Is there a way to make money from providing free email?If so how?The only thing I can think of is get a free email account if you buy xxx product.
Anyone got any ideas?

By "providing free email", I assume you mean running a service like Hotmail on your web site.

Here are two ways you could earn money by doing this:
1. More repeat visitors. Users will keep coming back to your site to check their email
2. Banner ads (Hotmail does this)

Everyone.net (http://www.everyone.net) allows you to do this. For the free version (you pay no money) they have banner ads. They use 1/2 for their advertising and give you the other 1/2 to use for advertising or promotion for your site. There is no cost to you.

Or you can download script to run the services, then you can own all the ad revenue. Many of the scripts are free. Just do a search over sites like hotscripts.com etc...