by Lane on August 22, 2009
Every time I send an email out, I make money – both directly from ads/affiliate offers that I insert into the emails as a minor part of the emails and then from the rush of traffic that I get from the hits of people coming to my sites to read about the things I’ve linked to.
On days when I send a newsletter, my AdSense earnings nearly double from normal and residual affiliate earnings pick up as well.
I absolutely love Aweber. It now costs me $149/mo to maintain the service, but my list is so large that I earn $100-$200 with every email that I send (and I send out several per month). I expect this to continue to scale in an exponential fashion.
I started out only paying $19/mo (actually, I think the first month was a free trial) and easily made that back from the small list the first month out of the box.
If you have any doubts about using an email service, you need to check those at the door and sign up for a service like Aweber. They have a solid FAQ and Help section (as well as a blog of their own) to help you get going. I did a lot of reading in those sections in the beginning and still have a bit to learn; however, it wasn’t too hard to really get my list growing and more than covering the cost of the service.
Using the pop-over / pop-up (or whatever it’s called) for first time visitors to your site is key. I’ve been experiencing about a 2-3% conversion rate on it, which helps grow my list at a rate of 40-80 or so per day. Do the math and you see how fast you can get a few thousand emails on your subscriber list.
Once you get set up, you just need to provide the same quality content to subscribers that they are used to on your site and you’ll keep their attention. I like to link back to my blogs a lot so that I can get eyeballs on my site and get some AdSense ads clicked.
For some reason, email subscribers love to click on AdSense links. I think there may be a connection on a willingness to click a link. Obviously, an email subscriber has clicked on a link to get to my site and they’re already in “click mode”. Putting AdSense in prominent locations (test them to find out what position is best for you site), lends to a better CTR (click through rate) for these email subscribers as well – or so my hypothesis goes…
Of all the “sure things” that come and go on the blogosphere, email marketing is still huge. While I’ve barely scratched the surface with this post, there’s a lot of potential to make real money with email lists and newsletters. I can already cover my car payment with email marketing alone after just a few months.
Aweber makes it easy and I can’t say enough good things about them. I have rarely posted affiliate links on this site and will only do so if I really believe in a product or service. Aweber is one I believe in and I’d recommend them even if I wasn’t using an affiliate link to their site. So, yeah I would recommend that you go to Aweber right now and sign up for their awesome service and start making some real money from your highly targeted audience.
by Lane on August 2, 2009
Here’s my blogging revenue report for July 2009.
Amazon (all countries) – $1524.32
Google AdSense – $1017.64
Other Revenue Sources – $1216.81
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Grand Total for July 2009 – $3758.77
Ouch!
Amazon’s still cruising pretty good at $1500+ and other affiliate programs are doing ok. There’s one in particular that has been providing excellent support with direct, hands-on contact with me. I’ve seen the earnings from that program increase from under $100/mo back in April to over $450 for July.
My CPM network is nowhere near as consistent as I would like them to be. This month was under 10% the earnings that I made from it back in April. They’re just not getting the ad buys. If they were doing what they should be, I’d be in the $5k-$6k range.
I think my biggest problem though comes down to traffic and scaling my niche. My largest site has been on a plateau for several months now. If I’m growing, it’s only marginal.
I feel like I have optimized earnings pretty well from the traffic levels that I’m getting. So I know I need to scale up. And, that means I need more focus and energy directed toward producing quality content and engaging my audiences.
In addition to traffic on my sites, I’m going to continue to do some email list building. I’ve just began to realize the potential that email lists have on earning capacity. I plan to do some posting on this in the future. But, I’ve been using the Aweber email service to grow my email lists and newsletters. It works great (oh, man it works great!) and more than pays for itself.
Here’s my blogging revenue report for June 2009.
Amazon (all countries) – $1818.32
Google AdSense – $1091.04
Other Revenue Sources – $1863.96
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Grand Total for June 2009 - $4773.32
The big hole in the “other” category is from a $1500 drop in CPM ad buys. I don’t know what really happened this month, but I sent inquiry email to my ad network manager to see where the money went. Otherwise, I would’ve broken the $6k mark this month.
All other income sources saw another month of steady increases.
I added another source of income this month as well. I sent an advertisement / sales offer to one of my email lists for a flat rate. That worked nice and I didn’t receive any lashback from my subscribers. It was easy money and I’ll be looking for more opportunities like that in the future.
Weblog Tools Collection has posted a great little checklist to use when setting up a new Wordpress installation.
While I have my own checklist that I’ve developed over the years, this is a pretty good list that also expounds upon the “why” for each task. Just thought I’d pass it along.
Check it out here.
Here’s my blogging revenue report for May 2009.
Amazon (all countries) – $1875.32
Google AdSense – $780.46
Other Revenue Sources – $2477.36
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Grand Total for May 2009 - $5133.14
This was the best month that I’ve had since December 2008. Amazon and my CPM banners carried the day. Both were close to $2k earnings each. AdSense and affiliate programs made up the last $1300 or so.
I can’t really point to anything that I did to make earnings surge past the $5k mark this month. I have a suspicion that consumer spending is coming back though. Based on some of the affiliate product trends, it seems that people are more willing to drop some cash on nonessential products, particularly consumer electronics.
Consumer spending appeared to be down over the winter months, which hit pretty hard back around the first of the year. I think January had a little residual effect from the holidays left over and February was my worst month in a while.
Advertiser spending seems to be coming back too. It was nice to see nearly $2k come in from CPM ad buys on my main site. I think the resurgence in consumer spending directly affects advertisers’ willingness to push their marketing. Hopefully, this trend will continue as well.
If consumer and advertiser spending is making a comeback, that’s a good sign for the second half of 2009, which should help me find a month where I can finally break the $10,000/mo earnings mark.
Here’s my blogging revenue report for April 2009.
Amazon (all countries) – $996.81
Google AdSense – $544.82
Other Revenue Sources – $3148.55
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Grand Total for April 2009 - $4690.18
Here’s my blogging revenue report for March 2009.
Amazon (all countries) – $989.06
Google AdSense – $755.87
Other Revenue Sources – $1819.08
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Grand Total for March 2009 - $3564.01
Well, it was certainly a better month than last month in terms of revenue and traffic. While I’m not thrilled with the current numbers, I’m pleased with some recent relationships I’ve developed among a variety of niches. I believe that over the last few weeks I have increased the status of my primary blog to a more authoritative one based on some higher profile linkbacks and comments from others in the industry in which it is focused.
I’m not sure what’s going to happen with my revenue over the next few months. Late last year, I was sure it would keep going up and up. Over the past few months though, I’ve seen effects of the economic decline across a variety of advertising platform. PPC rates for average CPM have dropped by almost half since Fall ‘08. Affiliate earnings in my primary niche are down due to lack of big-ticket purchases.
Don’t think I’m stopping though. I am motivated, perhaps more so than ever. I consider the hiccups in revenue over the past few months as just that – hiccups. I consider myself quite blessed with these blogs that produce a significant monthly revenue. I’ve had full time jobs in the past that pay much less than I get out of blogging 10-20 hours a week. I’m going to continue pushing hard in the evenings and weekends to get to a six figure income.
Here’s my blogging revenue report for February 2009.
Amazon (all countries) – $763.15
Google AdSense – $646.52
Other Revenue Sources – $1291.87
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Grand Total for February 2009 - $2691.54
I don’t have much to add about February. Worst month in a long time. Meh.