Use Your Blog as Your Newsletter

Many people with an online business also maintain mailing lists to send out newsletters. Frequently, people also pay to have a mailing list service each month, such as Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, etc. But did you know that if you also have a blog at a host like Blogger or WordPress, you can use your blog as your newsletter? Not only would this save you lots of time, but it would also save you money, if you pay for a separate mailing list service. To use your blog as your newsletter, all you need to do is have your blog's feed burned at a feed-burning site like I use: Feedburner.

Your blog usually has an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed, which is really just a way of delivering web content that is frequently changing. It allows anyone to get changing web content, such as from blogs, without the need to visit the website that the content appears on. To do this, the feed gets "burned," and that enables people to subscribe to the feed, either in a feed reader or via email. So once your feed gets burned, anyone can subscribe to it in a feed reader (I use the Google Reader myself). Better yet, you can get HTML code from your feed account that you can place on your website, enabling people to subscribe to your blog via email.

I love this feature of my blog feeds, and I use it with all my websites so that I can use my blog as my newsletters. It eliminates the need for a mailing list service. It saves you tons of time, because all you have to do is post on your blog and anyone who has an email subscription will get the post automatically by email. If they subscribe in a reader, they can read it along with any other feeds they have subscribed to there. Or, they can visit your blog at any time too, if they like. And if by some chance you're doing the big no-no and sending out newsletters as a mass email from your own inbox, you can stop wasting the time doing that, and help prevent yourself from getting blacklisted by ISP's for sending out spam (which, is what happens quite frequently when you are sending out mass emails from your own email account)!

So really, there are lots of great reasons to use your blog as your newsletter. After all, who doesn't like to save time and, in today's economy, money? BTW, have you subscribed to the blog you're reading right now? If not, follow the link on the left side of the blog (under the SUBSCRIBE NOW header) and subscribe today!

Hide and Seek Order Information

Do you want customers to order from you? If so, don't hide (or completely omit) information they need before placing an order. It really would be wise to provide a page of information on your website (perhaps called, "Order Information") that includes relevant information about the ordering process. Include the following items at the very least...

* Forms of Accepted Payment
* Applicable Sales Tax that will be added to their total
* Information on how to purchase Insurance, if available
* Information for International customers (and if you don't ship Internationally, you are missing out on some great potential sales!)
* Shipping Carriers, Rates, and Policies
* Your Return/Refund Policy

It is really annoying to me, as a customer, to visit a website and not be able to find this information. And I have never ordered from a website where this information was missing! And what's more, if it cost you my sale, I guarantee that it cost you other sales as well.

If nothing else, provide this information on a FAQ page or something similar. But put it somewhere, and make it easy to locate on your website. A confused or annoyed customer is not going to stick around for long.

Newsletter Marketing

I just ran across another newsletter/mailing list service provider on the Web. I have several other resources linked on Primitive Business Junction, but I'm always looking for others to add. This one is called My Newsletter Builder, and it starts at $10 per month and goes up from there. If you're interested, follow the link to:

My Newsletter Builder

But also be sure to check all the resources we have for mailing list providers on the website:

Mailing List Provider Resources at Primitive Business Junction

New Issue of Creative Times

The latest issue of Creative Times Magazine has just been released. Each issue of CT brings you crafting articles on a variety of topics, and also a monthly business article with info on running your business. And oh yeah, the business article is written by me! If you're interested in this free PDF download, visit the link below for the download page.

Click Here to Get Creative Times and Get Your Download

Your Computer Eats Your Stuff

This is just a heads up for anyone who might believe otherwise, but YOUR COMPUTER EATS YOUR STUFF! What do I mean? I mean, you should absolutely not rely solely on your computer to store information. I see this time and time again...someone's computer dies and they don't know the URL of their website builder, or they lose all their bookmarks, or their passwords are all gone. This is just incomprehensible to me. And, it's totally preventable.

First, and I can't believe we still need to say this in 2009, back up your data. This is not complicated, in fact it's quite easy. Two words: FLASH DRIVE. This is a small USB storage device that you just stick in your computer, drag your files to it, and voila, you're backed up. You can store an unbelievable amount of data on a flash drive, and you can stick it on a key ring even so it's always with you. It's far easier than burning things to CD's too.

Also, back up your browser's bookmarks. How you do this varies by browser, but every single browser (that I know of) is capable of letting you backup your bookmarks. So do it, at least once per month, if not more often. And backup them up into a file that will also get put on your flash drive! That way, if you ever lose all your browser's bookmarks, you can easily import them at a future date.

As for passwords, there are far too many people that store all their website passwords only on their computers. Oy. Not smart. You should have hard copies of all your important passwords stored somewhere outside of that stuff-eating computer. I keep passwords in a rolodex for a quick and handy reference. You have to do something, because heaven knows, we need our passwords! So be smart about it and keep a hard copy of them somewhere.

If you own an online business, I can't stress enough the importance of backing up and saving all of your important Internet data. And since it's so easy, there's really no reason not to do it. So rage against that stuff-eating machine, and BACK UP!

Spell-Checking in Outlook Express

Are you a bad speller? Or maybe you just want to ensure that your spelling in your business emails is accurate? If you need a spellchecker for Outlook Express and you don't have one installed on your computer, you won't have access to one in OE. So here are a couple of links to sites where you can download a free OE Spellchecker.

Spell Checker at Major Geeks
Spell Checker at Snap FilesHappy Spelling!

Page Rank Explained

For those of you who are confused by what "Page Rank" means, I have found a great website that explains it quite well. It should help take a bit of the mystery out of it, for anyone who is scratching their head on the subject.

Page Rank Explained