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How To - The Newsletter

One of the BIGGEST To-Do things for starting your online biz is connecting with the peeps, keeping them informed, letting them know your story. One of the ways to keep in touch is to create a newsletter. If this is your first visit to yourdori.com, (or a visit after you have cleaned up your cache) you saw our Newsletter opt-in. There is also a place on the sidebar where you can sign up because, of course, we really want to connect with you.

We created this over on MailChimp, which has a free newsletter option, with lots of possibilities to do fun stuff for that free price. My first visit was confusing, I gotta say. And, well, irritating. You gotta fill out the boxes provided, cross your T's and no skipping.  I imagine the form filling out is required everywhere, but I'm not a fan of forms.  I'll admit, I gave up and didn't revisit the whole newsletter thing for quite awhile. But, now Nancy and I have Yourdori and the Newsletter is an important connection, so I had to face the form and fill it out.

You can't go over it, you can't go under it, you have got to go through and finish up that whole form.  Yes, they need to know everything.

Once this form is filled out I got to the main interface. Mailchimp helps you through a step by step process.  You can set up the opt-in's and create the actual newsletter to send off to the readers who sign up or click the link.  But following each step is important.

The create a campaign button also means create a newsletter.  If you don't want to make your newsletter now, you can come back to this. The start building your audience button is where you can create the gadget to get the code for your opt-in on your website. You will see on the right the button that says Create A List, even if you don't have anyone to put on the list go ahead and put your own email down, and ta-dah, you have a list.  All you need is one email.  Nancy created our Opt-in and it's super cute, don't you think? For some reason, the way that these steps are named on the Mailchimp interface was really confusing to me, and also, the pressure of creating a list when there was no list, seemed to overwhelm and defeat me.

But we all have to start somewhere, and once I translated the interface into my normal everyday speak,  I set aside that overwhelm and defeat.  Yay!

Once we figured out the main interface, we were good to go.  MailChimp's newsletter format and gadget newsletter sign up are mostly drag and drop, copy and paste.  Since we did a lot of that for setting up the website, we are pretty much pro's now.  I absolutely know how to drag and drop! So now you know how to make a newsletter.  Kinda.

Well, now you know that you can make one for free at MailChimp and it doesn't have to be frustrating or overwhelming.  Do you have a newsletter?  How have you found the whole experience?  Did you see ours?  What did you think?

