------- Clearing Up the Confusion E-Zine ------- Vol 3, Issue 6 Lisa, Kaylie, and I just returned from a relaxing trip to Chicago. We road the train from Ann Arbor right into Union Station -- a quick fifteen minute walk from our four-star hotel. We stayed in a beautiful suite, went to Shedd's Aquarium, snacked in the executive lounge, worked out in the fitness club, swam in the pool, and enjoyed lavish breakfasts from room service each morning. Other than briefly monitoring my email for emergencies, I didn't do one bit of work. I read, did the puzzles in USA Today, and spent a lot of time playing with the laughing, giggling, joyous 16-month-old that is my wonderful daughter. What a delight! Now the cool thing is, as a result of taking advantage of a variety of opportunities, we ended up paying very little for our two night stay. We got an amazing amount of value for each dollar spent. As an entrepreneur, that is something for which I am always looking. In fact, this very e-zine reflects some of that ethos. For a relatively small expenditure of time, I get to maintain contact with an ever-widening group of people whom I know and like. Just in case anyone else would be interested, I thought I would take a quick look at some of the general tools that anyone can use to maintain an online newsletter. ---------------------------------------------------------------- In This Issue... ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Article: Extra! Extra! Read All About It! 2. Shameless Self-Promotion 3. The Fine Print ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Article: Extra! Extra! Read All About It! ---------------------------------------------------------------- Ignoring the fact that this issue almost didn't happen, for keeping in touch with friends and acquaintances, few things can match up with the ease and effectiveness of the lowly e-zine (or electronic newsletter). I spend an hour or two writing up each issue. When I send it out I get to help over a hundred subscribers. Pretty good return on my time investment. Oh, one thing before I talk about any of the possible tools: When I refer to ezines or electronic newsletters I mean missives which you send primarily to amuse or educate the people who have actively stated their interest. A message in which you tout your services or business and/or send to people who have not given their permission is not a newsletter. To put it politely, it is advertising. Less politely, it is spam (and it might be illegal). That all being said, you can use a variety of tools to send out your regularly scheduled masterpieces. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. Let's look at some of them. * Email Client (Thunderbird, Outlook Express, etc) An e-zine is basically just an email message that you send out to a group. That being the case, you can certainly just set up a group of email addresses in your email client and send your messages to that group. Advantages: Really easy to set up. You won't have to learn any new tools since it's pretty likely that you already have a reasonable knowledge of how to use your particular client to send email. Disadvantages: You have to do all of the management by hand. If someone wants to receive your newsletter, they have to contact you first. If they don't want to receive it any longer, they have to contact you, too. Also, many ISP's limit the number of messages you can send out at one time (some as low as 50). That means you would have to maintain multiple lists in order to be able to send out messages to larger groups. * Online Group Services (Yahoo Groups, Google Groups, etc) Advantages: Free! The mechanisms are usually pretty straight forward on how to set up the group. With the proper settings, users can sign up to receive messages by themselves (and remove their subscription, too). Disadvantages: Slightly less professional for subscribers to receive newsletters from "googlegroups.com" instead of your company's domain. As a spam-prevention mechanism, some of these services place severe restrictions on the number of recipients you can add at one time. This can cause problems if you are switching a large mailing list over from another system. * Hosting Service Mailing Lists (Mailman, proprietary systems, etc) Many hosting services provide access to mailing list and e-zine maintenance software as a part of their service. Some are better than others. Advantages: In general, they provide all of the convenience of the online group services, but have the advantage of coming from your own domain. I use the "Email Marketing Tool" offered by the 1 and 1 hosting service (which I use for the CDS website). Disadvantages: These systems can be kind of a mixed bag. If the hosting service provide access to third-party mailing list software, such as Mailman, they often won't provide much support. Conversely, if it's a proprietary system, it often won't give you as much control over the behavior of the system as you might like. It also might have an interface which might suffer from "nerd-itis" -- the quality of being largely unusable except by those of the techno-nerd set. * Commercial Services (Constant Contact, EliteEmail.com, etc) Advantages: Allow you to create a relatively polished look without a lot of technical knowledge. Allows you and/or your webmaster to tie the service into your website. It has all of the tools necessary for the users to maintain their own subscriptions. Disadvantages: Costs money. For smaller mailing lists it's a penny per message sent. Larger mailings are cheaper per message. Even with the tools they provide, to create a particular "look" for your newsletter, you will still probably need a professional designer to make a truly polished and branded ezine. Drop a line if you've tried these or other tools. I would like to hear about your experiences, both positive and negative. Let me know at gpeters@cyberdatasolutionsllc.com. Copyright 2009, Greg Peters ---------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Shameless Self-Promotion ---------------------------------------------------------------- The "Clearing Up the Confusion" E-Zine is a production of Greg Peters, owner, chief cook, and bottlewasher of Cyber Data Solutions. CDS has been helping website designers develop better web presence for their clients for more than a decade. Visit us on the Web at www.cyberdatasolns.com to see how we can help your webmaster. ---------------------------------------------------------------- 3. The Fine Print ---------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: You can subscribe to the "Clearing Up The Confusion" E-zine at: http://www.cyberdatasolns.com/ezine Questions: If you have any questions, concerns or comments regarding the Clearing Up the Confusion E-zine, please email Greg Peters at: gpeters@cyberdatasolns.com This content may be forwarded in full, with copyright and contact information intact, without specific permission, when used only in a not for-profit format. If any other use is desired, permission in writing from Greg Peters is required, with notification to the original author. We never send the "Clearing Up the Confusion" E-zine uninvited, and we NEVER share, sell or rent our mailing list to anyone. Your privacy is safe with us.