On January 5, I launched my monthly newsletter. (You know the same newsletter that's had a sign up form for the past month, but no actual news.) My journey towards a newsletter didn't begin with looking at software packages. It began with me sitting down and making a list of what needed to be in each newsletter.
Then I needed a logo. That was relatively easy. My site is called the Knitting Penguin, but I moved away from cutesy penguin logos during the initial design phase. That doesn't mean I didn't create numerous cutesy penguin logos. It just means I didn't use them in this iteration of the website. (And note, this is stage 2 of a 3 stage redesign. Stage 3 uses the penguin.)
I grabbed the cutest little penguin in my arsenal and nominated it as the newsletter logo. Then and only then, did I begin looking at software.
Choosing mailing list software is a bit like buying yarn. There are more choices than you can shake a stick at and some are invariable better than others. After reading reviews, fees, experimenting with PHPList (an open source option that I don't recommend), and trying several of the commercial options, I settled on Mail Chimp.
They're this little outfit out of Atlanta, and their interface and work flow make the others look lame, sick and dying. And they let you have lists of up to 500 people for free. The freebie sends are nice, but they aren't the reason I went with the software. I loved their WYSIWYG template creator. I don't normally like WYSIWYG editors, but they did a wonderful job with this one.
So if you haven't subscribed to the newsletter yet, here's the link. And if you're thinking about creating your own, MailChimp is what worked best for me when I did my tests a few months ago.
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