Arghh! Templates!

 

It always looks so easy ~ until you try to do it. I thought I would get a jump on my next newsletter by choosing a MailerLite template and at least editing the heading and inserting an image. Don't let anyone tell you that MailerLite doesn't offer tons of templates, because they actually feature too many. The trouble is, most of them are a pain in the ass to work with. I ended up choosing the simplest one I could find, the one that looked the most straight-forward. Even that one is a challenge. There are too many buttons to click on to change this or that thing, which I'm not even sure what the "thing" is, so I ended up just clicking on each one to see what it would do. Some of them apparently don't do anything! I found myself longing for the simplicity of Blogger, whose interface lets you do all the things that MailerLite's does, only so much simpler. But of course I can't send a Blogger newsletter, so my template confusion will be a cross to bear.

No site that I know of does this, but it would be an advantage to offer a full-page preview of a work in progress, rather than something little bigger than a thumbnail. Even Blogger lets me preview a post before I publish it. I know from past work experience that I am more proficient than probably ninety per cent of other software users (and I'm self-taught), but maybe I'm just kidding myself. Maybe everybody else finds these things a breeze to work with.

I want to emphasize that this is not a condemnation of MailerLite. I like the site overall, and I no doubt would have the same issues creating a newsletter with any other mail host. At least I'm pretty confident that once it's ready to go, MailerLite will actually send it (unlike that other site whose initials are SS).

I'm sure I'll get it. And I will definitely send a test newsletter to myself before I send it out to my "massive" 🙂 subscriber list. And anyway, it'll be a while before I send anything anywhere. I want to ask for ARC readers for my latest novella, and I'm barely one fourth of the way through it, if that. 

And speaking of ARC readers, I'm about to check out a site that allows an author to create secure ARCS and deliver them seamlessly to the people who want them. More about that after I thoroughly research it.

As for today, I am back to writing!