How Joe Rogan Makes $110,520,000/Year?! (Only 27% from Spotify)

On December 24th, 2009 Joe Rogan uploaded his first ever video of the Joe Rogan Experience. It was just him and some buddies live streaming on their webcam and only 100 people were watching. 11 years later, he signed a multi-year exclusive deal with Spotify. And now Joe Rogan’s net worth is estimated to be around $100 million dollars.

But Joe was actually making a lot of money from multiple income streams way before this!

In this post, I’m gonna break down all four of his major income streams to show you why Joe’s net worth is as impressive as it is.

Let’s dive in.

---

 

Join 157,000+ subscribers getting my FREE weekly business tips

I’m in!

 

---

Joe Rogan Net Worth & Income Breakdown

Revenue Source #1: UFC Commentating

Let’s talk about Joe’s first love.

No, it’s not me — or his wife.

It’s martial arts!

As a kid, Joe was small and got picked on and bullied at school (just like me) so when he was 14 or 15, he actually decided to start training at a taekwondo school and became obsessed with the sport.

He got his black belt two years later, became a teacher at his gym, and won the state championship at 18. He then won the US championship at 19, and at age 22, he decided to stop competing because he was scared of getting permanent brain damage.

Smart dude.

But his love of martial arts never went away.

So around 1997, Dana White reached out to him and asked him to come commentate for the UFC, and he did!

He actually did the first 12 events for free (!!) and about 24 years later, he’s still commentating for the UFC and getting paid extremely handsomely from it.

We estimate that he’s getting paid around $50,000 per event, and with around 40 UFC events a year, that’s $2 million a year!

Not bad.

Revenue Source #2: Comedy Shows & Tours

Now, let’s talk about Joe’s second love…

Comedy.

When he was 21 years old, one of Joe’s friends who thought he was funny, convinced him to go to an open mic night. So 3 years later, he’s at an open mic night and he meets his (now) manager who convinced him to move to New York City, and by 26, Joe was able to pay his bills with comedy!

Throughout his career as a sitcom actor and host of Fear Factor, Joe kept doing stand-up on the side — and Joe Rogan is still doing stand-up on the side! And he’s one of the biggest American comedians out there.

But how much is he actually getting paid from doing stand-up comedy?

Before the pandemic, he was doing about 4 venues a month in theaters all across the country, with an average capacity of 15,000 seats.

Tickets for his shows cost anywhere between $40 – $120 (we’re gonna average it out to $60 a ticket) and he generally sells at around 80% capacity.

His takeaway from all sales is around 50%.

4 venues x 15,000 seats x $60/ticket x 80% capacity x 50% cut x 12 months = $17.3 million dollars per year

So every year, if he’s touring, he’s almost making $20 million dollars!!

And he’s also released 6 comedy specials (some are on Netflix) and we estimate that he got paid around $5 million for his Netflix special, Strange Times.

So if Joe does one comedy special per year, plus tours about 4 times a month, then he’ll make over $23 million dollars a year from just doing his comedy stuff!

That’s no joke.

Revenue Source #3: Onnit

Did you know that Joe Rogan actually owns 50% of Onnit?

He’s a 50/50 partner of the health and wellness company and they offer supplements, food, and really unique fitness equipment. They got popular for their original kettlebell designs, and they’re a really popular health and wellness brand.

 

(PS, check out my interview with Onnit co-founder Aubrey Marcus here)

 

Joe’s the face of the brand and brings value to the company by marketing it to his audience, while Aubrey does more of the day-to-day operations.

When I interviewed Aubrey back in 2017, Onnit was making around $28 million a year — today it’s probably closer to $50 million a year, and Joe owns 50% of the company.

So in terms of Joe Rogan’s net worth from Onnit, it’s huge!

But in terms of the distribution per year, we estimate that he takes in around $2 million dollars.

Revenue Source #4: Joe Rogan Experience

So Joe did sell the rights of his Joe Rogan Experience podcast to Spotify — I know you’ve heard about it — and it’s a $100 million multi-year exclusive deal.

We estimate that it’s around a 3-year deal, but that number isn’t actually public.

So what does that mean?

It means that literally every single one of his podcast episodes is exclusive to Spotify. And Joe actually removed his entire back catalog from Apple podcasts! But it does look like he kept some of the episodes on Youtube — probably because they’re still accumulating a lot of views and Youtube is a great way to promote his new episodes that are on Spotify.

So what are my thoughts on this deal?

I’ll take $100 million for any amount of years!

That sounds great.

But you have to consider this…

Howard Stern, do you guys remember him?

I don’t.

He’s getting around $90 million a year for his show on SiriusXM. And it looks like Joe’s getting somewhere between $20 – $40 million dollars a year.

So it’s kind of strange that Joe is getting so much less…

Another thing that I don’t like about this deal is that I’m not actually hearing about Joe Rogan’s stuff as much. Have you noticed that you’ve kind of dropped off on it? Because it’s not on Apple, and I’m not seeing as much on my Youtube.

So I wonder if the trade-off of the money is going to be compensating for the lower amount of distribution?

The question you have to think about as a content creator or as a business owner is, what are you optimizing for?

I can’t speak to Joe’s move, but I think aligning with Spotify and trying that out for a few years seems like a worthwhile experiment.

So overall, we’re estimating that he’s making $30 million bucks a year just from being on Spotify — that’s pretty damn nice!

Podcast Sponsors

Joe also makes money from the sponsors on his podcast episodes.

He’s getting over 200 million downloads every single month — he’s one of the top 10 podcasts in the world — and he was making serious cash for a long time before Spotify even came around.

But how much is he actually making?

We estimate that Joe’s getting paid around $20 CPM — so for every 1000 downloads, he makes around $20 bucks.

Let’s do some math…

200 million downloads per year / 1000 CPM x $20 x 12 months = $48 million/year from podcast sponsors

Plus he also makes money from the ads that play on his YouTube videos!

He still gets about 55 million views a month on his main channel, and his clip channel gets around 75 million views a month. So combined, he’s still getting 130 million views a month on both YouTube channels!

We’re gonna use RPM to calculate how much he’s making from those views.

RPM = revenue per 1000 impressions

So for every 1000 views you get, it’s how much you’ll actually get paid from YouTube.

Our RPM is around $10 because we have a gorgeous older audience — probably just like yourself. But we estimate that Joe has a more generalized audience, so he’s probably making somewhere around $4 for every 1000 views he’s getting on his Youtube show.

Let’s look at the math…

130 million views per month / 1000 RPM x $4 = $520,000 per month from YouTube Adsense

Which is about $6.24 million dollars per year, just by taking his podcast that he’s already doing, and uploading those clips and videos to Youtube!

So what’s really interesting about this is that he’s actually triple dipping!

• Spotify’s paying him
• Podcast sponsors are paying him
• YouTube Adsense pays him

So even though Joe isn’t posting his full episodes to Youtube anymore, he’s still making great money from posting clips, and it serves as marketing for his podcast show on Spotify.

Joe Rogan’s Total Estimated Revenue

So let’s add up Joe’s yearly revenue:

• UFC Commentating: $2 million dollars/year
• Comedy Shows & Tours: $23 million/year
• Onnit: $2 million/year
• Spotify Deal: $30 million/year
• Podcast Sponsors: $48 million/year
• YouTube Adsense: $6.2 million/year

Total yearly revenue = $110,520,000/year

Gives you a good idea of why his net worth is over $100 million dollars, right?

Two thumbs up!!

(Quick disclaimer: This is revenue, not profit, and doesn’t take into account his costs.)

Key Takeaways

If you’re a content creator, or you aspire to be a content creator, these are the key things you can learn from Joe Rogan:

• Try weird things. Joe Rogan tried stand-up comedy after a friend challenged him to do it, and turned out that he loved it! He also commentated 12 UPC fights for free, and he’s still doing it over 20 years later. And he started the Joe Rogan Experience just by going live with his friends and goofing around. It should be fun!
• Law of 100. When you find something you want to be good at, stick with it for the long run. Commit to it for at least 100 days or 100 episodes or 100 posts — whatever it is. He’s been doing stand-up comedy for 32 years, he’s been doing UFC fighting for 24 years, and he’s been hosting the Joe Rogan Experience for 11 years! His superpower is sticking with it.
• Stick to your strengths & hire for your weaknesses. I see this a lot of times with YouTubers. They’re still doing their editing when they should be focusing on content creation and hiring people to do all the other things. The perfect example of this is Joe focuses on his strength which is growing Onnit’s audience, while Aubrey handles the operation side of things.

What have you learned from Joe Rogan’s career so far? Let me know in the comments down below.

---

 

Join 157,000+ subscribers getting my FREE weekly business tips

I’m in!