How to Start a Newsletter

I just started a newsletter! Go me and doing things that may or may not help my pretend writing career! Anyway, I’m going to walk you through how you can do the same for your writing career, pretend or not.

Okay, so I’m not the expertest expert ever, okay? But I can still explain this. And I’ll do it… with numbered steps!*

1. Go to mailchimp.com There’s other newsletter sites out there, but this seems to be the most     common one, and I found it pretty easy to use.

2. Create an account. Simple dimple. Just fill in the info things they ask for, confirm your email address and what not and voila! You’re ready to start.

3. Okay, now you’re going to want to create a list. Don’t worry if you have no idea what you’re doing yet, it’ll get clearer. Name your list whatever you want to use it for, like “Book News.” 

4. Fill out the thingummies they ask for, then next step!

5. Design your sign up form. They make this pretty easy to do. They let you make it super fancyfied, but I’d advise against it. Keep it simple. Make it quick and easy for people to sign up. 

6. It’ll give you a link to your sign up form. Go ahead and link to it wherever you want it linked to. Your website is a good idea. 

7. Sign up for your own list. This way you can make sure everything is working like it should be. 

8. Send out a test email. Obviously, don’t do this if there’s anyone other than you on this list. Play with the newsletter formats to see what you like, figure out how all the features work. Mail chimp tells you how many people opened your emails and clicked on things and what not.

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             Anyway, just generally sort out what you’re doing while your only subscriber is yourself and make sure you know how it all works for when there’s someone actually watching.

And that’s it! Just a few sidenotes:

sidenote the first: do not add anyone’s email to this list without their express permission. Do I need to say this again? Do. Not. Add. Emails. Of. People. Who. Do. Not. Opt. In. Got it? Good.

sidenote the second: I would suggest just using the free version of the newsletter for now. The paid ones are really for people with thousands of subscribers. Don’t pay for something you don’t need.

Now that you’ve created your newsletter, you can even send out legit emails! I would suggest not doing this more than once a month, or you could start annoying your subscribers. And don’t send it out once a month just because, make sure you actually have something to say that your subscribers will consider useful information. I decided I’ll send mine out whenever I release a book, that way it’ll do exactly what I want (tell people there’s a book to go get) without getting spammy.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Tutorial’d. 

*I will never use numbered steps ever again until tomorrow. They're really hard to make, okay? Appreciate this effort I put in for you.