Building a list of thousands or even tens of thousands of email addresses takes not just months, but years. The patience is worth it.

The payoff from such long-term focus for a local media site is in building a list of loyal visitors who come to the site more often, which boosts page views and ad inventory.

Consider the impact: nudging frequency of visits from 3.0 to 3.1 per month with a site of 1 million unique visitors and average pages per visit of 6.0 will boost monthly page views by 600,000 and ad inventory by 1.2 million impressions at two ads per page.

One of the best sources of email addresses is with an email newsletter, whether it’s daily, weekly or monthly. Some sites do all three depending on the content:

1. Daily: news, sports or both

2. Weekly: features, especially entertainment

3. Monthly: features again if the site content is updated less often, such as travel or recreation.
Here are a few tips on producing and managing a newsletter:

- Put it in html format.

- An ad position is optional.

- Include five to 10 headlines for a quick read.

- Provide a link to subscribe (if the recipient sends it to a friend) or unsubscribe.

- Send it early in the day because a large number of people receive them at work. You don’t want them reading it the next day when the information is stale.

- Promote on the site with prominent standing links and display ads.

- Set up opt-in or opt-out boxes throughout the site where people register for other benefits such as contests.

- Expect a moderate unsubscribe rate; anything heavy points to a problem.

A big database of subscribers takes years to develop, but eventually the site numbers will jump noticeably whenever a newsletter goes out to a large list. The day you notice the bump is the day you will be especially glad you put the effort into it.