How to make money with email marketing: 11 ideas and examples for newbies and pros

Remember the early days of email? Inboxes were filled with spam, and it felt like people were out to con you.

Thankfully, the internet and online security have advanced heaps since then. And email is now a trusted, respectable way to grow your business.

In this article, we share legitimate, effective ways to make money with email marketing.

We’ll even show you how to calculate your potential income and showcase examples from creators doing exactly what you should be doing—making money from email marketing.

How much money does email marketing make?

Creators earn anywhere from a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars from email marketing alone. For example, artist Danny Gregory earns up to $45,000 from his paid newsletter. How much you’ll make depends on several factors:

• How many subscribers you have
• How engaged your subscribers are (measured by average open rates, click rates, unsubscribe rates, etc.)
• How you earn money from your newsletter (whether you sell products, run ads, or have a paid newsletter, for example)

11 ideas for newbies and pros to monetize their email list

Let’s show you how to turn your email list into a legitimate moneymaker, from the easiest to the slightly complex options.

1. Add a digital tip jar to your free content

Difficulty level: Newbie

Whether you’re getting started or have been writing newsletters for years, adding a digital tip jar to your emails and other free content is a fuss-free way to earn money from email marketing. Kit makes it quick to do this—for free and paid accounts.

Head to Kit > Earn > Tips and follow the setup steps.

There are so many ways you can use a virtual tip jar (and many examples of Kit creators using Tips you can learn from). Some easy options are adding a link to your digital tip jar in your newsletters, email sequences, at the end of blog posts, sharing the link on social media, or collecting tips on your lead magnet page.

Email example with a virtual tip jar: Simply Stacie

2. Make money promoting affiliate links

Difficulty level: Newbie

Another effective way to earn money with email marketing is by promoting affiliate links. Affiliate links are links to products or services for which a creator earns a small commission if anyone purchases the items via those links.

Most affiliate programs require an application and prior approval. Once approved, you’ll have a unique link to each available product and service to promote to your audience.

Anyone can use affiliate links, but many companies prefer creators with an engaged audience, even if they are relatively small. You can even become an affiliate for Kit!

Example of an email including affiliate links: Niche Site Lady

Niche Site Lady frequently shares affiliate links with her audience in an organic way. It works because she:

• Shares items that appeal to her audience and interests
• Creates other content that doesn’t include affiliate links (so her audience doesn’t feel bombarded)
• Includes an affiliate disclaimer (creators are legally obligated to do this) so readers know she earns a percentage from their purchases—at no extra cost to them

3. Increase your profit with a paid newsletter

Difficulty level: Newbie

If your audience is eager to hear more from you and gets value from your content, consider a premium newsletter. Paid newsletters are email editions blocked by a paywall; they can only be accessed by paid subscribers.

With Kit, it’s easy to set up a paid newsletter (you don’t even need to be on a paid plan). Create your newsletter product, customize it to match your brand, and share it with your audience.

While the setup is pretty easy, creating a paid newsletter may not be the best choice for every creator. First, you’ll need to ensure that your audience needs your offering and is willing to pay for it. It may also take some time and trial and error before you gain many paid subscribers—especially if you don’t already have a large following.

Paid newsletter example: Empowered with Kate

Coach Kate Marley shares a paid coaching newsletter on her website’s homepage. Her offering is appealing for several reasons:

• In the sign-up form, she provides concise copy highlighting the value of the paid newsletter
• She includes a screenshot to show visitors a sample of the paid newsletter
• The price is front and center, so potential subscribers know what to expect

4. Offer other types of subscriptions to gain recurring income

Difficulty level: Intermediate

If a paid newsletter isn’t the right speed for you, you might prefer to run another recurring subscription offering. Recurring subscription ideas range from paid courses to membership communities and retainer agreements.

Subscriptions work well for creators selling services in installments or digital products requiring long-term access. Like paid subscriptions, this works best for creators with an engaged audience willing to pay for more or prolonged access.

Subscription email example: Jo Franco

Creator Jo Franco runs a YouTube channel and has a paid membership community and several digital products. She consistently promotes her products and services in her newsletters. Here’s why it works:

• Jo also offers free value to her audience in the form of journaling prompts
• She promotes one product or service at a time instead of multiple, which may overwhelm readers
• She starts each email by first connecting with her readers before trying to sell to them

5. Recommend other great newsletters and get paid for it

Difficulty level: Intermediate

If you write an email newsletter, there’s a high chance you love to read newsletters, too. A straightforward way to earn money with email marketing is by getting paid to recommend your favorite newsletters to your audience.

With Kit’s Paid Recommendations, it’s super easy to do this. You’ll need to join the Creator Network and set up a SparkLoop account. Once you connect your Kit and SparkLoop accounts, you can apply for approval. After you’re approved, you’re good to start recommending.

Although it’s easy to set up, this income channel would work best for people with an existing, engaged network. So, if you’re just starting your mailing list, it won’t be lucrative.

Example of a newsletter recommendation: Cole Bridge

Creator Cole Bridge earned $10,000 in 7 months by getting paid to recommend his favorite newsletters to his audience. Copy his strategy by:

• Using Paid Recommendations as soon as you have a small, engaged audience
• Recommending other creators you actually like—this builds trust in your audience
• Re-investing in your newsletter with your earnings from Paid Recommendations—you’ll grow even faster

6. Add revenue with an email course

Difficulty level: Intermediate

Email courses can be the perfect low lift for creators who want to build a course or teach a topic without committing to a full-on video course. An email course is delivered through several emails, providing detailed information on a specific subject. You can make money from your email course by making it only accessible to paid subscribers.

Email course example: Nathan Barry

Kit founder Nathan Barry runs an email course about money broken down into 16 emails. The course began with six emails, and Nathan has progressively added new emails over time. He’s also increased the price from $100 to $150 since it began. Here’s what has worked for him:

• Taking advantage of how flexible paid email courses are by adding more emails over time
• Specifying his audience (creators earning over $200K per annum) in the signup form
• Keeping it low-pressure at the start with only six emails

7. Add an income stream displaying newsletter ads

Difficulty level: Intermediate

A popular way to monetize your email list is using newsletter ads.

Email advertising means that another creator pays you to insert ads into specific emails you send to your entire subscriber list, or only a segment of your list. Once their campaign ends, they don’t have further access to your email subscribers.

Potential revenue calculation for displaying newsletter ads

8. Champion your products and services

Difficulty level: Intermediate

Before you start getting paid to promote others’ products, it makes sense to use your newsletters to spread the word about yours. And yes, this generates income because it drives sales and reminds your audience that you have additional value to offer.

Whether you sell digital or physical products, showing them off to your audience is relatively easy, even if you’re just starting.

Example of an email promoting a product: Maurizio Leo

The New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Loaf, Maurizio Leo, earned his book deal by dedicating years to his blog of the same name, specializing in the art of baking sourdough bread. Here’s why his email works:

• The mention of ‘for you’ in the email subject line adds a personal touch
• The body copy highlights Maurizio’s expertise and experience
• The emojis catch the eye in a cluttered inbox filled with text
• He offers a discount for his newsletter subscribers

9. Don’t shy away from upsells

Difficulty level: Pro

Ever walked into the Apple Store for an iPad and left with an iPad, Apple Pencil, and iPad keyboard? That’s the power of upselling.

This marketing tactic encourages your audience to upgrade to a higher membership tier or purchase a complementary product that enhances their experience.

Upselling without being too salesy is a skill worth mastering.

But with Kit, you don’t have to upsell manually to each customer. You can set up useful marketing automation to make the process easier. So, after making a specific purchase or taking a particular action, subscribers will receive an automated email offering an upsell.

10. Unlock the earning potential of downselling

Difficulty level: Pro

Downselling might seem counterintuitive when considering how to monetize your email list, but it is surprisingly effective. It refers to recognizing that a certain product or upsell hasn’t worked for some in your audience and offering them a different or less expensive option that might be a better fit instead.

Like upselling, downselling requires marketing chops and a firm grasp of marketing automations.

Downsell email example: John Gannon

Blogger John Gannon is a big fan of the underrated downsell and has found it rewarding to offer subscribers a different option when his offer hasn’t worked for them. He’s been successful at this because:

• He offers multiple alternative products in place of his initial offering
• When subscribers don’t buy even after a down-sell, he requests feedback to understand why

11. Get sponsored by brands that love your work

Difficulty level: Pro

Brand-sponsored newsletter content is similar to newsletter ads. But the two are different in one important way: brand sponsorships are fully encompassing.

This means that unlike with a newsletter ad, when a brand sponsors an edition of your newsletter, you can’t include any other adverts or sponsored content within the same newsletter.

Kit offers creators on its platform many opportunities for brand sponsorships. It all starts with joining the Kit Sponsor Network. Once you’re in, Kit will match you with brands willing to sponsor your content and compatible with your content and audience.

Sponsors pay you to advertise their brand, product, or service in your newsletter. How much you earn from this monetization method will depend on how many subscribers you have, how engaged they are, and how much of a budget the brand has.

Sponsored email example: Mark Manson

Bestselling author Mark Manson runs a popular newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. Through the Kit Sponsor Network, Mark has partnered with various brands, including Drink LMNT.

With brand sponsorships, Mark earns as much as $15K from his newsletter each month. This email marketing strategy works for him because:

• He partners with the Kit Sponsor Network, which connects him with high-paying brands
• The companies and products he works with are those that appeal to his audience
• He chooses to promote products that he uses and that align with his values

Best practices to turn email marketing into a source of income

Whichever route you choose, we recommend implementing some marketing best practices to keep your email marketing generating income for a long time.

Build a targeted and engaged email list

As you may have noticed, it’s impossible to make money from email marketing if there’s no one on your email list. Even more importantly, you need a list that engages with your emails by opening them and clicking on the links you’ve included.

How many email subscribers do you need to make money? There’s no fixed number, but 1000 is a good start.

We estimate that a creator with an engaged list of 1000 subscribers can earn over $3500 annually—a nice chunk of change to help with household expenses. You could even make more than that. Creator Darren Smith made 10K monthly with less than 2K followers. So, make sure you’re exploring all monetization options.

Once you’re earning some income from your email list, it’s added motivation to work on continuing to grow that list. Make sure you’re growing your list ethically by letting people opt into your newsletter.

Remember, the kind of email marketing discussed in this article differs from cold emailing, where people email strangers with whom they’ve had no prior connection. While it may be possible to make money from cold emailing, the monetizing strategies differ from those we’ve considered in this article.

Personalize your emails using segmentation and tags

Add a personal touch to your emails by using Kit’s personalization tools. While using your subscriber’s first name in your email to them is nice, going beyond that is even better.

With tags and segments, you can organize your subscribers into multiple pockets based on several criteria like where they live, which products they’ve bought, which ones they’re eyeing, and which content categories most appeal to them.

Set your email marketing on autopilot

If managing an entire email marketing operation manually sounds overwhelming, it’s because it is! Thankfully, automations are here to save the day.

There are countless ways to start using automation workflows in email marketing, even if you’re a newbie. Whether you’re sending out onboarding emails to subscribers who’ve purchased a product or a welcome email sequence to new subscribers, automation ensures you only need to do it once.

Make sure your emails are being delivered

After all that hard work planning content, writing emails, and setting up automations, you want to be sure your subscribers receive these emails. For this reason, we recommend choosing a reliable email marketing service provider.

Each month, Kit reports delivery rates of 99.8% (you can see all the monthly deliverability reports for yourself). This makes us a trustworthy client who ensures your emails reach their final destination.

Your sender reputation is another factor that improves your deliverability. If readers constantly open and engage with your emails, email clients will send them to their inboxes. But if your emails are often marked as spam or left unread, this may signal that you’re emailing people with no interest in your content—leading to low deliverability.

Start making money from email marketing with Kit

It’s possible and now even commonplace to make money from email marketing. With so many monetizing approaches to consider, you’re sure to find one that matches your technical abilities and current business status.

And the best part? With Kit Commerce and its many marketing workflow automations, it’s easier than ever to get to work on one or more of our suggested ideas.

Sign up for your Kit account and start growing that mailing list.