I’m sure you must have read many blog posts on building a massive email subscriber list. You may already have a big email list yourself. But have you made any real business progress using it? Have you made any money from it?
In one of my recent blogging consultancy sessions, I was surprised to meet a blogger who had more than 1000 subscribers, yet he made very little money from them. His list was largely disengaged from his business, and the only attempts he made to monetize it was by offering freelance writing services. Naturally, that offer failed since the majority of his subscribers were freelancers themselves and did not need his services.
What’s the solution then?
Without going into the details, the easiest and most profitable way of monetizing your email list, and making a sustainable passive income from it, is by creating a digital product that fulfills a core need of your subscribers.
Understand your subscribers first, analyze their preferences and needs, and create a product that addresses their problems with the most actionable advice possible. Don’t give them opinions. Give them solutions.
With this in mind, here are two kinds of digital products that you can create within 48 hours and sell them to your mailing list.
1. Offer a Premium Email Course
Email courses are much easier to create as compared to eBooks. You don’t need to write 40-50 pages to create an email course. Instead, you can create a series of highly actionable emails, spread over 8-10 weeks, accompanied by additional resources and links to exclusive content on your blog.
Some of the most successful internet marketers, bloggers and freelancers have used free email courses to build their email list. But many others have extended their free email courses and created exclusive premium versions with additional content and tools for their subscribers.
The success secret in email courses is focus. You need to focus on a single problem, instead of a wide range of issues. For example, your email course can be about “How To Attract 1000 subscribers in 8 weeks” or “How To Feature on The Top Blogs in Your Niche in 2 weeks”.
Pick one problem, and offer in-depth, detailed and highly actionable advice on it. Spread your emails over a period of 8-10 weeks. Add a list of actions, at the end of every email, which your subscribers need to complete.
Bundle a 1 hour consultancy session for the buyers who purchase your email course. That will add further spice to your product.
Since you already have a sizeable email list, I’m sure you’re either using AWeber or Mailchimp. It’s easy to create auto-responders in both these services.
Create a good looking advertisement image of your email course and put it in your blog’s sidebar. Float it to your mailing list with a time limit. For example, the first time you introduce your email course, announce that the registration is open only for one week.
Always time-cap your offers – they produce the maximum impact.
2. Sell Highly Actionable Video Tutorials
As I said, selling email courses is a great way to make money from your email list, and many people are already doing it. But just in case you want to create something more unique, you can create a short and effective video tutorial series.
Sounds difficult doesn’t it?
That’s precisely why many bloggers never explore this option.
Creating and selling video tutorials is not as hard or time taking as people think. Best of all, people love to purchase video tutorials and the conversion rates on video products is significantly higher than eBooks and email courses.
Skilled designers, academics and IT professionals are earning thousands of dollars by selling tutorials on websites like Udemy. But with your own email list, you can replicate their success without having to share your revenues.
Here are a few examples of bloggers and designers who’re successfully selling video tutorials to their subscribers.
The content formula for video tutorials is quite similar to email courses and eBooks – you need to focus on one problem.
The only difference is in the way you deliver this content.
You have two options in this regard.
- If you’re not shy, and have prior experience of creating videos, then get in front of the camera and deliver the content yourself, looking directly in your buyer’s eyes. This creates the highest impact and also gets you closer to your subscribers. You can mix it up with screenshots from your computer, where needed. But make sure you write down the main points of your tutorial on a piece of paper and structure your tutorial properly. After a brief introduction and opening, get down to the business.
- If you tend to freeze in front of the camera, then use a screencast with your voice in the background. This works well for technical tutorials that require a lot of tool configuration, coding etc.
Once you create your video tutorial, give the final touches in an editing tool. I personally use the Windows Movie Maker. It’s a free, yet extremely useful, tool and should be enough for your editing needs. But in case you need to explore more tools, here’s a good list.
The next challenge is to sell your video tutorial.
There are many digital product selling tools like E-Junkie, Shopify, Easy Digital Downloads etc. but none of them is tailored for video selling. The only service, which I could find, that had separate video selling features was Selz. You can upload videos of up to 15GB on your free Selz account.
Once the video is uploaded, you can embed the Selz video selling widget in your WordPress website. From there, buyers can directly pay you for the tutorial on your website, using Master Card, Visa or PayPal, and choose to download or stream the video tutorial online.
Conclusion
Having a sizeable email list is one of the basic needs of any online business. But in order to make sustainable income from your mailing list, you need to create the right product for your subscribers. The two product types I mentioned in this post are not only easy to create but also have the potential to offer massive value for money. If your product has enough value for the buyers, you will not only make a lot of sales with your mailing list, but also attract many referral subscribers and customers to your blog.
In one of my recent blogging consultancy sessions, I was surprised to meet a blogger who had more than 1000 subscribers, yet he made very little money from them. His list was largely disengaged from his business, and the only attempts he made to monetize it was by offering freelance writing services. Naturally, that offer failed since the majority of his subscribers were freelancers themselves and did not need his services.
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