Mailing Lists & Maxi Dresses

To use an example from the nightmare that is my summer wardrobe, the loose formula for a business’ online success is like a maxidress. Yes, it will technically fit everyone… but it makes some folks look great and others look like a sloppy, awkward  mess. It simply isn’t right for every person and every venture.

Most internet marketing gurus push the unconditional necessity of  mailing lists for all enterprises like retail stores indiscriminately push maxidresses on all body types.  Many of the entrepreneurs I am lucky enough to work with have little or no use for such a thing, but feel pressured to invest valuable time and energy because an “expert” who knows nothing about them or their business said they should.

So how do you know if having a mailing list is right for you? It all comes down to how you want to run/grow your enterprise and  how you want to relate to your clientele.

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• Do you have the time? For most of the 9-5 folks I work with, taking on a monthly newsletter would be a stressful nightmare while coming up with a bi-weekly ad for sales/specials would be cake for the stay-at-home moms. People on your mailing list won’t always catch a hiccup in the newsletter’s schedule, but consistency is paramount in building a good relationship and an image of reliability with your customers. I can’t even begin to tell you how bad it looks when notes show up in my inbox from people who claim to be pros, apologizing for an unannounced hiatus or failure to follow through with previously promised content (and even entire e-courses!).

If you decide to take on a mailing list, keep the frequency of your newsletters manageable.

• Do you have the content? If you have nothing to say, don’t drive yourself nuts out trying to say it. I subscribe to a few dozen mailing lists (and read ’em too!), and its apparent when people have run out of things to say or just mash out some drivel to meet their deadline. For example – when you get a newsletter from a business coach who promised a quality marketing lesson every week, thats what you expect to see every time – not a five paragraph bout of textual diarrhea about their vacation to who-cares-where. As an army of one, it can be a huge challenge to keep content fresh, relevant, and interesting to your readers. Fortunately, a creative mind can turn almost any experience into relevant content. Did you buy exciting new materials for your art on the vacation nobody wants to hear about otherwise? Maybe the vistas inspired some amazing new pieces?  There’s nearly always a way to bring it home and not waste your readers’ time.

Keep your content relevant.

• Are people going to care enough to read it? Here’s a harsh reality:  if people are annoyed by the frequency or quality of your content, they will flag you as spam. Big deal, right?  If enough people flag your emails as spam, the source of your emails (whether it be an email address, IP, or service) will be blacklisted… and that means your messages stop getting  delivered  or  bypass your customers’ inboxes and go right to the spam folder.  Even subscribers who want to get your mailers will miss out if you piss enough people off with lame newsletters.  Features like double opt-in (two confirmations that the person wants to hear from you), an opt-out link in every newsletter, and detailed contact information will help folks say “no thanks” without hurting your business.

Frequency without quality will get you flagged as spam and undermine your efforts.

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Beyond the time, interest, and ability to produce quality content, the most important thing to ask is “will it help your business?”.

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Do your enough of your customers want sales notifications and updates to warrant a mailing list? Is there a better way to reach your target demographic?  Is your content worth sending out to an entire mailing list versus a smaller list of repeat customers or even individual messages?

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The answers to these questions made me lean toward “nah” for my jewelry business and “soon” for Momentum Maker. Why? I like to take periodic breaks from the jewelry, so a mailing list didn’t make sense for something that had become extremely part time. As for Momentum Maker, I enjoy the personal approach, so emailing people directly with something of interest feels more my style than sending out mass notifications. As the fine folks I work with become more numerous, a mailing list would certainly be a helpful tool for reaching everyone with things of general interest.

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Never settle for the  “one-size-fits-all” approach to marketing. While many businesses look amazing in the mailing list maxidress, its perfectly alright to abstain if  partaking will make you look like a hot mess.

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Resources and further reading

• Bravenet – A free, reputable, and  sophisticated mailing list service. If you can deal with ads, the free version has good reviews.
• Constant Contact –  A paid service with excellent reviews, but they also have a wealth of free information that can help you prepare for an effective mailing list.  their Learning Center is great, as are their blog posts and podcasts (links are on the left side of the Learning Center page).

6 Tips for Writing Great Tutorials

Do you get a lot of compliments on your work but make few sales? How cool would it be to sell the design without having to part with the finished piece? More often than not, pieces don’t sell because of the price. Don’t you dare lower it; its worth every penny. But if your item on Etsy is getting tons of hearts and not selling, its definitely time to write a tutorial.

With a few hours of work, you can create a professional looking .PDF tutorial that shows your customers how to create their favorite piece. Let them do the work, and enjoy the income from a hassle-free product that can be sent via email.

• Be original. Stick to your own designs and ideas, since they are your biggest selling point. Let other people pour their time into documenting and photographing the projects that even girl scouts are doing. Have something new and unique to share with your audience and they will gratefully let their Paypal buttons do the talking.

• Start at the beginning. On the front page, be sure to have a title, copyright, legal, and contact information, recognition of other contributors (photographer, etc.), list of materials and tools required, a description of the project, and at least once clear photo of the finished product.

• Write first, then take pictures. Follow your own directions and photograph each step as you go along. Do your instructions make sense? Now is the time to adjust your copy if they don’t or if there is more information about the step to share.

• A picture is worth 1,000 words. Some customers will skip the text altogether and read your tutorial as pictures. Use only clear, close-up, and uncluttered pictures of each step. To get good closeups, use the macro setting (little flower button on your camera), no flash, and daylight. If you must use artificial lighting, daylight bulbs will do well.

• Formatting counts. Organize your text and pictures so that they work together. Separating them makes the work visually confusing and can frustrate your customers. A good, widely used format is to have pictures on the left and the corresponding text to the right on each page.

• Send out free copies to friends. Your hard work will pay off soon enough, but first you need to have it proofed. Send it out to friends with varying familiarity on the subject and ask for feedback. You can be as specific as you want, and even include a questionnaire about how you did. Consider it quality control, and listen to every bit of feedback whether you agree with it or not. Don’t forget to say “thank you”, even if the review sucks.

Making a tutorial is 100% free. If you don’t have MS Word, you can download OpenOffice and use it’s word processor. To create the .PDF, download/install CutePDF, select ‘print’ wile your word document is open and select ‘CutePDF’ under the printer drop-down menu. Click ‘print’ and it will automatically convert the file to a .PDF. Its that easy.

Review of VodaHost

VodaHost is the hosting service associated with BlueVoda. Yes, you can get BlueVoda without VodaHost, but its really a cereal-without-milk situation.

Things I  dig about VodaHost

• Built-in analytics. Know how your visitors found your site, where they are, how long they stayed on each page, and more. Having this feature come standard with any account saves you  the trouble of using an external analytics program (aka “one more thing to worry about”).

• One-click publishing. One click versus the hassle of an FTP program? Pffft.  This feature saves my sanity when it comes to typo control and minor edits.

• Forum support. The help manual for this program was written by users, for users. You can post questions, answer them, or just peruse to see if the topic has already been addressed.

• Annual rate includes second and third domains. Not having to pay a separate fee for my second domain’s hosting was a very cool surprise.

Things that kinda suck about VodaHost

• Forum support. Its just as annoying as it is good. Sometimes you just want to talk to a real #%*$ing person, and getting someone on the phone is literally impossible. You can email for support, but be prepared to wait until they can get to you.

• Average-priced domains. VH definitely isn’t the cheapest for domain names. You can buy it elsewhere and have it transferred to VH, or just save yourself the trouble and pay the $20 for the domain.

• It ain’t GoDaddy. My previous host was GoDaddy, who floored me every time with amazing customer service. VH lacks in this department, but makes up for it in others.

There are definitely cheaper hosting plans available from other companies, but the slightly-above-dirt-cheap price includes more than enough tools and conveniences to warrant the few extra bucks.

Review of the BlueVoda Website Builder

After years of relying on friends, family members, and other well-meaning types to work on my jewelry business’ website, it became apparent that the job would never get done right until I did it myself. Weeks were spent poring over HTML books and making some absolutely hideous sites from scratch. It was too much for a programming newbie; all I wanted to do was create a small site that communicated my personality, message, and product, and not have a stroke while doing it.

I tried every site builder available at the time. Frontpage, Dreamweaver, it was all so overwhelming. Then, as if FSM heard my frustrated sobbing, I stumbled upon BlueVoda.  BV is like the glorious bastard child of a word processor and a graphics program. There isn’t much BV program can’t do within a few clicks, including set you free from relying on others for your website.

This tool rocks hard, and I’ll give you seven (of the many) reasons why.

1. Drag & drop interface. Seriously folks, it doesn’t get much better than this.
2. Spell check. Well, almost. It will tell you when a word is spelled incorrectly, but won’t offer suggestions. Still a helpful feature for lousy typists like myself.
3. SEO tools. Search Engine Optimization can overwhelm the most competent of minds like a flash flood. Easily edited meta tags, title bar, and keywords make SEO a breeze.
4. Gallery options. Lightboxes, conveyor belts, and galleries are available formats for displaying your product or other images. All look super slick, and all are customizable. No more ugly slideshow.com watermarks or logos stuck on your animated galleries!
5. Menu options. Drop downs, nav bars, slide menus, they’re all here and pre-made. Just plug in your links and go.
6. Paypal compatibility.  Premade Paypal buttons link customers directly to your Paypal account. Accept payments and donations, set up an automatic billing cycle, and even have a store on your site.
7. Basic image editing.  Thats right…images can be edited and cropped within the program!  Sound like small beans? Its like having a faucet instead of going down to the river to draw water for your clan every time someone gets thirsty.

I could rant for hours about how gratifying it is to make a killer template in minutes or how your drag-and-drop opus can be translates into raw html with 2 clicks of the mouse… but I’ll let you find out for yourself.

BlueVoda is the best damn site builder I’ve ever seen. Aside from the all-important  factor of being free,  BV enables people with absolutely no HTML knowledge to create professional sites in minutes. I’ve been using it for three years and have built dozens of pain-free sites… isn’t it time you designed the site you’ve always wanted?

Download it here!

The Big Switch

In the interest of SEO, conveniance, and sweet sweet sanity, I just moved the MM blog to WordPress. Not only does it have SEO and analytics built in, but it is more customizable overall and has greater flexibility in terms of function and appearance.

I tried Blogger so that I could give an informed opinion as a first-hand user instead of just telling people what I’ve read. Save yourself the trouble and just go with WordPress.