On one of my websites I am experimenting in building a newsletter mailing list. I have never done this before, but from many sources I heard that having a large subscriber list is a good way to make money. So, I thought to myself I should give it a try and see if people would signup. If they sign up I can move forward and develop a newsletter. The website averages 800-1000 visitors per day and makes about $6.00 per day from Google Adsense. $6.00 a day is not much to be honest. Sure, it’s nice money, but it does not get a business anywhere (unless you live in India or some other country where the cost of living is extremely low compared to the United States). I added a link to the newsletter signup page in several highly visible locations and have received about 25 subscribers so far. Out of those 25 subscribers 50% have confirmed their subscriptions. Out of those who confirmed their subscriptions 6 seem to be from outside of the US.

The link to the newsletter signup has been out there for one month or so and I think that the subscription result is not too bad. So, now I am moving forward and will develop a newsletter that I can send out. Getting content initially should not be too hard. I can even link to competing websites or news articles without jeopardizing my subscribers, because if the target provides value they will stay on the newsletter mailing list hoping to get more value out of it. My intial plan is not to monetize the newsletter too much. I might include links to Amazon products related to the overall topic of my website. That would allow me to keep track of the results. Then I monitor things for another month or two and take it from there. A next step will be to see if I can write some special content and promote it via the newsletter. Let’s say I write a product review and mention it in my newsletter. With proper tracking in place I can see how well the newsletter content is received.

For now I plan to work on this for 3 months and then make a conclusion based on the results. Sure, 6 subscribers will not cut it, but I hope to gain 5 confirmed subscribers per month. If I can continue that kind of growth and keep current subscribers happy I think it might be worth putting more efforts into this experiment. If the viral thing takes off these subscribers might drive more people to my website and eventually have those subscribe to my newsletter. A contest with some nice prices is another option to get more subscribers. And with subscriber numbers growing I might be able to sell advertising to a sponsor.

So, 2008 has some good stuff ahead for me. I will write more about this experiment as we go.