Alright, now you have followed my articles before and now it is time to start banking off of that list, right? Hold up, playa. You need to approach this the right way. Here is how I look at a fresh email list.

Imagine your email list is a woman (or man). How do you approach a potential partner? Do you dive right in and try to get them straight to the bedroom? Of course not! Well, at least I hope not. But anyways, this is what I mean.

You need to take your approach slowly and build a relationship so that your potential mate trusts you. You need to do the same thing with your email lists. If you starting hard selling immediately, your opt-out list will be just like a slap in the face. Not what you want when you spent all that time getting your list ready to go and gathering precious emails.

Alright, so now that we know that we need to be smooth and use some charm to get what we want, how do we do that? Give more stuff away! Start a daily or weekly newsletter to your email list. Give away a free e-book, scripts, tips on whatever or some great coupons you have found, or a combo of them all. Don’t directly link to any of your stuff for about the first month or so. If you are going to link to a site, make sure it is a content site that has real value and not a lander. A lander will get you opt-outs too very fast.

After a month or so of good quality newsletter, you should have a solid user base that is starting to trust you as a source of good information. Now, it is time to start making some money off of them. Now, don’t ruin your credibility by sending out an email template from your favorite affiliate network. No, you still need to send out a good newsletter, just now you want to start to drop the seeds of the product you are pushing. A good example would be to do the following with your email:

Say I am sending out a diet email. Here is a basic sample. Don’t use this exactly, expand on it, as it is just a base sample and not good sales copy.

Post an article of a famous person losing weight and how they did it in your email. Then, after that, say something like:

Can you believe that they did that? They make it look so easy at times that it makes anyone sick. One thing professionals recommend is some type of jump start for your diet. Most people have a hard time starting out, as they don’t have the energy or the self-control to start the diet. Something like DIETPILL(this is your affiliate product, send it to a review site, not a lander) is way to jump start the diet process, as it helps give you energy and blah, blah, you get the drift. Just don’t pour it on too heavy.

The beauty of these email lists is that you built trust and you can recommend them to products and they don’t know it. It is subtle or soft selling, and it is done every day in life. Why not utilize it in your newsletters?

Now, you might be thinking, while this is great, after awhile, won’t they know I am pushing these products? Maybe, but not if you do it the right way. Plus, with the market that we have for almost every niche, the new products that you can talk about is almost endless. It is just about selling your current customers, retaining them after they bought, adding new to the list and limiting the amount of opt-outs. If you can keep your newsletter growing every month while increasing your income, then you of course are on the right track.

A bit of legal reminders here. Don’t forget about CAN-SPAM act when mailing out. Basically, you need to provide a way to opt-out online and offline, which means having an opt-out form online and your business’ physical contact information. If you are worried about privacy, just get a P.O. Box. Also, don’t just scrape emails or buy huge lists for a couple of bucks, because I guarantee you they are not opted-in. Make sure record them opting-in so that you cover your butt. And if they opt-out, make sure you don’t mail them. Finally, if you are running an affiliate offer, to be on the safe side, make sure to run your database against the network’s scrub list. That way, you cover your butt and no one can give you any reason to sue you or hold back your commissions.

That is the basics! Pretty simple, really, once you get the hang of it. Once you get going, it is really easy to stay up with and write the emails. You almost get to know your audience and writing to them is almost like talking to a friend. Once you get to that stage, you will be more successful, as the emails won’t sound as canned either.

Next post will be the finale and it is how you can get even more money out of your list without changing a single thing! You don’t want to miss this one, I promise.