Sure, on your blog offer something extra that is only available to email subscribers. Try to make it something that will be updated regularly to encourage them to stay subscribed instead of signing up to receive the extra and then unscubscribing right away.

Seems like the standard is to make a useful non-commercial looking blog with search ranking to attract visitors to a soft sell opt-in. Once their in the list employ standard marketing techniques mixed with alerts for important additions to the blog.

Obviously your content will be king, however there are email marketing tools like autoresponder and GetResponse that will allow you to integrate the html into your blog. Also Wordpress has an email marketing plugin. Getresponse has a free account, but it is very limited.

building a list BY using your blog is actually a great way, one of many, to build your list. mark hit the nail on the head, if your using wordpress just use their plugin.

if not, just use an opt in template, found everywhere online for free, and upload it to your page, most likely the public_html directory of your server.

you have the right idea though and no, its not over complicating things.

best of luck, hope that helps.

courtney

:end

Provide content about your affiliates on your blog. Give a free product away for signing up through for your list. Send periodic emails to your list to bring them back to your blog, like a monthly email with an article you wrote that they may be interested in to bring them back to your blog. Don’t send them emails everyday about your affiliate product.