At the center of this debate is quality versus quantity and you really must consider the niche your business is in to determine if you can make money online with a small list.
There are numerous examples of people earning a full time living on the Internet with lists of less than a thousand subscribers. One example that comes to mind is a guy who started an investment newsletter and charged $100 a month to subscribe to it.
If you are charging $100 a month and have a thousand subscribers you can earn over $1 million a year with a small list. Granted this is a very targeted niche, but that is part of the point of this article.
Other examples would include a person who has a newsletter that teaches people how to make money online. Because this is a competitive niche there are thousands of newsletters available just on this topic alone.
To make money with this type of list you would need to have more subscribers, or find your own unique angle in the type of newsletter you publish.
In reality you can probably never have too many subscribers to your mailing list. Regardless of the theme you want to build your subscriber base as large as possible unless you are capping it in the form of a limited membership.
Internet marketing is a numbers game to a certain extent, so you have more potential to make money the more people you have viewing the email marketing messages. This would just seem to be common sense.
The primary problem is people have a hard time building a list of their own. When you are trying to add one subscriber at a time it can be time consuming.
Co registration leads and hiring a lead company is a faster way to build a large list, but it is not as personal either. You will have to work harder at developing relationships and getting to know your subscribers with this type of list building.
In summary to make money online you do not need a big list if you are in a targeted niche. However to play it safe you can probably never have too large of a list either.
