Website newsletter pop-ups

Raise your hand if you recognize this: You go to a website you’ve never been before because you followed a link to an article and BOOM! You get a pop-up asking you to subscribe to their newsletter. You click it away, and since the choice was saved in a cookie, you never get the question again.

Am I the only person in the world who thinks that this is the most stupid interaction ever?

Why would anybody ever decide to subscribe to content from a website they don’t know? Should a person not at least be able to actually read at least one of the articles on the website before getting this question?

Even if the person would later be open to subscribe to the newsletter, they probably can’t find the subscribe option, since this option has less prominence due to it already being in the pop-up. And they won’t get the question to subscribe again, since the pop-up has already been shown.

The visual presence of the option to subscribe to a newsletter would be much more effective, and also not so annoying. In that way you always remind the visitor that subscription is a option.

Alternatively the javascript pop-up could use a counter, and only ask the question at the Nth article read.

Of course sane people use RSS, but that is another story altogether.