Advice Needed on New Strategy for Gaining Subscribers (possibly making a BIG Mistake)

[staffjam]

1. Hi,
   
   I have recently launched a Free daily Intelligence Newsletter for my site: www.oilprice.com and am about to embark on a strategy that could be a BIG mistake.
   
   At present we have an advert for the newsletter on the site to the right hand side and signups are averaging about 40 new subscribers per day.
   I'm looking to up things a bit though and my webmaster is currently creating a subscriber section in the site - so subscribers will be able to go and read archived material and reports that were sent.
   
   if you take a look at the site you will see the main part is centred around the content and the articles we have listed. We will be creating a section on the right hand side currently above the (Free Daily Intelligence Newsletter)- actually this will be shifted down.
   And in it's place will be a box called Intelligence articles: These will be the Free reports that we send to our subscribers on a daily basis.
   The idea is to have people click on the title and start reading the report - but there will only be 4/5 paragraphs to whet their appetite (and help with SEO) then if they want to read the rest they have to join the newsletter - where they will have access to the membership section.)
   Stratfor have done something similar and Stratfor are VERY successful
   http://www.stratfor.com/memberships/...ot_out_trouble
   
   Now the articles and Reports will be good - they are written by ex Intelligence agents who supply similar reports to Governments and Hedge funds - so people will and do want to read - but i have been told by a few web publishers that making people enter their e-mail for content is a terrible way to go forward.
   My argument to this is that 95% of the content you see on the homepage is Free and can be accessed by a click - But if you want the special reports you have to subscribe to the mail (they will be clearly marked special reports)
   
   How does this sound to you? Am I making a huge mistake or does what i'm planning seem reasonable?

 

[David G]

Seems very reasonable and an excellent plan.

Congats on the really well done and successful site and all those daily subscribers.

 

[staffjam]

Thanks for the reply Trader. Well we'll be going ahead with it - the site will be updated in 2 days. I'm glad you like the site , a lot of hard work has gone into it. Have a few more projects coming to life as well - sure beats parking.

 

[David G]

I am surprised there have not been more comments about your site because it has extremely valuable features such as the articles, quotes and charts etc and is one of the best financial sites I have seen.