Do podcast guests get paid?
I recently worked on a podcast with a client who thought he wouldn’t be able to land big-name guests because they didn’t have a budget to pay them. Here’s the thing, though: most podcast guests don’t get paid.
That’s right, all of those HUGE podcasts, like The Joe Rogan Experience, and Huberman Lab, don’t pay the high profile people that appear on their podcasts as guests. They do sometimes pay for travel and lodging, but an appearance fee is not the industry standard.
This tiny piece of information usually comes as a surprise to most people. They’re out here assuming that Alex Cooper pays all of her Call Her Daddy guests; how else does she get Kamala Harris and Anna Kendrick to come on her podcast?!
(Btw, Cooper recently confirmed via her Instagram stories that she has never paid any of her guests).
Here’s the thing, though… being a guest on a successful podcast is a WIN WIN for the guest. Usually, their appearance is timed with promoting some other project that they’re working on, like a new TV series or movie. Maybe they’re launching a skin care line, or have a new album coming out. Or, like Bethany Joy Lenz, maybe they just wrote a book about that time they were in a cult (y’all, if you haven’t listened to Cooper’s sit down interview with Lenz on her new book, Dinner for Vampires, you’re seriously missing out!!!)
So, what do potential guests care about when deciding whether or not to appear on your podcast?
Demographics: They want to know who the audience is, to know if this aligns with THEIR target audience.
Ratings: You may get asked about your subscriber count, or how many listens your podcast gets in a month.
Content: What do you talk about on your podcast, and what kinds of questions will you ask the guest?
Previous Guests: This is a common question; everyone wants to know who else has been on the podcast.
Samples: Oftentimes, potential guests or their teams will want to listen to previous episodes, to get sense of the style, tone, and format. This can be a challenge for NEW podcasts, so I usually suggest finding a few inspo podcasts that you’d like to emulate, that you can share with potential guests during the outreach stage of the pre-production process.
I’ve successfully booked over 7,500 guests for radio and podcast interviews, and here’s what I’ve learned:
For every guest that appears on a podcast, there are probably 4-5 who declined.
The best interviews are well-researched, and well-prepped, but not scripted.
Men are easier to convince than women are. A man with a very narrow scope of expertise in a given field is more likely to agree to be a guest than a woman who has an extensive background in the subject. In order to prioritize gender parity in the podcast world, you need to be willing to convince women that they are smart, capable and valued voices.
TL;DR - It’s not the industry standard to pay guests to appear on podcasts. But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a little work involved in finding and booking the right people for your show!
