This is a continuation of our Live Case Study series showcasing Michelle’s journey, following along how she is building a series of publications generating millions of unique visitors monthly.
In our previous case study, we discussed how one of the best ways to recover from Google’s [Unhelpful] Helpful Content Update was to pivot to diversifying your traffic and income to come from multiple platforms. Before you break your phone from imagining having to devote more time to yet another platform, please remember that you’re able to build your audience and traffic on these platforms, namely email and Facebook, with content you've already spent years creating for Google!
In fact, when we had a massive setback a few months ago when one of our main traffic sources died on us, we immediately pivoted to replacing that income with traffic from multiple Facebook pages and email lists. Not only did we double down on Facebook, which every single publisher needs to prioritize as the foundation for their publications, but we also ramped up our monetization efforts from email.
You can monetize your email list in one of several ways – below is a list of how quickly you can start earning revenue from zero dollars to real dollars:
Drive traffic from your list to your website and make money from Ezoic ads (note: email traffic has one of the highest EPMV’s relative to any other traffic source!)
Drive email traffic to affiliate offers
Sell sponsorships on your email list
We recommend a mix of all three, but first thing’s first, you must actually grow your email list first!
“Email newsletter. We’re steadily growing HHL’s email list by 5,000 to 9,000 subscribers per month by using Infinity Engager and the website to convert traffic into newsletter subscribers. The goal is to get to 20,000 new subscribers per month and to earn a baseline of $1,000 per month for every 10,000 subscribers from the newsletter” (quote from our 1st case study).
Update since then:
Despite a turbulent last few months, especially one of the slowest summers on industry record, we’ve been able to keep the email list growth steady and actually marginally growing by spreading the growth across multiple lists - we expect to really ramp these numbers up in Q4 as the traffic and engagement velocity picks up. Our smaller lists are on track or beyond earning $1,000 for every 10,000 subscribers while the really large lists (100k+) we are very slowly building up to this point as they require a lot of re-engagement. We detail all of this below.
Growing a new Facebook page is easier, cheaper and more effective than ever before and, interestingly enough, is one of the fastest ways to grow your email list too. Unlike building a website and generating content for it that you must painstakingly optimize for search engines, which often takes months for you to understand if you’re heading in the right direction or not, you can start a new Facebook page today and start driving traffic to an email signup landing page tomorrow.
We covered the basics of starting a new Facebook page or growing an existing one quickly from scratch in our last case study, as well as the type of viral content to produce to make the page really hum along with high engagement, so make sure to read that first.
Once you’re sharing viral memes on Facebook, they will quickly start to get tens of thousands in reach, likes, comments, and shares. Not only can you earn money from the Facebook Performance Bonus program for these, but you should also be leaving newsletter signup prompts underneath each image and for each commenter!
Here's how:
Here are some examples of varied types of posts with Infinity Engager responding to commenters prompting them to sign up for the newsletter:
Example from a brand new page:
Example from a more established page:
So, what are the results from this kind of approach when one leaves newsletter signup prompts for thousands of viral comments a day?
If one is earning $1,000 for every 10,000 subscribers, this new list growth will result in $1,000 additional revenue per month. Do this for one year and that’s an additional $12,000 per month in revenue on top of your existing base. Keep it up for a few years and soon you’re earning an extra $100,000 per year just from email revenue once all of the growth compounds.
Here’s a video we created showcasing all of the above and how to grow your email list organically and supplementing that growth with engagement tools like Infinity Engager:
We mentioned above how to monetize your list in one of three ways, with you ideally stacking all three monetization options. We run many different email lists across many different niches at Publisher in a Box with our turn-key email monetization team and our rule of thumb is that one generates $1,000 for every 10,000 email subscribers (yes, really!). Here’s how you can stack monetization methods like we do:
Each one of these points is of course its own world which our team painstakingly obsesses over and you will need to as well as the opportunities come in, but one step at a time!
As an aside, make sure that you’re using tools to boost subscriber engagement if your open rates are low or your list needs to be revived (let us know if you need some recommendations for this).
Here’s a video we created showcasing how we manage the email list, how we use Ezoic’s Big Data Analytics to guide our email marketing efforts and how we create the emails themselves:
Everyone knows the summer is brutal for traffic and revenue, so this is the best time to optimize everything and get ready when things start to pick up come September. We especially want to be prepared for Q4 which comes with the highest EPMVs and payouts! How?
We wish you the best of luck ahead in your efforts to grow your own publications, as we do for our own - that new swimming pool won’t upgrade itself after all!
Written By: Michelle Toole
Michelle Toole is a co-founder of Publisher in a Box and Infinity Engager; companies developed to rapidly grow and monetize online publications. Her strategies, systems, and technology have generated hundreds of millions of unique visitors and millions of dollars in revenue. Contact her to learn how you can grow your publication's traffic by 1,000% to 10,000% in a matter of months just like in this case study.
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