What’s a subscriber worth?

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m going to look at ways of getting more traffic into a blog this week – and one of the simplest ways to get traffic is a good old-fashioned advertising campaign.

I’m going to be experimenting with Google AdWords, but I need to think about (1) what my primary goal is, and (2) how much I should pay for that goal.

In my case, I want to increase traffic, but I want to do it in a way that’s sustainable. That means increasing subscriber numbers. Of course, I have the chance to make money from every casual visitor to my site, but if I get them to subscribe, I have the opportunity to get long-term revenue from each subscriber.

But how much should I pay for this AdWords campaign? What is a subscriber worth?

Well, I’m lucky in that in my particular niche, people like to post their stats. A little research leads me to believe that the top bloggers in my niche are making $2-5 per subscriber per month.

I can only guess how long a subscriber stays subscribed on average, but if I estimate 6 months, then that gives me a total value per subscriber of $12-30. Obviously, I want to make some money, so I’m going to aim for the lower end of that, and try to keep my cost of acquisition per subscriber to $5 or less.

The other issue is that there’s no effective way to accurately track a subscriber sign-up as a goal in adwords, so I’m going to start with a very small campaign and just keep an eye on the stats on a daily basis.

If you’re looking at advertising your blog, these are the kind of things you need to be looking at. But you should always do your own research too. How much is a subscriber worth to you?

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Tags: advertising, adwords, subscribers