You could.
You could do it all yourself though it wouldn't be easy, and there are alternatives to Aweber too although Aweber is certainly recognized as the leader in the field. However, in truth I wouldn't even try. I would work on building up my site and income until site income would pay for it if I didn't want to invest up front. Until then I wouldn't try to do a newsletter or anything like that.
Why? Because of the great deal of work required for even a small mailing list without the service which programs like Aweber provide (including all the things mentioned below) and the great risk of messing up.
Think about what you need to do. Getting someone to send you their name and email address is just the first step. Then, to be safe, you have to contact them and ask them to confirm that they did indeed intend to register. Otherwise you don't know if someone really signs up or if someone else submitted their name. Then you have to adjust your list accordingly. You have to have a way for people to cancel their listing as well. And, you need to be absolutely sure you will remove those names as soon as they cancel.
Then to maintain your list you need to do other things as well. For example, you need to learn when addresses are no longer valid and remove them. And you have to take the time to learn how to deliver the mail effectively (this includes two formats set up so that people who block html will receive a text formatted email).
All of these things are important because you can have long term negative consequences for any failures. For example, it is not far fetched that someone who gets mad at you for some reason, or who just enjoys doing nasty things for a joke, will sign up a number of people to your list who identify your mail as spam and you get labeled a spammer. This could be as bad as getting banned from google Adsense as some have. I just wouldn't take the chance.
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