How to Make Money Sending Emails – A Guide for Absolute Beginners

Do you want to make money online with emails? If yes, in this article you are going to learn how to make money sending emails. The process of earning money online through emails is termed as email marketing.

What we will be talking here is about the ethical email marketing methods. Not the one where the marketer keeps spamming other people’s email inboxes without their permission.

Emails are the one of the most powerful ways of communication in this digital era. As you already know, emails can be highly personalised and can be a great way to connect on an individual level.

They are also very engaging. And that’s why any recommendation done through an email tends to convert much better than the ones done through other mediums of mass communications.

In this email marketing guide for beginners, we are going to introduce you to the basic concepts of email marketing that are essential for you to start a thriving online business based on emails. Without further ado, let’s get started.

What Is An Email List?

An email list is a collection or the database of email addresses that are built with a primary purpose of marketing. As you already are aware, we can’t just send unsolicited emails to anyone. If you do, it will be considered spam. And spamming isn’t legal in most parts of the world today. Also, this is bad business etiquette.

That’s why you need the consent of the person to whom you want to send emails. Getting a consent beforehand is compulsory if you don’t want to get into any kind of a mess when doing email marketing. Now let’s see why building an email list is important and why is it considered a powerful asset in online business.

Why Build an Email List?

Why is an email list important?

Now, there are many reasons we can give you to answer this question. But if you want us to answer it in one sentence that would be, ‘because, emails work’.

As mentioned at the beginning of this post, the engagement rates with emails are much higher than the other social and communication media.

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand the fact that when you send an email to a person it has higher chances of being read than your latest blog article or social media posts. In fact, some statistics say that even an actual letter has a lower chance of being read than an email.

If a person is giving you his/her email address and giving you permission to mail them regularly, it means that the person trusts you. Because in this digital era emails are considered very sacred. If someone trusts you with their email, that’s an encouraging sign for you and your business.

And that’s also the reason why you need to be very responsible when dealing with your email list. Don’t forget that each email address on your list is a human being first then a customer. Don’t forget to give them enough value through your emails before promoting a product or service.

Want to build an ethical email marketing system to drive sales and commissions? Check out this $5 eBook.

Choose Your Email Marketing Niche

Before you start building an email list and make money sending emails you need to choose a niche for your email business. A niche is a topic in which you are interested to promote products to your subscribers.

Your niche can be anything. Health, wealth, relationships, sports, dog training, dating guide, etc, etc. If you want to learn the exact process of niche selection, read our how to choose a niche article.

That particular article was written keeping the newbie bloggers in mind. However, the same basic principles of niche selection hold good for you as well, no matter what type of business you want to do online.

how to make money sending emails

How to Build an Email List?

Email Service Provider

Once you have chosen a niche it is time to get into the practical aspects of building an email list. To start building a list of email subscribers we need to have certain tools. We can call this our ’email list building toolkit’. And the very important part of this toolkit is the ’email service provider’.

If you want to make money sending emails, you are going to need a service that allows you to collect email addresses and send your emails to those subscribers. Such a service should also allow you to automatically send pre-written emails to your subscribers in a particular sequence at pre-determined intervals.

The tool that handles the process of sending a sequence of emails automatically to your subscribers at regular intervals is called an ‘autoresponder’. And the tool or the platform which provides these services is called an ’email marketing service’ or an ‘autoresponder service’.

This is a must-have tool for anyone who wants to earn money with emails. Without an email marketing service, you can’t collect email addresses, take their consent, and send bulk emails. If you try to send bulk emails using your Gmail or yahoo account, your account will be blacklisted. So don’t ever try that.

The email service provider we personally use and the one we recommend to beginners is ‘GetResponse’. You can sign up for a free one month trial using the link below.

>>>Sign Up from Here<<<<

Once you have signed up for the email service of your choice, in this case, GetResponse, you need to create a lead magnet.

Create a Lead Magnet

A lead magnet can be considered an official bribe that is offered to people in return for their email address. This can be a PDF download, MP3 file, a video course, a special report, a free consultation session or anything else that offers value to your subscriber.

But why do you need a lead magnet?

Because no one is going to come to my website and give away their email address just because I am good looking. Right :-)?

Most of them want to get something in return for giving their email address. That’s the way the world works. And what better way to collect email address than by giving away something of value for free! The word ‘free’ can have a magical effect on your visitors.

Most of them will simply sign up for your newsletter just because you are offering the lead magnet for free, even if they didn’t need it in the first place. And that’s why you need to create a lead magnet.

Now, you can create a lead magnet from scratch or get a readymade one from one of the many free PLR sites on the net. Here is one such PLR site we recommend.

>>>Download PLR Products<<<

You can get access to thousands of eBooks, software, audio files, music files, graphics and more that you can give away to your subscribers for free and build your email list. Best of all, you can get started for free on this PLR site.

Upload Your Lead Magnet

Once your lead magnet is ready you need to save it in a place from where your subscribers can download it and use it whenever they want. Thankfully this can be done for free using GetResponse, which otherwise would have cost you a decent amount of money.

upload lead magnet

To save your lead magnet on GetResponse just login to your account and then click on the ‘files and images’ option under the ‘Menu’ tab. Here you can upload your file and get a unique download link.

Create a List and Set Up Your Autoresponder Sequence

Once you have uploaded your lead magnet it is time to create a list, write your emails and arrange them in a sequence using the GetResponse autoresponder. This is the most important part of the whole email marketing process. And it is from these emails you can earn money.

We normally write an email sequence of more than 15 days with 2 to 3 days interval in between. When you are just starting out, you can write an email sequence containing 2-5 emails.

There are marketers who set the email autoresponder with only a welcome email that informs subscribers about the download link. Later they market to that list by sending regular emails, which are otherwise called ‘broadcast emails’ in the email marketing terms.

To set up the autoresponder sequence just go to the ‘autoresponder’ section in GetResponse and then write your emails. Here’s a screenshot from one of our email lists on GetResponse.

autoresponder setup

As you can see in the picture above, we have created a 4-day email sequence for one of our email lists. The first email is set to be sent immediately once the subscriber signs up.

That’s why you can see a ‘zero’ in the ‘cycle day’ section in the image above. Similarly, the second email is set to be sent on the 3rd day, the third email on the sixth day and so on.

Once you have created an autoresponder sequence, it is time to start collecting email addresses of your subscribers.

Collecting Email Addresses

Forms

You can collect email addresses using forms and landing pages features in GetResponse. To create forms, you need to go to the ‘Forms and Surveys’ section in GetResponse and then create a new form.

create form

You can use one of the hundreds of premade form templates available inside GetResponse or create a new form from scratch. As you can see in the image, there are a number of premade templates available for your use. Each of this template can be customized to your liking.

You can embed these forms on your website or blog and start collecting email addresses. If you don’t have a website yet, the next method is for you.

Landing Pages

Creating landing pages for collecting leads is our favourite way of building an email list. Although we use premium landing page builders like LeadPages and Thrive architect, as a beginner you can use GetResponse itself to build landing pages for your campaigns.

You can use the landing page feature in GetResponse at no extra cost. They will also host your landing pages for free. So you don’t have to worry about the domain and hosting expenses.

If you want to learn how to create landing pages using GetResonse refer to the article here that shows how to create a landing page without a website.

Promoting Your Email Sign Up Page

Whether you use a signup form or a landing page, you need to bring it in front of a maximum number of people possible, to build a large list of email subscribers. Without enough traffic to your sign up page, your email business will mostly fail.

Now there are different ways to promote your opt-in page, otherwise known the email signup page. Some of them are paid methods while many are free.

As you are a beginner, it is better to collect a few email addresses using the free method first, before jumping into the paid ways. Here are the most popular free methods of traffic generation to your opt-in page.

Blog Posts

Promoting opt-in pages through blog posts is one of the best free ways of promoting your email signup form. Sooner or later you are going to need a blog if you want to go the free route to build your email list.

Starting a blog need not be difficult. We have written a detailed article showing how to start a blog from scratch as a beginner. You can read it here.

YouTube Videos

If you don’t have time to start a blog or if you don’t like writing, you can always start creating and publishing videos on YouTube. Don’t forget to mention the landing page URL in the description area of your YouTube video. If you want to create videos fast without showing your face use this tool.

Social Media Posts

When it comes to building an email list FaceBook, Pinterest, and Twitter, can be great tools. But you have to approach these platforms cautiously. Before you start promoting your opt-in page on social media platforms, you need to have a history of providing great value to your readers.

These social media platforms are becoming smart by day, and can easily smell an account that is solely set up for the marketing purpose. When they do, your account can be blocked. So tread with care.

Also, make sure that you develop a relationship with your reader first. Because without trust factor no one is going to give you their email address.

How to Make Money With The Email List?

All that is good, but where’s the money?

Is that what you are thinking?

You have built a list of email subscribers using the methods mentioned above. Now what? How to make money from that list sending emails?

There are two popular ways to earn money sending emails to your list. The most commonly used method of making money with emails is through affiliate marketing. This is the one we personally like and follow.

Affiliate marketing is the business model where you can earn a commission promoting other people’s products and services. You can read this guide which shows how to start affiliate marketing as a beginner for more information.

The second way to make money sending emails is by promoting your own products and services. But don’t forget to provide a lot of value to your readers before you start promoting affiliate products or a product of your own.

Conclusion

When it comes to making money sending emails, earning money is the easiest part. Building the whole email marketing system, collecting leads and gaining the trust of your subscribers are the difficult ones. If you have succeeded in building a list of raving fans who are eager to hear from you, earning money from that list is like pushing a button.

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