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Want to make money but keep it simple? Enter email marketing. Want to learn how to make money with emails and not have to (always) worry about a full-fledged website to earn money? Here are some of the most proven, effective ways to monetize your email list.
Email marketing is still a lucrative way to make money online and build an online business. In fact, there’s likely a ton of ways that you haven’t really thought about in monetizing an email list.
One thing about online businesses is that you need to eliminate shiny object syndrome. Focus on one thing and excel at it.
This is where email marketers have a ton of options to be successful. You really don’t even need a website to make it work.
I’m not talking about spamming people or buying email lists.
That’s a good way to get your entire IP address banned by email marketing providers.
What I’m talking about is providing extraordinary value to people and solving problems to help others.
I’ve spoken about this a ton in my free course about building an email list.
Table of Contents
How to Make Money with Emails
An email is a form of direct communication with people. It’s extremely powerful. Think about dialing someone directly on the phone or sending someone a text message. It has the same level of impact (if not more of an impact).
Imagine having a direct line of communication to thousands of people. A great example is your phone book. If you have a ton of numbers and know a lot of people, when you need help or want to provide something of value to someone you have a ton of options.
The same goes for emails. But how do you actually make money with emails?
It’s all about the right type of emails and the right people.
Let’s keep it simple. Say you have a friend that loves playing basketball. Are you going to invite that friend to help you with your homework?
No. You’re going to reach out to someone that’s actually in your class.
The same goes for emails. You can make money selling complimentary things to the demographic of emails that you have. In the example above, your basketball friend might be a good option to join a pickup game of football or go with you to the gym
So, with emails, your audience needs to be relevant.
You can’t try to sell an audiobook about hunting to a group of people that support animal rights. It’s just not going to work.
Before we get into the various methods of making money with an email list, you need to know that revelency is the most important component of it all.
If you don’t have relevancy, your monetization strategy is going to be much much harder.
List of Proven Ways to Make Money with an Email List
1. Use Leadpages to build a 1-page website.
With something as easy Leadpages for both landing pages and conversion tools, you can do a ton with building an email list.
You’ll get a free 14-day trial if you want to see how it works.
I used Leadpages to explode my email subscribers. With their easy to use landing pages, you can sync it with a domain name of your choice and go.
All you’ll need is a landing page and you can do it all from there. Start driving traffic to the landing page to capture emails and you’ll be good on your way.
Here are some free traffic sources that can help you get going on the traffic side. If you have some money set aside, you can drive paid traffic to your landing page to capture emails at a faster rate.
I mentioned Leadpages for a number of reasons but mostly you can use it to then navigate your subscribers to whatever sale event you want.
Getting to that below.
Check out this step-by-step review of Leadpages that I compiled.
2. Local lead generation
Local lead generation is a strategy that has been going on for years. I mean people still do it and you probably don’t recognize it as this.
What this means, as far as how to make money with emails, is using SEO, landing pages, and special discounts or offers that entice visitors to give you their contact information. 
When your website is easily found by people looking for businesses such as yours and your landing page offers something in exchange for their contact information, you’re able to build a list super fast of potential customers.
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The best part is these prospects have come looking for you. They have already expressed an interest in knowing more about you.
Make money online by offering a sample of your solutions at a discount or even free for a trial period. Then convert them to paying customers.
3. Sell a product or service on your “Thank you for subscribing” page
Once people come to your website and enter their name and email address to gain access to more of your content, use the momentum of their interest to make sales.
It’s easy to create a page that appears after visitors opt-in with their email address. It should be warm and welcoming thanking them for signing up to receive your updates.
Or you can set up the same sentiment in an opt-in email which is easy when you use an email manager like Constant Contact.
Either way, don’t stop with a simple welcome. They’ve already come to your site looking for your solution.
And they were so excited by what they saw, they’ve given you an email address for you to give them more information.
But don’t make them wait for your next blog post or promotion. Ask for the sale by including a buy button or link along with your thank-you message as soon as you’ve captured their attention.
This method to monetize your email list works best if your webpage has comprehensive, enticing product or service descriptions.
4. Hold exciting flash sales a couple of times a year
Pick two or three times and plan a big sale on your items or services. Use your email list to invite your followers and create a sense of urgency.
Use power words in your copy and calls to action like:
- Put these hot dates on your calendar so you won’t miss this huge sales event
- Do your friends a gigantic favor and forward this email
- Flash Sales Event—3 Hours Only
- Inventory is limited. Shop early!
When figuring out when and how to make money with email addresses, try this method in January, especially if your business is in fitness, healthy eating, coaching or some other type of self-improvement.
With New Years’ resolutions on everyone’s minds, January is a fantastic time to capture interest and generate wealth.
5. Make money with emails by using your list strategically
Not every name on your list will respond the same way to your messages and promotions.
Get to know your customers and what motivates them to buy with emails targeted to different segments within your own list.
When thinking about how to monetize an email list, do a deep dive into your email service provider’s analytics to see who’s opening your emails and who’s clicking through.
An email service provider such as ConvertKit can give you the data you need to figure out what makes your followers click and buy.
If you can figure out their motivation, use that market research to create highly targeted messages that will be sure to get them to buy.
For example, create a first-time buyers promotion for those that open your emails but haven’t been motivated enough to click on your link to buy.
You wouldn’t want a special promotion like that to go to everyone, right? Especially customers who are already loyal to your store.
Figure out what makes people buy based on their past behavior and create campaigns that speak to them.
6. Use tripwire marketing
This tactic for capturing quick sales and loyal customers involves selling an item or service to new signups that is attractively priced but also shows your value.
How to make money with emails using tripwire marketing looks like this:
- After someone opts into your website with their email address, you would send them an email soon after promoting a low priced item.
- The item is good quality but the point is to lead them through the experience of buying from you.
- Once a person buys from you, they are more likely to buy other things.
Eventually, you’ll be able to approach them with your premium good or services—the ones with the highest returns for you.
Since the buyer already knows, trusts and likes you, that golden 6-week coaching course you sell for $1200 won’t seem like such a big, heaping bite of commitment.
7. Offer an upgrade, downgrade or cross-sell
For a price, of course.
This method of how to make money with emails is also called up-selling. After the purchase, ask your customers if they would like an additional service.
They may love an opportunity to upgrade to VIP status with the purchase of a monthly video call and other personalized services to add to the coaching package they just purchased from you.
Or, suggest a subscription to your premium content newsletter or a membership to your private Facebook group where they’ll get access to a like-minded community and additional support from you.
You won’t know until you ask.
Up-selling works brilliantly in casual dining (“Did we save any room for dessert?” The server asks while waving a display of molten lava cake and other gooey sweets under our noses.).
And also in wireless services where companies graciously pre-qualify us for upgrades that we have to pay for. Everyone wants the lastest phone, right?
Conversely, you can also offer to downgrade a customer if they seem to be changing their mind on a purchase. Offer something of lesser value at a lower price and you may get the sale.
A third way to maximize your sales to people on your email list is to cross-sell them a similar or complementary product or service to what they’re already buying.
Doesn’t Amazon always show you what others have bought at the point of purchase?
They want to make sure the customer is leaving with everything they need (while they’re in the buying mood) and making tons of cash simply by suggestion.
8. Email prospects who’ve abandoned their shopping carts
How to make money from your email list means also thinking of effective ways to close your sales, even when your prospect leaves your site.
There could be many reasons why someone loaded their virtual cart and then left your page without completing the sale. It could be that it cost more than they realized.
Or, they were “kicking the tires.” Or, perhaps your website had a loading problem and the buyer lost patience.
But, don’t let that keep you from getting the sale.
Make money sending emails by creating an auto-responder for abandoned cart-owners saying, “Hi! Forgot something?”
Make the email campaign triggered by the abandoned cart and start a series of gentle emailed nudges encouraging the prospect to complete the sale.
Remind them of the value of what was in the cart and exactly what they’ll be getting when they buy. Recap your shipping terms, any guarantees and price-matching policies.
This is another excellent opportunity to cross-sell other products they might like too.
Don’t let them miss out on your great deals.
9. Sell your followers premium coaching services
If you desire to help others follow their dreams and you’ve been successful helping at least one other person or have reached personal success, other want to know how it’s done.
Give them all the glorious details, case studies and step-by-step coaching in a curriculum, newsletter or vlog accessible only to paying customers.
This is one of the best ways to monetize an email list and you don’t even have to be the number one expert in your field.
You just have to know a little more than the people on your email list.
A great way to build a list for this purpose is to offer some kind of freebie that’s related to the content you can deliver in exchange for an email.
For example, if you’re awesome at home organization, offer a free closet cleanout checklist.
To begin your campaign, send your email list an invitation for a free masterclass webinar where they get to know you and exactly what you can offer.
Encourage them to stay until the end of your webinar because that’s when you’ll answer any questions and throw in a digital bonus item or two upon purchase of a subscription to your premium coaching.
Once you have your paying insider circle, deliver on what you promised them and send out your modules, downloadable worksheets or whatever you use to deliver the curriculum you created that can’t be found anywhere else.
The amazing part of this method is that you can relaunch over and over, bringing in thousands of dollars each time.
How many subscribers do you need to make money using this method? Not a particularly long list of them. Just a willingness to help the people on your list succeed.
10. Sell subscriptions to exclusive content
People love being members of a community. Build your own and sell memberships using your email lists.
The best way to do this is to offer a free or discount trial period so people can get a sample of what their membership will bring them.
After the trial period, membership is charged at the full rate. For the length of their membership, your subscribers should receive content they won’t find anywhere else. 
Double down on the concept by creating a private, members-only Facebook group so your community can support and learn from each other.
If you want to know how you can monetize an email list of less than 1k, selling memberships is ideal.
Content can be delivered via newsletter or video but it should always provide amazing value.
11. Become an affiliate marketer
One of the best ways to monetize an email list is by partnering with companies you like that have products you believe in.
The idea behind affiliate marketing is whenever a reader on your website clicks a link you’ve embedded in your related content and it results in a sale, you’re paid a percentage or a flat fee for that sale.
When considering affiliate partners, choose companies in your own niche.
They should be companies with products that will interest the people on your email list and businesses they will likely buy from.
Using your email list, deliver content containing links to products or services sold on your affiliate partner’s website.
The content can be a blog post, reviews of products or lists–anything that provides value while also compelling your readers to click on the embedded links and buy.
How much can you make with email marketing? It’s a lucrative option. Pay attention to the analytics so you know what kind of traffic works best and brings in the most money.
It’s that simple and signing up to be a company’s affiliate marketer is just as easy.
See Related: How to Start a Nice Blog and Make Money
Conclusion
Make money with an email list of almost any size. You can build one fast and effortlessly with an effective lead generation strategy, like a quiz or downloadable freebie.
The main thing is connecting with your readers and learning what they need. Then deliver it in a way that makes them happily want to pay for more.
So collect those emails, provide some value and start making serious cash.
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