I use MailChimp for my email mailing list, and many authors do the same. It’s pretty easy to set up a simple sign-up form and make a link to it. Here’s what my link looks like:
http://eepurl.com/K5xX9
And here’s what the sign-up form itself looks like that that link will take you to:
http://eepurl.com/K5xX9
And here’s what the sign-up form itself looks like that that link will take you to:
As you can see I give a few bullet points explaining the mailing list options, which really just amount of 5 choices:
So now anyone signing up has options. But could that just make things more complicated for my users and readers? I mean, what if I’ve got someone signing up for my mailing list because they like my fantasy novels? Do they really care what I put on my websites? I doubt it.
So they could click on the New eBook Releases. I had a text box there for awhile and let people write in what genre or type of books they wanted to be notified about, and I still think that’s great, and might even be better with radio buttons.
Mainly, though, I just want to consolidate all of my mailing lists into one author brand – me. Right now I’ve got too many lists:
- Monthly Newsletter;
- Writing Blog Posts;
- Montana Blog Posts;
- ESL Blog Posts;
- New eBook Releases.
So now anyone signing up has options. But could that just make things more complicated for my users and readers? I mean, what if I’ve got someone signing up for my mailing list because they like my fantasy novels? Do they really care what I put on my websites? I doubt it.
So they could click on the New eBook Releases. I had a text box there for awhile and let people write in what genre or type of books they wanted to be notified about, and I still think that’s great, and might even be better with radio buttons.
Mainly, though, I just want to consolidate all of my mailing lists into one author brand – me. Right now I’ve got too many lists:
As you can see I don’t really have much to crow about. I’ve got 6 people on one mailing list, 0 on the other two. So those blog mailing lists didn’t get a single sign-up for the 9 months I’ve had this site going. Oh well, I think that’s kind of understandable for a new site.
New Mailing List Experiment
I’m going to try a new thing with my mailing list experiment starting tomorrow. On the first of the month I’ll send out a unique newsletter to my subscribers. And that means that I have to just go ahead and risk alienating those 6 people on my mailing list.
Yeah, kind of a joke, huh? Alienate 6 people! See, those people signed-up for new eBook releases, not a newsletter. But I guess I’ll be presenting those releases (there are 5 this month), just in a newsletter format.
Still, I fully expect to get 3 to 4 unsubscribe notices in the next few days. Hey, I’m just pessimistic! But long-term I think it’ll be a good idea. And those new short stories I’m giving away to mailing list recipients should also spice up the pot. More about that later!
Yeah, kind of a joke, huh? Alienate 6 people! See, those people signed-up for new eBook releases, not a newsletter. But I guess I’ll be presenting those releases (there are 5 this month), just in a newsletter format.
Still, I fully expect to get 3 to 4 unsubscribe notices in the next few days. Hey, I’m just pessimistic! But long-term I think it’ll be a good idea. And those new short stories I’m giving away to mailing list recipients should also spice up the pot. More about that later!
My First Monthly Mailing List Newsletter
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