when you don't know what you're going to say, you end up doing that. Then you have bloopers. But that was something I did to keep myself on track, on topic, and have less bloopers. So you might want to try that yourself. There are plenty of ways to get your stuff transcribed. Otter behind the scenes is using Chat GPT. So after I ask it questions, that's how I did that. So you could do this in castmagic or any other tool that you are using. And as I was listening to this back, getting ready to publish it, it dawned on me that every time I mentioned an affiliate product, I mentioned something like a microphone. Well, that makes sense for me. Like if your show is about empowering women, or maybe it's Brian over at the Cinematic Cine. Brian, what? You see, now we're into bloopers. It's the cinematic psycho show. So Brian may not be promoting microphones because that doesn't make any sense for his audience. So I'm hoping you realize when I say, you know, promote an affiliate product, it's something that would match your audience, not my audience. Yeah,
B
yeah.
School of Podcasting with Dave Jackson — Episode Summary
Episode Title: How to Turn Your Podcast Into Passive Income (With Tools I Actually Use)
Date: April 13, 2026
Host: Dave Jackson
Podcast: School of Podcasting: Expert Tips for Launching and Growing Your Podcast
In this episode, Hall of Fame podcaster and coach Dave Jackson dives deep into the practical steps and tools he personally uses to monetize podcasts through affiliate marketing. He demystifies the process—explaining that it isn’t about getting rich quick or needing a huge audience, but rather leveraging “hoses to fill the pool” by adding another income stream to support your podcasting journey. Dave outlines not only the tools for tracking and optimizing affiliate links but also shares valuable stories, common pitfalls (especially with Amazon), and actionable advice for integrating affiliate links seamlessly into your workflow.
Dave mixes authority with approachability, injecting humor (“More hoses filling the pool!”), transparency (sharing his real numbers—even the low ones), and actionable detail. He’s candid about both the opportunities and limitations of affiliate marketing, continually reiterating the importance of audience-product fit.
For a deep dive, full guides, and Dave’s affiliate links, visit schoolofpodcasting.com/1031.
Next Week: Lapel mic reviews, in-ear monitor recommendations, and more actionable podcasting advice!
For further reading/listening:
Class dismissed 🛎️