I have a mailinglist on a new site which i want to promote.. What is the best way of doing that? Is it common to use another website in the same niche to build your mailinlist? and does that work?
Well viral marketing is always the way to go. Maybe develop an ebook that draws people to your site that is what we did. Fact is you have to get people to your site to sign up for a newsletter so market your website. This goes with search engine optimization offpage and onpage this is where you need to focus.
I know a lot of the pros create squeeze pages. Offer something people will really want (can be a report you've written related to your niche), and deliver it via e-mail, as a reward for signing up for your newsletter or whatever.
There are many ways to get people to join your list such as joint venturing with another webmaster and cross promoting each other's list. You have to also think about the quality of subscribers. The best types of subscribers are obviously people who have bought things from you before. Second to that are people who opt into your list because you gave them quality content. One way I provide quality content is to write a short report and give it away. In the report I would plug part two of the report in exchange for an email address. It works very well and I get happy subscribers who are more willing to listen to me and buy from me.
I agree with giving something free by email. I run a website where I give free Christian website templates for download and the download link comes by email. I built a nice mailing list already with this. This also gives me good linking back to my website through the use of templates.