Wordpress Question

By allowing visitors to subscribe to your RSS feeds it will notify subscribers of any new posts you publish.

There is also a way via aweber (I know aweber, maybe others) to automatically add any subscribers to your RSS feed into a mailing list to build your actual list with. So that is another benefit.

Yeah mailing lists and RSS feeds are two different things. No, people do not subscribe to build backlinks. Ideally, you want ppl to come back to your site when you publish a new post...that's why they would subscribe.

You can build your list via aweber and attach your RSS feed to it. That way whenever you make a new post your entire email list will get a notification of the update. Also you have a list to now promote products to. (I do this with my blog right now. But instead of sending them offers I write up a honest review of the product and it's their choice to come read it and buy it if they want instead of some in your face sales copy in an email. Seems to convert much better that way.)

People comment to leave backlinks. Turn moderation on for comments, and you can build up your content by grabbing a spam comment, stripping out the url, making the comment say what you want it to say, publishing it, then replying to it to keep the 'conversation' going...

Another way to build up content is to let people become contributors. In that case, you leave the login meta info in the sidebar widget.

The whole point of having a blog is to build a readership, so you need to make sure to add regular posts to your blog to keep visitors coming back often.

Building a list of subscribers is really what you need to concentrate on, so adding opt-in forms to different parts of your blog would be a good idea.

You can get a wordpress plugin called wp optinform that works really well, and you can then set it to display on whatever posts/pages you wish.

Look at how ChrisG does it at chrisg.com

He publishes all his posts to his email list (as far as I tell) and also publishes other messages ONLY to his list.

Your blog becomes a broadcasting platform. Your list can fit in very nicely to compliment with offers, news and messages not suitable for your blog.

To directly answer your question, the purpose of a mailing list is to send out relevant offers which can make you money when a subscriber buys something. In other words, they join your mailing list, you create an email with an offer and send it out to the list of people who signed up, they open it follow the link and buy, you make money-make sense?

The key to it is relevancy. Of course, this depends upon the subject of your site and it's own marketing availability. I notice you refer to it as a site and not a blog so I am assuming you have built your site around a product or subject with products which can be purchased right?

I wouldn't assume your visitors are interested in backlinks unless the site is centered around internet marketing. Truthfully I am not even sure how anyone could get a backlink by subscribing to a mailing list? Something I am unaware of here? Do you know what a backlink is?

The easiest way for me to think of the purpose of a mailing list on a wordpress site is to convey how I learned to make money online. The whole purpose of the wordpress sites I have built is primarily to build up a relevant mailing list which I can send offers out to via email. Offers which I have either created a product for or that pay me via commission for a sale. It's all in the list my friends, ALL OF IT.