Blogging or a newsletter?

I've been blogging for over a year now.

It's been fun.

When I started, I wanted to have a means of connecting with my site's visitors, and I was leery of sending emails or establishing an email list because of potential problems when people report your newsletter as spam.

So I thought, hey, they can subscribe to the blog and it's going to be just like a newsletter to them that way.

This has been an experiment to me in that sense.

I put the "Subscribe to my blog" box on my site... and got a few subscribers a day, you know, between 0 and 3 daily. Subscriber numbers got between 250 and 300 and seemed to start slowing down.

I was thinking, these numbers aren't growing real fast. But I thought, well, that's just how many people want to listen to my blogging, so I wasn't worried about it either.

Then came last summer. I keep reading all sorts of search engine optimization and marketing stuff, and based on those, it was very important to have an email list.

So I decided that it was time to try do a newsletter. I went ahead and started it, using my blog writings as content for the newsletter.

And since last summer I've promoted a "Subscribe to my newsletter" on my site...

Guess what?

I think the proof is in the pudding.

I get 15 subscribers a day or so. The newsletter just starting accumulating subscribers in a much more rapid pace right from the start.

Most people just aren't ready for a blog... but embrace a newsletter easier!

I'm not sure why. You know, the stuff in my newsletters (see archives) comes from the blog writings. It's all the same stuff.

And in case you're wondering, no, I'm not planning to stop blogging. I think it can work great if some people read a blog and some people read all of that (or 'highlights') once a month in a newsletter.

But, there is one thing where a blog is greatly helpful, in terms of SEO. Google likes links from blogs. So promoting a new site in a blog greatly helps that site to get into the search engines.

So I'll keep blogging. People keep sending me links that I can blog about, and my hubby keeps finding interesting things on Digg.com that I sometimes blog about, and I keep having other ideas too.

For example, right now I have an idea about percent proportions that I want to blog about soon.

But all in all, December might be a little slower with blogging. I've gotten so busy with the Math Mammoth books.

But keep checking back when you can!