Capture Emails And Send Newsletters
Ajay Ahuja started his online business in October 2003 with absolutely no technical knowledge and has experienced online sales of over GBP 2m amassed from just a computer, a broadband connection and a bit of spare time. Ajay knows the sites and software that will save you your precious time and money and - used right - make you a tidy stream of cash.
I run a newsletter and I earn anywhere from £7,000 to £15,000 per month from simply sending out an email every day. The way you do it is in three stages.
- 1.Capture a visitor’s email and build up a subscriber base of 15,000+
- 2.Send them an email to their inbox, prompting them to click onto your newsletter page which is part of your website.
- 3.Have a newsletter that has content, but more importantly affiliate links and adverts in the page.
1. Capture a visitor’s email and build up a subscriber base of 15,000+
The way you capture email addresses is to ask for them! I think we’ve all seen websites asking you for your email to join up to their newsletter. The great thing is around one in seven people do volunteer their email. Especially if you can promise them something in return.
This is what works for me. I:
create a report or free gift
create a hover ad
create a sign-up page to capture their email
link it all together.
Create a report or free gift
You’ve got to give them something in return for them giving you their email. A free report, piece of software a document or whatever. I create a report in MS Word then convert it into PDF to make it look professional. Put headers and footers into the Word document to make it look pretty then convert to PDF. To convert a word document to PDF visit: www.MassiveAndPassive. co.uk/word-to-pdf.html.
Try to think of what would be useful to your visitor that you could create. It could be your top ten tips on…, the best places to find…, the seven steps to…, etc and then offer it as a free gift in return for their email.
Create a hover ad
I create what’s known as a hover ad that drops down after the reader has been on my site for five seconds. A hover ad is like a pop up add that can’t be blocked. It pops up after five seconds so this gives the reader some time to get an idea about my site. If they click away before five seconds then they would never be interested in giving me their email. If they stay longer than five seconds then it’s possible they would.
The hover ad would drop down and say something like:

So this eye-catching advert will drop right in front of them while they are reading. Now some people find this annoying, but most don’t. Especially if they are interested in your subject. They will look at your offer and think they could do with that report, and since all they have to do is give their email, it seems a fair trade-off. My research has shown one in seven people are willing to do this if your offer is compelling enough.
To create a hover ad visit: www.MassiveAndPassive.co.uk/hover-ad.html. Once created you click on generate code and copy and paste both parts of the HTML code into your home page. The way you do this is to go to the home page text editor as if you were going to edit the text of the home page, click on the icon that looks like ‘<>’ and then paste both bits of code at the top of all the code. Then click ‘Save Page >>>’.
The JOIN NOW is a hyperlink to a sign up page which you create in the website creator. To do this you need to create a sign up page first.
Create a sign up page to capture their email
- 1.Create a new page by going to website/edit/pages and then create new page.
- 2.Tick ‘normal page’.
- 3.Name the page ‘Newsletter Sign Up’.
- 4.Write a small piece like ‘Give us your first name and email and you will get the latest information surrounding…’ in the text editor.
- 5.Then click on the icon that looks like a piece of paper with two red lines on it. When you hover your cursor over it it’s called ‘Insert Form’.
- 6.A subscribe box will appear with text entry fields for their first and last name and their email.
- 7.Click on ‘Save Page>>>’.
That’s it. You now have your sign up page. It will be called www.yoursite.com/newsletter-sign-up.html and this is what you have as the hyperlink for the ‘JOIN NOW’ part of the hover ad.
Link it all together
You create the ad in the hover ad software, link the JOIN NOW text to the sign up page and add the generated code to your home page. Now you need to add the report to the welcome email they get when they subscribe. This is how you do it:
- 1.Go to mailout/autoresponder and then click on ‘change autoresponder configuration>>>’.
- 2.Check the html/text combo box and click on ‘Next Step>>>’.
- 3.Add the following text after ‘This is to confirm you have been added to my mailing list’: ‘You can download your free gift by clicking here’ and then highlight ‘click here’.
- 4.Then click on the icon that looks like a paper clip that says ‘insert file’ if you hover over the icon.
- 5.Click on ‘browse’ and then click on the report you have saved on your computer.
- 6.Once uploaded click on ‘insert file’.
- 7.Then click on ‘Finish>>>’.
Now when someone signs up they will be sent an email confirming that they have been added to your mailing list and there will be a hyperlink where they can download your free report.
It took me around six months to build a subscriber database of 17,000 and since then it has hovered around this number as the same amount of people subscribe as well as unsubscribe. This is because the website creator allows the subscriber to unsubscribe at anytime with one click (to comply with spam laws). So my list stays at a healthy 17,000-ish. I do not know how long it will take you to build such a list. I think my list grew very fast as it’s quite a popular subject. You may grow one even faster than me, you just don’t know. The great thing is a hungry list = lots of money. This is because they come back to your site, clicking all over the place. You will understand as I go on.
2. Send an email to their inbox prompting them to click onto your newsletter page which is part of your website
I want you to read the above title very carefully. I am not saying send an email for your subscriber to read. I am asking you to send your subscriber an email which encourages them to click again back to your website. There is a distinct difference. I see many newsletters that come straight into your inbox and they are all there to be read. You need not click back to the site as they have given you all the information right there in the email message. I want the subscriber to read my email message and click back to my site.
The way you do this is to follow these three steps:
A. Get the email opened up and read
The best way to do this is to always put the subscriber’s first name at the start of the email subject. The way you do this is to put [[first-name]] at the start of the email subject line and the website creator will substitute [[firstname]] with the subscriber’s first name which they told us when they signed up.
Also, have an attention grabbing subject line. So the subject line:
John, find out the seven ways to save on your tax bill is better than
Find out more about your tax bill
because it addresses the person directly, namely John, and it tells him that we have found out seven ways he can save on his tax bill. This is a lot better and more likely to get opened compared to ‘find out more about your tax bill’. I hope you can see why.
B. Write an enticing email message
So using the above example you would not tell them in the email the exact seven ways to save tax. You would say something like:
So I would use the [[firstname]] substitution a couple of times and then tell a bit of the story, but leave most of it out, leaving them hungry to find out about the four adjustments that only took four minutes.
C. Instruct them to click on further
At the end of the message I would finish with the words:
‘If you would like to find out more visit: http://www.ahuja.co.uk/2212 Ajay’
So I would tell them exactly where to click if they wanted to find out more. Do not just put your link as sometimes people just scan read and will not understand to click on that link to find out more. Also only include one link per email message so as not to confuse the reader. And don’t forget to include the http:// before the www, otherwise the link will not work.
So all the way along I am enticing them to open further. Firstly to open the email message and then to open the page where the newsletter is displayed. If you manage to do this then you are on the way to making some money… the next part is crucial.
3. Have a newsletter that has content, but more importantly affiliate links and adverts in the page
Once they arrive at the newsletter you’ve got to deliver what you have promised otherwise they will not open up any further newsletters from you. You also need affiliate links (which are links that once clicked you potentially get paid on) and adverts (which you get paid on every time someone clicks on them).
So you have on the page the following:
- 1.The actual article.
- 2.Affiliate links which are related to the article. In my example I have spoken about tax so I will have affiliate links about tax, accountants, tax savings, etc that I have signed up to. Please see Chapter 8.
- 3.Adverts which are displayed by Google. Please see Chapter 7.
To see an example of my newsletter with affiliate links and adverts please visit www.ahuja.co.uk and you will see my daily newsletter.

