Make Money with Email Marketing with Less Than $10

The Concept

The concept is very simple:

You pick a product to promote as an affiliate. For those unfamiliar with affiliate marketing, basically, you sign up as an affiliate of a company/business and promote their product/service.

For every lead you send their way, you earn a commission.

Commission range anywhere from a few dollars to few hundred dollars, depending on the products/service.

Once you have chosen the product, you build a Squeeze page where you promise to give people something in exchange for them subscribing to your free list.

You then create a sequence of emails with quality and helpful content related to the niche, sending them to the subscribers. Within some of these emails, you will promote the product you choose in the first step.

A percentage of those subscribers are going to buy the product you are promoting, earning you a nice commission.

Needless to say, the bigger your list is and the better the quality of information you offer and the product you promote, the more people are going to buy the product, thus earning you more money.

What’s Needed

The good thing is that this form of client building is not going to require that you give anything away or create eBooks to give out for free.

There are only 3 things which you will need:

1. A Web Hosting Account

A hosting account will enable you to host the page in which people will sign up for your list, otherwise known as the “squeeze” page. If you do not have a host, consider SiteGround, as they have a 60% off deal where you can get an unlimited hosting plan for only $3.99 a month.

Of course, there are many other good hosts out there as well. BlueHost, HostNine, and A Small Orange are a few examples. Honesty, any one of those commonly shared hosting plans would work.

2. An Autoresponder Account

An Autoresponder is basically an email marketing service that helps to build and maintain these email lists.

I use Aweber myself.  It is easy for anyone to use if the person has no technical knowledge whatsoever. The cost for Aweber is around $19 per month, but you can try it at a discounted price during the first month, for only $1.

3. An Affiliate Network

Affiliate networks are basically the middle man between you (the affiliate) and vendors/sellers. They make it easy for you to search and find products to promote in almost any niche.

That said, you want to go with a network that has high-paying offers. In order to make money from the list that you are generating, then you need to ensure that the affiliates you work with are going to have good-paying offers.

For the intent of this guide, Clickbank is an example that will be used, which is an amazing network. For those who are looking for a CPA network, then MaxBounty is going to be one of the best options as there are high payouts and top-notch offers. They pay weekly via PayPal.

1. Pick a Niche (a Target Market)

You will first need to choose the target market. You want to choose a niche that is going to have many offers available. You will need to browse through the Clickbank Marketplace and MaxBounty Offers, or whatever affiliate you utilize, to find the offers that you want to promote for them.

On Clickbank, you will want to look at the gravity icon next to the item, to determine whether this is a product selling or not.

On MaxBounty, check the average conversion rate to determine if this product is selling or not.

With each offer, you will see an EPC, which stands for Earning Per Click. This is going to be an average, thus you may not earn this every time. Thus, your conversion rate may be different from what you see. This is just meant as a way to get an idea of what you could earn.

These are a few examples of markets from which you could choose:

• Student: There are always student offers out there that you can choose from. For example, scholarship offers, student loans, coupons or the like. You could send out a newsletter to students with all the latest discounts, something that students would definitely sign up for.
• Gamers: There are several offers that are aimed at gamers, many of these are appearing on MaxBounty. Though the payout may be lower on these, they are relatively easy to promote among a network of gamers. For example, you can promote a new game coming to the market, in hopes of people clicking and buying this game.

There are several other niches out there that you can choose from, these are just to give you an example of all that you could do with one niche. As long as there are people out there looking at this offer or product, you have an audience to promote to.

It is not mandatory that you pick a niche you know about, yet this can be greatly helpful when you are convincing people why this is a product or offer they need. The more you know about something, the more likely you are to be believed and actually see returns from your time.

Next, What is Your Angle?

Why should people consider signing up for your list? The best way to answer these questions is to put yourself in the shoes of your consumer. What would make the person want to join your list?

Look at your approaches, and choose the one that best fits your abilities.

A few ideas include:

• A newsletter that has a “cause“, which sends out information that is going to get support for a cause. For example, a newsletter entitled “Make Poker Legal in the US” would send out regular updates on this cause, but may also include a coupon at the end for US players to play at an online site.
• A newsletter full of “discounts“, which has been repeatedly done, but it works, so it is something to consider. Offer your audience “hot deals” or “big discounts” on the products. There are several sites that do this on a large scale, such as Groupon or LivingSocial. Examine how these sites are doing this and replicate this on your scale. Those who sign up for these types of newsletters are looking for the advertisements, which is why this idea is so successful.
• A newsletter that is “information“, which sends out information on a subject regularly for the intents of educating. For example, if you were targeting poker players, a newsletter that includes playing tips or other information to help with their game is going to be appreciated.

There are so many ways in which you can do this, you just have to be creative and always keep your target audience in mind.

2. Set Up a Squeeze Page

This is where you set up your squeeze page. Luckily, there are several page templates for free that you can utilize.

A few to consider are:

• WordPress Squeeze Pages – 10 pages to choose from
• JetDigitals Squeeze Pages – has 20 free pages to choose from
• Video Squeeze Page – a squeeze page that is video

An example of how this would start:

I find that “Healthy Cooking” is the niche that I am interested in. I then see that MaxBounty has several offers that I could promote.

Now it is time to decide my “angle”.

I decided that offering a newsletter that is informative and puts me as an authority on the subject is the way to go. I decide to send out healthy recipes, tips, cooking ideas and the like with my offers blended into the information that I am providing.

A few examples of great squeeze pages that would entice people to sign up can be seen here.

Now that you have your landing page and are ready to add your link that is going to allow people to sign up with an email address to be included on your list, you will want to go to Aweber and click “Create a New List” in the “My Lists” section.

You will then fill in basic details such as your list name, description and the like. You will then need to set your confirmation email. This is the email that people receive once they have signed up to be a part of your list, which usually asks the person to confirm their subscription by clicking the link.

You can make this your own if you wish. However, do not spend a lot of time on this, this is just the signup, not the way in which you are getting people to try offers.

Once you have created this, hit the “Create a New Web Form”, in the “Web Forms” section, and simply play around with this until you have something you like. I personally just change the “Basic” template to include a bigger font for my squeeze pages.

You will then save your form, and click “I Will Install My Form” to get a form code that you will then copy and paste into your squeeze page.

3. Write Your Email

Once your squeeze page is set up, it is time to get to work on the series of emails that are going to have information, plus your offers throughout the email.

There is no need to stress out over this, as it is an easy process to complete, and there is no perfect way to do it. Simply set the email up and then later you can make adjustments where needed.

Pick 3 offers in your niche that are going to convert well.

With the healthy cooking example from before, I will choose a few offers from MaxBounty and Clickbank, then come up with 5 – 10 emails for newsletters that are going to blend in these offers.

With each of the 5 – 10 emails, I will include a recipe or a healthy eating tip. Do not stress about this, simply write as though you know what you are talking about, which is easier said when you know the niche you are in. Let people know that your email is meant to help them, rather than sell them things.

Once you have the initial emails set up and written, it is time to enter the “Follow Up Messages” section of Aweber and click “Create A New Follow Up Message”.

Look at the different graphic templates for use, but for most lists, I tend to use plain text. Plain text converts well, is more personable and it takes less time from my schedule to prepare it.

The first email that you put into this section is going to be sent to those who confirm their email address after signing up.

You can then choose how many days before another email is sent to those who are on your list after they sign up.

My recommendation on this is not to send more than one email per day and send more than one email per week.

If you overwhelm your subscribers with emails, you could get marked as Spam. Yet, not doing this enough could make people forget about your information and offers.

Once you have your email sequence complete, the only thing you now have to do is to get traffic to your squeeze page.

4. Drive Traffic to Your Squeeze Page

Without traffic to your page, it is impossible to get sales, thus, this is an important step.

Here are some quick ways in which you can start to get traffic to your squeeze page:

1. Forums: Find forums that are relevant to your nice, and stick a link to your post. If you are one of the first people to post in a new thread, then you are likely to get more traffic from this post. Look on Google for forums that are related to your niche.
2. Facebook: Build a page that is designated as your fan page with a logo and links to the newsletters that you have written. You can even set up an opt-in form on your Facebook page to recruit more leads.

3. Google+: Get invited via Google+ and make your own account to ensure that your URL is out there. You will then want to find profiles on Google+ that are related to your niche in order to gain more attention. More times than not, those who you like on Google+ are also going to like you in return. For example:

If you are looking at joining a gaming niche then almost anyone following this Minecraft profile post could be a follower of you since you have similar interests. The good news with Google+ is that it is extremely easy for people to share your material, thus you could see more traffic through this social media tool.

4. Niche Social Networks: There are tons of networks devoted to one sort of niche, and you should join these in order to find more people who may be interested in what you are offering. For example, a cooking niche can find social networks such as FoodPals.com or BakeSpace.com.

With these social networks, you want to join and get your profile and URL out there. The more you do this across the social network, the more likely you will see people finding you or at least interested in what you are posting about.

5. Newsgroups: There are several newsgroups that are meant to get the word out about what you are doing. Find a newspaper group within your niche and simply post a message about your latest squeeze page and information.

Already got traffic?

If you already have sites that drive in traffic, then create a list based on the niche of these websites. This is going to allow you to start seeing results almost instantly!

Those who have a huge number of subscribers do have the option to start ad swaps with other people with lists, in order to gain more attention, but this is a whole other topic to discuss at a later time.

The Bottom Line

Email marketing is a deal like no other. I mean, it’s like an on demand money making machine.

Once you build your list, you can promote it over and over again. You can even promote different products (though you should always only promote products related to what the subscribers originally subscribed for but that’s a topic for another day).

You can earn multiple commissions rather than just a one-time commission, which is why I love email marking as a way to make money.