Is This Blog My New Weekly E-zine?

This week on Tuesday and Thursday I was listening to Alexandria Brown’s last free teleseminar on e-zines. It was kind of a big deal, because she’s the E-zine Queen.

The Tuesday night call was a free course on latest methods and techniques for getting the best results from an e-mail newsletter, or e-zine (electronic magazine). Thursday night there were five or six people (I left the call early so I’m not sure) who use Ali’s ideas and were talking about their results.

The recordings of the calls are available through her blog, the first link above. The Tuesday call is worth downloading and listening to. Thursday’s was more testimonial but there were some specific ideas I heard for people wanting better results from an e-mail newsletter.

I was listening Tuesday night and not hearing much new at first, but suddenly I grabbed a notebook and started taking lots of notes. Ali was giving a lot of “how-tos” and “why-tos” and that sort of thing – specific, useful information.

Then she told us one of the biggest mistakes people make when they decide to start an e-zine is to try to put too much content into each issue. It becomes such a big task they can only publish monthly. She said that’s a bad idea.

Ouch!

My goal has been to publish monthly issues of Chasing Wisdom. I wanted to have several sections and lots of content. Ali recommended taking that much content and breaking it down into one idea per week. That reminded me I initially planned to post one section per week until a month’s issue was fully posted. I haven’t followed that plan, focusing more on getting a month’s issue posted on time.

She was also talking about ways to get more people to opt-in to the e-mail list to get the e-zine. Now there’s where my plan seems to have a huge hole. You don’t have to sign up for my newsletter to get my information. The articles are posted on the web. My newsletter just basically says, “Hey, everybody! My articles are posted!”

On Wednesday I got The Wednesday Minute, which is actually several minutes these days. Alex Mandossian was talking about how he uses a “squeeze page” to get people to give their e-mail address when they navigate to his blog page. It’s a somewhat clever idea, though I’m not sure of the value of an e-mail address given in this way.

But these things got me thinking. (Yikes!) First, I need a weekly e-mail newsletter. Second, I like writing articles for Chasing Wisdom. Third, I don’t think a newsletter that goes out weekly to say, “Hey, another section of my blog-zine is posted” will be very valuable to my business long-term.

I haven’t figured this all out yet. However, I realized that I post here weekly, and I post to my Anything But Marketing! blog weekly. I chart my own journey here, so it’s a record of my discoveries, challenges, struggles, and successes transitioning to a new career. Since I want to work with people discovering and transitioning to creative careers, this information could be useful. The ideas for “telling your story” in Anything But Marketing! are simple and practical. Sounds like an e-mail newsletter to me!

I’m trying to figure out how to integrate or re-arrange or Frankenstein what I’m already doing into a weekly or twice-weekly e-mail newsletter. I really like the idea of having past issues archived on the web, so maybe I’ll post things to my newsletter and then a week or so later archive them. The advantage to signing up would be getting the information earlier.

I might consolidate my blogs to one site by making them sub-pages of a designated site. Haven’t figured that out yet. Obviously, if and when I do make that kind of change, I’ll put it in my newsletter and post it here!

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