Mark

I would pitch the following offer - continue advertising but at a lower rate of $100/month. Then maybe haggle up to a rate of $150/month. Maybe offer to sign a 6 month contract, or pay it all fully up front.

The traffic he sends you is probably beneficial, but you are paying too much for it. I would suspect that if you were paying 20 cents or so a click rather then the 30+ cents a click it would make more economic sense to you.

Final thought - this is something I learned from texas cooking and soliciting small food companies for effective ads: Do not make your landing page your front page. Make a special landing page that strongly pushes the prospect to give you their email address. Then you can continue marketing to these people with future newsletters.

Another alternative you could do is offer to pay web sites $1, $2 or more for each qualified email address they send you. If someone pitched that kind of idea to me, I'd think seriously about it for frisky fans.

Steve