Garden Newsletters
One of the delights in Internet publishing is watching the different ways that information is distributed and trying each of these newsletter systems out (some would call it “spying” but I call it market research) 
The newsletters I get are mostly info-products and not for the purpose of entertainment or community-building.
For me, it really is market research because I use the different systems to decide what I’m going to do with my readers on my own newsletter.
Let me give you some examples.
Option One
There are now online magazines. A company takes its print magazine and essentially turns it into a monster webpage run in Flash. This means you can “turn” the pages, skim from front to back and do almost anything you can do with a print magazine. I tried a few of these, contacted the companies that produced them, and thought about it.
Bottom line. I find myself looking at the table of contents and thinking how long it’s going to take me to actually go – hook up to a slowish Flash delivery system and skim through to find an article. The question of “is it worth my time?” comes to mind regularly and I find myself saying, “no” far too often for the publisher’s liking I’m sure.
Now, that’s not the story that magazine publishers want to hear and I’m sure there are folks who love this kind of thing. I find it slow and cumbersome and after the novelty wears off – I find myself not going there, doing that.
Option Two
I also get a ton of newsletters that are composed of links. Links to all the articles – links to questions – links to ads. Your copywriting had better be superb to get me to click on one of those darn things. The premise here is that if you give me a link, I’ll click through to your site and maybe click on an ad or buy your product.
Again, I find I rarely click on a link. I got one the other day that said, “Here are some answers to gardening questions” I clicked through and there were some pretty basic advice type articles. I needed to get three clicks (open, goto page, goto article) to get to the info. Won’t do it again
There are places for links btw but delivering a newsletter that only consists of links doesn’t turn my crank.
Option Three
I find the short summaries that I get from one publishing company are worth their electrons. I read them all. And I click through to those articles I find interesting enough to visit and learn more about. A hundred words or so as a precis and then I can decide/not decide to click on the “more info” link.
Bottom Line
I’m likely not your average garden reader. I want my info fast, easy-to-read, short summary unless I need more and I need a one-click answer to more. I want decent information that’s not canned and written by some “service” somewhere. I want it easy to upload and fast to run if I have to visit your website and I surely don’t want to have to click on “entry” or “doorway” pages or register before I read your stuff.
Quick. Fast. Easy.
And So I Asked
I asked some folks – sitting around drinking wine – what kinds of information they used online. There was a good sample of every age range present – from 25-55 and I got back an earful of data. With one exception, they were all technically literate and used the Net in typical ways (not working on it).
The summary of all this – give it to me my way.
Most wanted to see a quick and dirty summary of the info to tell them everything they needed to know and if they wanted more information, they’d click through to get it. One was a luddite and refused to read anything longer than emails online.
When it came to information or news, none of them would take the time to click through to a website unless they were comfortable they’d get the info they wanted. One summed it up nicely – I read summaries, then I click through if I want more info. If you don’t give it to me like that – I won’t read your stuff. I have choices.
They all snorted at flash type online magazines as being time-wasters and hard to read compared to print magazines. One made the point that this was just the Net trying to copy the real world and it didn’t work.
Here’s My Take On This
You give your readers what they want or they go elsewhere. (or you had better be the only source of the information you produce)
And you get to decide to find readers who like the way you produce your content or to change the way you provide content. It’s hard enough producing good content without having to hassle the problem of delivering it in useful ways.
Every idea now has multiple ways of delivery depending on your audience. And multiple ways of involving your audience in that content.
So what kind of online newsletters do you really take the time to read?
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Just working on revamping our mag’s monthly Enewsletter and grappling with this – PDF or HTML? Mail it to all or put on site and just mail invite to view it?
@Kathy J, Washington Gardener Mag -
I do this all the time – use an online survey to see what those who use the Net prefer. They’ll tell you. And in any case, my .02 is to do either or both – it’s too easy now to upload an html document and also turn the doc itself into a pdf. i.e. “Like this information? Download it right here for your notes”
Ask your readers.
The key point is to make it easy for your readers to get what you’re offering.
Maybe make all the new issues behind a membership gate (use your membership address or label code to get in) and then publish all issues over a year old to the Net for general consumption and hopefully to increase readership. Make an ebook of all past years back issues for your readers (a yearly pdf bonus for readers) There’s tons of things you can do to add value to your subscriber list. Be the local go-to people for info and resources. etc etc.
Really easy to say! But a lot more work to do.
If you’re going to Raleigh, maybe we should chat over a beer? 
I’m a brand new Doug reader. I happened upon a video of yours about plucking petunias and it was the exact info I was looking for. Everything else I found had no detail and atop that it would be split into chunks of 1 minute videos such as 1) Here is a petunia 2) petunias grow 3) petunias have leaves (i think you get the idea). This is because they show an ad before every video – i find this takes up too much of my time and won’t use those sites for information anymore.
I personally like to have alot of information in my email because i often go through my emails when i’m not online because I’m on the laptop away from any internet connection (my son thinks I watch all of his hockey practices when in fact I’m in the car cleaning out email). I do, however, think that at some point everyone will be connected all the time no matter where you go.
Your option #1 is one of those things I haven’t been able to take to because paying for information that I can find elsewhere makes me feel icky. Even if it takes me an hour I will keep searching instead of paying and I can’t read a whole magazine at a computer. Very soon I hope to be getting one of those handheld devices that allow you to download books and magazines and I personally can’t wait for them to come out at a reasonable price. If you offered a full magazine for download to one of these I’d subscribe! I won’t subscribe to anything paper – not for any god reason like being a tree-hugger – I just hate the messiness of piles of paper.
So this is my .02 and I’m just glad someone that knows stuff that I want to know cares enough to ask so I thought it only courteous to give some feedback.
@Kristin -
Interesting take on information – thanks. I think a lot of folks on the Net would rather hunt for an hour than pay for information – but most of the time that’s for specific information. I wonder about a specific body of information – like “everything” you need to know about building a boat (compared to how much time that would take to hunt down). So do you hunt down *all* the info you need in a new subject matter you know nothing about or would you purchase a real book or an ebook on the subject? Or is that still something you’d hunt down?