Know the Show and How We Make Money

Ever wonder what goes on behind the scenes at Listen, Money Matters?  Trust me.  It’s as glamorous as you probably imagine it to be!  No, it’s really not.

Andrew started the LMM website while he was displaced by Hurricane Sandy. He wanted to share what he had learned about personal finance with others and one day make some money through sharing that knowledge.  Matt and Andrew met in late 2013 on Fizzle, an online business training service and community.

The two of them started out by advising each other on their respective projects, LMM and Swim University. It was a marriage made in heaven because each brought to the other, something that had been lacking.  Andrew is the business guy and Matt is the creative guy. The two of them spent a lot of time on Skype.  Andrew’s wife overheard all this discussion and said they should start a podcast.  That’s how this podcast was born in November 2013!

In the beginning there was a podcast a week.  But you demanded more!  So in May, LMM launched Money May, a podcast every single day.  It was so successful that we decided to continue with a new episode daily.

How do we manage to get out that many episodes when both your hosts have full time jobs?  They discuss the topics on Tuesday evenings and batch record on Wednesdays.  Andrew’s wife Laura or I contact and schedule guests that we find or that you all suggest.

On Thursdays Matt edits each episode and creates the images that you see at the top of the posts.  Matt sends them to me.  I listen and write the show notes, what you’re reading now, insert relevant links and the Tweetables,  schedule them to go live and there you go!

What does the future hold for LMM?  We would like to be your ultimate personal finance resource.  If you need to know it, we want you to be able to find it on the site or in the podcast. If you feel intimidated or left out of the conversation on other personal finance sites, podcasts, or books, we want you to find a home here.

A lot of that stuff is geared to a much older, already pretty savvy audience and we want to fill the gap for younger people or people just starting their personal finance journey no matter what their age.

How do you make money?  Well, we don’t really yet.  How we don’t want to make money is from you.  People who need help with their finances shouldn’t be put in a position to pay for that help.  We feel that help should be made available to you at no cost.  We want affiliates and sponsors to fund what we do for our listeners.

A good example of an affiliate is Amazon.  On Swim University, when Matt recommends a product with a link and a reader uses that link to buy that product, he gets a cut.  That cut does not cost the buyer anything, Amazon pays that cut.

A sponsorship is a company that pays to advertise on an episode.  So we would ask a company like Mint or Ready for Zero to buy advertising on the podcast. The hope is to get enough of these sponsors to fund the show and allow Matt and Andrew to do LMM full time.  What we can promise is that we won’t take the easy money.  If you hear an ad for something, it’s something that we believe in and something that will help you.

So that’s what really goes on behind the scenes and what we hope to do going forward.  Thank you to all of you.  We wouldn’t be able to do any of this without you.

Show Notes

Boulevard Brewing The Sixth Glass:  A dark ale.

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