Email Marketing - Creating a list

Hello all,

I just created a MailChimp account and have about 15-20 people signup everyday. (Total of 51 so far. I started 3 days ago) It's my first time starting an email marketing campaign/list and was wondering if you can give me some tips and advice.

A few questions:

1- Whats a good conversion rate to have people sign up?
2- Whats a good number of subscribers to have in your list to consider a decent milestone to make a decent earning ($5k/month)? Number of subscribers: 5K, 10K, 20K ? Any tables or numbers you can share Subscribers VS Earnings?
3- Do you embed the signup widget or use a pop-up or both? Which converts better?
4- MailChimp has a long process of having the member verify their email address etc... Any other tool that simplifies it a bit more?
5- Do you require the First Name, Last name? Or only add an Email field to speed up the process?
6- Can you sell the email list? And if so where? Is it true that they say each email is worth $3-4 dollars?
7- Any mistakes/suggestions/stories you'd like to share where it would help me and the WW community/newbies? :)

thanks in advance.
DP