An important aspect of having an email course is finding a way to monetize it. Making money for your hard work is important. When you make money doing something you love, and that you really know how to do, it will enable you to do more of it – thus helping more people learn the information that they need to know.

* Moon Clerk – This works with MadMimi.com, Aweber.com, GetResponse.com and other autoresponder services, which will enable you to collect one-time and recurring payments for your courses. You’ll need a stripe account as well to get started with using Moon Clerk.

Link to Moon Clerk – http://www.moonclerk.com/

* PayPal – You can set up a PayPal subscription payment with a simple link to set up an eCourse, using either ClickBank.com or another shopping cart system. Set up a sales page with the payment option, and then send them to a thank you page with a sign-up sheet. That will sign them up for the autoresponder with the eCourse.

* aMember.com – This is a membership software, which you don’t need to run an eCourse, but it is a good way to set them up to avoid issues with people unsubscribing and still being on the course list, as can happen with the PayPal / ClickBank idea.

* Upsells – A great way to make money from a free email course is to offer an upsell of some kind. This could be a product you’ve shown them that they need, such as a private membership group and other related products to the course.

* Affiliate Programs – Your course may suggest different types of tools, software and services to your audience. This is a good opportunity to include an affiliate link. You do need to disclose in your terms of service on the sign-up page for the course that some links will be affiliate links. However, most people will not mind if you are suggesting things you’ve tried that work.

* Exclusive Offers – People on your list will love feeling exclusive. Use the list to make “list member only” special offers. When you hype up these offers to let them know that they are honestly the only ones getting a “sneak peek exclusive offer” and an inside view of your products and services, they’ll be excited to get the chance.

* Cross-Promote – If you have other offers outside of this course, such as more courses, you can cross-promote. This is an offer that is related to the course your customer is taking, but is not a sale that’s directly related to the course they’re in now.

* Coaching – If you’ve given a good eCourse to your audience, you can offer to give them extra help with one-on-one coaching or group coaching calls for a fee. Make the offer through the course in the beginning, toward the middle and at the end.

If you give it some thought, you’ll be able to cash in on email courses. You can make it as simple as you want, or as complicated as you want, depending on which software you choose to use. But, one thing is for sure; you can make money and get paid for an email course.

An email course is usually delivered in “drip” mode. This means that whether it’s daily, weekly or monthly, part of the course is delivered to those who signed up for it via their email, through an autoresponder service. An autoresponder service like Aweber.com, Mailchimp.com, or another one can get the job done delivering an email course.

Determine What the Purpose of the Course Is

Is this a free or paid course? Is the purpose of the course to encourage your audience to buy something from you when the course ends? If it’s a free course, what will the offer be at the end of the course? If it’s a paid course, how can you deliver exceptional value to your audience and make them feel as if they got their money’s worth?

Decide What to Teach

Teach your audience about or how to do something that is unclear, frustrating or hard to do for your audience. If you’re not sure what this could be, look be ask your audience for the answers. You can ask them directly, or you can find groups where they ask questions. Any question is a likely a good choice for an email course.

Organize the Subject

Choose your topic or question to answer so that you can now organize the subject into subtopics. You’ll want to pick one focused subtopic for each part of the email course. You don’t want to overwhelm your audience with too much information at one time. Instead, think of it like teaching one point of a problem at a time in a logical order.

Choose How Long You Want the Course to Be

Usually an email course consists of five to seven emails for free courses, but sometimes a topic will require a lot more than that – especially if it’s a paid course. Decide how long, but more than six to eight weeks might be too long. It’s important to consider your audience so that you know how they’ll deal with shorter or longer courses. Making it too long might mean a lot of people don’t finish, but you do want to give enough information that they learn the material.

Tell the Subscriber What to Expect

Before and after the subscriber signs up for the course, you should let them know what to expect. Be explicit about what is in the course so that they’ll know what’s coming and know what to look for. How many emails will be in the course? How often will they come? Will you send other emails and information to them? Let them know what to do if there is a problem. Probably the best place to do this is on the sales page, plus on the thank you page, plus in the first email.

Format Each Email Similarly

You want each email to look like part of the same course by branding it the same. Use the same fonts, images, colors, intro and exit. Always tell them what you have already told them, and then after the body of the email tell them what to expect for the next part of the course. This will help hone their expectations in a way that keeps them interested and involved.

Make Each Email Simple and To the Point

Once you’ve created a template for your course, it will be simple to fill in the details for the course. Give them one strong lesson each email, and keep the emails on the short side – no more than 700 to 1500 words per email. Otherwise it will be too overwhelming.

Craft Subject Lines They’ll Recognize and Open

The subject line is important because it will be key to ensuring that your subscribers know to open the email. You probably want to put the name of the course and the lesson name inside so that they know.

Finally, give your audience a way to report problems and ask questions. You can do that via a special course email address or by making a private and closed Facebook group only for people who have signed up for the course. In addition, you can use eCourse software to help you make an eCourse without having to know any coding or even have a website.

Link to eCourse software – https://coursecraft.net/

The best email subscription forms ask for very little information to start. But, the more personalized the emails you send your subscribers, the more response you’ll get. Therefore, you need to come up with ways to get more information from your subscribers after they’ve already opted in so that you can ensure that you are sending them the right information.

Welcome Message – Right off the bat, when you send your new subscriber a welcome message to your list, it is a great opportunity to seek more information from them using a web form. Depending on which email marketing program you use will determine which features it has to collect more information.

Thank You Page – Another great place to get more information from your subscribers. This can be true of an opt-in thank you page, and a product purchase thank you page. Create a form for the page where your subscriber or buyer can click to provide more information about them to help you serve them better.

 – Periodically, it is helpful to send your list subscribers interactive information such as polls and quizzes. This will help engage your list subscribers in a new way and open them up to providing more information about themselves so that you can personalize your interactions with them even more.

Coupons and Codes – Any time a subscriber takes advantage of a coupon code is a good time to collect more information about them so that you can personalize the information you send them. You may have only collected an email and name when they first opted in but when they redeem the code, ask for just a bit more info.

Request for Response – Sending out an email to your subscribers requesting a response such as a comment on your blog, or for them to fill out a form, or to ask you a question that you’ll answer on your blog, is a good way to get more information about each subscriber that can be used to create more personalized messages.

Surprise Gifts – You probably gave your subscriber a freebie when they signed up for your list. You can use the same tactic in your subscriptions to get more information from your subscribers. Offer them a new free gift for some sort of action taken.

Subscriber Preferences – This is a good way to get more information is to offer your subscribers various preferences they can choose for the type of information they want. If you have more than one type of list, why not give them a chance to get on other lists that you have at this point?

Behavioral – Moving your subscribers from list to list due to the behavior that they demonstrate is a great way to personalize the information that your subscribers receive. For instance, if they click through to buy something, they should be moved to a new list.

Don’t just try one time to get more information from your subscribers. Take time to build the trust between you and your subscribers and as time goes on, ask more questions and seek more feedback from them so that you can make the information you send them more personal than ever before. The more personal your messaging is to them, the more response you’re likely to get.

Depending on the email marketing software you use, it’s important to learn all the features that it has so that you can use it to its fullest potential. You might not even be aware of all the things your email marketing software is capable of doing. If you aren’t sure, consider seeking out someone who is an expert with your particular software choice so that everything can be set up to be the most effective and the most personal in nature.

1. Craft Interest-Targeted Email Messages – Use the software to capture the information needed to personalize and craft email messages toward what your subscriber wants to know about. This is an important way to move your subscribers enough to purchase from you. Capturing the right information will enable you to point your subscribers to products and services that they want.

2. Create Geocentric Messages – It is likely that your email software allows you to capture location-based information from subscribers. This location-based information can be used for a variety of purposes, from marketing events in their area, to encouraging them to visit your location if you have a local bricks-and-mortar business.

3. Let Them Define What Information They Want – Sending a poll or checklist to subscribers that lets them define what information they want to get is a good way to find out exactly what your subscribers need and want to hear from you.

4. Acknowledge Purchases Made – Each time a purchase is made it’s important to acknowledge it with a thank you, but to also move them off a list that keeps promoting that item. If they feel like you’re harassing them to buy something they already have, they won’t respond to well when you market something new to them.

5. Encourage Social Sharing – Put social share buttons on appropriate email messages so that your subscribers can help you get more people to sign up for your email marketing lists. This is a type of personalization that encourages them to share with their friends, but also encourages them to friend, like and follow you on other social channels.

6. Insert Predefined Fields – Most email programs allow you to insert different predefined fields. For example, if you have a website that is devoted to selling art, you could send a questionnaire to your audience asking them what their favorite style is. Then the software will not only trigger the right emails to go out based on that style, but it will also mention the style within the email message. If they don’t fill it out, it will insert some other value that you choose into that predefined field.

7. Use Date Insert Fields – It’s important for many of your emails to be pre-crafted, but you can make the email message look as if it was just created by using the date insert field. Then the email message looks timelier. With that function, in conjunction with special sales pages that also show the current date, you can personalize by keeping everything looking current.

8. Use Retargeting Technology – When someone visits your website, or buys something, it’s important to use the technology available to you to retarget them for buying something more. When your user receives your email and opens it, a software program can be used to install a cookie that will then allow specialized ads to be delivered to the user when they visit various webpages.

9. Ask for Reviews for Products Purchased – Whenever a customer buys a product, send them a thank you message and then a series of follow-up messages. One of these can be a request for a product review, after giving them enough time to try and use your product or service. The form they fill out for the review will also ask for more information about them that you can use for further targeted marketing.

Even though most consumers are savvy enough to realize that a lot of email marketing is automated today, they still respond better to more personalization than less. Therefore, if you want to compete with others it’s imperative that you use your software to its fullest potential by using as much personalization as it’s capable of.