How to get podcast sponsors when your show is small

Most advice about sponsorship starts with your download numbers. Start somewhere more useful: with the companies that already buy ads on shows like yours. A company that has paid for a show in your corner has already decided podcasts work for it. You are not selling podcasting — you are offering one more placement to a buyer who already believes in it.

1. Find the companies already buying in your trade

Pick five to ten established shows that talk to the same people you do. Open their episode descriptions and write down every company that appears next to “sponsored by”, “brought to you by”, a promo code or a tracked link. Within an afternoon you will have a short list, and it will be more specific than any generic list of podcast sponsors.

If your show is about one of the trades we follow, that list is already made: developer tooling, crypto, security, short-term rental, restaurant, ranching and farming, law firm, auto repair, self-publishing, DTC and e-commerce, nonprofit fundraising, accounting and bookkeeping, summer camp and small-business buying.

2. Sort the list by what each name tells you

Three questions separate a good first call from a long shot.

1. Are they still buying? A company seen on a show in the last year has a live budget and someone whose job is to spend it. A company last seen years ago is useful history, not a lead.
2. How long did they stay? A sponsor that renewed on the same show for a year or more was getting results there. Long runs are the strongest signal that a trade’s audience pays off for that buyer.
3. Do they only advertise to people like your listeners? Software for rental hosts, tools for restaurant operators, services for small law firms: these companies cannot reach their customers on a big general-interest show. A small audience made up entirely of their customers is exactly what they are looking for — and it is the one thing a small, focused show has that a large one does not.

The names you hear on every show are worth knowing too. They tend to buy at scale through networks and agencies, so they make a better second or third sponsor than a first one.

3. Look at how they measure

A promo code or a custom link in the show notes means the sponsor counts what each show brings in. That is good news for a small show: you are judged on the listeners who act, not on the size of the room. Offer your own code and link from the first message, and say you will report what they bring in.

4. Write a pitch that shows you did the reading

Keep it short, specific, and about their customers rather than your show. Something like:

Hi — I host [show], a weekly show for [who your listeners are, by role]. I noticed you sponsored [two peer shows] last year, so you already know this audience. My listeners are [one concrete fact about them]. Would you try a three-episode host-read spot with a code of your own, so you can see exactly what it brings in?

Name the peer shows because it proves you understand their buying, not to flatter them. Give the facts you have about your audience and no more; an honest small number beats a vague large one. A short trial with its own code lowers the risk of saying yes.

5. While you wait for the first yes

Check whether the companies on your list run an affiliate or partner program — it is usually linked from the footer of their site. Joining one lets you read their ad on your own terms today, build a record of what your listeners do with it, and bring that record to the sponsorship conversation later.

What a list of sponsors cannot tell you

A sponsor list tells you who bought, where, when and for how long. It does not tell you what they paid or who to email — we do not hold rates or contacts, and nobody should claim to know them from show notes. It also cannot prove a negative: not seeing a company on a show does not mean it never advertised there.

Read through 2026-09-27. Companies that sponsor podcasts, trade by trade →
How to check any sponsorship claim in five minutes →