[Email] Journey to Banking Hard with Email Lists

frizenking said:

You earn a good amount of money,considering how little subscribers you have in you list,so what's the issue?
Even if you are not able to monetize the list by means other than adsense,it's still generating revenue,isn't it?

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The earnings aren't coming from the email lists. They're all coming from new and returning visitors to my site. Earnings went up substantially when I stopped collecting email addresses.

QueenAnnesRevenge said:

The earnings aren't coming from the email lists. They're all coming from new and returning visitors to my site. Earnings went up substantially when I stopped collecting email addresses.

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Are not that returning visitors from your lists? Or did they just stumble upon your website on google?

frizenking said:

Are not that returning visitors from your lists? Or did they just stumble upon your website on google?

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Some of them would have found my site through google. Others visited initially from my classified ads and are returning to see if there are new properties listed. About 85% of my traffic is new.

QueenAnnesRevenge said:

Some of them would have found my site through google. Others visited initially from my classified ads and are returning to see if there are new properties listed. About 85% of my traffic is new.

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So,are the lists useless to you?
BTW,what your average open rate and link CTR were?

frizenking said:

So,are the lists useless to you?
BTW,what your average open rate and link CTR were?

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Not necessarily useless, but I make much less money collecting emails and trying to get them to come back to the site than I do just throwing ads in their face from the start. I do wonder if @GringoMonkey is right though and in the long-term I would eventually make more money.

Opens and clicks drop with each email. But the last email I sent I got about 20% open and 8% clicks.

QueenAnnesRevenge said:

Not necessarily useless, but I make much less money collecting emails and trying to get them to come back to the site than I do just throwing ads in their face from the start. I do wonder if @GringoMonkey is right though and in the long-term I would eventually make more money.

Opens and clicks drop with each email. But the last email I sent I got about 20% open and 8% clicks.

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I'm looking for a way to earn some start up cash for my other ventures, did starting this cost you anything or did you do everything for free? Perhaps i missed this, sorry if you've answered already.

Also, perhaps there is an important tip or a definite no-no i should avoid? Thanks!

ogretardo said:

I'm looking for a way to earn some start up cash for my other ventures, did starting this cost you anything or did you do everything for free? Perhaps i missed this, sorry if you've answered already.

Also, perhaps there is an important tip or a definite no-no i should avoid? Thanks!

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This can be done for free using any of the free hosts. But you will do better if you can afford a domain and hosting. I already had a domain and hosting so I didn't count them in my costs.

Important tips...don't spam craigslist too hard

@QueenAnnesRevenge I have one question,you stated that you got 8% CTR,that's great number in any way,but I wonder is that percentage calculated from the total subscribers amount you have in your lists or the ones who opened your email?

QueenAnnesRevenge said:

Not necessarily useless, but I make much less money collecting emails and trying to get them to come back to the site than I do just throwing ads in their face from the start. I do wonder if @GringoMonkey is right though and in the long-term I would eventually make more money.

Opens and clicks drop with each email. But the last email I sent I got about 20% open and 8% clicks.

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If you don't understand HOW you can make real long term money from a list then you probably don't quite understand the business you are in. You get a decent click through rate, so what are your viewers clicking through to? That is more likely how you will make real long term money in your business.

frizenking said:

@QueenAnnesRevenge I have one question,you stated that you got 8% CTR,that's great number in any way,but I wonder is that percentage calculated from the total subscribers amount you have in your lists or the ones who opened your email?

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That's the click through of total emails sent. Clicks per open is more like 40-60%.

GringoMonkey said:

If you don't understand HOW you can make real long term money from a list then you probably don't quite understand the business you are in. You get a decent click through rate, so what are your viewers clicking through to? That is more likely how you will make real long term money in your business.

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They're clicking through to view houses on the site. So naturally I would make a ton more money selling solos to realtors and landlords, the problem is I can't find anyone who wants to advertise. They all want referrals which they say they will pay on if and when they close.

How do I convince realtors, or landlords, or builders to pay to advertise to my list?

QueenAnnesRevenge said:

They're clicking through to view houses on the site. So naturally I would make a ton more money selling solos to realtors and landlords, the problem is I can't find anyone who wants to advertise. They all want referrals which they say they will pay on if and when they close.

How do I convince realtors, or landlords, or builders to pay to advertise to my list?

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Well your trying to sell advertising but they are offering you a commission type deal.

You just have to look at your business differently... How much commission would you make if they buy a house v click a link?

socialmediapro999 said:

Going to follow this journey! Really interesting.

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Thanks!

GringoMonkey said:

Well your trying to sell advertising but they are offering you a commission type deal.

You just have to look at your business differently... How much commission would you make if they buy a house v click a link?

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A referral commission would be around $700. If I had been selling solo ads to these lists I could have also made about $700 by now. Of course both are hypothetical since I haven't received a commission or sold a solo ad. So we should also compare that to what I've actually earned from Adsense which is $254 now.

QueenAnnesRevenge said:

Thanks!


A referral commission would be around $700. If I had been selling solo ads to these lists I could have also made about $700 by now. Of course both are hypothetical since I haven't received a commission or sold a solo ad. So we should also compare that to what I've actually earned from Adsense which is $254 now.

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Your misunderstanding your business as I said in a previous message.

It happens a lot online, people know how to drive traffic or they know how to make money, but seldom both.

The reason why people are coming to your site is you are promising them something.

The reason they are bouncing through without coming back is because you are not adding value.

To make big money you have to add value or drive millions of traffic that bounces through. And to make mega money you need to do both.

You need to determine where you fit, but typically your sweet spot is somewhere in between.

So, you need to build a sales funnel that recognizes where you fit.

Now it is impossible to tell you without seeing your site and understanding the process with which you drive traffic to it. So I am going to make something up as an example.

Let's say this is your process:

1.Someone says they are looking to rent a property in Florida on Craigslist.
2.You answer saying you have such a property and direct them to your site.
3.All that is on your site is an advert for another site.
4.They bounce through to that site.

You did not add value, so the only way to make money is drive millions of traffic.

Now lets see how you could make money...

1 & 2 stay the same.
3. When they get to your site your an aggregator of all of properties for rent in Florida.
4. Now you add value and they will come back / register etc.

So to make a lot of money either team up with an aggregator site or build your own.

Now you can blend business models and charge realtors for premium listings and/or take a %, because they can see you add value. That is a combination of the business models of comparison websites and yell.

Making a lot of money long term isn't easy, if it was, everyone would be rich.

QueenAnnesRevenge said:

I agree 100%...but not for this niche/monetization combo. The people I'm attracting to my lists are very short-term leads. They're looking for a house right now and when they get one they will never open another email from me again, so I have to keep replacing them with fresh leads anyway. Combine that with the extremely low Adsense earnings from those who do click on my emails. And you end up with a lot of work with minimal return.

For this niche to be profitable the monetization has to be much more per lead. Solo ads are a no-go as far as buyers are concerned. Everyone I've spoken to has been burned by guys who claimed to offer the same thing I do. The only thing they're willing to try is a referral fee on closed deals. The problem with a referral business is tracking to keep your clients honest. Even if referrals do work out I don't need to collect emails, I can just refer them directly from my site.

So long story short, I don't think email lists are a good strategy for the real estate niche, unless you are a service provider (broker, lender, lawyer etc.) Or you are an amazing salesperson and can sell these people CPA and CPS offers that aren't related to what they signed up for.

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Hey mate, just a thought. Many people browse houses for months and even years. In my experience not many people think oh i'm gonna buy a house
and just buy it in a weeks time. It's a process imo.

ogretardo said:

Hey mate, just a thought. Many people browse houses for months and even years. In my experience not many people think oh i'm gonna buy a house
and just buy it in a weeks time. It's a process imo.

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That's a good point and probably true for some of the visitors to my site. The ones who fill out the form usually want to move by next month, but they might not be representative of the group.

Week #8 December 3-9, 2018

The past week
I sent my first email in weeks to 665 subs and got 123 opens, 46 clicks and 11 unsubs. This contributed to the best day of the week on Sunday at $17.88. Total visitors to the site for the week was 489, so I made about $0.135 per visitor.

Plans for this week
I've decided to get back to collecting emails even though I'm going to take a short-term hit to earnings. To that end I applied to and was approved for Amazon SES. I can now send 50,000 emails a day. So I just need to choose a list management platform. I tried EmailOctopus but their sign up forms are garbage, and they charge for subscribers anyway. So I'm thinking self-hosting is the way to go. Leaning toward Sendy or Mautic. Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions?

Numbers for the past week
654 subs (-11)

Spent: $0
Adsense: $66.32

Total Profit since Journey Began: $318.25

Week #9 December 10-16, 2018

The past week
After a ton of work I got Mautic set up on an Amazon EC2 instance and it's running well, except that it seems to be using way too much storage space for the number of subscribers. I'll have to keep an eye on that and try to figure out what's going on. I had the best week yet as you'll see in the numbers section. But early this morning I got blocked by Kijiji so my earnings are going to take a huge hit going forward. .

Plans for this week
I think I'll start building more keyword-rich content and working on SEO and see if I can get organic traffic up. Right now organic search makes up about 17% of my traffic. I don't like the idea of being dependent on search engine traffic, but it's better than depending on a classified site that will ban you for using their service.

Numbers for the past week
687 subs (+33) | Opens 10% | Clicks 3%

Tools
Shared Host, VPS, 1 Domain, Mautic

Expenses
Interserver Shared Host: $1.99/month
Amazon EC2: Free for a year
Amazon SES: Free up to 62,000 emails/month

Earnings
Adsense: $102.57

Total Profit since Journey Began: $420.82

Week #9 December 17-23, 2018

Final Update
So without the free traffic everything's pretty much stopped. Thanks for joining me for this journey!

Numbers for the past week
689 subs (+2)

Tools
Shared Host, VPS, 1 Domain, Mautic

Expenses
Interserver Shared Host: $1.99/month
Amazon EC2: Free for a year
Amazon SES: Free up to 62,000 emails/month

Earnings
Adsense: $8.43

Total Profit for this Journey: $429.25

Does anyone have expertise with Volo? I need someone who can help extract data (mailed, delivered, opened). we have a mailing list of 2M in the program and we can easily extract it all, but not in segments to know which have been opened, etc.

if you are an expert and willing to help, please message me with your skype

QueenAnnesRevenge said:

@frizenking 406 uniques. I have an opt-in rate of about 35% so only 142 actually saw ads (minus however many have adblock). 10% of the traffic was returning from the emails I sent out. Ahh...I see where you're going. $26 / 406 is ~$0.06. So if I can buy traffic for less than 6 cents per visit I'll turn an immediate profit plus have recurring revenue from returning visitors. Interesting.

I'm not spending anything on traffic and I'm still on the free plan at Mailchimp. I already owned the domain and hosting before starting this journey.

@xfull Only want double opt-in. No spamming scrapped emails thanks.

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Try push traffic, fb ads is hard to get that type of traffic under $.12 CPC