Email subscription popups? Are they worth the risk?

Hi guys.

I'm planning to start my own blog (with the main focus on e-commerce and everything connected with that). Surely, I want to get more readers to subscribe to my posts. And seems like popups is the most effective way to do that.

However, pop-ups is such a controversial topic. After browsing through various forums I came to the conclusion that they are damn irritating and readers hate them. But despite this fact, email popups helped a lot of bloggers to double the amount of the subscribers and collect decent email lists.

While researching the topic I bumped into this post about different types of popups: http://webmeup.com/blog/do-your-pop-ups-annoy-customers.html

Which one do you consider to be the most effective and the least annoying?

Also, as this posts says: http://unbounce.com/email-marketing/get-subscribers-from-pop-ups/ , we should put too much info into popups. But how much is ok? Should I only ask for an email/name, or add some info/details?

What can you advise?

If is like in the example, it's ok!

I would rather go for a pop up that detected the intent to leave your page/site.

there are plugins that track mouse movements and when they look like they are about to leave or click the back button the pop up will trigger.

I find pop ups irritating personally however there is no doubt that they do increase signups. I guess its a moral dilemma initially but only testing will show you if your audience engages with it or not.

you say you are just "planning to start your own blog". I would suggest you focus on getting traffic first and worry about increasing opt-ins later. Build something worth signing up for.