How to build an email flow / funnel content?

[woodkid]

I was wondering if any of you guys could direct me to some resources that could help to create an effective email funnel for my mailing list (which i'm slowly building). I have chosen a vertical already but i'm totally not sure what to send to the subscribers. I know that i want to build a relationship instead of sending a one-time offer hoping that they convert. But how many emails should i put in the flow - two, five, a hundred? How often to send them? Where to get the inspiration to write the content? The last thing seems to be the most difficult part and it probably is... Should i subscribe to some competition newsletters and just see what they do? Sure, i'm doing that already, but perhaps there's something which could speed up my learning process and let me avoid obvious mistakes.

Right now i'm testing a "no money" method, which is to put several posts on Facebook each day (on some vertical related groups) which takes me 5 minutes and brings one or two subscribers per day. Of course i want to scale that up, but I thought I would get zero. Just a small