If you’ve been blogging for a while, you’ve probably heard “the money is in the list.” When I first started blogging, I heard this so often that I found myself regurgitating it to other bloggers about the importance of building an email list early in your business.
“even when my list wasn’t making a dime.”
I’ve always heard people talk about the hundreds of thousands of email subscribers they had on their email lists and because of this they’re making hundreds of thousands of dollars. I’ve heard people say you should make $1 per subscriber each month from your list.
Since these things have been embedded in my mind for years, you’d think I’d make almost $7,000 from my email addresses each month (that’s the number of subscribers on my list).
but what people don’t tell you is how.
How the heck do all these so-called gurus make money from an email list? How many email subscribers do you need to make money? And the bigger question is, why isn’t my email list generating those magic dollars I was promised if I built it? how to make an email list more effective?
If these are questions you’ve also been thinking about, you’re in good company. I’ve thought about those questions a lot, and after a lot of research on various search engines and even more email list development, I can say that I know something, something.
However, I am not here swimming in money like scrooge mcduck from my email list, but I have succeeded in unraveling the mystery of the term “the money is in the list”.
Now you must be wondering how to make money with an email list. I’ll show you what I’ve learned about list building and the various ways people make money with an email list and demonstrate why creating a side activity is so essential. Plus, I’ll even include some examples of how much money you can make with email marketing and how I make money on my email list for you to take away.
1. sell other people’s products or services
oh no! sale! wow!
The truth is that we sell and they sell us something every day.
When a person tells you their name, you are buying them. they’re selling you an identity and you accept that identity unless, of course, they give you a reason not to believe what they’re selling you.
If you give people what they want and need, there really shouldn’t be much selling involved. In general, the key is to find the right products for other people to sell.
My favorite thing to sell is affiliate products. Affiliate marketing means that if someone on your list buys a product with your link, you will receive a commission for it.
For example, one of my favorite affiliate products is convertkit. They are an email marketing platform that I love to use and recommend. their email service allows you to send the same email with multiple test subject lines for your broadcasts, leading to higher open rates. therefore, more people could buy from you.
This email management tool helps me create landing pages and signup forms in minutes, helping me grow my email list by converting clicks into subscribers.
but do you know what I like the most about them? your affiliate program.
For every person who signs up for convertkit under me, I earn 30% of what they pay each month. and it’s at no additional cost to my subscribers.
In fact, my readers get a discount. all they have to do is use one of my links, like the one below, and they get a 30-day free trial of convertkit. player, right?
Get a 30-day free trial of convertkit here!
There are so many affiliate programs like this that can help you make money working from home. in fact, I keep a complete list of affiliate programs that I like to work with. it is part of my blogging technique to earn money. if you talk about affiliate products in your emails and use some personal anecdotes about how they work for you and why you appreciate them, those who are a good fit will buy.
Now, some people will be immediately annoyed if you try to sell them something and then unsubscribe from your email list. but guess that? They were never going to buy you anyway. so you don’t want them on your list.
have a good trip!
If you’re wondering how to find more affiliate programs to sign up for and start making money, here are a few I recommend:
- flex offers
- commission junction
- share-a-sale
- rakuten network
- awin
Each platform has several affiliate offers that you can join. you can search for the ones you like, request them and get their affiliate links.
A word of warning: Don’t sell things from your email list that you’re not buying yourself. in short, people know when you’re cheating on them. so don’t cheat your list. they will know.
and stick with high-quality products along the way. they last longer and your audience will thank you.
2. sell your own product
This is the one I hear most often. the way it works is you come up with a great idea, you promote it, and then you make money using your email list step by step.
When you think about it, selling your product is one of the best ways to make money with an email list. instead of getting 10-40% commission on the sale of existing affiliate products, you keep 100% of the profits.
The hard part of building a product is the time it takes to complete it and having to figure out what to build. however, many people who make money with their own products don’t tell you that the product they made the most money with is often not the first one they created.
so please include it in your time. your first product may be a flop. heck, your second product may be a bust. taking this path is a risky business.
here are some things you can do to make sure you choose the right product to build.
- solve a problem for everyone else that you’ve already solved yourself.
- inspect your email list and see what they want.
- pay attention to what content on your blog is doing the best. can you build a product around that content?
- what questions does your email list ask you? What types of articles do they click on the most?
if you can create a product that incorporates those four elements, you should be perfect.
but that’s not a guarantee. people can be fickle. just go into his creation knowing that it may not be all sunshine and roses. however, if it succeeds, it will be awesome.
3. create a tripwire
good! so tripwires are one of my favorites. but first you need to understand what a tripwire is. A tripwire is an upsell landing page that directs people to you after they’ve already gotten something from you for free.
This is an example:
Suppose you give your new subscriber a free list of items they should have in their kitchen. If this person is looking for things to put in their kitchen, they are probably also thinking about decorating it. So why not sell them in some decorative items? the tripwire page could be something like “the ultimate guide to redecorating your kitchen”.
Technically, tripwires fall into the category of creating a product, but they’re a little different. creating a tripwire does not require a significant time commitment. I was able to develop the tripwires I have in one day.
They’re a great way to test your audience’s interest in a topic before building a more effective product that can take months to complete. this is another way to ensure that the product you create does not fail.
4. create a paid newsletter
A paid newsletter is often overlooked as a way to make money because who’s still doing paid newsletters? I do, I do! and I’m doing fine! I’m a case study where paid newsletters really work!
Why not charge a monthly or even weekly fee to get people the content they want? If it saves them time, makes them money, or helps them a lot, people will gladly pay for a newsletter. people love shortcuts.
If you’re going to charge for a newsletter, you just have to make sure it’s worth it to your subscribers.
for example, with my email newsletter, the blogging money update, I charge subscribers $20 per month to receive three emails from me each week. In return, my subscribers receive 10-15 sponsored post opportunities in those emails, all priced at $65-$5,000 each.
If you applied to those opportunities and were accepted to even one of the lowest paying ones, it’s already worth staying on my email list. the numbers just make sense. my email list wins, and so do I. You can check out the blog money update for yourself here.
5. host a webinar
There are two schools of thought when it comes to making money with webinars.
- You can charge people to attend the webinar.
- Or you can provide great information for free in the webinar and then sell them something at the end.
This last method is how most webinars work.
An added benefit of hosting webinars is getting more email subscribers. the first webinar I hosted was for a company I was working for at the time. we ran a simple facebook ad for a couple of weeks. resulted in adding 2,000 more people to our mailing lists!
two thousand email subscribers in two weeks!
Even if those who signed up for the webinar didn’t buy or didn’t attend the webinar at all, you can still sell them something more in the future through your email list. For this reason, webinars are not just a way to generate income, but a way to build your list fast.
6. advertise on your email list
I really like this as a way to generate income because it’s so easy.
This is how it works.
If you want to make money with an email list, you need to be in contact with your subscribers on a regular basis. also, you must have an accessor format that you use to do this. I enjoy a great newsletter format.
And if you’re doing the newsletter format, you can charge brands to be in your newsletter that week. It can be a banner ad, a link to your blog post, whatever.
It’s that simple.
You can charge a flat fee for mentioning them as long as you disclose that you’re getting paid to mention them in the email.
I do this in my weekly newsletter to my list. is the last section of each weekly email. When I don’t have company ads, I just add affiliate links.
An easy way to get advertisers to pay you for this is to include newsletter mentions in your media kit. include how much the ad will cost them and the stats on your list that will attract them.
7. sponsor sponsorships
This is similar to writing a sponsored blog post.
Instead of creating a piece of content for your blog, you create content for your email list. For example, think of it as a long email that talks about a product you like. Specifically, I’ve found that many bloggers use this form of email for affiliate products, and it works well for them.
but this can also be done according to a particular brand. For example, I’ve run campaigns for brands where we recruited an email to my list in a campaign for a sponsored blog opportunity.
If you’re doing business with a brand and looking for more to offer for a bigger paycheck, and you’ve already mentioned their social media accounts, highlight their email list. if you have open rates and list size to tell them, they might be very interested.
Remember to let your audience know if a brand pays you to mention them.
Not sure where to find paid sponsorships? I have a list of 150 influencer networks that pay bloggers to work with brands. you can register below.
Get your list of 150 networkss here.
8. offer a service
this uses your email as one more way to advertise a service if you have one.
For example, if you’re a freelance writer looking to write for other bloggers, you can send an email to your list saying you offer a service and are looking for clients. Of course, your email list needs to be relevant to the service you offer, or you’re probably wasting your time.
9. promote cost-per-click offers
These are similar to affiliates, but instead of someone buying, they just click on the link.
If you have reliable click-through rates, this is a great way to generate income. just make sure their offers are relevant to your list and that you’ve reviewed them.
Remember, don’t make fun of your audience! they will know!
10. associate with other bloggers with products
There are a lot of great affiliate programs created by other bloggers. and honestly, they pay the best. you can earn up to 30% – 40%. however, sometimes you can go a little further and put together a campaign to get even more sales.
perhaps you could work together to host a particular webinar or challenge. And you can drive more attention, traffic, email subscribers, and revenue for both of you.
If you see a product that fits well with your brand that you want to promote and you can see years of working with another blogger, working together on a specific campaign might not be a bad idea.
I love finding new affiliates for my product, blogging money update and I offer a 10% recurring commission for every member my affiliates send me. interested in joining? email me at editors@missmillmag.com letting me know, and I’ll set you up!
11. try all these strategies in an evergreen newsletter
If your head is spinning and you’re having a hard time deciding which ideas to pick, why not try them all in an evergreen newsletter? you can also test and monetize your blog for full time income.
an evergreen newsletter is an email workflow that essentially goes on forever. for example, you send a broadcast to your list, and once it goes out, you add it to the end of your email automation. that way anyone who signs up later down the line can also see the same broadcast email.
So if you send a high converting email to affiliates, you should add it to your evergreen newsletter. so that it continues to work well for you and all your new subscribers in the future.
To conclude, go out and earn some money!