How many times have you heard the very true phrase “The money is in the list”?

If you read my post on Pangaea and 500k Names, you know how powerful your list (address book) can be.

If you are using an email newsletter system that is charging you a monthly fee to host your mailing list(s), there is little incentive to grow your list because you are being penalized (charged) for adding more names.

I’m not against newsletter systems.

But if you are new in business or aren’t yet making enough profit to justify the cost, I’ve got an easy solution.

Google forms via Google Docs.

If you have a Google account, you can create a free form for your website.

Simply log in and open docs.  Click on “New” and then on “Form”.  From there you can create your questions and how you want them to be answered.

When you are done, you get a little code that you can embed into your website and your form will appear on the public page.

When your website visitors fill out the form, the results are stored in a spreadsheet.

You can download the spreadsheet and use the data to communicate by sending emails, newsletters, and direct mail.

Two resources I recommend for sending group email on a budget is gmail (Google Mail) and Swiftpage.

Gmail has great “grouping” capacity.  You can import contacts from your spreadsheet into a group, then send a BCC email to your group.  

Their group sending limit is 499 – much higher than I’ve ever been able to send through Outlook.  (FYI – sending more than 500 will get your gmail service temporarily suspended).

You can’t use pretty graphics or templates, nor is there any tracking with gmail.

If you want something more visually appealing with bells & whistles, you can try a free swiftpage account  The send limit is only 50 mails a day, but even their first paid level of service is good at $14.95 a month (250 emails per day).

The difference is 250 emails a day vs 250 contacts in the contact manager.  Many of the web-based newsletter systems base their pricing on the number of names that you have in your account – not on how many emails you send.

Which is why I prefer Swiftpage.  Since my contacts are broken up into different groups, it’s easy for me to send a blast today, another one tomorrow (to a different group) and another one the day after that to another group.  

If I have 250 names in each group, and I’m communicating throughout the month with different groups, then I could talk literally to thousands for the same price that I would have paid to talk to 500 with another service. 

The only drawback is that Switpage can be a little more technical to understand and use than some of the other web-based services.

The difference is, how much easier it can be to use with Google Docs forms.

If you have multiple forms, it’s as easy as downloading the form into excel, clicking the (pre-installed) Swiftpage button, typing in your message and hitting send.  The service merges the emails in the spreadsheet with the message you typed, with a newsletter template you have on file, then sends it out through their servers.  It can be personalized “Dear first_name,” and you get a whole host of tracking info (have you ever wondered who opened your email or if people are clicking on your links?).

My hope is that you find the tools and resources you need to help you stop spending money ON your list and start experiencing profit FROM your list :)

Ricci