Sleeping cats.
A teenage son that appeared to need a long afternoon nap.
And the house to myself.
What’s a blogger to do?
Another coffee from my little red stool coffee station would be lovely, thank-you!
But I brought my coffee to the computer screen, and gave my weekly newsletter a fresh, new little makeover.
The newsletter
I really love writing the newsletter. It’s bright, colourful and fun to edit! Especially the design part. Guess that graphic designer blood in me is there to stay after all. But only a small percentage I’m sure. 🙂
What’s that? You haven’t subscribed to the newsletter yet? Let’s change that!
Next up, I’ll be revamping my daily email updates so they’re prettier. I just wanted to get a handle on this part first.
My own newsletter is in Mail Chimp. It’s pretty easy to set up and send, if you were on the fence about it.
I offer a newsletter mainly because my daily emails aren’t very pretty. I’ll get that all set up too soon! I just desired to get a handle on doing it this way first.
What’s your take? If you get the newsletter, do you think you’d still read it if you got pretty daily emails? Prefer updates right away, or once a week, or both? I’d love your input!
The business cards
And since we’re talking about branding, here’s a glimpse of my business cards. They’re double sided and visually spell out the story without even having to read.
The blog
Someone also emailed me asking for info about how my blog was designed and built.
It was completely custom done. I emailed my designer some pictures, and she and her guru made it happen. How my blog was built is HERE.
But Sunday shall be different. I’m heading to my church to do a photoshoot. Then will come home and… I’m not sure yet. But I imagine it will involve some more of…
The coffeeDream Box Building Challenge #5:
Is it time for a mini tweak with some of your design work? Set aside a nice quiet day, pour yourself something lovely, and have fun with it! Best done barefoot while wearing pjs of course.
But it’s now the weekend. So don’t forget to take time for that coffee and mindless mental wandering too.
I promise… your work will not break up with you. 🙂
– – – – –
Visit what dream box building is all about HERE
Visit all dream box building updates HERE
I know what you’re talking about with a prettier email reminder or newsletter. I made the switch with my own blog a few months ago and happy I did. I don’t do a newsletter I just send out emails when a new blog post is up. This is no more than 3 or 4 times a week. If I have something new and exciting to share like a workshop or something – I’ll enclose that information in one of those emails.
Graphics are fun – I do my own blog design for now – when things pick up I guess I could find someone to take what I’ve started and make it better. Hope you have a great Sunday!
Carole @ Garden Up green
Hi Donna, I first learned about newsletters in general from my daughter, who learned about it from you. I thought it was brilliant and I set up one of my own. My question is … why send a daily email with complete posts when you have an newsletter with links? I can’t imagine that a daily email would bring people to a persons blog … why bother? Anyway, I stopped my daily email option (after letting all my subscribers know about it) and don’t regret my decision. I am having a blast writing my newsletter!
Hey Barb! The daily blog prompts that I send out are truncated (shortened), so they don’t include the entire post. I was forced to truncate due to scraping (stealing).
Daily – Some like to get a heads up on a new post as soon as it’s up. The daily prompts will bring traffic according to your subscriber number. I find the biggest visit surge with these because the numbers are highest here.
Newsletter – groups everything together for those that desire more detail. I also include more in the newsletter than just a quick blog prompt. Extra musings, lots of links to other things, etc. They are very different from each other.
But the end result would ultimately still be the same… blog prompts. I think it depends on how one prefers info delivered.
If your newsletter is just a recap of the last week’s posts, then I don’t need it because I’ve already read it. But if you’re posting about future projects or ideas or linking to other neat blogs, then it would be new material which I would read.
Great point Noreen! And thank you so much for reading faithfully as you do! I love hearing everyone’s thoughts on this.
All my past newsletters have some social media highlights, introducing new Pin boards, and at times highlights from the weekend link parties as well as sneak peeks of things in the works I haven’t posted about yet. I also write an intro that isn’t posted anywhere else.
In future, the newsletters will also host other exciting offers in the works to keep you current on what’s up and where to find it.
The newsletter is much broader than a blog prompt for sure. If you subscribe and it isn’t for you, it’s super easy to unsubscribe from that very post. 🙂
OK, I get it! it makes sense if the daily emails are truncated … 🙂
oops, I meant to reply to this comment … disregard my extra comment …
OK, I get it! it makes sense if the daily emails are truncated … 🙂
I receive your newsletters but not your emails.
I just started sending out weekly newsletters on top of my monthly recap because I recently started a Linky Party. I feel it depends on the amount of content a blogger writes. If you only post a couple of times a week, one email a week is enough.
I love following along, wish it was longer then 31 days. Have a wonderful Sunday!
Yes, mindless mental wandering. That is what I was trying to tell my husband that I needed. I just couldn’t find the right words.
Hi Donna,
I would happily read both the newsletter and follow the blog prompts. I must admit I’m a little bit greedy when it comes to finding inspiration and your blog provides loads for me… so as soon as a blog prompt comes in I’m reading it! Just signed up for the the newsletter… so looking forward to any other insights that it holds. 🙂
Nikki
well i just signed up for newsletter i get mixed up with this stuff so if i get two i will just unsubscribe from one xx
I am a little confused. I had not heard anything from Funky Junk in ages and then this mini confusing entry. good to heat though.
Hi Brenda! I’ve been here all along. There are issues with feedburner and I’ll be moving the works soon to a more reliable platform so you do get the feeds again.
What appears to work is if you unsubscribe, then subscribe again.
Sorry for the glitch!
Hi Donna, I have been following your blog for a few weeks now. I use RSS to get updates, which works great.
I am a web-designer by trade. I mainly work for small local businesses in my areas (so I am not fishing for new projects).
I wanted to mention a couple of things:
1. Love your site. Your ideas and photos of how you re-use old materials is inspiring.
2. Although your website is a neat design, it takes a long time to load, and is not very friendly to anything but large screens.
My thought is that your beautiful photos and text are the main appeal of your site. The extra design around it is nice, but is slowing your site down, and not easy to adjust for different size screens.
Slimming your website design down to use less images would put the focus on to your main content and allow for adjusting to different screen-sizes (tablets).
This would also make the site load much faster.
for newsletters: personally I already work too hard to keep my inbox clean, so I never sign up for anything like that, but I realize not a lot of people know how to use RSS.
just my $.02.
Keep up the nice work. I have already made a few things based on your ideas.
Thanks for the input Adam!
The blog template ended up being larger than I had speculated it would be when it was designed. It was apparently too late to go back and fix it unless I wanted to pay for it all over again. It’s totally custom, so it also isn’t mobile friendly. Yet.
Mobile friendly is currently in the next thought process phase, but I hesitate because I’ve just never fallen in love with any mobile looking templates yet. So I hesitate.
What I don’t love about my current RSS via email is the truncated pictures it displays. If that’s what you’re referring to.
Thanks for your thoughts! Mulling it all over…
Hi Donna, I like the changes you made to your Welcome message and pic! I hear ya re: prettying up your post emails – I’ve been thinking about signing up with Mail Chimp to do the same. I find I don’t have the time to read a full newsletter and prefer the convenience of catching up with my favorite blogs when reading my daily emails. Your business cards are awesome BTW!
OHHHH, I love your business cards. I have been a long time follower/subscriber so your emails are good but I would do a weekly one as well. And I have always like the design of your site, even the one you had before this one.
As Adam mentioned, your site does take a long time to load. I don’t visit often because of that and often don’t wait. I do love your photos, projects and writing though.
Sorry to hear that! What device and browser are you on? I’ll see if it’s an issue with others and get it checked out!