To make money online you need an email list.  Most successful online entrepreneurs will tell you that.  Then they will talk about how they use some expensive mail service like MailChimp or Constant Contact to manage their email list.  I’m not saying MailChimp and Constant Contact are bad services, they are actually really good services.  The problem is that if you have a decent sized list of of people but aren’t monetizing it yet, you can wind up spending hundreds of dollars before you ever make one cent.

For example, if you have a list of 8,000 people, like I do for one of my websites, then it will cost you $75 per month to use either MailChimp or Constant Contact.  That’s great if you know that you can make more than that from your list.  But what if you are not well versed in monetizing the list or just aren’t interested in monetizing it?  $75 is a lot of money just to send a few newsletters a month.

Here’s how you can create a newsletter system like those mentioned above for $14 plus the cost of hosting, which today runs around $2.50/month at 759domains.com (disclaimer: I own 759domains.com), and the cost of sending messages, which runs $0.20 per thousand emails.  Sending 4 emails every month to 8,000 people would run you a total of $6.50 per month.

First, you need to purchase the NewletterMailer v1.3 PHP program from CodeCanyon.  Then you need to get a domain and hosting account, such as the one I mentioned above from 759domains.com.  Third, you need to get an account at Mandrill.com, which just happens to be owned by MailChimp. (You can also use Amazon Simple Email System)

Once you have purchased the NewsletterMailer v1.3 and have your domain and hosting account, along with a Mandrill account, then you can follow the simple instructions that come with the NewsletterMailer software to set it up.  Basically you’re going to create a MySQL database and then upload your files to the hosting account and go to a specific URL to execute the installation script.  I like to create a folder called “newsletter” and upload the files to that.  That way I just go to mydomain.com/newsletter to access the newsletter system.

Once you’ve installed the NewsletterMailer application you’ll need to setup your STMP settings in the software.  Your SMTP host will be smtp.mandrillapp.com, and then just enter the username and password that you setup for your Mandrill account.  I use port 587 and check the SMTP Auth button.  I set up the NewsletterMailer to send 8000 messages per hour, at 1000 per connection.

You’ll need to setup the following cron job to run every 15 minutes so that your email continues to send once you hit the send button:

wget -O – -q -t 1 http://yourdomain.com/newsletter/mails/sendAll

Replace http://yourdomain.com/newsletter with the domain and folder you created for your NewsletterMailer system.

If all of this sounds complicated, don’t worry, the instructions are well written and the author of the the NewsletterMailer provides great support.

After you get the technical aspects of the newsletter system setup, you can then upload your contacts via CSV file or from another database.  To create newsletters is super easy as there are several free templates that are provided and you can always create your own templates.  There’s also a plugin for WordPress.

One of the great things about Mandrill is that you get the first 12,000 emails sent for free!  You only pay for each email after that.  This makes the cost savings even larger for those of you with smaller email lists.  Mandrill will limit the amount of emails that you can send per hour in the beginning, but once that you show them you aren’t a spammer then they will open up the gate wider and wider.  I think I can send around 10,000 messages an hour now.

That’s the basics of how to setup a newsletter system like MailChimp and Constant Contact for about 10% of the cost per month.

Good luck with your email list and comment below if you have any questions or discover other cool things with NewsletterMailer v1.3.