newsletters for dum-dums [not a tutorial, i'm the dum-dum]

[lulu]

 Sooooo a friend of mine shared a thing i wrote on her Traditional Social Media Profile, and somebody left a comment asking if I had a blog they could follow. I don't, but I would like to find a way to send updates, since most people aren't going to be refreshing my big-kid homepage. I thought about signing up for a Traditional Social Media Profile for this, but I reeeaally don't want to. Still, I'd like to reach people outside of the small-web scene.. and maybe even find some new recruits. Actually, I've wanted to create a quarterly newsletter for years, just to people know about new articles/webpages/projects, maybe throw in a playlist or something fun.

I rly liked the Melonland year in review newsletter (if y'all haven't signed up, you should. it's delightful). It's pretty similar to what I envisioned for my own. I have no idea how the heckity he did it though, my guess is it involved PHP? Which is definitely in the "I don't know enough to know what I don't know" category for me. It's on my list of Things To Learn, but I'm not sure if this is something I can learn in a day or in a week. It seems like a lot could go wrong if I don't have a very firm grasp on what I'm doing, though.

So I've been sort of pacing around deciding if I should jump into that, or find a lazy workaround:

- Use a third-party email form provider to collect email addresses to my inbox & create a mailing list with them ^{(pro: easy. cons: people would have to email me to unsubscribe, trusting a third party with other people's info)}
- Use a newsletter service ^{(pro: easy for people to sub/unsub. cons: same third party concerns, high monthly fee for quarterly newsletter, Big Tech Ickiness, might not have much creative control)}
- Have people email me to sign up/unsub ^{(pro: no middlemen, cons: mainstream internet users probably aren't accustomed to putting in that much effort)}

Hokay. That was a pretty long message, cookies and ice cream to anyone who read it. Here's the summary though:

Apparently people want to follow me, but I'm unfollowable. I want to create a quarterly newsletter, and I want the email to be a blank canvas for me. PHP is scary/confusing. Should I be scared, or am I just making a boogeyman? Is the learning curve very steep or could I get my toes wet and figure it out?

Does anyone have input on the lazy workarounds? Experience using certain providers? I'm a little nervous about not having an unsubscribe option handy, not sure if I'm underestimating the average internet user. I know Karen isn't gonna sign up for my newsletter, but I don't want her to send my host a STRONGLY WORDED EMAIL ABOUT ME SENDING SPAM.

[Melooon]

Sooooooooo, my newsletter is a lot less complex than you think. I have a fancy e-mail collector that I made in Node.js, but all it does it put e-mails in a list in my address book and then auto sends a welcome e-mail to whoever signed up.

For actually sending newsletters, I just use Thunderbird with a plugin that lets me edit e-mails as HTML. So then all I do is design the e-mail like any webpage and then paste the code into Thunderbird in HTML edit mode and send it to my mailing list like any normal e-mail.

Lessons I have learned doing html e-mails and newsletters:

• Every image must use a full external link like https://melonhead.pasta/myimage.png
• You cant style the body tag, you need to create a wrapper div and style that, its an e-mail limit apparently
• Some e-mail clients will mess with your style trying to make the e-mail dark/light mode
• E-mail HTML is super limited so don't try anything too fancy
• Always put your mailing list in the Bcc recipient section or you will leak everyone e-mails
• Check how many e-mails your provider lets you send at once because if you need to send to a mailing list that has 100+ people, they might not like that. Most have a limit you can send every hour and day.

For you I think the first option; collecting e-mails with a google form or a microsoft form would work great and then you could send them out manually like me! Even a plain text newsletter is fine in most cases (but I do enjoy designing them more) and if your list ever gets too big you can move over to one of the professional services later.

I wouldn't worry too much about the unsubscribe issue, just end your e-mails with "reply with unsubscribe if you no longer want to receive my e-mails". In my year review e-mail I told people to subscribe their friends without telling them and I think a few people actually did that which was kinda funny, as far as I know no one got upset

[m15o]

I'll just +1 on Melon's advice.

1. Use a way to collect email: Google Form is simple and works well
2. Send out the emails manually

This gives you the most control/flexibility to get started! You'll be able to migrate to a service any time you want.

By the way, I really, really enjoyed what you wrote about writing! What do you think about setting up an RSS feed? This is my favorite way to keep up with people from anywhere. You could set-up a web archive for all your newsletter issues. That archive could have an RSS/Atom feed to let anyone who prefer subscribe to it that way. Here's an example of what a simple archive could be (well, it's more a blog actually! but you get the idea).

Looking forward to read your letter!

[Melooon]

Just a quick update because I have altered my newsletter format a little and its improved it a lot!

Firstly, if your using a custom domain on your e-mail, make sure your e-mail is setup properly with your domain! Mine was snot so I was getting spam filtered.

Secondly, I got a new plugin for Thunderbird called Mail Merge it basicly takes a list of contacts and generates a custom e-mail for each one.. so you can include a persons name in the e-mail, and it will also send it as a unique e-mail (from you to Jimmy, instead of; from you to undisclosed-recipients).

So now I make my e-mail in html, paste it into a Mail Merge template e-mail, generate unique emails for everyone on my mail list, and then send them out. The handy thing is that because emails are now all separate unique emails, you can time them with a Send Later feature! So if your mailing list is very long, you can send 100 and hour or something, that way it wont break your e-mail senders limits!