I’ve been doing a little research. Research that revealed how you and I can do our business even better–and stay on the right side of the Internet police.
Most of us use email to send people our newsletters, tell them about products we think will benefit them and to keep in touch. From our perspective, the emails we send are beneficial, informative and profitable.
The recipients usually refer to it as S—- (I can’t use the actual word here or it might just trip one of those filter things and you won’t ever see this! Suffice to say it is another word for unwanted email sent from a business. And it starts with an “S”, has a “M” at the end and “PA” in the middle.)
In researching this I had two questions I wanted answers to:
1. How can I make sure my emails meet all of the legal requirements for each state?
2. What is the most profitable method of utilizing my list?
I was amazed at the answers I found.
For instance, did you know that in some states you are required to have certain letters in the subject line of your email or you are violating the law? Or that attorneys who use email have different requirements than others?
I took my legal research and reduced it to a group of “rules” that, if followed, will keep you from violating the laws of any individual state. While I don’t claim to offer you legal advice–hire an attorney for that–these should keep you on the good side of the law (for now). You can get your own copy of these rules here:
http://www.All-In-One-Business.com/emailrules
Now onto question two…
There are basically two sources of income from a newsletter list: Selling ads and selling products. Some people do one, some people do the other, some people do both.
Here are the results I found from polling several email newsletter publishers about their income per subscriber:
HIGHEST INCOME: 5+ cents per subscriber per month.
SELLING PERSONALLY PRODUCED PRODUCTS COUPLED WITH A FEW HIGHLY TARGETED AFFILIATE OFFERS
If you have your own products, this is the way to go. It is the path I take as well as the path Corey Rudl, Jim Daniels, Marlon Sanders and a host of others take.
This works well because it builds the credibility of the owner which increases readership as well as responsiveness.
NEXT HIGHEST INCOME: 2-4 cents per subscriber per month.
SELLING A SMALL NUMBER OF HIGHLY TARGETED AFFILIATE PRODUCTS FOR WHICH YOU RECEIVE A COMMISSION
Allan Gardyne is one of the best examples of this: He recommends a different affiliate product every month or two using a series of informative articles.
This works because the high-quality content of the ezine gives Allan respect so his recommendations generate for him high response rates.
SOME INCOME: .5 – 1 cent per subscriber per month.
SELLING ADVERTISING SPACE IN A LARGE EZINE
This is effective for ezines which are LARGE (25K or more) and have high-quality content. Smaller ezines have trouble making this work well, though they may have much more responsive lists on a “per subscriber” basis.
LOWEST INCOME: Less than .5 cents per subscriber per month.
SELLING NUMEROUS AFFILIATE PRODUCTS
This is really no surprise. People stop reading emails from people who bombard them with ads. Recommendations don’t mean much when the “recommender” changes their opinion of the “latest greatest” thing each week.
If you take these results seriously, you can see there are a number of ways to increase your income. The best course of action is to:
(1) Provide a high-quality newsletter with original content.
(2) Limit recommendations to those products which are well targeted to your subscriber base
The newsletters that follow this plan produce the greatest return for the time, effort and resources invested.
Kevin Bidwell is owner of
http://www.All-In-One-Business.com/cg-bin/at.cgi?a=274293
Kevin just finished a complete report on building a passive
income. Grab your copy here:
http://www.All-In-One-Business.com/cg-bin/at.cgi?a=274293&e=/pi
