I am thinking about setting up my own newsletter for my Izzy Stradlin site but need a few pointers to help me get started. There are a few things I dont understand:

Can I run a newsletter through Outlook Express and just email it to everyone on the list? I was thinking I could just design a HTML email and send it to everyone who subscribes... -Does this work?

How do I get people to sign up? I know I can just put a little box on my main page saying sign up here but once an email has been entered do I then just receive the email and add them to the list of outgoing mails?

To be honest, I need quite a few pointers. I would like it to be a free newsletter which is why I think it best I run it from outlook. I dont want to have to enter my email address into any websites unless relevant becos as you all know Junk Mail will come flying in if I subcribe to justy one thing.... lol

have a look at http://www.yourmailinglistprovider.com/

they will sort you out with code to enable sign ups, they don't litter your emails with ads and its free.

You just write your email in html and paste it into their send page.

very easy.

As David has said, you should try to use some sort of web based program for sending newsletters.

I would recommend against using OE to send them, as for one thing it would take you ages! You can't just put all the addresses in the TO: field at the same time as that would be a breach of privacy (everyone on the list would see each other's email addresses!). Also, you can't just put the addresses in the BCC: field as some people delete messages if they are not sent directly to them!

Also, a word of caution... not everyone likes to receive, or is capable of receiving, emails written in HTML. You should ideally give a choice as to HTML or plaintext, but supply a plaintext version if you havent the time to do both.

My 2p.

Outlook Express now has a limit to how many addresses it will send out at a time. I used to send out a couple of newsletters using OE, but that new feature stopped that. I think it only sends out 29 now, or some number like that.

Also, some of the newer spam filters will stop any email that has multiple addresses using the BCC feature. So, that will also kill using OE.

There are several free web-based services that are pretty good. Ezine Manager is a free one until you reach a certain amount of subscribers. You can send html or text with it. It will handle the subscribing and unsubscribing automatically, too.

I use both a web-based service and a computer program. Those are different newsletters. I do like the control that I have with sending out a couple of newsletters from my own pc, but that can be more costly when buying the programs and with the setup.

I suggest you check out Ezine Manager, or something like that. It's probably one of the best ways to start out a newsletter, without some of the problems of sending from your own PC.

Dave