Hey, what's the best website to use to start am opt-in mailing list that wont cost me anything? thanks in advance.
Dixie it would be best to get an account at aweber. It's not free but its the best out there. You don't have to start a mailing list then change it to aweber later. All your subscribers will have to re confirm their subscription and about 70 - 75% of them will not.
Depends on the kind of list you want to build, and the numbers involved. If you're expecting a small list (< 1K members) and not very frequent mailings, you could try using phplist or other list mailing scripts on your own website. You can run this on a shared hosting account. If you are looking to get a large number of subscriptions and / or frequent mailings, don't do it on your own site even if you have a server. Two reasons a) Many providers restrict the number of mailings per hour; they don't want to get their ip's blacklisted as spam sources. Typical numbers I've seen are 200 - 500 / hour. In such a case, if you have a list that's many thousands, just imagine the amount of time it would take for a broadcast to be sent out. b) Even if your hosting provider allows it - most isp's and email providers (gmail / hotmail / yahoo) will automatically classify your mail as spam, if they get too many messages hitting their server within a short while. For a large list (and if you're looking to send commercial offers / have people buy), go with aweber / getresponse. Using a free provider looks as though you're a fly by night operation, or doing so badly that your offer doesn't have credibility. On the other hand - if you MUST go free (for instance, setting up a free ebook site or some such); try using google groups / yahoo groups in list mailing mode rather than as a discussion group.