Monetizing email traffic (6)

Hello Everyone, this is my first post.

I used the search function and read some pretty good threads. I joined because cpakingdom recommended this forum highly. In other forums, there is too much noise, too many trolls, and too much useless info to read through in order to find good info. Who has time to read 100-page threads?

Why I am here: I would like to get some ideas on monetizing my mailing list. My list consists of 5 million high quality emails, all pretty affluent, well above average in income, IQ, etc. This is not a list scraped off the web. It is a legitimate list where people signed up. I cannot reveal the source (it's from a previous business) but the list is pure gold. These are people with a lot of purchasing power.

Does anyone here dabble in high volume email traffic? Please share your experience here.

Set up: My current set up is interspire + SendGrid, but it looks like Amazon SES is much cheaper. Could anyone please comment on their set up?

Lastly, what kind of offer would you run, and what network would you sign up for?

Thanks!

Hey _mcr_,

I'm not an expert on this as I'm still in the nooby aweber stage but I guess you'd at least have to reveal the niche those 5 million subscribers are in or else people will be having a hard time suggesting you offers to run.

For the sake of an example, let's say your affluent and intelligent subscribers are in the golfing niche. You aren't limited to CPA offers here (probably difficult finding something for golfing except a gaming offer or maybe some kind of membership/lead-gen) but could also sell them courses/guides to improve their swing (ebooks, "home study courses" in form of a dvd set etc. - clickbank) or all sorts of golfing equipment or even tickets to certain golfing events (ecommerce - commission junction, shareasale, linkshare).

On top of that, you might also want to segment your list into 2 sections (standard subscribers and subscribers that already bought something from/through you, as these are worth more and will probably buy again). This doesn't monetize anything but it will give you a better understanding of the value of your list, which you could then use again to estimate prices for advertising spots in your newsletter (read below).

Another option would be to offer other advertisers to purchase solo-mailings or email ads. So they pay you either on a flat rate for a certain amount of your subscribers or on a CPM basis to mail out offers for them (you'd screen them before to check if their offers are legit etc.) or if you send out newsletters frequently, you could show their ads in a certain section of the newsletter. With 5 million subscribers you have a lot of leverage here to offer advertising.

Not sure about your "big advertising campaigns" but if you already have so many affluent subscribers on your list, it might make sense to create your own high-ticket products (think $2k-$10k per customer). A huge home-study course with a bazillion of dvd's, guides, booklets and what not would come to mind, or an advanced software (pay $10k once to outsource development, then charge monthly for access or a high one-time fee) but again, this would depend on what kind of niche your subscribers are in.

Again, depending on the niche of your list, you could also create some CPA offers yourself and then plug a coreg path behind. Since your subscribers are more on the intelligent end of the spectrum though, they might not "fall" for stuff like gift cards etc. so you'd need to presell the coreg in a different way which depends on your niche again

Sorry that most of this stuff was very general but I hope it gave you a few ideas.

Hey thanks for your reply.

Originally Posted by alex_b

Another option would be to offer other advertisers to purchase solo-mailings or email ads.

Originally Posted by alex_b

A huge home-study course with a bazillion of dvd's, guides, booklets and what not would come to mind, or an advanced software (pay $10k once to outsource development, then charge monthly for access or a high one-time fee) but again, this would depend on what kind of niche your subscribers are in.

Pm sent.......

Looking at amazon ses terms seems like they only allow 50 emails per send and 10,000 max per 24 hours at first.

Originally Posted by theguvna

Pm sent.......

Looking at amazon ses terms seems like they only allow 50 emails per send and 10,000 max per 24 hours at first.

Originally Posted by _mcr_

Hello Everyone, this is my first post.

I used the search function and read some pretty good threads. I joined because cpakingdom recommended this forum highly. In other forums, there is too much noise, too many trolls, and too much useless info to read through in order to find good info. Who has time to read 100-page threads?

Why I am here: I would like to get some ideas on monetizing my mailing list. My list consists of 5 million high quality emails, all pretty affluent, well above average in income, IQ, etc. This is not a list scraped off the web. It is a legitimate list where people signed up. I cannot reveal the source (it's from a previous business) but the list is pure gold. These are people with a lot of purchasing power.

Does anyone here dabble in high volume email traffic? Please share your experience here.

Set up: My current set up is interspire + SendGrid, but it looks like Amazon SES is much cheaper. Could anyone please comment on their set up?

Lastly, what kind of offer would you run, and what network would you sign up for?

Thanks!

PS: If you have any other comments relating to monetizing an email list, please share here also.

PPS: Some people might read this and think, oh this guy has all these emails and experience and is asking basic questions about CPA? Well, yes I am. All my previous experience in email marketing involves big advertising campaigns, and I used a sophisticated revenue engine to manage the campaigns. It's a different game with different tools.

I look forward to reading replies, and making some new friends here!