Making money online isn’t always easy and nothing is for certain in business; however when you have a good email list, it can be like printing money!

Today I want to share with you how you can create your own email list and teach you how to earn money from it.

The great thing about having a list is you can always be making money, all you need is an offer that you can sell to your mailing list and then send it to them.

For example, last month when I was in Cyprus I emailed my list a promotion and was able to pay for my entire two week trip, all it took me was 5 minutes.

The thing with blogging is that your traffic can drop and advertisers come and go; but if you look after your ‘list’ it’s yours forever.

If you were to lose your blog today you’d have nothing to show for it, your advertisers won’t continue paying and readers will quickly realize you no longer exist. However if you had an email list you would carry on making money. Personally 80% of my income comes from sales generated from email marketing and my eCourse. This is by far the best approach to making money blogging I have come across.

Right now I am using pretty much any means possible to grow my list because I understand how important it is.

I created myself an eCover,  and I use a lightbox optin. I also have a squeeze page.

I use the best software possible for my newsletter and so much more.

Below is my step by step guide to email marketing:

The only decision you need to make is how much money you really want!

 Making Money with Email Marketing and an Autoresponder Series

Create a “hook” so people sign up for your list

When I created WebDesignDev back in 2006 I got my programmer to create custom newsletter software which worked to the extent I thought that newsletter software should work (send emails and that’s it). There were many issues with this, the biggest being that my sign ups weren’t presented with a double optin which meant I wasn’t legally allowed to email them.

When I started my next site in late 2006, I made sure to get this right and got email software that I could rely on. After researching I found most big Internet marketers where using a service called Aweber, so I invested $19/month and bought it.

Frankly working with Aweber is probably one of my best business investments.

When I first started I simply said, “Sign up For Retireat21’s Newsletter,” I think I got around 4 or 5 weekly sign ups doing this, not very good. A couple months later I decided to offer a FREE eBook about making money online and optins went up straight away to around 4 or 5 per day and it grew from there.

I realized that to get more people on my list I had to almost “bribe” them to sign up, a few examples of good incentives would be, FREE reports, eBooks, eCourses, design templates, software, basically anything you can give over the Internet that holds value.

A lot of people aren’t keen to give away something too good but remember, the better it is, the more sign ups you will get and the more money you will make.

A few things to remember when offering a hook:

• Make it stand out with a good title – copy is incredibly important because if people can’t see the benefits of signing up, they simply won’t!
• Add an eBook design – this helped a lot to make it stand out and make it look like there was value to the FREE eBook. For those looking to get a eBook design, I recommend you check out Instance eBook Presence as it allows you to quickly make a very professional eCover for less than half the price it would cost to get it done elsewhere. Another benefit of using this software is that you don’t have to make just one, you can make 1,000s!
• Social Proof – if you have hundreds of subscribers or more, show it off with an Aweber list counter. If your readers see you have a lot of sign ups, they will think they should too because everyone else has.

Setting up your email list and adding an auto-responder series

Once you have decided what type of list you want to have, you have to create it. Like I mentioned above, you should use the service called Aweber, by far the best and has some great features to work with. Once you have ordered Aweber, login and we can start.

If you have done that, here’s what to do next:

In the top left corner, below the logo you will see a link to Create and Manage List, click this and then click Create a New List. Fill out the form and click Save List Settings. Now we need to create a opt-in form so people can sign up for your mailing list on your website, in the header, click Web Forms followed by Create Web Form. Fill out the form and click Next, an example of one of my forms is below:

You will notice that I have added a custom thank you page URL, I recommend you all do this.

A easy way to set one up is to go into your WordPress Admin and click Pages, followed by Add New, now add a page to thank your new subscribers.

Now you will see a preview of what your opt-in box will look like, click on the text to change it and style it. Once you have done all the edits, click Save. Now click the link saying Get HTML, you either have the choice to get Javascript Snippet code or Raw HTML Version.

I personally use the RAW HTML so my designer can custom it to fit in with my website, if you won’t be customizing it then just take the Javascript version.

Now go to your blog and login to your WordPress Admin, on the left side click Appearance and then Widgets. Drag the widget called Text to the right side next to your other active widgets and where it says Title, put the text you want to be seen above your opt-in box, for example “eCourse Sign Up”.

Now in the other box paste in the code Aweber gave you and click Save, it will now of been added to you blog. You can see an example of this in action by looking at the top of my sidebar where I offer the opportunity to subscribe via email.

Autoresponder Series

The next you want to do straight away is set up your first autoresponse email for when people sign up.

To set up your first autoresponse, go back to Aweber and put your cursor over Broadcast and a drop down box will appear, click Follow Up. Now click Add New Follow Up Message, you will now be able to set up your first autoresponse email, it’s all quite self explanatory, you can choose to customize it in a few ways such as use code like {!name_fix} to input the name of the person on your list who will be receiving it.

A good thing to do on your first email if it’s not a eCourse is to just simply introduce yourself and mention all your important pages on your website.

The most profitable follow up series I ever wrote came only 10 minutes after I completed the most amazing email marketing crash course we’ve ever come across – The McIntyre Method.

Unlike other guides, the McIntyre Method isn’t made by a self-proclaimed guru, but someone who actually knows the industry. Gone are the days of losing subscribers or prospects…

There is a big difference between offering a FREE report or eBook and giving away a eCourse.

You see with a eCourse, the reader knows that you will email them regularly and so they won’t get annoyed when you email them daily. So often once someone signs up for your mailing list they will unsubscribe because they have got what they want and don’t want to be spammed.

Even if you don’t intend to create an autoresponder series, you MUST set up at least one autoresponse email to welcome them when they sign up, this is the time when they are most interested and have showed that they want something from you.

A good idea is to create a email to say who you are, where they can connect with you and your favourite posts from your website.

Autoresponders can be used in lots of different ways, myself I use it to provide my FREE eCourse to teach everyone how to create a blog. Some people set up a year worth of emails to be sent out, some daily, some weekly but each time it refers them back to their website to have another chance at making them money.

I have one friend who uses his list quite often to promote affiliate promotions, every time he gets a good response from a email, he will add it to his autoresponder as he knows it performs and will likely make more sales when new people sign up for his email list.

Making Money From Your Email List

You see I make it a slight mission to get people to sign up for my eCourse because this way I know they really want to be on it.

Before I even get them to sign up I make them know they need to spend money on Domains, Hosting and a Web Design. Typically a lot of people buy before they sign up because I make it feel like the course is conditional on them buying the products.

Once they buy they sign up, even if they do or don’t buy the product they will then go to a thank you page. This is where a lot of people go wrong, your thank you page is probably the most important page because they have already taken action and are interested right now!

This is where I make sure they know to confirm there email address but also I let them know again to buy a domain and hosting. On this page I always cut out the navigation which is on the main site so they have to scroll through the page first to see what I have to say before there is a link to go back to the main site.

Sending Out Affiliate Promotions

Here is where you can make more in a single day (actually 2 minutes it takes to send) then your blog makes in a month.

I recently sent out a couple promotions for related products to my site, both had up sells and both had recurring revenue built in, two things you want to look for when choosing something to promote as that can bump up your earnings a lot. I made around $2000 from the two emails and both had recurring payments so since then I have earned several thousand dollars.

It’s super easy and your list doesn’t have to be big, mine was a 4 month old list I built from a new blog.

Another great thing about participating in product launches are the affiliate contests where you can win prizes if you perform well as an affiliate.

Rules to Follow When Finding and Send Out Affiliate Promotions

• Always look for the best offer, for example you can sell a eBook were you will get a commission, but you would be best to find a offer that has a recurring revenue program built in so you don’t just earn today, you earn for months and years to come. For example the promotion I talked about that I did in Cyprus just over a month ago, I have since earned around $1000 in follow up payments from the recurring revenue program. Another great thing to look out for is up sells, on some promotions I make more money from just the up sells then the course itself.
• Don’t send to many promotions out, typically you can get away with around 3 a week and no one gets to cross but I try to limit to once if it’s a direct promotion but most of the time I don’t send out ones at all because I know my eCourse performs well.
• Make sure you send promotions for target products, if you can’t send many emails because you are worried people will drop out then you want to get the best results possible. Wait for a promotion that fits 100% with your business.
• Send out emails before the launching offering the affiliates FREE reports, this is huge! Basically they give you an affiliate link which you can promote to your list and when they sign up for it and get a FREE report or eBook they are now signed up through your affiliate link so when they email the there list about the launch of the product and anyone you send for the FREE eBook buys, then you make a commission, this way you don’t look like your pushing the sale yourself.
• Be the first to promote, so often dozens of affiliate will email a new promotion on the same day, the first person is more likely to get the most sales. This is because a lot of lists have the same people on them so you want to be the first one to let your mailing list know.

No Leakage Means More Money

This is something I picked up from James Schramko who was one our my first interviewees on this blog.

We sat down on the last day at Yanik Silvers underground seminar and we compared blogs, I had double the amount of traffic as him so naturally thought I would be making more money then him, surprisingly he told me he made around 20x more than me!

After I went through his website I didn’t quite understand how, he had no text links, no paid reviews and no advertisers, he later shared with me that it’s all in the list. He explained if your list is so much more profitable than selling adverts on your blog, then why bother selling adverts?

You see he worked out that instead of sending people to other peoples websites through adverts and reviews and instead getting people on his list, he would make more money. This is where “No Leakage” comes in, if there is a way for your reader to leave your website, then there is less chance they will sign up for your mailing list.

A great example of this is IncomeDiary, the only way you will leave is if you go through an affiliate link or if you get bored and press the X in the top corner, so my chances of getting you on my list are greater then say someone like John Chow who has 100’s of different websites you can leave his website too.

Now if John concentrated on his list and getting people on his list instead of having all those banners and links up, he could earn more money in my opinion. (But to be fair, I know John does make a lot of money with his site — but hopefully you can see the point I am trying to make)

Another great benefit of using the no leakage rule is you don’t devalue your content, readers typically hate adverts and do get turned off so your blog will stand out as being a nice one.

Email Marketing Rules

You now have all the information you need to set up and start earning from your mailing list. I thought I would finish by offering a few rules I run my list by to make sure I make the most out of  my list and get the best results.

Rule 1: DON’T SPAM!

Rule 2: Try not to share your list, often for new product launches they will get you to send pre launch emails to get them to opt-in for a FREE report, this is a bad idea because then they basically get a copy of your list although it’s a great way to convert more sales.

OK, not everyone will agree with that one and there are times when I will share the list, but the above point is well worth remembering — at least some of the time 😉

Rule 3: Be personal, your a human being (I hope) so come across like one and not a spam bot.

Rule 4: Be consistent in what you offer your readers, if you are offering great blogging tips then don’t just “wack” up a post about blogging just because you have to, make sure everything to provide has true value.

Rule 5: Be consistent in how often you email your readers – I get some readers who actually email me saying “Hey Mike, I haven’t heard from you in a while, when is your next update?”. I try to update them Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Rule 6: It’s not all about the money, don’t promote something just because you want to make money but because your readers actually need it – and you would personally buy it!

I hope today’s post has helped you all out a lot and if you are new to making money online and haven’t yet set up your blog to drive sign ups to your mailing list, then I recommend you take my FREE 7 Day eCourse on How To Make Money Blogging.

To Our Success,

Michael Dunlop

PS. If you are just setting up your mailing list today, comment below so I can check it out and see how you are doing!