5000 subscribers = 200 downloads?

[Nexic]

My newsletter is just over 5000 subscribers, however the average newsletter I've sent just recently has only been generating about 200 downloads of the game advertised (affiliate titles). I've tried both HTML with pictures and plain text and have also tried varying the subject line incase of spam filtering. Is this normal? Back when I had like 200 subscribers I'm pretty sure I was seeing at least 1/2 taking an interest.

Is it possible a large ISP has blacklisted me? I'm using YMLP.

[Sean Doherty]

In my opinion your news letters are no longer about your games! They seem to be news letters for the sake of sending news leters? If they were about your games, that would be cool; but they seem to be about other peoples games.

The last news letter was about Astro Fury, a reflexive game. I'm not every sure it mentioned the name of your new game; is it "Real Space III"? These days it seems everyone is doing the same thing and thats cool, but it causes a much larger percentage of people to ignore the news letters.

Then again what do I know...:)

[Nexic]

Usually talk a bit about what I've been up to recently business wise and yes did talk about upcoming game and gave AstroFury a brief mention. Though honestly there isn't much to talk about without artificially creating something to say that's most likely completely off topic anyway.

What do other people send in their newsletters? As far as I can see most send new game releases and sometimes affiliate games, identical to us. Some will send news too but often not much of interest except some rare cases. I don't feel the need to say "Look, we got 5/5 stars at randomfreedownloadsitethatgivesallgames5outof5anyw ay.com!!!".

[Sean Doherty]

One of the great things about gmail is the ability to group emails by a category. So if I go back and look at the news letter category I would say most of them are worth less then a second of my time.

Amazon has by far the best news letters, probably because I tell them what to send me and they spend a lot of money doing research. In my mind, Gamespot have the worst news letters; I need to remove myself, their news are to frequent.

Why don't you talk about your upcoming game? Give a few screen shots or at least a small summary? Offer a discount or a coupon on one of your older games? Give me a reason to download something new? Maybe offer a tips a tricks section to complete desterate space?

Make sure your talk about somethings new? I really dislike it when people talk about other people products, especially old products. Its kinds of like when NBC advertises the world release of some movie, like Starwars, on NBC.

And no your not alone, everyone seems to be doing it these days; the last news letter from chroniclogic was on Venture Africa:

"Venture Africa has been sold in Walmart, Target, Gamestop, and
Apple stores and is now available for download from chroniclogic.com."

I expect more from the people who created Gish. As my wife would say, shame on you Gish guy! That said, Venture Africa is a great game and Chroniclogic is a great company; I've meet both these guys at GDC's. That news letters was worth was well...

I look forward to the next Jagged Blade Software game.

[LilGames]

Does your newsletter service track how many emails were actually opened ? If not, you need to switch. Most good mailing services have "read" tracking.

[Polycount Productions]

Amazon has by far the best news letters, probably because I tell them what to send me and they spend a lot of money doing research.
I couldn't agree more: it's absolutely stunning how well they've done the system. Amazon is probably the only place dedicated to selling stuff whose newsletters I read carefully.

Is this normal? Back when I had like 200 subscribers I'm pretty sure I was seeing at least 1/2 taking an interest.
What has changed? What's the difference? What were you doing back then compared to what you are doing now?

Is it possible a large ISP has blacklisted me? I'm using YMLP.
I don't think large ISP would blacklist you... because as far as I know - they blacklist IP addresses, so it would be YMLPs concern - not yours.