Thanks! That's very helpful.

Hi Kelly,

As someone who works almost exclusively on the internet, this article was very helpful.

Having a long illustrious history of asking the "dumb question" every on else wants answered but is afraid to ask, I would like to ask you to expand on #9. I know CMYK stands for cyan, magenta, yellow and black (figure that one out!) and RGB stands for red, green blue but what is spot color printing and what should we know to prevent a problem?

Thanks!

Hi Scott,

You might want to correct the typo in the title. This is a good article with good advice and I'm concerned people will blow you off when they read the title.

Take it from me. I'm the "Queen of the Typo"!

Elge

Even with the link at the top of the page, I'm willing to bet most people don't see your newsletter sign up link. I was looking for it and had a hard time finding it!

I would recommend bringing it into the body of the page and putting the form on the page instead of a link to the form. In the sign up box, tell the reader what they will get in your newsletter in addition to their free gift for signing up. The trick is to make it compelling in as few words as possible.

Hi Dawn,

I doubt there is one solution that will do both project management and invoicing. I've cobbled together a solution. I use JointContact for project management and TraxTime for invoicing. You can test out JointContact for free and it only costs $10 a month for the paid version. TraxTime is only $40.

Great article Tia. One thing I would add would be to get as specific as possible in your proposal. I typically put 3 - 5 hours into proposals for two reasons:

1. It prevents the dreaded scope creep
2. It shows the recipient that you have paid attention to their needs and have crafted a unique solution.

This doesn’t mean you tell them how to solve the problem. You enumerate what needs to be done to get to their desired result.

(This is also a good way to justify charging more than the competition.)

We've got a couple of coworking places here in Portland and I've been wondering if it was worth the investment. After reading your article, I think I might try them out. Thanks Wayne!

A very wise (and successful) mortgage broker once told me "Constantly strive to fire your bottom 10%."

It sounds kind of harsh but it helps you get away from "I have to take this client because I need the money." and move toward working with clients you really like and who appreciate what you do for them.

Yeah. I remember when that happened...

A few years ago, 1SCart was kind of looking the other way and some users were sending spam and 1SCart got blacklisted by Comcast, AOL and a few others. That's when they started the tier 1 and 2 thing. In part to accommodate single opt in and in part because they couldn't get their reputation back on their first server (now called the tier 2 server).

That's when I quite using them. They were less than forthright about why delivery rates went through the floor. But if you're selling info products, need an afiiliate program and are trying to cross market, you pretty much have to use them.

I avoid double opt in as much as possible. The confirmation message gets blocked by some ISPs and it seriously drags down your subscription rate.

The newsletter services will try to scare you wtih horror stories about "all the bad things that can happen" but that's just to protect themselves from their mail servers getting flagged as sending spam. Yeah, you can get some false susbcribes but they're pretty obvious and I just delete them off my list before I send a newsletter.

As I understand it you get a check int eh amil.

At the last Biznik event here in Portland a few weeks ago, Mark Silver mentioned that he got a check in the mail shortly after the event. Dan and Lara were there so I'm sure they would have corrected him if that wasn't the case.

Hi David,

Setting up eNewsletters is something I do a lot and I’ve used just about every service out there. Personally, I recommend iContact. It's the least expensive and has all the bells and whistles.

I used to use 1ShoppingCart. If you need a shopping cart and are trying to sell info products, they’re about the best thing for you but they're kind of expensive, hard to use and their deliverability rate isn't very good.

Constant Contact is pretty good but they start at $20 month whereas iContact starts at $10. Constant Contact has a newbie friendly user interface but they make it pretty hard to import your own HTML code. Plus, I don’t think they do auto responders.

I've used AWeber too but they require you to use double opt in which will reduce your sign up rate by about 25%. Plus their reporting is terrible and when I asked them about it, they blew me off. (It's not possible to have over a 100% open rate no matter how great your newsletter is.)

iContact enables you to do auto responders (which 1Shopping Cart and AWeber do too). It's also got a survey feature and you can archive your newsletter in their public community which has an RSS feed and could be a good way to easily get more subscribers.

Hope that helps,

Elge

Hey Jeff - Great example of the benefits of real human communication! Many people using the internet to send press releases do it in the hope that they won't have to actually call a journalist and risk rejection.

What they fail to realize is that if they follow Nancy’s advice, the likelihood of out-and-out rejection is slim. Journalists might not need your story but they’ll probably be nice about rejecting you because they’ve dealt with so many twits who didn’t do the basics before contacting them.

Well, that's been my experience.

Elge

Thanks Nancy! It's great to have this all in one place. I will definitely be printing this out and keeping as a cheat sheet for the next time I send a press release.