This is a quick note to let you know that I’m switching newsletter providers. I’m changing from Feedburner, which basically just emailed you an article from my blog, to Revue, which is a newsletter specific company.
Why?
I’ve been thinking about switching companies for several years, but my experience with email marketing companies, such as MailChimp, wasn’t great. After using MailChimp for several years as volunteer for an organization, I found it overly complicated — so much so that I couldn’t learn it. It’s powerful, and if I had an employee that understood how to use that power, I might have stuck with it. I stalled with the switch, because I was just looking for something simple and flexible that didn’t get in the way of me writing a newsletter.
I tried Revue for three issues, which you can read on my Revue profile, and decided that I liked it enough to switch. They also offer a paid subscription option, which I could use in the future to add value to the newsletter. This will depend on feedback, etc… For now, it’s completely free and there will be free newsletters as long as I continue to write. I’m not planning on using the paid option, but it’s nice to know it is there. If I use it, I imagine I’ll use it like I use the subscriber option on my Facebook page. That is you can pay $5 a month to support what I do.
Revue will also allow me to be a bit more flexible in what I write in each issue. The problem with using my blog for a newsletter was that for SEO (search engine optimization) reasons, I tried to keep each post targeted to one topic. That didn’t always work, which hurt my website as far as getting traffic.
What’s in the new newsletter?
It is different than what you will see here.
So far (and this may change a bit), I’m writing about the Making of one photo that I made during the prior week. I’m including my take on interesting photography news at the intersection of outdoors, public land, perception, adventure, and whatever strikes my fancy about photography. I may also include a short “teaching” topic that answers a question I received in a prior week. Send me questions.
Basically, I want to make the new newsletter more conversational.
I also want it to work for both fans of my pictures and photographers. It’ll be a balancing act that I think I can pull off.
What do you need to do?
NOTE: If you currently subscribe, please, add bryanhansel@getrevue.co to your address book. To make sure that you get each issue of More or Less About the Photo, add the email address bryanhansel@getrevue.co to your contacts list.
I tried to import everyone that was subscribed via email to the new newsletter, but for some reason it didn’t get everyone. It told me that it failed to import x number of people, but it didn’t tell me who. Then I noticed that there were about 700 people who never verified their email address when they signed up years ago, so I’m email those folks individually to see if they want to sign up for the new newsletter. Unfortunately, whenever someone makes a change like this you end up losing subscribers. I’m estimating a loss of 500.
If you subscribe via a feed reader, you will need to subscribe to the new newsletter. This isn’t common anymore. There are about 600 of you. If you get this via my Google News Feed or as a browser notification, then you’ll need to subscribe if you want the new newsletter.
You can check to see if you are subscribed by trying to subscribe again. You can subscribe via this form (you might have to come to the website to see it). You can do it at my Revue profile.
What will happen to articles from the blog?
I’ll still be writing blog articles here that will become more targeted. When I post a new article here or on one of my other websites, I’ll include the link in my newsletter.
If you get my current articles via a feed, notification or email via Feedburner, you will still get those (until I turn off Feedburner — if I do). The new newsletter is different content.
Is that all?
That’s it for this update. I hope that you’ll join me over on Revue. I’m looking forward to learning how to use the new platform to provide more value to all my subscribers.
