Growing Your Business and Monetizing Your Podcast From Podcast Luminary Heather Ordover

Starting a podcast is a pretty simple. Staying committed, inspired and consistent in publishing your podcast is a whole other matter.

In our Podcasting Luminary Series, we share the voices of podcasters that have been podcasting for 5 or more years and have them impart some of their best podcasting wisdom grounded in experience.

This is Part 2 of our feature on Craftlit’s Heather Ordover whose experience as a longtime podcaster merited this second article focusing on the business aspect of making a podcast, or as most folks would say, monetizing your podcast.

Make sure you check out Part 1 where Heather offers some pretty surprising insight about what part social media plays on discovery of her podcast, plus top-notch advice for podcasters that are just starting out. 


Craftlit and Heather Ordover host their media on libsynDo download numbers matter matter to you? or is audience engagement key?

I like seeing numbers but I don’t let them rule my life. I know I’ve temporarily lost listeners when I’ve done “difficult” books like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, but the book is important and the end has such a huge payoff if you stick with it. I just kept plowing ahead—and switched genre immediately after.

Chick Lit is definitely our most popular genre—Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, Little Women, Jane Eyre—but Dracula and The Woman in White had impressive followings as well.

I’m learning more and better ways to ask my audience what they want to hear. Luckily, we all like the same books. In fact, I never would have done The Woman in White or A Tale of Two Cities on the podcast at all if it hadn’t been for listeners pushing them.

How important is podcasting to the success of other revenue generating opportunities you currently have?

100%. I wouldn’t be selling books or “Audiobooks-with-Benefits” if it weren’t for the podcast. I wouldn’t have a job blogging for a new education company either (that’s new, their site isn’t up yet)

Did you start off podcasting and that lead into a business or did you see podcasting as a necessary support for an existing business?

Podcast came first, for love. Business came in 2010 for rent.

Has podcasting helped you grow your business.

Definitely some. It isn’t a slam dunk, like “oh, look, all I have to do is start a podcast and then I can make a living.” And even when it’s great, your entire audience isn’t going to buy whatever it is you’re selling.

Podcasts are free (usually) so you can’t just start off charging money, or if you try to your audience will take off—as they should.

Why should they trust you if they don’t know what you’re going to be like?

It’s a lot of hard work over a long time that you can eventually leverage when your audience trusts you, like Diane Gilleland has been doing at CraftyPod.

I was able to start a secondary (tertiary, actually) Premium Audio stream last year because I had a track record and folks knew I’d deliver. It was the right thing to do at the right time. Same as the audiobooks-with-benefits and the knitting book series.

The first book sold well for a first time author, but our second book just came out and the sales have surprised us.

As the audience grew, awareness of my books has grown, too, so in that respect the podcast has been invaluable.

What piece of advice would give others looking to generate revenue from podcasting whether directly or indirectly?

You can’t ask for money right away.

I didn’t even have a donation button until someone asked for one—and that was at least six months in (about 24 podcasts).

Plan to work hard for a long while before you start to see an opportunity—before your audience trusts you and trusts your show to be there for them.

If you charge for access to your podcasts or premium, how did your audience react when you started doing this? How did you handle this?

I only heard enthusiastic responses—but that’s because I don’t charge for the main podcast—that will always be free.

I started offering premium content (streamable on the iPhone/Android apps) on the side and folks were more than happy to support the show and get value for their investment.

They know the money is coming to me and it’s what keeps the regular show going.

I’ve heard no complaints.


Heather just released a new-and-improved version of A Tale of Two Cities (20+ hours of audiobook fun!) If you wanna dive into some of fun fun fun reading/listening, which you should…you know summer time is coming!

Of course, if you love knitting and literature you really do need to subscribe and follow @CraftLit or check out the Facebook community.

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If you’re all amped up to create a podcast, have your own iOS and Android app, plus have a platform to take your content to premium, then hosting your podcast with Libsyn is all you need!

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