eborg I think it depends on your business model. Let me offer a scenario where using AdWords to gain subscribers can pay off.
One thing I've noticed from reading a lot of blogs over the years is that the more subscribers a blog has the quicker it usually grows. A blog with 500 subscribers will usually pick up subscriber 501 than a blog with 50 subscribers will pick up subscriber 51. It's probably a combination of people being more likely to subscriber to a blog that many others have already subscribed to and that the more subscribers you have the more people are out there generally spreading the word about you.
Another thing I've noticed is that blogs with large subscriber numbers have a much easier time launching new projects. A lot of bloggers are looking to run ads on their sites to make money, but the real money seems to be in getting your audience to sign up for other projects. Whether that other project is a new product you have or a membership site or whatever.
If you have 50,000 subscribers and decide to offer them something that costs $100 and 1% of your readers sign up, you just made $50,000 dollars. Pretty good just for launching. 1% conversion rates aren't that difficult with an audience that trusts you either. You could easily convert at a higher %.
The above would indicate that having a lot of subscribers is a good way to make money.
Just consider advertising. Advertisers are going to want to know about your pageviews and subscriber numbers. The more you get of each the more attractive you are to advertisers and the more money you can charge them.
You'd probably have to spend a lot on AdWords to gain 50,000 subscribers, but say you were willing to spend enough to gain 500 or 1,000. Assuming you have a good blog that might be something reasonable to spend. And as I said at the start once blogs hit a certain number of subscribers they tend to grow much faster.
If you start putting a dollar amount on how much a subscriber is worth you might find that one subscriber is worth more than the cost of gaining one subscriber through AdWords. It really depends on what a subscriber is ultimately worth to your business and how much it costs to acquire another subscriber.
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