I don’t think any responsible email marketer will give advice before finding out more information.

For example, how was the list built? Using PPC? Expired domain traffic? Co-reg traffic? Via opt-ins through Squidoo or HubPages? Via an article directory? As a result of a follow up/update list after buying a product (either an affiliate product or your own product).

Each of these channels comes with it’s own level of permission – and if you’re a permission-based marketer, you’ll realized that someone who’s just bought something from you has a higher level of loyalty and stickiness, compared to someone who’s just downloaded a free report off your site.

So back to the 10,000 mailing list – determine the source of list/lead generation is important. Are they emotionally invested in you? Have they spent money purchasing something you offer? Called into one of your teleseminars and stayed the full duration because they found the information compelling? Are they merely curious strangers? Or evangelists for your brand (also known as “raving fans”).

Once you’ve sorted that out, you need to figure out the demographics of your list too. What’s their geo-origin? US/Canada? Europe? Asia?

Obviously some forms of monetization will work better than others.

Pay-Per-Click Content Publishing: You probably would know that adsense publishing and CPC publishing is probably my least favorite source of monetization (mainly because you’re sending visitors AWAY from your site for $0.10 to $0.50 per click). So unless you’re generating a couple of hundred thousand uniques a month who come back repeatedly, it’s not going to be very viable.

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CPA Marketing: despite what you might hear, the bulk of revenue is still based in US/Canada for CPA/lead generation type monetization strategies. So you might have 30-50 offers that are “international” (even then a number of countries will be excluded), and there’s only so much you can do from Europe and Asia.

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Affiliate marketing/product sales: to do either of these well requires that you understand your list. This might include getting them to take a survey and compiling the demographic data. A good way to increase responsiveness for this is to offer some type of incentive. Maybe a $20 or $50 coupon in a mini-sweepstakes, valid at Amazon, iTunes, home depot or some site which is relevant to your list.

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The most important element I would suggest is to segregate your list into smaller sublists, especially if there’re multiple demographics in there – teens and babyboomers will have different interests and breaking the list into at least 2 different lists will have a huge impact on your conversions (just imagine having 10,000 keyphrases in a single adgroup…it doesn’t work does it? It’s a similar principle for email marketing too).

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Once you’ve got your lists broken up, work on your sales funnel and go beyond just promotion one ebook or service to that list. Ideally you’d want a funnel of multiple related and relevant products and services that you’d market to the list over the course of your relationship with them.

It’s all about the permission thing and if you’re speaking to their needs, there’s no reason why your list wouldn’t continue to generate the big bucks for you.

So think long term and the list will do well for you.

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On the choice of autoresponders: Aweber and GetResponse are the big ones. I personally prefer Aweber, and I know marketers who’re happy with GetResponse too.

Blogging can be a profitable and fulfiling venture. If you have a strategy in place, you’ll not only see your pool of regular readers grow in time, but you’ll build a community of readers and learn from them in the process.

Given that blogging is an established traffic generation method and compliments many income monetization business models, here’re some points for consideration as you’re building up your blogging proficiency.

• Positioning/Branding

It’s important to establish the positioning of your blog.

I’m seeing that “Internet Marketing” is too big an umbrella to blog under, or at least to provide the amount of depth of coverage that would be useful for blog readers like yourselves.

In the last couple of weeks, you might’ve detected that this blog is moving more along the lines of

• Blogging
• Affiliate Marketing
• Traffic Generation (especially social traffic)

If you’re blogging within a broad category (such as golf, internet marketing, the legal profession), choose one or two niches and focus on those.

However, if you’re picking a niche such as “pet geckos”, you might want to go horizontal in your focus, ranging from gecko grooming, nutrition, exercise (a cradle-to-grave approach if you will).

• Content Building

I realize there’s a great temptation to load a blog up with adsense the moment it’s created.

Resist the urge.

If you have 10 visitors a day, your CPM rate will not be very high.

It’ll serve your long term interest better if you focus on building quality content for at least 1-2 weeks, establishing yourself as a content creator before looking at the monetization aspect.

Quality content should help your readers in the following ways:

• It helps them solve a problem they’re currently facing (the more painful the problem, the more valuable the solution)
• It helps them do something they’re already doing faster,more effectively,at a lower cost. Maybe all of the above.
• It’s something unique and you’re the only person they can get it from.

You’ve probably already heard my refrain that Content is King, Queen and the Crown Prince too.

• List Building

Building a list helps you maintain contact with your visitors/readers. If you create a compelling reason, they’ll opt-in to your list. This gives you the opportunity to follow up with them, build a relationship and if you recommend useful products or services, you stand to benefit from the relationship.

I’d suggest going with Aweber or GetResponse for your list building solution.

• Blog Monetization

Although blog monetization is important, I suggest that it should factor into your plans, but be the last aspect you look into. That’s because if your blog degenerates into a daily updated sales page, you’ll ultimately turn off your readers.

When choosing to participate in a marketing promotion, ask yourself the following questions and answer them truthfully:

• Does this product/service provide value to my readers?
• Have I invested my own money and time into this product?
• Did it work? Was it effective?
• Would I promote the product, even if I didn’t benefit from it?

If your answer is “yes” to all the questions, by all means go ahead. Your readers will know you stand behind your recommendation.

On the other hand, I’ve seen affiliate marketers whose blogs consist of one promotion after another.

I don’t think they’re in tune with their readers at all. (And their traffic numbers tell the story).

Whatever you might consider doing, think this through:

Would you watch a TV program if it consisted entirely of ads? Would you read a book or magazine if every page asked you to buy something?

Have mercy on your readers (and ultimately yourself) by sparing them the neverending sales pitch.

They’ll thank you for it too.