Should you make a podcast, be a guest, or advertise?

Should you make a podcast, be a guest on other shows, or advertise on podcasts? For most businesses, start as a guest on the shows your buyers already hear, if someone on your team speaks well and has something new to say. Advertise when you need sales you can count and know what a customer is worth to you. Make your own show when you want a channel you own and can give it the hours. And if a show charges you to be its guest, that is an ad, so judge it like one.

Narrated by a synthetic version of Lam Hoang's own voice.

Two of those routes trade on the same thing, a host's trust. In The Podcast Study 2026, 40% of American podcast consumers said they were likely or highly likely to try or buy after hearing the host personally read and endorse a product, against 27% for a prerecorded ad the host didn't read, as the study's release on its ad findings ↗︎ put it on 23 September 2026. The release calls that a 48% relative increase. Radio Ink's account of the study ↗︎ gives the population: 1,205 consumers aged 18 to 54 who listen at least monthly. Crooked Media, NPR and PRX, three podcast publishers that sell ads, co-sponsored it, and its first findings ↗︎ were presented on 15 September. These are stated intentions, not purchases anyone counted, and no questionnaire, field dates or margin of error are published. The question was about ads, not guest appearances, so "a guest borrows a host's trust" is our framing, not the survey's finding.

Why be a guest first?

Because the audience is already there, and so is its trust in the host. The same survey asked about favorite shows: eight in ten named the host as a big reason they listen, or the only one. That trust is the asset. Your own show has to earn it from nothing, and that takes months. Guesting mostly costs your time.

The figure behind "eight in ten": of the 1,104 respondents with a favorite podcast, 82% said the host is a big part of their listening (61%) or the only reason for it (21%), by Radio Ink's account ↗︎. The study's release ↗︎ adds that 56% would definitely stop or seriously consider stopping if the host of their favorite show left for good. One academic study points the same way: a 2025 survey of 512 podcast listeners in the Journal of Business Research ↗︎ links a listener's relationship with the host to brand attitude and recall. We read the abstract only, and its findings are associations in a survey model, not an experiment.

Two podcasting teachers rank guesting near the top for reaching an engaged audience. Cliff Ravenscraft, in Podcast Answer Man episode 478 ↗︎ in December 2025: "Be a guest on other podcasts that already serve your ideal listener." He calls it the most effective way to gain new subscribers who already value podcasts. Dave Jackson, in School of Podcasting's 2026 guide to starting a podcast ↗︎, calls appearing on other podcasts "the fastest way to reach an existing, engaged audience". Both were advising people growing a podcast, not a business. The reach works the same way for a business; that step is our reading.

A firm that books business owners onto podcasts, Interview Valet, makes the cost case in its piece on hosting against guesting ↗︎: a guest skips the upfront time and cost of making a show, though guesting "has time investments that should be considered too". It sells guest booking, so its advice favors its service.

What the order rests on: no study compares the three routes for the same kind of business, and nothing independent measures what guest appearances do for the guest's business. Putting guesting first is a judgment from the teachers' advice and the survey's picture of host trust, not a finding. And it runs against our own interest: WorkHacker makes podcasts for businesses, and every episode ends by saying so.

Where should you appear?

Pick shows by who listens, not how many. A few hundred of the right people beat thousands of the wrong ones.

Do shows even want guests? Often, yes. CastFox, a podcast search company that transcribes episodes, published Podcast Guest Statistics 2026 ↗︎ on 5 October 2026. In a random sample of 30,049 English-language episodes published in 2026, 40.5% included at least one guest, a person other than the show's hosts. By the show's primary Apple category, Business had among the highest guest rates, at 59.8%, behind Science at 62.6%. Its list of 2026's most-booked guests "is dominated by people with something new to talk about", several of them on book tours. So pitch a reason to have you on, not just your credentials.

The count's limits are on the page. Guests are found automatically in transcripts, so a regular co-host can be counted as a guest and an unnamed guest missed, and only transcribed episodes are covered. "Business" means every show filed in that category, not only shows run by businesses. CastFox sells podcast search and data, and the reading of its guest list is its own.

An older count agrees on how common guests are. Pew Research Center's study of 434 top-ranked US podcasts ↗︎, published in February 2024, found that 76% brought on at least one guest in 2022, and 78% of all guests on those shows appeared just once that year. Pew identified guests with a GPT-3.5 model and checked its accuracy, and it counted top-ranked shows only. MillionPodcasts, a database that sells lists of shows to pitch, says in its guide to guesting, sponsoring or launching ↗︎ that about 379,700 shows in its index accept guests and about 43,100 carry sponsors, close to nine to one as of August 2026, and under three to one in finance. It publishes no method.

One worked example of choosing by who listens. Jesse Cramer, a financial advisor, hosts a retirement-focused podcast. In a Kitces.com guest post from May 2026 ↗︎, Kendra Wright of Rebel Media, an agency that markets advisory firms, describes how he listed the shows retirees would listen to, sorted them into four tiers with hosts he already knew first and dream shows last, and batched his outreach. His goal for 2026 is about two dozen guest appearances, up from one or two a quarter in earlier years. The strategy was the agency's recommendation, and the author sells advisor marketing.

And what will guesting bring back? The only figures come from firms that sell it, and from single stories. Daniel J. Lewis, who teaches podcasting, writes in his episode on paying for interviews ↗︎ that a friend paid about $10,000 to appear on a podcast and made far more than that from the sales it generated. That is one appearance, secondhand. The episode on getting a new podcast found covered one network's figures for guest spots, which come from a network's own tracking with "conversion" undefined. So you'll be judging guesting on your own results, over a run of appearances rather than one.

What if a show charges you?

Then you're buying an ad, whatever the show calls it. Do shows really charge guests? Some do. In 2022 a Bloomberg investigation found popular shows asking guests for up to $50,000, often without telling listeners, and business shows were among the main ones.

The reporter, Ashley Carman, described it to NPR's All Things Considered ↗︎ in August 2022: she found up to $50,000 for one appearance, and saw the practice particularly in wellness, cryptocurrency and business shows. Podnews's summary of the Bloomberg piece ↗︎ added that several shows charging more than $30,000 an interview added a full disclosure only after Bloomberg contacted them. Fifty thousand was the top end, in 2022. How common paid guest spots are in 2026 is not measured.

Lewis doesn't call paying wrong. "It is okay to pay for podcast interviews, with some important caveats and considerations," he writes in the same episode ↗︎, from April 2026. Paying makes the most sense, he says, "when you have something to sell and you see the appearance as an advertising opportunity". He also says a podcaster paid to feature a guest must disclose it, and in his view the guest need not. He recommends two booking services by name, says their affiliate programs have ended, and says on the page that he is an affiliate for some booking services.

So weigh a paid spot like any other ad: what does it cost, who hears it and what comes back?

The rules on disclosure, as far as they reach. The US Federal Trade Commission's answers on its Endorsement Guides ↗︎ say a connection between an endorser and a marketer that a significant minority wouldn't expect, and that would affect how they weigh the endorsement, should be disclosed clearly. It has no podcast example. Its nearest guest example runs the other way from Lewis's case: an expert on a company's payroll appearing on talk shows. That is a US rule, and other countries have their own. If a paid spot comes with a link in the show notes, Google's spam policies ↗︎ accept paid links when they are marked as sponsored or nofollow. That policy is written for web pages; applying it to show notes is our reading.

What do podcast ads buy?

Two things, mostly, and only one carries the host's trust. A host read is the host voicing your ad on their own show. The other is your own recording, which the seller places for you, even on shows you pick.

Acast, a podcast hosting and advertising company, offers both on its self-serve platform. Its help page on creating a targeted ads campaign ↗︎, updated in late September 2026, lists "2 formats available: Targeted ads and Host-read sponsorships". Targeted ads are your uploaded recording, placed by country and language and optionally by region, city, postal code, podcast category, specific shows, age, gender or device. That only the host read carries the host's trust is our reading of the two products beside the survey above, not a measured gap.

One company that measures podcast ads compared host reads with prerecorded spots. In Magellan AI's measurement benchmark for the second quarter of 2026 ↗︎, covering the campaigns it measured from 1 January to 30 June 2026, host-read ads had a median response rate of 3.22%, against 2.09% for produced ads. That is about half again as many listeners sent to the advertiser's website. Response here means the share of reached listeners who visited the advertiser's site within 30 days. Those are site visits rather than sales, from campaigns whose advertisers bought Magellan's measurement, and Magellan sells it.

What a host read costs

Host reads cost more. Acast's 2026 guide to podcast advertising costs ↗︎ gives a planning range of $15 to $30 per thousand downloads for prerecorded ads bought across a network, and $25 to $40 for host-read sponsorships on individual shows. It adds that business, finance and B2B shows "regularly command $40+ CPMs".

Say a show's episodes get 2,000 downloads in their first month. At $40 per thousand, one read there costs about $80, and four reads on each of five such shows about $1,600. That is our arithmetic on a seller's asking range, not on deals anyone made. And it assumes the show sells ads at all. Acast's July 2026 guide for podcasters ↗︎ says most ad networks look for 1,000 to 5,000 downloads an episode, and direct sponsorships usually become realistic at 5,000 to 10,000, unless the show serves a high-value niche. It puts host-read sponsorships at $25 to $50 per thousand. The episode on whether a podcast is still worth starting looked at the same money from the show's side.

Other price lists sit near those ranges. Libsyn Ads' rate card ↗︎, undated and read in October 2026, prices host-read ads on downloads in an episode's first 30 days: $24 to $26 per thousand for a 60-second spot and $18 to $22 for 30 seconds, with Business at $30, the highest in its category table. These are asking prices from sellers, not deals.

Your own recording, placed by where people live

There's a self-serve route that can aim your own recording down to postal codes, at a higher rate. As of October 2026, Acast's page on advertising on Acast ↗︎ says a prerecorded campaign can start "for as little as $250". Its targeted ads guide, linked above, says region, city and postal-code targeting raises the price per thousand by 20%. Even so, its own advice for a narrow or niche audience is to "start small - say €1,000 or similar", and at least €2,500 for a wider one. So a local business can buy podcast reach by place. What it can't buy that way is a host's endorsement. Nothing published measures what place-targeted podcast ads return for a local business.

How many hearings, and when to judge

One hearing is a thin test. How often should each listener hear it? Podscribe, which sells ad attribution, found up to five exposures a month per listener worked best in its third-quarter 2025 report, with diminishing returns beyond that, as Podcast News Daily relayed it ↗︎. We read the relay, not the report. The same relay gives median conversion rates that put producer reads slightly ahead of host reads, while its own summary says host reads edge ahead, so we don't lean on its read comparison.

Then wait a month to judge an ad. In the Magellan benchmark above, "campaigns judged at seven days show less than half of what they eventually deliver", and response kept building through day 30.

And don't judge it by the promo code alone. Tom Webster of Sounds Profitable made that case in 2022 in Is It Time To Rethink Promo Codes? ↗︎: people don't always use the codes, and a listener who forgets the code and searches for the brand gives the credit to search. He adds that "enough people do use the code to make them worthwhile". A 2026 survey points the same way: in YouGov's US podcast ads report ↗︎, from more than 1,300 adults surveyed between 13 March and 1 April 2026, 30% of media consumers said they had visited a brand's website and 30% had searched for a brand or product online after hearing an audio ad. That covers any audio ad, not only podcast ads, and it is self-reported.

Should you host your own show?

When the relationship matters more than the next sale, and you can keep at it for months. A firm that books business owners onto podcasts puts it by goal: be a guest to win new clients, and host to look after the ones you have. An agency that makes interview shows for companies sees it another way, and backs interviews for relationships with potential customers. Each recommends what it sells, and neither shows data. Whether your own show needs guests comes up in a later episode.

The firm is Interview Valet. Its piece ↗︎ says that to "nurture an existing clientele base, hosting a podcast is the more appealing option", and that guesting gives a better return for finding new clients. The agency is Sweet Fish Media, whose 2021 guide to planning a podcast ↗︎ says: "If you want to build relationships or reduce churn, it's best to focus on interviews." A studio that sells original series says when not to buy one. Pacific Content's guide to how it develops new podcasts ↗︎ warns that "if your goal is to drive short-term sales for next quarter, an original series might not be the best fit."

Take one financial advisor's show. By the Kitces.com write-up, Jesse Cramer's podcast and the funnel around it brought 53 inbound prospects, 9 new clients and $130,000 in new annual recurring revenue in 2025, from over 120,000 downloads that year. To grow it, he pitches the shows retirees already listen to, starting with hosts he knows. It is one case, self-reported, written up by the agency that recommended the strategy, and the post calls it a case study in building a whole marketing funnel, not just podcasting.

Two surveys give a wider picture, each with its limits. Outcomes Rocket, a healthcare marketing agency that produces podcasts, surveyed 861 marketing and PR professionals in May 2026 for its 2026 benchmark report ↗︎: 16% host their own podcast, 16.6% advertise on others and 12.3% do both. So about 28% make a show and about 29% advertise. The panel was recruited, mostly based in Europe and the UK, with 18.8% in the US, and it did not ask about guesting. And for one profession, a 2020 Kitces Research write-up of more than 800 financial advisors ↗︎ found that, beyond referrals from existing clients, the most cost-effective uses of an advisor's time were all about educating prospects, including a book, webinars or a podcast. That lumps podcasts in with webinars, and it is six years old.

If you start one, how long before you judge it? How do you start a podcast for your business? suggested six months of steady episodes. Not ready to commit that long? That same episode had another way in: start as a guest on other shows instead, or by writing. If you do make your own show, the hours are the cost. You can carry them yourself or hand the making to a podcast production service.

So let your goal pick the route. For most businesses, that means starting as a guest on the shows your buyers already hear. Give it a run of appearances, then judge them together. Sales you can count? Advertise, and judge it after a month. A channel of your own, and months to give it? Make the show, and judge it at six months. And a guest spot you pay for is still an ad.

What to do this week

1. Ask three of your best clients which podcasts they listen to, before you pitch a single show. Their answers are your first list.
2. Decide who would be the guest, and write down the one new thing they have to say: a finding, a book, a change in your field.
3. For each show on the list, check who it is for and whether it takes guests, then pitch that new thing, not your credentials.
4. If a show quotes a fee, treat it as an ad: ask what it costs, who hears it, whether the show will disclose it, and what you expect back.
5. If you want to test ads, price one show first: its first-month downloads times its rate per thousand. Plan several hearings a month and judge after 30 days, not by the promo code alone.

FAQ

Is it better to be a podcast guest or host your own podcast?

For most businesses, start as a guest. The audience and its trust in the host are already there, and guesting mostly costs your time. Host your own show when the relationship with clients matters more than the next sale and you can keep it going for six months. No study compares the two routes, so that order is a judgment.

How much does it cost to advertise on podcasts?

Sellers price ads per thousand downloads. Acast's 2026 guide plans on $15 to $30 for prerecorded ads across a network and $25 to $40 for host reads on individual shows, with business shows often at $40 or more. On a show whose episodes get 2,000 downloads in their first month, one host read at $40 comes to about $80. Self-serve prerecorded campaigns can start from $250.

Should you pay to be a guest on a podcast?

Only if you treat it as an ad. In 2022 Bloomberg found shows charging guests up to $50,000, often without telling listeners. One podcasting teacher, Daniel J. Lewis, says paying can make sense when you have something to sell, and that the show must disclose it. Weigh the cost, who hears it and what comes back, as you would any ad.