Apr 30 2009
How to Make Money After Building Your List
The hottest tip for marketing online these days seems to revolve around building a mailing list. Many tell you that if they could start out all over again, they would start with building a list.
However, when it comes to ‘building a list’ there seems to be a lot of mystery about how to proceed. Do you sell the list to make money? (The answer to that one is NO!)
So how do you go about making money online using your new found mailing list?
If you’ve ever taken a marketing class, an e-mail list is a sales technique known as an “endless chain.” You call one person, they might not want to take advantage of your offers, and then you move on to the next.
With a mailing list, you can reach hundreds (or thousands, if you’re that good) of people to promote your new product, website, service, etc. Mailing lists are extremely versatile for promotions.
Before discussing specific ideas, let’s talk about how NOT to make money with your mailing list. Here are some things you should never do if you want to be make money with your list:
- Do not spam your subscribers! They opted into your list to get some helpful resources/offers, not to be spammed with all sort of craps.
- Do not fill your campaigns (newsletters) with affiliate links. Try to keep it down to one or two per newsletter, and always inform your subscribers that they are going to click affiliate links.
- Do not send multiple e-mails a day. Once a day is fine enough, and you might lose subscribers from those who don’t appreciate the multitude of e-mails you send them.
How to Make Money with Your List
There are several ways that you can make money from your e-mail list.
Consider your list to be the audience at a company meeting, and your e-mails to be your pitches to loyal customers. The best way to generate money from your list is to make your subscribers feel like the elite. Offer them things early, get their opinions, and give them special deals.
Aside from that, the best ways to make money with your mailing list are:
Promoting a New Website: Send your leads an intro of a new website and how it benefits them. Encourage them to sign up and maybe even offer a benefit for subscribers such as early usage of the
website or a free month of service, etc.
Promoting your new site will not only drive traffic faster and more effectively, it will drive people who are interested in what your site has to offer, and who will possibly recommend it to their network of friends.
Selling a Website or Domain Name: You can use your new list to advertise websites or domain names that you might want to sell. Make sure to make your subscribers feel as though they are taking advantage of a quick offer.
Just like real-estate, you have to make them consider all of the benefits your available website can give to them, and how it could go fast.
Affiliate Marketing: You can make money through affiliate marketing by picking a product to promote with in a campaign and sending it off to your subscribers.
Be sure to tell them how the product works for them, and if possible, create a special promotional code to give them a discount. For HTML e-mails, promote your affiliate link (but don’t go nuts!) and for plain text, promote the coupon code more heavily (so people don’t see the affiliate URL).
Donations: If your website is more towards non-profit, or provides a free service, then ask your mailing list (nicely) to support your efforts with a small donation or contribution to development.
This is probably the least effective marketing technique, but if you have extremely loyal leads and a good cause, this method could work well. Just be sure to setup a “thank you” page!
Making money using a mailing list is easier than many might think. While a mailing list is not the magical end-all-be-all make money online idea, it is a tried and true method with various benefits for yourself and your website.
As it’s most often cited that “The money is in the list“. Now go build your list.
