To Be Announced...

Posting has been slightly more sparse the past 48-hours as I have been working on a new bag of tricks.

I haven't been too happy with the FeedBlitz subscription service lately. The control panel which allows me to change the format and look of the daily emails hasn't been working all that great...and the "daily" subscription mailings have been iffy at best. Besides, while free and a neat tool, I know I wouldn't want to receive emails every time a blog I enjoyed had a new post. To truly enhance and make it function the way I want would cost me money to upgrade to a better service.

There are a lot of great free things on the internet, but to be honest...most of them come with some sort of catch.

With that said, I have decided to discontinue the FeedBlitz service. I have yet to remove the link because I have been hard at work on my own mailing service through my own website that I can totally control. It required quite a bit of programming, but I think I have the bugs worked out and it's ready for it's debut.

It's called, the GregSays Newsletter and it'll be a lot different than the daily feed many of you have been receiving. Here's how:

1. The mailings won't be daily...they'll be weekly with a very rare extra edition once a month or so. Or, whenever events or a situation comes up that I would need to let loose a special edition. But I won't abuse the privilege.
   
2. The mailings won't be blog posts...they'll be highlights of the week and some additional unique content in between. Formatted nicely for most email programs, they'll be in HTML format so I can include the links I find valuable to include.
3. There will be unique and special private information...not just a simple cut and paste slap together piece of mail. For instance, my first GregSays Newsletter will be about my radio dismissal...and what truly happened.
4. There will be sponsorship opportunities and value to the mailings...but I won't overload the mailings with junk.

Some things the GregSays Newsletter will NOT be...

1. A fee-based service to you...other than the time it takes me to create the mailings. The content and subscription will be entirely free. There will be sponsorships who support the mailings, but nothing I don't approve of myself.
   
2. A means to steal and sell your information...no one...and I mean no one else will have access to the email addresses which you kindly provide for the subscription. The emails themselves will not even be available on my server, so there will be no data file for phisherman and hackers looking for email lists saved on a database. I couldn't be entirely sure that was ever the case with FeedBlitz. The list is totally contained on my home computer.
3. GregSays Newsletter will also not be available to everyone. While there is no charge for a subscription, I have limited membership to the first 100 people who sign up. Feel free to forward the mailings to anyone you like, but it'll be a small club who can join. I will announce publically when a subscription becomes available. Keeping it small makes it more valuable to me...and to you.
4. It will not be hard to subscribe or unsubscribe at any time. Each mailing will include clear instructions on how to unsubscribe. Very simple: just send an email to gregsays@gregalan.net with the subject line, "remove"...that's it.
5. As to subscribing, I won't collect a bunch of information from you I won't possibly have use for...no phone number, address, zip code, blah blah blah. I've made it very simple (primarily because the programming was kind of tedious) to subscribe. Just your email address and first name. Heck, you can even send an email to gregsays@gregalan.net with the subject line, "subscribe" and that'll add your name to the list.

And finally, to those who are subscribers to the FeedBlitz service. Be patient, I have to figure out the clunky mechanics of downloading your email addresses in comma separated ASCII code and I'll add you automatically to the new GregSays Newsletter. You'll be getting this post in a special email later this week.

That makes the number of subscriptions available somewhere between 35 and 40, so sign up now to the GregSays Newsletter.

Click Here to Sign Up

Labels: feedblitz, newsletter