What you could be doing if you had a decent email subscriber list

This isn't another post telling you that you should have started building an email subscriber list ages ago.

It's to show you what you could be doing if you had.

Image from Aweber report "Weekly subscribers to list"

My biggest email list isn't in this niche. If you know me, you'll probably realise that it's in the travel niche. I started it too long after I set up the blog (like so many bloggers) didn't add a decent offer to it for six months, and it took me a full year to start to use a pop up on the site.

That list now has just over 2000 people on it. If I'd done all of the above, it would be over 5000. Remember that for later.

The autoresponder sequence is well optimised, and has a good balance of giving great free, additional content, with a few sales pitches thrown in from time to time. As a consequence it delivers a steady, but not large, income every month.

A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by my account manager from one of the affiliate companies we deal with. He had an interesting offer for that list. It was simply a "sign up" to an airline site to receive special offers from them. Free to the consumer, but worth $1.50 to us for every one who did so.

It took me all of ten minutes to pen the email and send it out as a broadcast.

$273 for ten minutes work

The result was that 182 people went for the offer. By any standard $273 for ten minutes work is pretty good going. And just to add to the feel good factor, many readers emailed me back to thank me for giving them the chance to benefit from the offer!

And that's what you can do when you have a decent email list. Wait for something to come along that will benefit your readers and make you some money, and then spend a few minutes telling them about it.

$800 would have been better

Remember I said at the start that if I'd done things properly I would have over 5000 on that list? I'll save you the trouble of working it out - that would have earned me over $800.

Here's what you should do now:

1/ If you aren't already using a good email management software, start today. I recommend Aweber.

2/ Create (or even buy the rights to) something you can give away to people who do subscribe.

3/ Use a pop up for first time visitors. Aweber do one, but if you use Wordpress the one to have is Pop Up Domination.

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