There is a secret to making money online that millionaires all over the world are using, and that is this - having a database of targeted people who you have regular contact with through a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly email newsletter (e-zine). There is two reasons for the success of this method. The first reason is that you now have a (hopefully) large targeted audience of people who are all interested in the same thing (for me I have an audience of people interested in finances). The second reason is that you have a database of people who trust you.

Targeted Audience

People want to market their product to an audience who they know wants to buy their product. This is what you are creating. You are creating a targeted audience from your niche (area of interest) that you yourself can market with your products (or affiliate products…click here to read more on affiliates). This also allows you an avenue to market other people’s products. People will often spend between $0.10 - $0.25 per person to send out an advertising email to your targeted audience. If you have 10,000 people subscribing to your newsletter then you can easily make between $1,000 - $2,500 for each email you send (and you could send about one per week)

Trusting Audience

Studies have shown that people are more likely to buy from someone they trust than someone they don’t know at all. If you have an audience who you have contact with each week then they will come to know you and trust you. When they trust you they are more likely to take your advice and buy things from you…then you can make some money.

Now that you know the benefits of building a database and sending out a weekly newsletter let me show you
How to Build a Weekly Newsletter:

Join a Database Service

Many hosting sites have database services built into them from which you can collect names and send emails however their options are limited and can often take a lot of time to manage. There are many services online which offer you easy management of your database and many options for sending emails.
I would recommend to steer clear of the free databases, because even though they are free, they are limited and also your database is owned by them (not you). YOU WANT TO OWN YOUR DATABASE! and on many of the free services you cannot transfer your database to another service. So sometimes it pays to pay.
I use a service called Constant Contact and I would recommend it to anyone.

Have a Signup Form On Your Website

Your website attracts people (known as traffic). Your goal is to somehow convert your traffic into subscribers of your newsletter. In order to do this you need to have a simple signup form on your website where people can sign up for your newsletter. Have a link of every page of your website to a ’sales page’ which pitches your newsletter and gives people a way to sign up. Your goal should be to get 10,000 names…with 10,000 names you can easily become a millionaire.

Give Away Something Free

This is one of the most effective tools to get people to sign up for your website. People love free things and will happily sign up to receive your newsletter to get whatever you are offering. I currently offer a free report on my website as a reward for signing up…hopefully soon I will offer something of more value for free (an e-book or an audio teaching cd)

Send a Weekly Newsletter

Now that you have people’s names you need to be in constant contact with them (I recommend once per week, some people send newsletters bi-weekly or monthly). Send them a newsletter relevant to the website they signed up from. Give away FREE information in these newsletters. I know…you might be thinking how can I make money by giving away things…but you will. Give your people great content that helps their lives, make your newsletter valuable to them so they look forward to reading it every week.

Not Too Bad, Not Too Good

Offer content that is valueable to the reader. The worst thing that you can have is an email where people delete it straight away because they know it is useless to them. So have good content
The next worse thing is for someone to ’save’ the email because the content is too long, or too good to read now. So offer them good content but content that is easy to read and not too valuable.

So now that you know how to get subscribers and how to send out a weekly email lets go through the thing you will really really want to know and that is

How to Make Money From a Weekly Newsletter:

Run Advertising

You can run advertising on your newsletter and charge people for the ads you put in their. You can put ads which are 2-5 lines long, or you could put simple classifieds in your newsletter. Depending on how many people you have as subscribers you can charge accordingly. I am not exactly sure on the amount you can charge for an advertisement as I have not done it myself yet. But ask around and see.

Tip: Try to charge at a higher rate first. It is easier to lower your rate as you bargain than to raise your rate

Sell Affiliates

Instead of getting other’s to advertise their products and make lots of money on sales, why not advertise people’s products for them and then take a commission for each sale? ClickBank offers up to 75% commissions for those who refer people a product and make a sale.

This can often make you more money when you start off. For example I made $80 from selling affiliate programs but only made under $1 in my first 2 months of my website.

Send Solo Ads

I spoke about this before when we talked about a target audience. People will pay you often between $0.10-$0.25 per person to send out advertising emails to the people on your database. If you have 10,000 people then you could quite easily make $1,000-$2,500 from one email…couldn’t you?

There are many websites out there that offer this service to you (renting your database out) and to those wishing to send the emails.

Sell Your Own Products

Selling your own products is a great way to both make money and to build your database. If you have an audience that know and trust you then you can fairly easily sell an e-book or an audio teaching series. Why not offer your subscribers a discount just for them (and for this week only) to increase your sales.

Helpful Tips:

• Make sure you grab the name and contact details of every person who buys your product so you can send them your newsletter each week.
• Give people a commission for selling your product, then you are not just limited to your database but you are unlimited.

So this is the secret to becoming a millionaire: Having a database of 10,000 and having regular contact with them to offer them FREE information and to advertise your products, affiliate products and other people’s products to make an income.