James, meet Ross Chapman, owner of http://www.WorkatHomeCentral.com and publisher of Network News. This is definitely a guy you want to get to know - full of great resources and a super nice guy to boot
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In answer to your question, James, I have read some studies that say Tuesday evening is the best time - why in the world I cannot remember. My best advice to you is to study your web stats! Your targeted market's habits and lifestyle are a huge factor... when do you have the best chance of gaining the attention of your targeted market and turning them into a captive audience?
Some food for thought:
About 8 months ago I reviewed my site stats and found that the majority of my traffic was on weekends, lunch breaks and week-night evenings (after 8pm). At the time, most of my material was motivational/inspirational - geared towards helping people start their own business. I started to realize that the majority of my subscribers (at that time) were working outside the home and were more available in the evenings and on weekends. At the time, I seriously considered switching my publishing time to Saturday morning. (I should have!)
Instead, things began to unfold and my focus began to change just a bit... and with that came 400 new subscribers, and several of the originals were finally making the transition to their own business too... and now when I look at my stats I find that the majority of my visitors are on Monday night and Tuesday (just after receiving my newsletter).
It is obvious now that my my newsletter is being read by my subscribers - according to the rise in traffic. Why wasnt it being read before - or more accurate, why wasnt it causing a rise in site traffic? Either because I was not focusing on the material that my subscribers were looking for, or it was the correct content for that specific market but perhaps delivered at a time when they had the least time to give it their attention (thus getting lumped together with the hundreds of other emails they had received - and deleted).
With the change in focus and the rise in stats, I decided to continue to publish on Monday's, but also archive the issues online for those that prefer to read it there. Interestingly, I used to publish at 10am my time... now I publish closer to 10pm - and this made a huge difference in the response rate as well!
I definitely suggest following the trends of your site stats... and a little trial and error
