Fringe Fiction Unlimited discussion

Hey Everyone,
So I am finally looking to build my "Author Platform" or "E-mail List" as they are called. I've heard a lot of people talk about how they use Mailchimp, anyone heard of it or use it? I sort of get the concept but am still a bit hazy on the details of how it all works.

I am considering using it but I want to get some feedback and hear from anyone who already uses it and what it's like and it's it's easy and helpful to you.

I think it's easy, though I use my blog more to build my platform. Still, the first 1000 people is free, and you can't really beat that.

I use it in a minor way (the free version)and I've found it works for sending things out to people on my mailing list.

It's very easy to use and you can just drag photos and enter text and hyperlinks quickly using their layout platform.

I send out an eNewsletter once a month with reviews of books & films using MailChimp, and I include an update in each one on my writing. It took me a little while to figure out the sign up form and the Welcome email (people get a free short story when they sign up), but the newsletter itself wasn't too hard to format. There are several basic templates. You can upload photos or images you have as well as type in text. The result looks pretty good on mobile phones, in email, and on line. If you have trouble figuring out how to do something, I recommend searching Google for MailChimp Help + the topic. I've found that easier than hunting thru the Help on the site myself. Most of the help is in quick videos you play on the site and they are pretty good.

So I foolishly went ahead and made an account. Uploaded some contacts, went for a walk and then promptly deleted my account. I was so lost and confused and couldn't access my account. Needless to say I jumped the gun way too soon and I'm gonna gather more of the comments on here and another group before attempting it again.

Justin wrote: "So I foolishly went ahead and made an account. Uploaded some contacts, went for a walk and then promptly deleted my account. I was so lost and confused and couldn't access my account. Needless to s..."

If you get bettwr detail/instructions from your other group, I hope you'll fill us in on tbis thread! Ive been curious about mail chimp as well.

Will do Lanae. Yeah I definitely need to do more research and get more info on it before going ahead and deciding to use it.

I use mailchimp for my newsletter. I haven't had any difficulties so far; I have an online form for folks to fill out, and it keeps track of how many people open and click things in my newsletter.

I have a mailchimp account and have yet to use it. How often should you send out your newsletters?

I send mine every two weeks. I know some people do monthly. /shrug. I don't know if there's a general rule.

Yeah, so I'm deifnitely going to re-try MailChimp and hopefully it'll make more sense the second time around.

Okay so one major issue I'm having is figuring out when it's appropriate to send out these emails on MailChimp. I've been doing once a month because I feel like people don't wanted to be spammed and I've read several places saying the same but then give heard a few people say send one every few weeks. So who's right? I mean the last thing I want to do is scare away a new follower.

Justin wrote: "Okay so one major issue I'm having is figuring out when it's appropriate to send out these emails on MailChimp. I've been doing once a month because I feel like people don't wanted to be spammed an..."

I send a newsletter once a month that includes reviews of books & films (not written by me) plus a short column with an update on my writing. In between, I send an extra message if I have a new release, a book fair where I'll be, or a book release event or talk. I'd say I send one of those about 6 months out of the year. (I just listed a Goodreads giveaway, so I'm thinking I'll send a notice about that, too.) Overall, like you, I don't want to spam people. I do notice that some lists I'm on send me emails more often, even every few days. If I'm particularly interested in the topic or author, I don't mind, I just delete if I don't want to read. But I have unsubscribed so some lists I might have stayed on otherwise, so I lean away from sending frequent emails myself.

I thought this was a pretty good how to:

http://dankoboldt.com/author-mailing-...

Hope it helps! :)

I personally only send out a newsletter when I have something to update, i.e. a book is coming out, I'm doing a reading, etc. Otherwise, I wouldn't know what to write either.

Thanks for sharing Lisa.

Anne I'm the same way. Some times I have a few things to share but most of the time I would have nothing and no clue what got write.

I use mailchimp for my subscribers, and bloggers to announce blitz's etc. I find the formatting really easy and the program fairly straight forward once you get the hang of it. The free version is enough for me :)
Goodluck!!

I was just chatting with an author friend about this very topic! I asked her what on earth we less-than-prolific authors could put in an email every couple of weeks or monthly. Basically she said, if you write fiction set in a certain time period, Victorian let's say, you could talk about an article that inspired you or helped you in research, give a link to it so your readers can check it out for themselves. To give another example, I write speculative fiction. Currently, I'm working on two pieces.

One is a novel about a lost expedition to another realm that was sent to scout it out for human habitation. So I've been looking at various scientific research into human space colonization and theories on bubble universes and the like.

The other piece is a dystopian novella about a woman that rises from the bottom of the pecking order in her starving community, to become their leader. Vague, I know. Anyway, in this case, I could share a variety of articles and essays with my email subscribers.
And in my case, I would also have flash fiction that I'd write just for those subscribers, set in the same 'worlds' as my other work. Kind of a snack while they wait for the novel.

Just some thoughts. Hope they help someone here.

Anna wrote: "I thought this was a pretty good how to:

http://dankoboldt.com/author-mailing-...

Hope it helps! :)

I personally only send out a newsletter when I have something to update, i.e. a book ..."

I hadn't seen this before, but already I see some things I'll be putting into play. Thanks!

I send out a newsletter every month, towards the beginning, and try to include

1) Spotlight of someone else I know (author, editor, artist)
2) Something ridiculous to make my readers laugh (joke, odd song, my odd humor)
3) Any promotions happening soon

These are in every one, and then I'll also add in stuff whenever I'm releasing or working on a new book.

Hope this helps!

How'd this work out for you David?

Also this is about Mailchimp so let's try to stay on topic.

I meant that was a tip for creating newsletters on Mailchimp, sorry. And it worked out fairly well so far. Mailchimp offers lots of tips and tools as you log on.

A cartoon would be funny too.

Yeah, and Mailchimp makes it easy to insert pictures and stuff into your newsletter. So it's great.

(I realized after typing this up that the OP is probably well beyond the advice I'm offering here, but I'll go ahead and post it in case it is helpful to someone else just starting out with MailChimp).

I use MailChimp for a software company I am co-owner of. But we have not yet gotten to the point of actually emailing anyone through it (aka, an "email campaign"). I find it pretty easy to add new addresses. We keep track of them in a spreadsheet and then I can just copy and paste the cells of the spreadsheet into MailChimp and label them.

One of the first things you do in MailChimp is start a List (of email addresses). So make sure you have a few addresses to add before you get started. Then I followed these instructions
http://kb.mailchimp.com/getting-start...

We have a WordPress web site, and found some code on the MailChimp site to copy and paste into WordPress so that we can use our website to gather new email addresses from people who visit, rather than having to enter them all manually ourselves. Our site is here: http://www.mcfarlandcreativeworks.com/ You can see what the form looks like by scrolling to the bottom of the main page or clicking on the Join Our Mailing List link (you don't have to actually sign up to see the form).

I hardly promote my email list I made from them because they lack free stuff. You have to pay to automate emails so I just use mailerlite now.