If you only have your opt-in at the homepage, it will convert less because the visitors haven't trusted you yet. Provide free content on your website through YouTube embeds or product reviews. After, you can have your opt-in at the bottom. The readers mailing list that are interested decide if they want to subscribe to more reports or products. If you have been online for any length of time I would like to think you have discovered that you need traffic to visit your site so you can make sales or build your list.
I am equally sure you would have come across offers like: "1,000,000 email addresses for $39.99". All on CD. It is any marketers dream to be able to get such amount of targeted traffic at such a price. Mark you I said 'targeted traffic'. The traffic these adverts offer on CD is anything but targeted. It is often worthless. The names and addresses are often obsolete or obtained by very questionable means.
One of the things often quoted online is that 'if it sounds too good to be true then it is'. The people who usually seem to fall for these dubious offers are mainly people desperate for traffic to their website or they do not fully understand how mailing list things work online. I'll let you define yourself here. Every website needs a blast of traffic however; there is a sinister part to this traffic offered at so cheap a price. These addresses are often harvested using robots and other such software.