As soon as you've built up a decent size list of subscribers and are providing them with a regular newsletter containing useful and interesting content, you'll be in a good position to start thinking about increasing the various ways to monetize your opt in email list.
While your main goal of an email newsletter is to provide useful content to your subscribers while quietly promoting your own business, once your list has reached several hundred or even several thousand subscribers (depending on the nature of your business), it's viable to start thinking about featuring other people's businesses and products in your newsletter and make money from doing so.
Below are 10 different ways you can monetize your opt in email list:
1. A quick way to make some extra money from your list is to feature other people's products in your newsletter. To do this, simply join affiliate programs and feature the company's products in your newsletter. Test the products and write well balanced and unbiased product reviews and editorials about the products.
2. Sell newsletter space for banner and classified ads. Banner ads will work with HTML formatted newsletters but not with plain text format. Classified ads will work in any newsletter format.
3. Set-up a section dedicated to book reviews and review books relevant to your business niche. Add affiliate links to the Amazon bookstore where your readers can find the books you're reviewing. This won't make you a lot of money, but it will contribute to your bottom line and provide interesting content for your readers.
4. Find other good quality newsletters in a similar niche to your own which has a good-sized list of subscribers and set up an article exchange. Send out one of his or her articles to your list and have him or her send out one of your articles to his or her list. This is a good way to leverage the value of your opt in email list without compromising the privacy of your readers.
5. If you have some old stock that you want to get rid of, offer it to your list first at fire sale prices.
6. If you sell a range of products, figure out a way to bundle them into packages and offer them at a discount to your list.
7. Offer a basic product which includes silver and gold upgrades. For example if you sell an information product, you can also offer an audio and video/d v * as silver and gold upgrade options.
8. Send your subscribers email alerts when there are new product releases, and offer special price reductions before releasing the new products to the general market. This makes your subscribers feel special and gives them an incentive to remain on your opt in email list and to continue reading your newsletter.
9. Set up special "thank you" pages for your newsletter customers so that when they buy a product from you, they'll be presented with an extra special discount offer on the backend.
10. Create an exclusive members' site for your newsletter subscribers for a way to gather together all your offers and make them available in a single place.
There are many ways that you can monetize your opt in email list, so it's worth making an effort to grow your list and build a solid relationship with your subscribers.