Mailing lists - worth it?

[simonh]

Is it worth setting up a mailing list that people can subscribe to on the home page of a site? I notice that many indie websites tend to do this, but does anybody really get a decent amount of subsribers, to make it worthwhile?

It's just that I'm finishing my site off now, and didn't know whether it was worth the hassle of setting one up just to get a few email addresses.

[Tom Cain]

It took me less than an hour to set up a subscription mechanism that has gathered several thousand subscribers to date. Since these are people that have specifically requested to be notified when I have something new, the effort I put into it is insignificant compared to the value of the list. No matter how few subscribers you get or how many addresses go stale, it is still very difficult to get such a well-targeted list at such a low cost.

[Redclaw]

It's just that I'm finishing my site off now, and didn't know whether it was worth the hassle of setting one up just to get a few email addresses. Yes, it's very, very worth it. (very!)

And if you go with something like www.ymlp.com then the effort involved is minimal.

[fusionlab]

It's a well known marketing principle that your best customers are the ones you already have. You will always get a better response if you target existing customers, as opposed to people who've never bought your products before. Of course, it helps if you have several products to promote.