Running your own email newsletter is one of the most satisfying outreach for your thoughts or marketing pitch. If you have anything interesting to say like many industry experts then you should run a email newsletter.
There are many options but amongst the free ones TinyLetter seems to be one of the better ones. It is easy to setup, free and also gives an option to charge a recurring fee – if you want to – from subscribers. It is robust and reliable.
To start using it, select a Username and signup using your email address. You are ready to go to start asking people to start subscribing to your newsletter.
TinyLetter gives a WYSIWYG editor like GMAIL for creating your newsletter. Once you have emailed your newsletter to your subscribers they can also respond to you but without seeing your email address. Some basic statistics – eg number of times it was opened – are also there in TinyLetter.
However, the most interesting aspect of this service to me is the easy way to collect subscription through Paypal. Suppose you want to charge $2/= per month per subscriber. Then people will have to first pay via Paypal before they can become subscribers. Here is the screenshot for this.
One can receive the subscription payment straight into one’s Paypal account. But TinyLetter also provides the facility to collect money on your behalf which it can later transfer to your Paypal account automatically.