Detour!

Sometimes the freedom of the Twisting Road means you get to try a new route to see how it works. And sometimes the freedom of the Twisting Road means you get to take the route off your plan when it doesn’t work out for you.

I have been using an autoresponder for several months now to send out my newsletter, now titled On The Twisting Road. During that time I’ve seen a slow but steady trickle of new subscribers coming in, which seemed great, considering I have not used any pay-per-click advertising or search engine optimization to get potential subscribers. Heck, I don’t even have a free give-away to entice people to sign up!

I noticed recently that some of the new subscriber names were things like “Casino Nights,” and later they were the names of – how to be prudent? – enhancement drugs for men. So I finally paid more attention to my autoresponder and what’s happening.

It turns out most of the new subscribers never actually opted in the second time. That means a name and e-mail address were entered and put on my “waiting list,” which shows dozens of people, nearly one hundred. But they don’t go on the list to receive the newsletter until they click the link to confirm their subscription. That list is just a dozen.

Looking carefully at the list of unconfirmed names and e-mail addresses, it appears they are the equivalent of S-P-A-M. For example, the name might say “Dave” but the e-mail address is “Tony@provider” where the provider is something like “Mail.com.”

I’ve been spending two dollars and fifty cents per actual subscriber per month (about thirty dollars) to send out e-mail using an autoresponder. The first lesson I learned is: pay close attention to the information on new subscribers to see if they are real. I assumed they were real until they started being named after pharmaceuticals.

The second lesson I learned: don’t get an autoresponder and then sit around waiting for people to sign up. I didn’t need an autoresponder to send out my e-mail until I got to around fifty names. I’m not there yet, now that I checked the list carefully. I could have sent the newsletter manually until I was ready to focus on building my list. Money wasted.

The third lesson I learned: automated nonsense garbage comes to you in many forms, including sign-up forms and contact forms as well as blog posts. I have gotten increasingly more responses through a contact form on my web site. They are either nasty ads or meaningless gibberish with links to web sites. I have started getting the same kind of nonsense as comments to my blog posts. They say things like, “I agree. Couldn’t have said it better!” where such a comment is not related to the post, and there are imbedded web site URLs.

I’m going to pull down the contact form from my web site – as soon as I figure out how to do it! I know how to change a page, but I have to figure out how to remove one. I have the blog comments on “moderate” so I see things before they go public, which keeps these nasty ads and garbage off the blog site. And I have decided I’m going to shut down my autoresponder account so I can save the thirty dollars per month until I’m ready to build a list.

Didn’t I write a post somewhere about doing things in the right order? And didn’t I write, in that same post, about the difference between having a plan and just using tools with no clear plan?

Absolutely I did! And absolutely I got sidetracked and detoured by jumping in too soon to an autoresponder.

Hopefully this will keep one of you (and there are more than a dozen who read this blog – it’s not just my confirmed newsletter subscribers!) from wasting money paying for a service before you need it.

But you know what? If you do start using a service or a tool before you have a real purpose for it, you’ll be learning and growing and figuring out what’s right for you. That’s a big part of the fun anyway.

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

First Things First

I took my sons to a fast food (in name only) restaurant for fried chicken on Wednesday after soccer practice. The wait was long and we had to remind the people we were waiting for our food, but there was a silver lining.

My younger son’s meal came packaged in a box with puzzles and games on it. One had three panels of cartoon scenes that we had to put in the right order. His older brother and I got to show him how to decide what comes first—cause and effect. We helped him see that some things can’t happen on their own or without a set-up. You can’t trip over the roller skate until someone has left it carelessly on the floor. You can’t walk into a surprise party until people have shown up. First things first.

I had a similar experience this week when I was checking out some web sites for Coaches and career change consultants. I found at least three sites that had a sidebar button for newsletter archives and there were only two or three issues of the newsletter, stopping several months ago. But there was still a “Sign up for my newsletter” box on the site.

One guy I know, Ken Robert, started a newsletter based on helping people with creative ideas for career change. He refocused and started posting on creative thinking, brainstorming, and mind mapping for all sorts of problem solving. But he told his list he was making the change in focus and format and invited us along. These others just left people hanging.

Or did they? That’s probably the problem. They heard the normal mantra: “You have to have a newsletter.” They started one. They asked people to sign up. Maybe three or four did, but after three months of writing content and sending it out there didn’t seem to be a point.

This week I’ve heard and been reminded of about a dozen ideas for getting my message out to people. All these ideas have started with the presumed list. I heard ideas on what to tell my list and how to use creative new ways to package the information or make special offers. But I don’t have a big list yet.

First things first. I’m building a list, very slowly. I have all sorts of plans I can put into place once I have a larger list, but we’re not to that panel yet. I have to build my list or I’ll be wasting my time implementing to no audience.

I’ve had to remind myself that in the meantime I can still be working on things to have ready when the list starts growing. I can plan time-limited groups that combine training and coaching for parents. I can plan telecourses on creative career change ideas. I can put together workbooks to complement someone else’s book and sell them together in a package. But I can’t roll out any of these things without a list.

So I’m feeling a little bit like Noah—yes, delusions of grandeur and all! Noah built that danged boat for decades, with everyone asking him when it was going to rain. I’m not getting teased and no more people think I’m crazy than thought it before, but it’s causing a lot of self-questioning. I don’t have a history of designing programs or products that brought in money and satisfied customers to motivate me. I have to work completely on faith that what I’m doing now will bring revenue in the future. It leaves me feeling like I’m drifting sometimes. I’m pretty sure that’s what happens to a lot of Coaches when they try to get their story in front of potential clients but don’t get many nibbles.

And there’s a problem to be solved that can become a great business model. Hmmm…..

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

Autoresponders and HTML

This past week I signed up for an autoresponder. For those of you who don’t know or haven’t even heard of autoresponders, it’s an online software program that lets me capture e-mail addresses and names when people sign up to receive my newsletter. When I send out my newsletter (at least once a month) it will go to everyone on the list.

Autoresponders have other uses, too. For example, you can set up a brief e-mail training course on a particular topic. When a person signs up the autoresponder sends out the e-mails in a sequence. You can set it up to send the first one right away, a second one two days later, a third after two more days, and so forth. This would be great if you wrote a “5 Tips” or “5 Steps” kind of article. Each e-mail could contain one of your tips or steps and explain how to apply it.

Autoresponders can send out weekly e-mails for a year-long series, like steps to gaining freedom from consumer debt or motivational ideas or a series of spiritual devotionals. They can send out daily tips or quotes. You can set them up to send out as many things as you want in a series, at any interval you decide. They’re pretty cool.

They can also be set up as a follow-up to an online order. The first in a series might be “thank you” for ordering. The next, a few days later, might be to remind the person a package is coming and point out some extra features and benefits of the product. The third might be meant to arrive after the package to ask for feedback. The fourth might contain an unexpected extra bonus or further uses for the product. After that, maybe the customer gets an e-mail every two or three weeks for a short while, letting him or her know about other products available. Then the interval might go up to every four to six weeks, just to keep you in their thoughts.

Since I integrated my autoresponder with my Blog-Zine, I got to learn a little more about HTML. At least, I think that’s what I was doing. I had to go into the template for the blog site and add the code that put the sign-up form on my site. Then I had to configure the sign-up form and set up web pages on the blog to thank people for signing up. So far, it seems to be working. Check it out at Chasing Wisdom.

It’s meant I spent a lot of time on technical and specific skills and less on creative and long-term vision skills. It was a nice break, and I enjoy learning about some computer things—some. I hope to be able to make minor changes to my site by myself over time. But I don’t want to have to spend a lot of my time every week learning the programming stuff. I’m glad to learn a little and move on.

And I’m glad to ask for help when I need it. My webmaster will be helping me update my main site over the next few weeks. I’ll let you know when it’s up and ready to debut.

Do not fear web sites. Do not fear blog sites. Start with something simple, get comfortable with it, and then keep learning. You will enjoy the ability a web site gives you to get your message to people, and the creative energy that starts flowing when you get your own blog.

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey