Advice Please: list building - which list is better?

Hello Marketers and Marketdetts!

I am looking for a bit of advice. I like to give away free products as a list building strategy. As long as the product is pretty good I think it also helps build a reputation right of the bat for having quality products, and as long as you keep up that level off information and products you will have a loyal base of subscribers. I also think support is a huge importance. If someone has problems with download - help them out, if they want more information -give it to them, etc. Again breeding loyalty. Treat your subscribers as if they were family. but of course there's no one to think you have quality products and no one to treat like family if you don't get people to subscribe, right. Right.

Anyway. My question to you is this. I have two different styles of Optin pages. First one is more sales page like - Version 1 . The Other is more squeeze page like - Version 2. I will be throwing a good deal of money at them though PPC - yes I can a/b test, but before draining my bank account testing on Google, yahoo and Bing , I wanted to get some of your expert opinions on some of the following questions:

• which will convert more subscribers?
• What do you think of the auto responder sequence? (There's only 2 steps)
• Are there too many steps before getting to the download page.
• Do you like the quality of the free product?
• Which page design is better?
• What else might make you subscribe?
• What would keep you from subscribing?

If all you amazing people can help me out and give your critiques, I would really appreciate it! I will gladly return the favor if anyone wants my opinion on their site, or anything else for that matter. Just PM me the link to whatever you want an opinion on and parts you would like advice or opinions on and will gladly do the same for you.

Thanks! And may money come to you in truck-loads and rain of success flood your fields!

Justin