MORE SECRETS, MOTHER? IF THAT IS YOUR REAL NAME??

#1556; In which a Home is Haunted (Part 5 of 8)

  — December 16th, 2024

[ Tags: , , ]       Permalink: https://wondermark.com/c/1556/

This storyline began with Part 1.

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Requesting email newsletter advice!

Embed from Getty Images – Search result for “Frustrated with Computer”

Do you have professional expertise with email newsletters? Perhaps you can advise me!

Compared to social media — and the algorithms that control what you do or don’t see in your feed — email has classically been considered a safer, more reliable way of reaching readers.

However, you still have to GET your email into the inbox of your readers, and I’m finding that harder than expected these days.

In 2025, my ambition is to return to publishing new Wondermark comics on a regular, consistent schedule. In preparation for that, I’ve been blowing dust off of things and seeing what still works and what needs to be fixed.

My goal is pretty simple: to have a website where you can read my comics, and to provide my comics to you in convenient ways!

Some individual sub-functions of that effort have used third-party services, which have come and gone over the years, and so I’ve been trying to find replacements when necessary.

One key thing I’m troubleshooting right now is email delivery of my comics.

This (WordPress) site generates an RSS feed, and ages ago, you could plug that feed into Feedburner and it would send out an email to your subscribers on any day there were any new posts created.

Then, Feedburner was bought by Google, and of course that meant it was eventually shut down, and now that service no longer exists. So, the goal is to replace that functionality.

Options I’ve considered so far, and what I’ve learned:

  • There is a one-for-one replacement for Feedburner called FeedPress. (You can sign up for the beta-testing FeedPress version of the Wondermark newsletter here.)

    It does exactly what Feedburner did, with one major downside: The FeedPress mailing servers do not appear to be widely trusted by spam filters, so there is no guarantee that the emails will actually make it into every subscriber’s inbox.

    This is my initial observation about the service based on some limited testing — if that proves to be true, I think that’s a fatal flaw.

    It is not a free service, but the cost is reasonable and within my budget.

  • Mailchimp and similar email providers also offer RSS-to-email functions. I find myself in a double-bind, though, because my email list is large enough (~5k) that Mailchimp would be a $100+/month outlay, and it would only increase from there.

    If that cost is unavoidable, it’s unavoidable; but I’m trying to explore all options before committing to that, since ideally this would be a commitment for the long term.

    Every other email provider in this class seems to be roughly the same cost (including newsletter-focused providers such as beehiiv and ButtonDown).

    I do like Mailchimp’s robust tools for segmenting and so on.

  • Notable exception to the above blanket statement is ConvertKit, which has a free tier up to 10k subscribers… But this free tier does not support RSS automation. This means every email would have to be manually created.

    And their goal, of course, is to lock you into their ecosystem if/when I exceed the threshold of the free tier — but perhaps by then I’d be back into the swing of things here, with a more reliable income stream again.

  • If you’ve been getting my emails over the past year or so, you’ve been getting them from Sendfox, which is a pay-once provider (rather than a monthly subscription).

    That felt like a great solution at first, except that recently I’ve run into some troubling hiccups with their service that has me rethinking sticking with them for the long haul.

    Additionally, using their service requires drafting a manual email for every single update, and over the past year I’ve realized that what I really want is an automated solution.

  • I think there is probably a way to use an app within WordPress to send out emails directly from the blog.

    This would involve hitching up an app to a third-party mailing server such as MailerSend, and I am not familiar enough with that process to know what it involves or whether it is a good option.

    The costs involved appear to be similar to a service like Mailchimp.

  • I use Shopify for my online store, and customers who opt into the newsletter at checkout are one main source of new subscribers.

    So I briefly considered whether there might be a way to use Shopify’s marketing tools as the entire newsletter platform. I imagine it would once again mean drafting manual emails each time the WordPress site updates.

  • Finally, some cartoonists are starting to use Substack as a newsletter platform, meaning that becomes a mirror to their main blog, and their subscribers are reached through Substack instead of via the WordPress blog.

    Substack is another potential source of exposure and new readers, but once again it means duplicating everything onto another platform, and also, I don’t care for that platform much personally.

Making the choice

I want to figure this out once and be confident with the decision. The ideal platform is:

  • Cost-effective — it’s a free service I’m providing to readers, after all.
  • Reliable — the whole point is for subscribers to actually get the emails they’ve asked for. This factor seems to depend a lot on the particulars of the sending servers.
  • Simple — automated via RSS would be really great, but I would also accept a Zapier or similar automation that generates emails from the RSS automatically.
  • Flexible — custom segments and the like are nice. My main complaint with Sendfox is that they control the parts of your subscriber list that you can send emails to, and yet have no useful tools for segmenting your list yourself. Super frustrating!!

I guess the point I’ve come to now is: I only know what I know so far, and I’m not super happy with what I know. It doesn’t yet point to a clear choice.

I would love to hear from anyone with good ideas in this realm who can give me their best advice, or some kind of sanity check on whether I’m considering the above in the right way.

Or do you have experiences with any provider mentioned above that you can share, positively or negatively?

ALTERNATIVELY, if you would like to become a SPONSOR of my email list to help cover the cost of one of the more reliable solutions, I would consider including SPONSORED MESSAGES in the emails while also providing ABSOLUTELY NO GUARANTEE of their effectiveness in terms of ROI or whatever!

The way to reach me about any of the above topics is, of course, email: dave@wondermark.com

I figure there’s got to be smart people who have already been around the block on this, and I would love to hear from you if you have!

(Comments is yet another thing I’ll have to figure out how to fix on this site.)

THIS SUNDAY: Tune in live to my basement!

I’m doing a very simple one-day-only holiday promo – I’ve created a convention table at home, and you can visit it virtually!

It works like this:

  • Tune in anytime you like on Twitch between 11am–6pm Pacific time on Sunday. I’ll be working on comics in between chatting with “attendees.”

  • You can also pre-browse my current merch offerings on my site and on BackerKit to familiarize yourself with what’s available.

    (I’m leaving the pre-order store from the pins project open until the end of the year. After that, some – but not all – of the products will migrate back to my online store.)

  • To “approach the table,” join a one-on-one call by going to wondermark.com/bc. This will open a Google Meet that will let us have a face-to-face conversation!

    (Our call will be visible to the Twitch audience too, so you’ll be able to see whether I’m currently talking to anyone or not.)

  • While we chat, I’ll be happy to answer questions about any individual items you like; sign books or prints; and you can even commission a Roll-a-Sketch! Which I can probably draw right there while you watch!

  • You don’t need to buy anything to join and chat! But if you DO want to buy something, I’ll create an online payment link for you.

All U.S. orders will get FREE SHIPPING for any orders placed at BasementCon! You don’t even have to pay for parking or overpriced convention-center pizza!

Of course, you can also place regular store orders (at the links above, or over at TopatoCo, where they offer an overlapping but distinct set of fine Wondermark products) and we’ll get those out promptly to you as well, no conversation required.

For example: Multi-Purpose Greeting Card Sets were out of stock for a while, but they’re back, baby – I’ve reprinted both the holiday editions and the general-purpose versions.

Hope to see you on Sunday!!

Check out: Cabel Sasser’s amazing XOXO 2024 talk

A few months ago, I attended the final XOXO conference in Portland, Oregon.

XOXO is (was) an IRL gathering of “the good internet” — bloggers, hackers, artists, journalists, makers, all coming together to bounce off each other for a few days to see what happens.

Each annual installment was a place of learning, of inspiration, of friendly collegiality and of bonding over shared interests (and shared distress, sometimes — after all, the subject at hand is the internet, and what it does to people).

This year, XOXO returned for the first time since before the pandemic. It was billed as “Once more, with feelings.”

One of the themes that emerged from the talks, presentations, and conversations was the state of community on today’s internet.

Lots of people at XOXO, myself included, have spent the last few years reeling from the hyper-fragmentation and accelerating commodification of online spaces.

For example: Twitter used to be a place where I could reliably converse with and broadcast to a lot of like-minded people. Now, personally, I’m done with Twitter. I’ll never post there again.

That space has become toxic, and not merely toxic, but useless to me with respect to what I want out of a social network (conversation; reach; entertainment).

Bluesky…Threads…Mastodon…Private Discords and niche subreddits…Substack newsletters and Facebook groups just one spam DM away from being hacked…Everyone I know who works online has had to face the question, lately, of what is going to work now.

For now, I’ve personally shifted my focus to Bluesky – here is my personal profile, and here is one for Wondermark comics. I hope to see you there!

As for the video linked above…

All the XOXO speakers were great, and you can watch all their talks on YouTube (from this year and years past).

But I’ve chosen to highlight Cabel Sasser’s talk in this post for a few reasons:

  • It’s very entertaining. The entire audience was on the edge of our seats the whole time.
  • It’s on a topic I care deeply about: remembering, and cherishing, artwork from the past that can speak to us in the present in a new way.
  • It’s about taking time to save, and bring along with us, things we love that might otherwise be lost as we move from place to place, platform to platform, website to website.

Watch the whole talk, and then, visit the website Cabel set up in its aftermath. (No spoilers from me.)

[ Cabel Sasser describes how he discovered a forgotten artist – XOXO 2024 ]

New stickers & shirts now available!

I have submitted the manufacturing order for my new set of pins!

They are at the factory now — I should be receiving my stock in the month of August sometime.

Here are the final designs. Pre-orders are still open!

This project has been really fun! I enjoyed the challenge of designing a bunch of new stuff (which I haven’t done in a while), and it’s been really interesting seeing which designs have hit and which are are little less popular.

I can already tell that a few of these are going to be one print run only. So, this is your best chance to grab anything you like while they are all guaranteed to be available.

I’ve also made available sticker and T-shirt versions of all these same designs! Likewise, they are all available now, although some of them may not be available after this campaign (or anyway, I’m unlikely to reprint them after I sell through the first print run).

The shirt versions of these designs will be made to order, so basically any color is available, not just black!

But for simplicity’s sake, here are all the designs on black:

I am also taking this opportunity to reissue some of my older shirt designs as one-offs… So there are a total of 20 (!) shirt designs available.

Finally…I am also offering my books, games, and other miscellaneous things too (like greeting cards). This is a great opportunity to pick up some things at a discounted shipping rate!

And many of these items will migrate to my online store later on, but likely not all of them, so if you see something here you like, please don’t hesitate!

A hearty thank-you to everyone who has already placed an order!! Rest assured I am using your money to manufacture these actual things, and then shortly, I will be mailing them to you.

[ LINK TO PINTOPIA STORE ]

I made a video of the comic about making a video.

It’s not a “process video,” per se (I have made plenty of those in the past), but I couldn’t resist making the most annoying social-media reel possible out of the latest comic, #1548.

I posted it on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

RELATED: There is a Wondermark Instagram. I set it up ages ago but have never committed to doing anything with it. Someday, I will post more things to it! Feel free to follow it now in case I do!

The most active community I post comics to these days has actually become Wondermark on Facebook?

In the macro, I dislike that website with a passion, but in the micro, I can’t argue with the results for my page in particular.

Lots of great people reading and commenting over there! If you are one of them…thanks!!


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