TechDuke

If you’re sending out a newsletter to more than 25 people, you should be using a service that does it for you. Don’t do it from your own computer and your own email account unless you’re absolutely sure its kosher with your ISP. Check your ISP’s rules before sending. On AOL, for example. From this page, you can request to be put on AOL’s whitelist, which means that you’ll be able to send a newsletter and AOL won’t block it as Spam. However, you’ll have to agree to a set of rules: your mailing will have to comply with the CAN Spam Act, valid contact information must be included, all of your subscribers must have requested the newsletter, and so on.

Some ISPs and web hosting services offer free newsletter mailing services, so check with yours. If they do, it’ll most likely be limited to newsletters with a few hundred subscribers. You can also go with a free newsletter service such as Coollist or Yahoo! Groups. To use the Yahoo! Groups Service, first create a new group by clicking the “Start a new Group” link. After you’ve created the group, go to Members section and click Invite Member. That will allow you to add subscribers to your newsletter, which you can then send out whenever you want. Pay sites, such as DunDee is good if you’re distributing to several thousand readers.

For a more complete list, head to Google Directory Listings. The actual amount you’ll pay varies according to the number of subscribers and the size of your newsletter.