How to make passive income with your e-mail list

Are you a bit tired of hearing “the money is in the list” — yet, there is no money in your list?

Well, I hear you!

I have recently set up an email list. I am really passionate about it. It is a chance to grow an audience of people who are interested in exactly the same things that fascinate me.

It is a chance to communicate directly with them, without worrying about sudden algorithm changes (I am looking at you, Zuckerberg!). And, ultimately, it is a chance to make passive income streams.

However, my goal is to create passive income streams that can run on auto pilot.

In other words, my goal is NOT to create more work for myself.

My goal is NOT to be chained to the email list like a hamster running in an ever-faster wheel, always thinking of thirteen things I should have done yesterday.

Therefore, I am going for “automagic” solutions.

How to make it passive

I’ve set up the structure in the email list to run for someone like me — who likes passive income and, to be honest, is a little bit lazy at heart.

I see, both from talking to people and from the emails I receive from other email list builders, that many people send emails that are obviously written for a particular week.

These emails refer to specific dates or events that happen that week.

However, when you send broadcasts like that, each email is actually used up after you send it to your list.

You can’t send that particular email again to your whole list, because some people will read it and think “Didn’t she say exactly the same thing a few months ago?”. You don’t want that.

But at the same time, writing an email and sending it to a list of two people takes exactly the same amount of time as writing an email and sending it to a list of 20 000 — and to be honest, maybe even more time, because you are new and shy to email people you don’t know. At least it was like that for me.

But, as I said, my focus here has been to work strategically from the beginning and set up a passive income stream that can take care of itself even if I go on a holiday.

Therefore, I am barely sending broadcasts like this.

Instead, I’ve made various email sequences that are set up to send automatically to all subscribers, as they join.

That means that everything I do now, is not work that goes into sending to an email to a small list of subscribers. Instead, I write emails that will be sent to all of my future subscribers — hopefully many thousands of them.

The welcome sequence

Yes, it’s like a welcome sequence. We all have welcome sequences. But most welcome sequences are three or five emails. My welcome sequence is not like that.

Instead, it will be more than 100 emails — ensuring that two weekly emails with valuable content is sent over the full first year (and some extra add-ons in the beginning, depending on which lead magnet people signed up for).

(Or at least, it will be more than 100 emails when I finish. Right now, I’ve written the first 31.)

Let’s do some math

Do you see why the strategy differs in creating passive income rather than active income?

Let me show you by using a bit of math. Say your list consists of 500 people now. So with option 1, you write an email to these people and send it out this week. The email goes to 500 people.

But say you write the exact same email, but put it into an automated sequence instead. Say your email grows with 3500 people per year, so within three years, you have 11 000 people on your list (3500*3 + your existing 500 subscribers).

If this email is put into an automated sequence, all 11 000 will get the email at some point!

Putting the email in a sequence rather than a broadcast actually means that you just 22-doubled the effect of the email you wrote, because you will eventually send it to 11 000 people instead of just 500.

Or let’s say you are a beginner and have 3 subscribers (like I had, not that long ago). Let’s say I had spent my energy writing my 31 emails directly to them. What would I be left with after sending them? Hopefully 3 very happy subscribers, but not much more.

The energy put into these emails would be lost after sending them, and you would have to start anew, with a completely blank sheets for the coming weeks — and the need to produce something interesting every week going forward. Hello, hamster-wheel!

Instead, I now have an email list that runs on autopilot for the foreseeable future.

Fresh content

But, you ask, no fresh content at all?

Well. I will actually make fresh content as well. The automated emails work in the background. When there is something special — for instance a launch, something I want to promote or a special occation like New Years— I can send a broadcast in addition.

But with this set-up, I won’t have to send these broadcasts. If I don’t have anything specific to say, or if I’m sick or on holiday, I can just let the automation fix it. The subscribers would still get a couple of interesting emails from me every week — even if I am away for a month without my computer.

How’s that for a magic trick?!

(It is not possible to do it this smoothly with all email providers. I use ConvertKit*, where you can both build really great automated links of sequences, and also trust that the subscribers only get each email once, even if signing on to multiple freebies. This is one of the most important features of ConvertKit*, and given the time I save, I think it is well worth paying for. However, all the systems have some sort of system for automations — so you should be able to do simple versions of it even with free programs.)

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