I would start dissecting the subscription process. I think we can start with a simple assumption: the subscription consists (in its first step) to show a form asking two things: name and email.
An effective “email marketing” or a simple “keep in touch” with your subscribers needs to be personal and direct. If we collect the name of our subscribers, we can write emails like:
Hi John,
can you buy this so I can earn something today?
Customizing emails with name leads to a problem: a single mail for each subscriber has to sent. This is a resource consuming process, but the are no other way to insert the receiver name in the email body.
Since this is my preferred way to send newsletter, I opt for it! May be we can implement a “mass mail” mode, where one or more email with many users in “hidden carbon copy” are sent.
So the subscription first step is a form with name and email fields. Both required.
Now, how can we insert such a form in a WordPress page?
WordPress has “short tags”, like [aaabbbccc]. It is really easy to define our short tag with the ability to insert a subscription form. Ususlly it will be done in a dedicated WordPress page.
Subscription page may need some introductory text that explains the big advantage to subscribe. And after the subscription something has to be shown to the subscriber, at least a thank you message.
We can follow two ways: a page for the subscription form and a page for the “thank you” message or a single page dedicated to our newsletter system with all the text configured in the newsletter admin panel.
The first way is the more flexible, but an average user may have problem in creating a single page: creating two or more pages can be too much hard.
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