With the risk of being called a spammer, what do you think about my new site?

I really want to get back into blogging (for many years starting in 2000 I ran a somewhat popular blog called Fuckedcompany.com around (google it if you're in your 20's)) and it was fun but a full-time job.

Unless you're planning on making blogging your full time job, you're not going to build an audience, which means nobody will see any of your subsequent blog entries.

Twitter helps...because even if I don't tweet all month, my followers are still there. But it seems to me that having an email newsletter is still the best solution for someone in my position.

Sure, we're all already buried under an avalanche of email, and half of it goes into the spam folder. Nevertheless, when I have a large number of email addresses from folks who trust me and want to hear what I've got to say, I'd argue I have the most direct line to them than any other method of publishing.

So I spent a lazy rainy Sunday afternoon today building this: http://tinyletter.com

Thoughts?

Wow... I think you undersell your previous blog. Being old enough to remember I think that Fuckedcompany.com was the Techcrunch of its time. Loved to read that site - it brought a sense of reality to the startup/web space which is probably still required to this day.

For tinyletter, I like the idea however the one thing I would note is that it doesn't actually provide any sample of the type of newsletter that it would produce. For instance, what is the value of using this site as opposed to simply having a Google spreadsheet form to collect subscribers and sending the emails using Outlook?

Does it provide HTML templates to easily produce structured newsletters or does it only provide a big text field to type the newsletter? I'd be hesitant to sign-up without seeing at least sample visual of a newsletter that would be produced with the system.

I'd love it if one day Michael Arrington came on here talking about how Techcrunch was once a 'somewhat popular blog'

Thanks for the kind words about FC... those were fun days...at least for me :-)

Regarding TinyLetter, I suppose it automates that process were you might collect addresses with Google and sending with Outlook.

Do this to see what they look like: Go through the short sign up process. Then subscribe to your own newsletter. Rhen click "Write a newsletter." Then write something, and click "preview"

Wow that sounds complicated -- trust me it's not. But you make a good point...there should be a way for people to get an example newsletter in the mail so that they know what they look like.

Thanks!

Philip

And i remember that it was even mentioned in the movie August, [ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0470679/ ]! The employees of the startup portrayed are being caught by the founder slacking off there, while the company is sinking as the dot com downhill commences. A rather good film, despite its 5,4 rating on IMDB...

I'd love to see more infos about the service you are providing, in particular how you handle sending the emails from a technical/deliverability perspective.

Reliable mail delivery will be a major challenge -- what steps did do you take to ensure my mails will reach the recipients?

It's nice and all. Er... isn't just quite similar to http://letter.ly/ ? There's a subscription option to it with letter.ly ...

You ran FC? That was one of my favorite blogs, for some reason it helped me a lot through my post-dot-com bubble depression.

Free is value destroying in newsletters, because I think you will have your sending IPs spam blacklisted by a payday loan affiliate sending spam through your service prior to me sending out my Halloween email to my carefully cultivated opt in list. Charge to keep out the riffraff.

Generally, on this site, people aren't going to complain if you promote your own stuff, "within reason". I mean, if you took the time to create it, and link to it like this, it's not a problem.

Looks nicely done, although I don't feel like actually going through and creating it.

One thing might be to watch out for people grabbing 'nice' URL's...

I think the spammer comment was about the fact that this is an email newsletter service, not that this is a self plug. I have a friend who works in email newsletters, we all joke that he's a spammer.

I thought it had let me take /sitemap.xml for a moment, but it seems it strips out the dot. Looks like someone else tried to get /robots.txt and suffered the same problem

With a few lines of code you can easily incorporate tinyMCE wysiwyg editor.

Take it from somebody in the email marketing biz: sending emails in bulk is a massive headache. You need to worry about IP Reputation and whitelisting. If you plan on sending from a single IP, you will get banned.

Smtp.com provides good dedicated IPs meant for email delivery. Best thing to do is get a new IP and send about half a million emails per month / per IP.

Also, charge for the service. It's the only way to weed out actual Viagra selling spammers. Even if you keep it at $5 a year and don't get any income from it...it will be more beneficial to your users who are doing the right thing

I think you're on to something. There are a few sites that let you run newsletters (Constant Contact is one I've used) but they are just terrible to use.

I think you're going to find out pretty quickly you'll need to charge though, especially if you want any of your emails to actually get delivered. That's a non-trivial problem and involves actual labor to prevent spammers from using the service. Just making someone verify their identity by putting in a credit card will help a lot.

Firstly great idea! Am I right in thinking this is comparable to a simplified Aweber?

Also I would suggest you have a demo page, for example where it says:

"People will be able to subscribe at: http://tinyletter.com/your-newsletter "

It would be good if that link actually worked,

Some testing feedback:

•Needs an option to save a draft email badly. •Would like some two column •Not getting my opt-in emails or preview emails quickly.

Like others, I'm also very worried about spammers getting in and shutting this down quickly.

Other than that, it's uber simple! Very nice!

I'd include a demo on the front page. I know it is a simple concept, you know it is a simple concept, but you have to show your users.

What are you using on the back end? PMTA?

ShowHN is a lot shorter than your title, and it'd let you put your site name in the submission text.

great idea. I was looking for something as simple as that & I'd pay $5 or $10 to use it :)

looks good