Binge Factor Media

Is it true that hosts make absolutely no money in podcast sponsorship? In this episode, Samantha Lee Wright of The Essential Oil Revolution challenges that myth. Join in the conversation as Samantha shares with Tracy Hazzard how she started from nothing to becoming the top podcaster in her niche within a couple of weeks. Earning money from sponsorships helped her stay with her kids at home. The key is to find product services and companies that align with your listeners. Want to know how you can earn from sponsorships? This episode will teach you!

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Slashing The Myth That Hosts Make Absolutely No Money In Podcast Sponsorship With Samantha Lee Wright Of The Essential Oil Revolution

I’m interviewing Samantha Lee Wright. She is a podcaster with a very niche podcast called The Essential Oil Revolution and she’s got over 300 episodes. There’s a lot to learn and a lot to unpack here, but first, let me tell you a little bit about her. She analyzed, strategized, and bootstrapped her way into podcasting fame with no connections and a shoestring budget.

She skyrocketed to success, becoming the world’s top podcaster in our category in a matter of weeks, over 5 million downloads later. She is not only a master of her platform but a passionate advocate for podcasting itself. She hopes to lead the next generation of podcasters with clarity and confidence in the future.

She is a teacher, speaker, writer, podcaster, wife and mother of two living in the mountains of North Carolina. She has so many incredible tips and other things to share with you in this episode. There are some interesting things about how the show operates and the niche it’s in. I love these deep dive niche podcasts and I love how Samantha has this going on for her because she’s got this power that is in that niche of people already looking for information on essential oils. Remember that a lot of that power exists outside of the podcast ecosystem, but it also exists within it.

It is the fact that it is a top-level search term. It is something that people are looking for and that there are a lot of people looking for it that is part of the power that is accelerating her podcast into that successful stratosphere. As you’re reading, be thinking about the advice she’s going to give us. Here is the host of the Essential Oil Revolution, Samantha Lee Wright.

Sam, thanks so much for joining me. There are 300-plus episodes, the download numbers, and 5 million overall off the chart. I’m sure it’s more since you even booked a call with me here. I’m so excited to talk to such a successful podcaster. Let’s talk about that 300 number. How did that feel when you hit 300 on your podcast?

It felt validating, like, “People are still listening and care about this content. I’m keeping up a good job.” It felt like a little pat on the back. I’m not going to lie.

Did you celebrate?

We had some champagne that night. It felt good.

For most podcasters, when they start their show. They don’t see that positive feedback very early on. When did you start to feel that feedback from the audience about how many episodes in?

It was pretty early on that I launched three episodes for my launch date and from there, it was weekly. After the first month, I started to hear well from episode one. I was a part of a small online Facebook community that had to do with my niche. That was where I started sharing these episodes. The first couple of episodes came out and people in my community were like, “This is great. Keep them coming. We love it.”

I was very intentional from the beginning that I was going to start with some heavy hitter people to interview. That was my big thing. Before I launched, I had recorded probably about 8 or 10 interviews. I had a good stockpile. I front-loaded the big hitters in my industry right up front for those first three episodes to show the world that I ain’t messing around here like, “I came to play. This is fun.”

Do you think that industry niche helped you at the beginning and being so tied to it so upfront with it in the title of your show?

A hundred percent and that’s something to back up for people that need to see the whole picture. What I do now is teach other podcasters to start podcasts from scratch. I feel qualified to do that because the podcast that I started has nothing to do with business or entrepreneurship. It’s a health and wellness podcast about something I was obsessed with at the time and still obsessed with now, essential oils.

It’s not something that a lot of people would be interested in extremely niched and that’s where I excel at helping people, “What’s something you’re super passionate about? What’s your freak flag?” There are many people who like, “You have a podcast about essential oils. You must be a weirdo.” I’m like, “Maybe I am a little bit weird, but there’s a lot of other weirdos out there that want to learn about this thing.”

I was in love with this world of health, wellness and essential oils. I was plugged into that world and knew there were other people that wanted a podcast about that topic as well. I created this roadmap of how do I take this teeny niche, weird topic and turn it into a successful enterprise? That’s what I was able to do.

It’s like what you said about the title. I was close to naming my podcasts, something clever. I’m like, “Maybe I could name it Lavender Fields Forever.” Something clever. I was like, “Sam, how are people going to find your show if it doesn’t have the word essential oils in it?” I’m a big fan of optimizing the SEO of podcasts apps themselves. When someone goes onto a podcast app, if they’re looking for something in your niche, you’re way more likely to come up to the top of the results if you’ve got those keywords in your title. That’s something that I dive into a lot.

Podcast Sponsorship: When you have the right keywords in your title, you’ll most likely come up to the top results when someone’s searching in your niche.

Especially if those keywords are tying into a growth industry, we found the same thing when we were doing our 3D Print Podcasts, having 3d printing as a part of our extended title. It wasn’t a part of the initial. Ours was called WTFFF?! and that stands for Fused Filament Fabrication. People had to know what it was. It was for people in the industry.

Having it in the extended title helped bring exposure to a growth topic that people were searching on in essential oils is definitely a growth topic over the years that you’ve been doing your podcast here that people have been searching on. I can see the success tie in there. I think it’s a choice. It could limit you, but it could also be the key success factor for you. I believe that it has the success factor there.

I was someone that was starting from zero and scratch. I had no influence anywhere at the time. If you already have an influence somewhere and you want to start a podcast, it feels like you were given a little more license to make it about something a little more broad and generic. You can compete with those big, broad, generic podcasts out there. To give yourself the best chance of success if you’re starting from zero is to narrow down, find that niche that you want to serve and do what you were talking about with extended titles. I call that embrace the dash in your title. WTFFF – The podcast for 3D printing, which by the way, my husband has a big 3D printer. I’ll talk about your product.

It has over 650 episodes he has plenty to choose from. Let’s talk a little bit about that industry that follows through on this because you’re over the 300 episodes and over this time, you’ve probably touched on different levels of monetization in your show. You have lots of ads on the show, but you probably didn’t do that early on. Let’s talk about how you started to find some monetization style success as you went through the process?

When I was first starting out, I was learning everything as I went. I had no business background, but I knew how to listen to podcasts. I found a lot of business podcasts and marketing podcasts. I started to understand how the world of online marketing and business worked. First and foremost, as we all know, and I’m sure you talk about this a lot in your show, you need to know who you’re serving and why are people coming there? You need to focus on serving those people well. Don’t jump in with, “I’m about to make a lot of money.” It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

At first, I thought I had to have the whole picture figured out, the whole blueprint, all laid out and at the end of the day, I needed to focus on that core, “Who am I serving? Why are they listening?” I keep asking myself that every single day. The things fell in place from there. The first thing I did was implement the good old-fashioned free offer, a freebie.

Opt-in for people listening to this show that wanted to learn more about essential oils. Maybe they were new. I would run my own commercials. I tell people, “Don’t wait for sponsors to pay you to run commercials. Run your own commercials.” I ran my own commercials for my free oil course, “Go to FreeOilCourse.com.”

With podcasting, it’s important to create easy domain names. FreeOilCourse.com, it’s very easy to remember and set up a redirect to your offer for that. That would lead people into the, “If you want to learn about oils, you can learn about them. If you want to buy them now, here’s where you can go and buy them.” I’m an affiliate for that company. That’s where my first commissions came in from affiliate offers.

As with most podcasters, in the beginning, I’m an Audible affiliate as well, “If you want a free audiobook, you can go to Audible.com/Revolution.” You can do that way in the beginning, before you have enough listenerships to do sponsor deals. What are affiliate programs that you can find that are in your niche or that would appeal to your audience and run commercials for that?

What I tell a lot of my students who are more so in the service-based industry like coaches or therapists, I’m like, “Why are you scrambling trying to get sponsors for your podcasts? Advertise your services through your podcast.” Sometimes that’s a light bulb moment that goes off, some of them like, “I didn’t even think about that. I can like make a commercial for my own counseling sessions or whatnot.” I’m like, “Make it clear to people that you offer a service.” Sometimes advertising is not the best way to monetize if you do offer a service like that. That was a long way to answer your question.

Sometimes advertising isn’t a great way if you have a good offer of your own. Having five minutes of commercials about other things confuses people to the offer you’re making on your own. If they’re in the same alignment, having one or the other or both may make sense, but that can be very confusing to people. Muddying it to make $10 here and $100 there may not be worth it at the end of the day. You may be limiting your ability to sell your own stuff, which could be the best option for you long-term.

My show is more of a broader, let’s educate people. I don’t have a high ticket item of my own to sell. Eventually, sponsorship ads became a revenue stream for me, but that took about a year. I remember like a year in, I had to call my sister up one day and say, “I need to borrow $300. I can’t pay my electricity bill. They’re going to turn off my internet. I’m not going to be able to keep doing what I’m doing.” We were that poor.

I had to bum money for my sister to keep the lights on in my office. That was a year in and I definitely had those thoughts of, “Should I keep doing this?” I was fumbling my way through for that first year. I’m so glad that I stuck with it and those sponsored deals did start coming in. That’s been a big source of revenue for my show. I don’t know if you want to get into the details here, but especially when we started switching over to dynamic advertising versus baked-in advertising.

We can do a little definition here and I’ll have Sam talk about it in a little bit more detail. Is that baked-in where they’re in the middle of your show or somewhere in there and they’re in the downloadable file? In other words, when somebody is listening to that audio file, they’re taking it down from whatever server is coming from or whatever directory they’re pulling it from. That is coming in with the ads baked into it.

What we hear running on the front and back of things on Spotify and other places are what they call streaming ads. Those are only coming from someone who has the ability to put those ads on and there they are interrupting some cases if you’re on radio stations. At the fifteen-minute mark, a streaming ad runs.

It can be very intrusive and annoying because you’re not getting to the show. In most cases, the streaming ads, you cannot skip. Baked-in ads are better because they’re built right into your show, but dynamic ads also allow some switching. At Podetize, we have dynamic ads that are truly dynamic, meaning that they are dynamic and baked at the same time, and that is unusual. You won’t hear that anywhere else and that means that we can take them in and take them out, but we are putting them within the show.

Most baked-in ads work best as Sam does. This is where I want you to listen to her show. When you listen to her show, you’re going to hear ads where she’s speaking about the product and sponsor. That’s where they’re more powerful. When you have baked in post-read ads, those are the most powerful ads you can have. Sam, tell us a little bit about why you love baked-in ads and switching from that made a big difference for you?

We started with baked-in ads and I ran those right in the middle of the show. They were baked-in. After I started developing a catalog of episodes where I had 250 episodes and realized that a new listener was coming to my podcast, they were like, “The Essential Oil Revolution that looks fun. That looks like it’s for me.” They might binge through and listen to that back catalog all in one month.

I don’t have anything old.

They’re listening to an ad that I might’ve recorded several years ago, back in the beginning, and not only am I not getting paid for that ad anymore, but that ad might not even be relevant anymore. We went through a very big process when we decided. It was a big decision.

Podcast Sponsorship: Make a podcast you would want to listen to episode after episode.

It’s because you had to edit all your shows to fix it.

We had to go back and take every single sound file.

That’s why we invented what we did here at Podetize. You never have to edit your shows to fix that problem.

I had a three-person team working on cutting out these ads and now it’s so simple to be able to recreate. I make my ads the same they’re as personal as they were before and I have total control over exactly where they go in the episodes. As well, a lot of control over that in different backends have different options for that. Now, if someone’s listening to episode 1 or episode 300, they might hear that same ad that counts as two listens for me. My revenue increased a lot when I was able to do that because I was able to capitalize on all the downloads for the month versus what’s that one episode gets.

What Sam’s alluding to is that 60% of your listens will come from your back catalog in any given month. That’s pretty much average for most and some shows are higher than that. The more episodes you have, the higher your percentage of back episodes will carry the weight of your total downloads for the month. I’m sure that’s pretty high for you. I’m seeing you’re doing so well every month. Let’s talk a little bit about bingevility. When did you realize you had binge listeners?

I don’t think I realized it until they emailed me.

They started reaching out.

“Sam, I discovered your show and I’m already on episode 98.”

I don’t know about you, but the first time someone sends me that, I’ve thought, “You can listen to me for that many episodes in a row?” That’s what went through my head. I was like, “That’s not okay.” That little weakness in you comes out at that moment. They started reaching out and you’re like, “They’re binging on it.” Once that happened, did you consciously think about what was your binge factor?

From the beginning, I’ve always kept my main priority at the top, which is my main priority is I want to make a podcast that I would want to listen to episode after episode. The heart of my show is we’re here to learn. People listen to learn. They want to learn how to use these tools, improve their health, and be self-sufficient when it comes to using their oils safely and efficiently. They’re curious about like, “What’s the newest research in this field?”

If I record an interview with someone and I’m like, “I’ve heard all of this before, I’m not learning anything new, you’re not bringing anything to the table.” I try my best as the host to get us there and keep asking, “Tell me a story or tell me somebody else.” If I can’t get it at the end of the day, it doesn’t go live because if it’s something that I’m not learning something from, then I want my episodes to be valuable for the person that’s listened to all 300 or is coming there for the first time.

I’m going to psychoanalyze your show because that’s what I do here for everyone who joins the show as a guest and to let you know that from my view of having reviewed hundreds and hundreds of bingeable shows, there’s a deep-seated reason for what you’re doing that is your binge factor. That is because your industry is extremely hungry for information, and they need someone to be their curator and their guide.

You do that so well because you care about it being valuable to them, as you mentioned. You want to make sure that it’s valuable to those that are seasoned essential oil people, and those that are brand new to it enter saying, “What is this essential oil thing?” Coming to them with this valuable piece of new information, a valuable recommendation of what essential oil might be perfect for the topic of the day. Those are things that they can file away and use.

They’re going to come back again and you’re helping the other advocates in the essential oil industry through what you’re doing because you’re giving them industry news. You’re giving them information and something that they can refer to and say, “I believe lavender is amazing for this and that, but Sam said on the Essential Oil Revolution, she said this.” Now you have an alternative or third party you can refer to that helps validate the advice that someone might be giving.

The essential oil is full of, as you pointed out, lots of affiliates, MLMs and other things that are in that process. When I say MLM, I’m going to define that for your multi-level marketing associates. There are lots of those things going on. They don’t always get valuable information from their own sources from the companies that are providing them with their oils themselves. They need somebody who’s got a great resource for them and you are that Sam.

Tracy, can I take you out of this screen, put you in my pocket, and walk around with you all day. You are my little ego boost throughout the day.

I want people to hear that this is what it takes, sometimes sitting back and thinking hard about making sure that you’re not phoning it in. You’re not sitting on the mic, interviewing whoever you’re taking someone who is going to be valuable to the audience. That’s why you’re here because I knew with your broad experience, success and monetization, this will be valuable to our readers who read lots of successful podcasters every day. This is truly the industry, though tie-in for you is essential to the growth that you’ve had, that the two things go hand in hand. You chose well with your industry and you chose well to be the right resource to that industry. That’s the essential binge factor for you.

For anyone out there trying to decide what podcasts they want to start, that’s such an essential question to ask. I almost didn’t start this podcast, Tracy. I almost started a podcast about something completely different, a lot broader, not in this niche at all, thinking, “Who’s going to want to listen to something specific and niche?”

I kept hearing this advice from John Lee Dumas, who was my mentor from afar at the time. He says, “Niche down, niche down again, and then niche it down until it hurts.” I’ll say, “This is definitely the one that I’m thinking about it. This is the real niche.” That is the key. When there’s something new and exciting going on in the world, I always tell someone that wants to start a podcast, but they’re not sure what it should be about. I’m like, “What’s new and exciting in the world that no one’s jumped on yet that gets you jazzed? Is there a new TV show that came out that you’re a superfan of? Start the podcast. Do it, jump on it.”

Let’s jump into some of our three things because you have great guests there. They have good authority in their marketplaces or their areas of expertise. How do you go about finding those great guests?

Number one, I outsource it because that is definitely the most time-heavy aspect of what I do at the Essential Oil Revolution. Finding guests on a weekly podcast, constantly having guests lined up and we try not to repeat our guests very often either. It’s a huge time commitment. My assistant is her main job, and I’ve trained her how to do that from the beginning.

There are different ways we do that. Sometimes, if we know we want to cover a certain topic, we’ll Google it and see if any bloggers come up that fit our criteria for the show. We search Instagram hashtags a lot if there’s a trending topic or simply search hashtag essential oils and see what influencer pops up and if we feel like they have a grasp on the knowledge that we’re looking for.

Those two things have been very helpful and then we have our system of reaching out on either a direct message or an email. We’ve got our canned responses lined up. I’ve learned over the years, keep that first message you send out real, short and sweet. You don’t give the whole ten highlights of the show, “Here’s what we expect and here’s where you pick your date.” Nope, start out with a little like, “We love your stuff. We’d love to interview on world number one, essential oil podcasts.” That’s pretty much it.

Podcast Sponsorship: You can outsource reaching out for sponsorships.

I feel the same way. I think the shorter sweeter like I do it personally on mine because that’s how you got to me. I do it personally only because I’m picky. If somebody comes through and we’ll go through my assistant, she’ll tell me about it. At the end of the day, I’ll make the offer for whatever. That’s how we do it here, too, because I feel that hands-on makes a big difference in making sure you’re curating the right people wonderful.

Now let’s talk a little bit about promoting your show and getting new listeners because I think that’s the part that everyone struggles the most with. It’s those increasing listeners and getting engagement in them by promoting your show. What do you think you do most successfully on the marketing and promotion side?

The most consistent way we’ve increased listenership is to stay smart about our SEO inside the podcast app itself. What are you titling your episodes? Are there keywords that you can put into those titles? Are there trending topics at the time? I remember there was a time where the internet was going crazy with bloggers and people saying, “Essential oils are killing all the cats in the world.” There’s this big thing about essential oils and cats big thing. I was like, “We got to do an episode.”

I think we probably titled it like our essential oils, killing your cat or something like that. Being clever about what you are naming your titles will increase your chance of someone searching for that in a podcast app and that coming up towards the top or getting a share. What are your titles? Are they share-worthy? That, to me, is probably the number one thing that we’ve done.

It’s smart because most people don’t even think about that part of it. You talked about monetization through ads and sponsors. What’s the one thing that you think you do well to attract those sponsors?

My answer for the other question, I outsource it. I don’t have time to be chasing down the perfect sponsors for my show. I was very blessed. I think it was maybe a year two that I started looking up podcast sponsorship. I don’t even think I knew the word for it was agency. I think I probably Googled something like how to get someone else to get sponsors for your podcast or something.

I ended up finding an agency that was small at the time. They focused on female-driven podcasts as well. I hit it off with the owners there and signed on. I have not had to negotiate my own contracts since, which has been a super blessing. They send me emails all the time, “This is a potential new sponsor. Does it look like a good fit?”

I probably turned down more sponsors than I approve because I’m very picky about who I promote to my audience. I’ve been able to build a lot of trust with my audience and they know if I do an ad for something, I’m going to have personal experience with it. If I don’t like it, I don’t promote it. I’m very picky and turned down a lot, but they keep sending them in. That’s great. Sometimes, if there’s something I know is a good fit, I’ll reach out to them and say, “Can you reach out to this company and see if they want to do sponsorship deals?”

I’m glad you’re picky because so many are not and you questioned that. The Audible thing that you mentioned earlier, like being an Audible affiliate and saying something about that. It’s not a misfit because if they’re podcast listeners, they’re probably likely to be Audible buyers too. It’s not a foregone conclusion, but it’s not an out-of-left-field idea.

It’s now like I go on my podcast and be a SquareSpace.com.

You definitely don’t want something that’s going to damage your brand and that can happen if you’re promoting the wrong thing, especially in the health and wellness space. That can happen and go wrong for you. Good for you being picky. I’m glad to hear that.

I’ll say one more thing on that topic, too. For people that are like, “I’m not big enough to go to an agency.” You are in the position where you have to negotiate your own sponsor deals and things like that. I’ve been able to build relationships with so many people through my podcasts. Your podcast is an asset, not just for the downloads you’re getting or the money it’s bringing in, but for the people you might get to interact with because you have that podcast.

I’ve been able to build a lot of relationships with people in my industry throughout the years. They know that I have this asset and ears of people who love essential oils. I’ve been able to make great business deals and collaborations with a lot of those companies in my industry. Know who is listening to your podcast and find the product services or companies that align with that. Approach them and say, “I’ve got this audience and asset. Let’s collaborate and do something.”

What’s next for you? As you head into the next 300 or so that you might want to do, how are you keeping ahead, relevant and in touch with what’s going on in the industry and keeping it fresh for yourself as well as your audience?

We don’t vary a lot on my podcast. The format and the general feel of the show have not changed much over 300 episodes, and I like that. I like being a consistent presence. People know what to expect. Coming into January of 2022, we’re planning a four-episode series that is bringing us back around to basics.

Usually, my episodes are 40 minutes long, give or take, and we’re going to do a couple of short, like seven-minute episodes that cover the big FAQs that people have about essential oils and launch that as a series. Occasionally, we’ll do something different like that, but I will say that the guests that I bring onto my show, keeping those changing up and I rely on them a lot to bring the new essential oil research that might be happening.

They might say something that I’ve never heard of them and go, “That’s fascinating.” I’ll start researching that myself and be like, “We need to do a whole episode about this.” I’m lucky. My show is about a topic that is constantly evolving, changing and having new research done, new controversies come up or whatever. You wouldn’t know it, but there are a lot of controversies I can come up with in the oil world. We don’t shy away from it and we lean into it when we need to keep things fresh.

I’m amazed by what you’ve accomplished. I think it’s the perfect case study of a podcast plan from the beginning that had everything right from the start and kept going and building off of the success. What it shows me is that you are a listener at heart. You’ve mentioned it before that you knew how to listen to podcasts, but what are some of your favorite ones?

I’d say Criminal is probably my favorite podcast. Do you listen to Criminal’s Phoebe Judge, who’s the host of that show? She has the most amazing podcast host voice ever.

That’s what inspires you about it. Not only it’s a podcast, but I love her voice.

The way they weave stories. They are so smart and the decisions they make about their background music, the way they weave stories together. It’s the most egoless true-crime podcast I’ve ever heard. A lot of true crime can go into the bleed and if it bleeds, it leads or the host is all up in your face and stuff.

Phoebe just wants to tell good stories, so she does that. I can’t say enough great things about Criminal. There’s this short series called Uncivil that is done by two African-Americans who deep dive into the civil war from that perspective. I wish they had another season. I think it won a Peabody, but it only had one season. I’m like, “Why did it never come back?”

Podcast Sponsorship: The general feel of the show has not changed much over 300 episodes.

There’s a spinoff from Radiolab, which of course, everyone loves Radiolab, but their spinoff is called More Perfect. It’s a deep dive into the Supreme Court cases and stuff, which sounds boring, but it is the opposite. It is the most fascinating podcast. I love it even more. Dolly Parton’s America was one of their spinoffs. It was a short series and I love it. I could go on.

I love that you’re a passionate listener because that’s the ironic thing is that the more people I meet, there’s a very distinct, a big distinction between those that listen and those that don’t. It manifests itself in two ways. One is that sometimes the people who listen fuss with the format of their show too much because they’re trying to emulate somebody else. I love that’s not what you took away from being a podcast listener. Instead, what you took away is the audience experience and that’s the other side.

When I see someone who takes away, I’m trying to build this great listener experience because I know what it likes to be a listener when it’s not a good experience. I’m trying to create that consistency constant and making sure that I’m building that. That’s the takeaway that I think ends up more successful and you certainly have done that from being a podcast listener.

Before we go, I want to give you one last chance to tell everyone a little bit about that story of starting your podcast because you alluded to it. I do this opposite when I can, which is why do we always have to start with the origin story? Let’s end with it instead. You have an interesting start because you were at rock bottom when you started. Even a year and you were still getting your lights almost turned off. Tell us about what made you decide that you were going to start this podcast and dive in?

It was the invention of necessity. I needed a way to earn money from home, which people might hear and laugh at. They’re like, “You needed to earn money, so you started a podcast.” That’s the joke these days. I don’t know if you hear that all the time, but people were like, “There’s no money in podcasts. There’s don’t make any money.”

I like to challenge that. Maybe I’m able to challenge that because I fell into success, whether that be skill, luck or a combination of both. I was a stay-at-home mom. I had given birth to my second. My husband worked construction, 40 hours a week but seasonally. We were a new family getting started that didn’t have solid careers. I had no college degree. I didn’t have enough money to send my kids to childcare, even if I could get a decent job because what job could I get?

We were broke and I needed a way to make money. I needed to be able to do that from home. I had been working in my essential oil business for a while the traditional way. I’m doing a lot of classes and hustling. I had a lot of fun doing it, but it wasn’t sustainable. It took me away from home a lot and I didn’t want that with two young kids. I needed to be able to do something while they were napping or do something at night when they were going to bed or whenever I could get that time in at home. I did that.

Since, as you can tell, I’ve been a big fan of podcasts for a long time. The idea hit me because that was the first place I went to look when I started learning about essential oils was podcasting. There are a couple of essential oil podcasts out there, but to be honest, they’re not like the caliber that I want. I’m like, “Someone needs to step in and do start this podcast.”

“Why not me?”

That’s the most powerful question you can ask, “Why not me?” That’s where I started and I bought my $40 ATR2100 microphone, which now they’ve upped the price to $90 because everyone started buying it. One of my colleagues covered the cost of my media hosting for the first year. That’s how broke we were.

It shows in your show because that scrappiness of necessity comes across, how you put your own effort into it and made it into something great. Congratulations, Samantha. The Essential Oil Revolution is a fantastic show and you deserve all the credit for what you’ve built.

Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Thank you for having me here. The show you’ve built is incredible. You felt such an amazing community and you gave such valuable content. Thank you for all that you do. I’m going to ask your readers to leave a rating and review for Tracy right now. She deserves it. Let her know. She works hours and hours every day on this show. Take two minutes out of your day right now to leave her a review.

Thank you for paying it forward. I appreciate that.

—

There was much information to unpack here and there’s much that she gets in the process of podcasting. She gets that this is a repurposable media type that she can use much of it in many different places. She’s using it on her blog, help her get Google ranking, on Instagram, other places and that’s helping her grow her show. It’s helping her grow the attraction to the business portion of what she’s doing.

Lots of that has shifted over time. She found exactly what I found when we did our 3D Print Podcast, that there was power in advertising, affiliates, association and the source for the information in an industry that is dying for some new information and that’s what she’s got here. The exciting thing about it is she completely debunked here the myth of no money podcasting.

There being no money in podcasting, that’s not true everywhere. There is a large part of that. That isn’t true for all of you. Many of you will never make money off your podcast because it’s not the right model for you, but this is the model where it works. This is the model where it works best, where it can be exploded and work even better, depending on the strategies, systems and processes you put in place.

I’m so glad that Sam came on the show and talked about how the Essential Oil Revolution has turned into more than a side hustle for her. It’s turned into her entire business. She’s moving into podcast teaching, coaching and some of these other things. Those may be her future big-ticket guests as well. I still think there’s such a power in what she’s got going on because there’s so much growth in that essential oil market. She’s not going to be able to let this podcast go anytime soon. I think she’s going to go 500 episodes or more, and I’d love to see what she does when she gets to those levels. We’ll keep touching base with her.

Samantha Lee Wright, the Essential Oil Revolution, you’re going to want to check it out. You’re going to want to go to the blog post for this episode and find all the links to Samantha Lee Wright and find the links to her podcast, the Essential Oil Revolution, her book and all the other things that she’s got out there that might be a resource for you as well. Thanks, everyone, for reading as we explore another successful podcast. Five million-plus listens is off the chart for what we typically get to review here. I’m so glad we got Samantha to come to the show. I appreciate you. I’ll be back next time with another episode.

Important Links:

• Sam – Samantha Lee Wright
• The Essential Oil Revolution
• WTFFF?!
• FreeOilCourse.com
• Audible.com/Revolution
• Podetize
• SquareSpace.com
• Criminal
• Uncivil
• Peabody
• Radiolab
• More Perfect
• Dolly Parton’s America
• https://www.Instagram.com/SamLeeWright/
• https://www.Facebook.com/LifeBySamWright
• https://www.Linkedin.com/in/Samantha-Lee-Wright/

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