How can I use my e-mail list? About 25K subscribers - All college students

[jayabraham]

Hello forum.

Through a few squeeze pages, I have been adding about 5,000 email subscribers every month. Now the niche that I am in is college students currently enrolled at a major 4 year University here in the States. The reason I building my list in this niche is because I have been marketing various affiliate offers to college students since 2005 through banners.

Now, I have been reading some chatter about making $1 per subscriber in your email list per month. That rate primarily focuses around lists with IM subscribers. I, on the other hand, am currently make less than 1 cent per subscriber. Granted I send out only 2 emails a month. But even if I increase that number to 8-10 emails a month, I'd probably make 5 cents per subscriber.

My question is ------ What can I do to increase the amount I make per subscriber? Just because its not IM, should the discrepancy be that high!? Maybe college students just don't have the money to spend on offers and hence there the earnings per subscriber will always be low.

Currently, I am sending affiliate zip submit and email submit offers. I tried ClickBank, but that barely converts for me even though I send only targeted products.

Anyone that can help? Solo Ads, Safe Swap - Will that work?

I have thought about starting an Edu link building service since all these students have access to .edu blogs. Is that a good plan?

I can keep building my list with 5000 new monthly subscribers every month for a long time to come. However, I don't see the point in putting in all the time and efforts if I cannot squeeze enough juice out of the list.

Any help is much appreciated!

Thanks.

 

[UrsuAke]

Send me a PM with your niche and the interests of your email list users. The interest is important as hell so if you don't know it I'll share a method of finding out. For free, I don't want your money. I won't share it here yet.

 

[jayabraham]

Send me a PM with your niche and the interests of your email list users. The interest is important as hell so if you don't know it I'll share a method of finding out. For free, I don't want your money. I won't share it here yet.

Hey there. I can post my niche and interests here. Sending you a Test PM as well so you can send me your method.

I run a few websites in the college student space that deal with various college student verticals - internships, housing, food, loans, etc. Through them, I promote scholarship offers. In return for a chance to win $1000, students give me their contact details.

Niche wise - all are 100% college/university students.

Interest wise - its mixed up. All I know is that they are all 18-24 year old students currently in college. That can help extrapolate a few interests such as internships/full time jobs, resume building, speed reading, fashion, textbooks, etc. Another commonality is that most are broke, so Cash Loans would be another interest. I don't know of any interest that is universal to my entire group like IM would be universal to subscribers of an Internet Marketing list.

I know quite a bit about this demographic. Problem is that I still don't make enough money out of the list.

 

[danny1]

That can help extrapolate a few interests such as internships/full time jobs, resume building, speed reading, fashion, textbooks, etc.

Try CPA job related offers, e.g. to those students in their final year.

Another commonality is that most are broke, so Cash Loans would be another interest....
I know quite a bit about this demographic. Problem is that I still don't make enough money out of the list.

Limited spending power means that you have limited choices on what you can offer. One idea is to create a product that they would be interested in that's free or cheap to use.

 

[jayabraham]

Try CPA job related offers, e.g. to those students in their final year.

So like a Resume Creation CPA offer via Share-a-Sale?
I have looked in plenty of Affiliate Networks. Did not really find too many good job related CPA offers. Any ideas?

Limited spending power means that you have limited choices on what you can offer. One idea is to create a product that they would be interested in that's free or cheap to use.

Im not sure what you mean. Could you throw out some actual examples to help me understand?

Thanks.

 

[StopWhiningAlready]

Just sent you a PM.

 

[mike2468]

Is your list targeted to certain universities or all over the country?

 

[jayabraham]

Is your list targeted to certain universities or all over the country?

Mike. My subscriber data is from all over the country. I also have access to some other school specific data.

 

[mike2468]

If you can narrow it down to school specific data (should be easy to do with software since most students use student email addresses) I would approach local businesses that cater to students, mainly food establishments, and offer the marketing services or to sell them the email list. Personally, I am a big fan of using online marketingt to make money offline. I am mainly involved in club promotion and have used online methods with great success. These methods obviously require you to have a very targeted list by school or geographic area.

 

[jayabraham]

If you can narrow it down to school specific data (should be easy to do with software since most students use student email addresses) I would approach local businesses that cater to students, mainly food establishments, and offer the marketing services or to sell them the email list. Personally, I am a big fan of using online marketingt to make money offline. I am mainly involved in club promotion and have used online methods with great success. These methods obviously require you to have a very targeted list by school or geographic area.

Thanks for the suggestion Mike. I just feel it might be a little challenging to bring business owners on board. And the time taken to do the business development might not facilitate the necessary returns. If I had the entire school's database, that was a different story. But with just a few 100 students per school, it might be tough. I'll look into it a little bit more...

 

[mike2468]

Agreed. You would definitely need a large database at a specific school to make it profitable.

 

[CEPI]

If you have the ability to separate by city or zip code that could help you put together an offline/online hybrid deal.

Go to a local bar/club owner (not the hottest one, but one that needs business) tell them you have an opted in list of college kids and you would be willing to advertise a special, or promote a night of drinking. Then you ether have to strike a deal to earn on the cover charge which would require a list. Or you can just ask them what an average (whatever day you promote) say a wednesday night, see how much his average wednesday night pull is at the bar. Then say that everything he makes OVER his average for that night you get 25% of gross.

So maybe a wednesday he does $2,500 at a small bar. So you promote to the local, get him a $4,500 wednesday night. $2,000 over his average. You get 25% - $500. Multiplied by several cities. Could be good money.

BIG PROBLEM THOUGH: Is that if you aren't there to see things for yourself, very few owners will be honest and pay you.

But if anyone wants to build this method to their local university its just as easy to post in CL that you are hiring college students, or people aged 21 - 25 for a position and build a college list locally. Promote drinking spots, hiring sub-promotion, social media and before you know it. You have a promotion and event company. OK so there are a few steps between but I didn't want to write a long guide right now.

 

[jayabraham]

If you have the ability to separate by city or zip code that could help you put together an offline/online hybrid deal.

Thanks for the detailed response. I once again feel it will be trying to do too much with too little. There are at most a couple hundred names per school. Plus these are e-mails we are talking about. Response rate will be drastically low. Under 10 people would respond to a local deal. And the hours it would take to set up that local deal. It will be a very challenging business to manage. Till the list grows to 10 times its current size, I don't think going local is an option.

One option that came to me via a PM to this post suggested creating a platform to showcase funky and rad products like a fire extinguisher lighter, beer bottle chandelier, magic wand remote, etc. from amazon and the other vendors with affiliate programs. Make it like a Groupon for college kids where they only buy online through your affiliate links. Send out an email every few days showcasing a new product. Eventually once the list grows out over the next year or two, start selling products directly and then start including local products into the mix as well.

Its very important to me to be able to execute any plan of action within my limited resources.

Besides the local/online-offline hybrid options, do we have any more suggestions?

Thanks.

 

[toolbar1]

You can advertise for graduate programs as well as online schools. You can advertise for Prep exams and I'll tell you what the number 1 winner would be. Get you a good freelance writer and advertise to write papers for them because lets face it. There's too many papers to write in college anyway. The last one is plagerism so maybe not the best idea but you could sell them language programs or even work out a deal with Russians and ship a few over there. They like American girls.

 

[jayabraham]

You can advertise for graduate programs as well as online schools. You can advertise for Prep exams and I'll tell you what the number 1 winner would be. Get you a good freelance writer and advertise to write papers for them because lets face it. There's too many papers to write in college anyway. The last one is plagerism so maybe not the best idea but you could sell them language programs or even work out a deal with Russians and ship a few over there. They like American girls.

Hahaha. I like the Russian plan the best.

Both prep exam and paper writer ideas seem solid. Though one small problem -- how many times can I really advertise prep exams. Once a month probably.
Then again once a month for Papers. Or I could join an affiliate program like Superior Papers and let them do the hard work of managing writers, meeting deadlines and managing payments. Lesser cut, but scalable.

This way if i can find 5-6 executable plans, I can have at least 5-6 newsletters going out every month. This should definitely start having a positive impact on my numbers.

Thanks.

Would love to hear some more options...I have access to developers, writers, SEO guys -- all in house.

 

[jayabraham]

You can advertise for graduate programs as well as online schools.

I missed that part earlier. I would love to market graduate programs especially since I know when students in my subscriber base are going to graduate from undergraduate school. Problem is making direct connections with say a UCLA Masters program will take a lot of effort.

Can anyone suggest any intermediaries who have access to the graduate programs at established Universities and would want me to generate leads for them?