How to Make More Money from Blogging with a List

A while ago I made a post about why building a list of your blog readers is a good idea. Now I want to continue the topic and post some tips of how to actually make money from that list.

Some of these tips might be obvious, others not so much. So how does list building help a blog make more money?

First of all, you have to understand one thing and always keep it in mind. A list is not just a collection of emails, it’s the means to maintain a relationship with your readers. And it’s all about that relationship.

See, your blog has different types of readers – some are your die hard fans who can’t wait to read your next post, others are occasional readers that might read your blog once in a while, and there are those who will only read your blog once or twice and forget about it.

A list is a tool to turn all your readers into die hard fans. Of course, it’s an art in itself and the actual increase in fans will vary, but it helps to create and keep that relationship nonetheless.

But that still doesn’t answer the question how it makes money. Some bloggers have tons of very active fans but only make but a few bucks here and there from some ads. Relationship with your readers doesn’t make you money, you actually have to “cash in on it”.

Now, I don’t mean hitting people with affiliate offer after offer over and over again like a broken record. That’s a sure way to lose all your readers even if it makes you some money at first. And it just amazes me how some marketers do just that. It’s like they have an endless source of leads to feed their list faster than it burns out. That’s not my idea of a sustainable business anyway.

No, you can make money by honestly helping people. And here are the promised tips:

• A list is a source of traffic, it’s as simple as that. You know you need a traffic, so you should know you need a list too. Still some people don’t seem to understand that! Whenever you want to direct your readers’ attention to your blog, send them an email.
• Notify your subscribers about an interesting post you’ve just made, or send a regular summary of posts (weekly, monthly, etc.). It seemingly duplicates an RSS feed and may seem redundant, but the matter of fact is that RSS feeds don’t give you a chance to initiate the communication – the subscribers have to be reading your feed and people who do that daily are still few and far between (depending on your niche, of course).

  Emails on the other hand are being read every day by most people and so are your post notifications. That’s a great way to increase your traffic on demand, and thus increase your ad clicks, affiliate sales and whatever monetization methods you use on your blog.

• Chances are you’re using some products that are relevant to what you’re blogging about – be it Internet marketing, web design, gardening, knitting, or just a personal blog. This is a huge opportunity to make some affiliate commissions by simply writing a review of those products and sending your subscribers to it.

  The reason why I like sending subscribers to a review rather than pushing them to buy a product is quite obviously because it’s a soft sell. That is, you’re not insisting them to buy but rather just talk about your experience with the product and hope someone gets interested enough to buy. And they will, if they trust you and the product is relevant to them.

• And finally, an obvious one – your own products. If you have something to sell, sell it. Your list is also your customer list, and will buy your products because they know you and trust you. Once again, it comes back to the relationship and how you built it and maintain it.

I’ll stop now as this post is getting lengthy, but I will post more tips about on this topic in the future.