Many authors think the only reason to build an author platform is to attract a traditional publisher. Some indie authors see the need for a platform to launch their independent book.

But did you know that you can make money from your platform before you publish a book?

To learn how authors can make money from their platform, I interviewed the OG of podcasting. He started his podcast in 2005, he’s in the Podcasting Hall of Fame, and he has a new book. Profit from Your Podcast: Proven Strategies to Turn Listeners into a Livelihood (affiliate link) by Dave Jackson.

In our interview, Dave answered important questions about earning money online from the audience you serve.

Where should a beginner start to find an audience?

Thomas Umstattd, Jr.: The first step to making money from your audience is to get an audience.

Dave Jackson: It all starts with knowing who your audience is and what they want.

To find out what my audience wants, I sometimes go to Amazon and type in a topic that I’m going to be talking about on the podcast. I read the two and three-star reviews. Those reviews tell me what the reviewer liked about the book and the topic, but they also tell me what aspects of the topic the reviewer wished it would have covered.

That’s how I find out what interested people want to know about a topic. And it’s where I get my angle for covering the topic on my podcast.

Once you do that, you’ll start getting feedback from people saying, “Thank you so much for doing this episode. This really helped me. I didn’t know about that. That was really funny.” When you start getting feedback, then you know you’re connecting with your audience, and that’s when you can start promoting it.

The next step is not to tell them about your podcast, but to actually make friends with people. If the first thing out of your mouth is, “I have a podcast,” the person will be thinking, “Great. Who are you?”

It’s kind of spammy when you lead with the fact that you have a podcast. But if you have real conversations with people, they’ll discover that you’re cool and that you know what you’re talking about.

After you’ve established a friendly conversation around the topic, then you say, “I talked about this once on my podcast.” And at that point, they’re interested and delighted, and they’ll want to know more.

When you’re starting, you need to know who your audience is, go where they are, and listen to what they’re talking about. That will foster ideas for future episodes. Then tell them about your podcast, and then don’t quit.

Thomas: I see many authors make that mistake when they’re getting started. They have a passion for a book, they write the book, and then they try to find readers. Often, they don’t even start the process of finding readers until the book is published.

If it’s independently published, they’ll notice it’s not getting sales, and that’s when they go looking for readers. It’s a backward approach, and it’s not what we recommend.

The Novel Marketing approach is to start with your reader. I recommend finding a real-life representation of your target reader. Start writing books, creating podcasts, and writing blog posts for that specific reader. Everything will be easier if you start there.