I have been going over some web marketing strategies and tactics. To open up my content (writing and ideas) to wider audiences I ough to build an email list. From the first subscriber through the 40,000th subscriber goal I hope to enlighten, entertain, and help solve problems for them and me.
I read a telling paragraph in Internet Riches book by Scott Fox. The section has a home constructin/repair website example of a business person with 40,000 subscribers to his email list. That list and the website, support a 90-acre property, a family and one full-time email answering employee. The ad revenue being key to revenue. I got to the point of how much revenue and profit is needed to meet the goals of support?
Take a profit of a conservative $400,000 a year. Divide by 1 million website hits per month for 12 million hits in a year. Take 30% of revenue is website hits or $120,000 a year. That values each website visitor at $0.01 per visitor. Then the email list of 40,000 generates $280,000 a year for $7 per email subscriber. No products sold (other than ads) and no services (other than ads). Run entirely off ads with relevant content on the site and in the ads. What does this mean as a baseline for other topics and interests?
How many hits would it take to reach your goal. Say my goal is $1,000 a month. 30% of it or $300 comes from website visitors at $0.01 per visitor. I need 30,000 visitors a month for that portion. Then the email list portion can generate $700 a month. How m any subscriberes are needed? Round out conservatively that the revenue per email subscriber is $4. My topics are not as keyword expensive as home construction/remodeling is. In a base case I need 175 subscribers. The $4 into $700. Such a list seems imminently doable and begins with one sign-up at a time.
Creating a content and ad-only website seems a daunting task at first with few clues to profitability other than testimonials. It can be done. If I did not believe it will not happen. If I do believe it can happen. There are many successful publishers of content on the internet. By techcrunchies some 2,000,000 who make a living at blogs. I don't think there are anywhere close to that many topics to go on about yet people do.
When the stars align, gravity is in balance. A life in balance can achieve the high-wire act of ethical sales and truthful, fair, wealth generation.