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Clearing Up the Confusion E-Zine Vol 03 Issue 06
------- 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.
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In This Issue...
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1. Article: Extra! Extra! Read All About It!
2. Shameless Self-Promotion
3. The Fine Print
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1. Article: Extra! Extra! Read All About It!
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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
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2. Shameless Self-Promotion
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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.
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3. The Fine Print
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Clearing Up the Confusion E-zine, please email Greg Peters at:
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