I’d gotten horribly bogged down here because I couldn’t figure out how to configure the tool that  would allow you to subscribe to my newsletter.

Okay, you’re here because you had subscribed on the original site. But maybe this info will be helpful or at least mildly interesting. And I do want more than a short handful of subscribers, much as I appreciate you.

An email program I trust

If you want a website than can generate cash and customers for your creations, you need a powerful and reliable email program. This is a program that  let’s you do solid email marketing. Email is the way you’ll build a list of people interested in your work, stay in touch with them and make special offers. Of course online marketing could be a whole blog site or several. Here, consider it an overview with links to helpful sites and products.

Although a free email program is tempting  and there are now some that are free and even good. By and large These are only free until you reach several thousand subscribers. If you go this route make sure you understand how much  you’ll be charged when the time comes.

These didn’t exist when I started on the web. I picked mine because even back then it had an excellent reputation.

But during my absence, they revamped everything! I felt like a total stranger.

GetResponse

I’ve used GetResponse.com (affiliate link) forever to help me collect subscribers, create and send newsletters, let them unsubscribe when they wanted to and let me know how well each  newsletter had done in terms of views and more. I’ve used it for myself and for clients. I trust them and I was impressed with the improvements even though I don’t (yet?) want to use many of them.

Great Customer Support

One of the things I love, which they’ve kept, is their Customer Support. It’s run through a chat box and usually I’m only 1 or two or three  minutes from help. Their support people are well trained, and I suspect mostly native speaking and writing folks. Plus it’s super easy to get a transcript of the chat within moments. This is helpful when the agent gives you more than one or two steps to accomplish what you asked about.

I don’t know why they changed the process of creating and adding a working email subscription so much, but they did. I was tempted to change providers but ultimately decided to stay with the known, even though I had to relearn so much.

Unfortunately I actually remembered the old method, but that only kept me expecting something to work that way, when it didn’t.

A little fear?

After several total failures I found myself avoiding the whole project. Which as you probably know is not a good strategy.

Finally, after lecturing myself, which didn’t work, and talking the mess over with a friend, which did, I was able to sit down and start all over again. This time I had the information I needed in front of me and I slowly just did it one step at a time.

I noticed there were places where I wanted to do it the old way. I was lucky I noticed this and sternly made myself use the instructions as they were written. Which worked as it often does.

Since part of what I want for this site is a good, functioning affiliate program I knew I needed that subscription page

A Good, Free Course in Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing means getting a small or even large commission because you sell someone else’s product. The largest commission I ever made was $600, many years ago and I no longer remember the product. But in the beginning it was more like $5 or $10 every now and again. I’m pretty sure it’s become a more reliable source of income and that most of the bugs that were there in the beginning have been worked out.

When it became time to restart this site I knew I wanted to do more with affiliate marketing than I had before. My logic was this: As a consumer I’m always glad to get a recommendation on a product from someone I trust and I don’t mind at all if they get paid a bit.

Although I had expected to pay for a course I ran into a dynamite course on affiliate marketing by a guy called Miles Beckler, and it’s a free series on YouTube. No, that isn’t an affiliate link because the course is absolutely no charge at all.  He has a good newsletter and provides other information, sometimes free and sometimes not. By all means take a look if you’re even a bit curious about affiliate marketing.

Feel free to pass this along to other creatives and thanks for your patience with me.

Create well and often

 

 

 

 

Photo by Clint Patterson on Unsplash