Should I fire my client?

[Ankesh]

Hi Larry. There were some interesting threads about this same idea on the old sowpub forum.

From what I remember - Linda Caroll and Andy Frain and a few others had started something like this and made it very successful in their towns.

One thing similar amongst all their plans was: they owned the lists. And not the stores who had joined their program.

As far as I remember, here is how it worked:

1. They created a website for their entire town - and not just one store.
2. They went and convinced local store owners to allow them to place a long paper near the checkout counter.
3. People could write their names and email addresses on that paper. They would collect these emails and feed it into their system manually (or by hiring a high school kid).
4. These same businesses would then pay for an ad or a coupon placement in the email newsletters.

You could do something like that too. And - to generate the email lists - you could offer some kind of goodie to people so that they would write down their email addresses.