Email marketing question

[chicagojoe]

I have a message board that I started a little over 4 years ago. I never had intentions of making money from it, it was just a hobby. It is a message board for a video game clan where I operate multiple game servers. Everyone (that I know of) who has registered plays the game or plays on my servers. It's a social community of gamers.

Now that the next version of the game is coming out, I was thinking of creating a page optimized for adsense clicks, and sending out bulk email to all registered users (a little over 11,000).

I was just wondering, since they registered at my forums, is this is considered opt-in? Is there anything wrong with me sending out a bulk email to all registered users? The page would be directly related to the content of the message board (the game).

[billmcintosh]

I'd recommend 2 things:

Send out a reminder email to everyone and remind them they registered to your site and give them some news about how the next version is coming out. Also let them know that as a registered user you will be emailing them from time to time.

Then a few days later send the promotional email.

This should help avoid anyone getting upset and making spam claims. That is your biggest problem: that you will upset your users and they'll report you as a spammer even though you're not.

I'd recommend you look at related affiliate programs instead of AdSense though. I'd imagine payouts in the gaming market on AdSense will be quite low. Good targeted affiliate programs should make you more money.