Make a show people choose to listen to or watch every week. Most shows earn nothing; a few become a living.
Click through it
Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Good for a wall or a guidance counsellor.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Typical
$0
Most shows
$0
Top few percent
$75,000
In a 2025 survey of 558 independent podcasters, 85% said their show makes no money. The typical show earns nothing and costs a little. The top figure is a show with about 10,000 downloads an episode, sold out with ads, before the ad network's cut. Famous shows earn far more, and there are very few of them.
27 downloads
in its first 7 days, for the median show on Buzzsprout
412 downloads in the first week puts an episode in the top 10% of shows on that host. 1,007 puts it in the top 5%. Most advertisers will not talk to you below a few thousand.
About $18 to $26
per 1,000 downloads, for one host-read ad
That rate is called the CPM (cost per thousand downloads). A weekly show with 1,000 downloads and 2 ads earns about $50 an episode, or $2,600 a year, and an ad network often keeps 30% to 50% of that.
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a decent microphone that plugs into your computer, headphones, free editing software and a cheap or free host. The high end adds a proper audio interface, two good microphones, cameras and lights for a video version, and a year of paid hosting and editing tools. No course or degree is needed. Paying an editor, about $50 to $150 an episode, is the cost that grows fastest once you are serious.
Start with audio and the gear you have. A clear voice in a quiet room with soft furnishings beats an expensive microphone in an echoey kitchen.
Sponsors and ads
Host-read ads are the biggest earner for most shows that make money at all.
Listener support
Patreon, Apple Podcasts Subscriptions and Spotify. Patreon says 47,000 podcasters earned $629 million there in 2025.
YouTube ad share
Video episodes can earn from ads once the channel joins the YouTube Partner Program.
Selling your own thing
Coaching, consulting, live shows, books. Many business podcasts lose money as shows and pay off through clients.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
No degree or license. You learn by publishing, and the hard part is not stopping.
Pick a narrow topic you can talk about for years
A few weeks
A show for one kind of listener grows faster than a show about everything. Check what already exists.
Record 3 to 5 episodes before you launch
1 to 2 months
You find your format and you have a buffer for bad weeks. Many shows die between episode 3 and 10.
Publish on a fixed schedule for a year
1 year
Weekly or every two weeks. Audio and video, so you are on YouTube as well as podcast apps.
Grow through guests and other shows
Ongoing
Swapping guest spots with similar shows and clipping short videos is how most small shows find listeners.
Sell ads or memberships once you have an audience
Year 2 to 5
Usually after a few thousand downloads an episode for ads, or a few hundred loyal fans for memberships.
English and public speaking
Writing an outline and speaking clearly without filler is the core skill.
Media or communications
Interviewing, audio editing and storytelling.
Music technology
Microphones, levels and mixing are the same skills.
Business or marketing
Selling an ad means pitching a company, sending an invoice and tracking results.
Anyone can start a podcast. Two sets of rules apply once money arrives. The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) says paid endorsements must be disclosed clearly, so say on air that a segment is sponsored, and do not claim you use a product you have never tried. The IRS (Internal Revenue Service) treats show income as self-employment income: once you net $400 or more in a year you file it and pay about 15.3% self-employment tax on top of income tax.
Free host guides and YouTube tutorials
Buzzsprout, Riverside and others publish good free guides on gear and editing.
College radio and student media
The cheapest way to get studio time and practice interviewing.
Journalism and communications degrees
Useful if you want a staff job producing shows at a media company.
Community college audio programs
Short certificates in audio production and editing.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Video
YouTube is now one of the biggest places people find podcasts. A filmed show reaches people an audio feed never will.
Short clips
Cutting 30 to 60 second moments for TikTok, YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels is how most shows get discovered.
Selling sponsorships yourself
Direct deals keep the share an ad network would take.
Audio editing
Good enough to edit other people's shows, which is paid work while your own grows.
An existing audience
A newsletter, a channel or a following in a field. Most big new shows start with one.
A co-host
Splits the work and keeps you going on weeks you would quit alone.
Access to good guests
Experts in your field, other creators, people with stories.
A quiet room
Rugs, curtains and a closed door matter more than gear.
The steadiest money in podcasting is often behind the microphone. Companies, nonprofits and well-known people pay producers and editors to make their shows: booking guests, editing, writing show notes and cutting clips. Freelance editors commonly charge per episode, and a few regular clients can pay more than most hosts earn from their own shows.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Monday you research and write the outline. Tuesday you record, maybe with a guest over a video call, for an hour. Wednesday and Thursday go to editing, show notes, the thumbnail and cutting four or five short clips. Friday it goes out, and you answer comments and send messages to next month's guests. If you have sponsors, you also record their ads and send them a report on downloads. Most podcasters do all of this around a full-time job.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
A 2021 count of Apple Podcasts found 26% of shows had just 1 episode, and 44% had 3 or fewer. Getting past episode 10 already puts you ahead of most.
Listen Notes counts about 3.8 million podcasts ever made. Only about 560,000 of them published an episode in 2026.
Listen Notes logged about 1 million new podcasts in 2020, the most of any year. About 167,000 shows went quiet in 2021 alone.
Of the independent podcasters Alitu surveyed in 2025, only 15% made money, and only 8% of those said the show was their main income.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Creators first, then the rest of the field. See all online and self-made careers.
Last checked October 2026. This is self-employment, so there is no government wage data for it. The income figures come from the studies and platform data listed above.