Why An Email List?




If there is one thing I have learned (and not applied) over the years in attending various blogger conferences and classes, it's that you own an email list. You don't own any of the social media platforms you choose to land on. Your followers there could disappear if it goes down, as I noticed last year when Twitter, Facebook and Instagram all had glitches. It was unsettling and scary and really drove the point home to me that I HAD to start an email list.

So why had I not done it in 2019? I thought of so many reasons why I couldn't do an email list. 

- I didn't know where to start
- I didn't feel like I could maintain it
- Couldn't decide if I keep all my categories separate or all in one email
- I didn't know the best way to collect email addresses
- I didn't know if what I had would be of value to my readers
- I didn't want to add one more thing to my plate

So you would think that by taking various email classes at blogger conferences, I would know where to start. But...it was still hard. Sometimes the speakers would say suggestions of websites to use and I'd look in to it and decide it was too expensive or not a good fit. I really wanted someone to hold my hand and say okay, use this site. Then, here's how you collect the email addresses. And so on and so forth. The classes covered content and layout but not some key elements I felt I needed.

Maintaining. I'm great at starting projects but not so great at finishing them or keeping them going. I didn't want an email list (especially if I was paying for it) to be another one of those things. But I see the value and am aiming for it to be a goal to get an email out monthly to my subscribers and maybe more often inbetween with important announcements or things that add value to your life.

Yeah..I still don't know the best way to collect email addresses. I hope the template I am using to start this email newsletter has a help for that!

It's hard to say what will be valuable to people, especially when I cover travel, crafts and lifestyle. All on 3 separate blogs but trying to combine them in to one email list. If it looks like one topic is really taking off, I could see myself creating an email list just for crafts or just or travel for example. We'll see..it'll be an experiment I guess as I go along. 

One more thing. I am so busy and when I go on trips, that makes my life even more crazier and busy because I'm not home doing a regular routine I set for myself. Irregardless, I am hoping that once I get a good template laid out for my newsletter, that all I need to do is write some words here and there, plug in links to blog posts I have prepared and hit send. 

Let me know if you have any email tips or ideas. I have my first issue of my email newsletter almost perfected and am excited to hit send!

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