Are you a blogger looking to start offering email subscriptions to your blog? Trying to find the best service without paying a lot? Here’s some information about what I think are the Best Free Services for Email Subscriptions in 2022!

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If you are a Blogspot blogger using Feedburner, you may or may not realize that RSS emails have been sent to your subscribers. Starting in July 2021, you will need to set up these emails yourself. You can do this! Here’s How to Set Up Automatic Blog Update Emails on Mailchimp just like the ones Feedburner sent for you!

Note: while these instructions may work for other email subscription services, like MailerLite, ConvertKit, etc. there might be slight differences. If you are a WordPress blogger, you can use a Mailchimp plug-in to collect email addresses, but the rest will apply to you!

First step to setting up Blog update emails: Sign up for a MailChimp Account

You can probably handle this part! Do the FREE account for now. BUT to send emails through MailChimp you will need 1) a mailing address you’re willing to share with subscribers. They also highly recommend (but don’t seem to require) using a domain email address.

If do NOT have a mailing address you are comfortable sharing you might want to consider other email services. See my recommendations here.

Why does MailChimp require a mailing address?

They require a mailing address to comply with the FTC’s CAN SPAM act, which is the same law that requires us to be able to easily unsubscribe from unwanted emails (yay!) You DON’T have to use your home address. You can use a PO box or a business address.

They highly recommend a domain and a domain email to ensure that your emails don’t end up in spam (and probably to prevent spammers from using their service.

Just telling you this now in case you’re like “NO WAY” and want to back out before we even get started. Or find a different email subscription service.

Next: Set up Blog Update Emails on Mailchimp:

Create a “Campaign”

1. On your homepage, click on that megaphone icon, or navigate to Campaigns

2. That should get you to a Campaigns page. Click the black box in the upper right corner that says Create Campaign. Then select Email, the first item on the list on the left hand.

Choose Automated from the three choices on the top bar. Then you’re going to pick Share Blog Updates. That should take you to the right hand image below. Click Begin. Don’t worry, it sounds alarming but it doesn’t begin anything except the design process.

3. On the next page, type the URL of your blog feed in the box (this is usually www.yourURL/feed OR if you use Blogger it is www.yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/post/default). Usually Mailchimp will help you find and validate the feed you want to use.

Then choose what day and time you want your email to go out. Should you check “resize images?” I’m not actually sure, but make a choice and then you will be able to troubleshoot it. Since I have a WordPress plug-in that sizes my blog images, I’m not going to check it. If you’re on Blogger, maybe check it and see what happens. Then click NEXT down in the bottom right.

4. Next, Mailchimp will ask you who you want to send the email to. If you’ve imported your Feedburner subscribers, you can choose Entire Audience. If you haven’t, you can still check Entire Audience. Later on you will subscribe to your own email to test the subscription box and see what the emails look like. Fun! Click NEXT again.

5. Now, here is the part where you can personalize your email a little bit. You will get to a window that says Campaign Info (see image below).

That first box (Campaign name) you can change. That’s just for your own use.

The second box (Email Subject Line) you can personalize a little if you want. You could add emoji, or say “Latest Posts.” But you can also leave it alone for now. If you connected Twitter and Facebook when you set up your account, you can scroll down and auto-Tweet when your newsletter goes out. However, I’d wait on that and see if you like how it looks first. When you’re ready, click NEXT again.

Time to building an email template – don’t be scared!

6. Okay here comes the part that might seem daunting. You can do it! You need to pick a template. For a beginner doing an RSS feed post I’d scroll down to the “Basic” section and just pick the one column format. Simple! Then you should hit NEXT again.

You’ll get to a little builder window where you can edit the template.

7. Hover your cursor over Logo and if you want, you can upload an image with your blog header or logo. Don’t want to do that? Hover the logo block, hit the trash can icon and that item will be removed.

8. If you select that text box, an editing window will open to the right where you can edit the text. Whatever text you write will be on every email that goes out. Don’t worry; you can go back and change it later. Remember the main content of your email will be your blog posts which MailChimp will magically pull out of your feed and put in the email. In my example I’m going to edit it. Here I clicked on the text box and opened the editing window:

And here is the text after I edited it down a little bit.

Add your RSS Feed!

Okay now this is important and NOT super-intuitive – to get your RSS feed in there, find the block on the right that says RSS Items and drag that over to the left and drop it into your email template.  This is what the RSS items block looks like. Just drag it sideways and plop it down where you want it.

I did all that above (plus added my logo) and it looks like this:

Above is what your email will look like. First the logo, then text, then all that asterisk stuff is where your blog posts will go. If you prefer, you can drop the RSS feed above the text if you prefer. Click NEXT to get to the confirmation screen and here’s where you can see if it worked:

Enter Preview Mode … it’s the moment of truth!

Find Preview and Test in the top black bar and select Enter Preview Mode.

You should see a blog post there! From that same “Preview and Test” drop down menu, you can send yourself a test email. Mine preview looks like this (below). Look, my latest blog post has magically appeared.

Is there is a problem? If so, click the X on the top right. That will exit you out of Preview mode. Then troubleshoot your editing to get things the way you want.

NOTE: your RSS feed is set up as either Full or Partial in your blog settings. Partial means that the reader will have to click through to your blog to read the full post.

If the email looks good, then you can schedule it to go out and see how it works on the day you set it to send. Click the big X on the top right to exit preview mode, and then hit NEXT again and you’ll get this screen:

This screen above recaps everything you did. Do you like the way things look? Next, click Start RSS in the bottom right. If you’re still not ready to start sending emails), then click Exit and Save in the top left. That way you can come back later to start the campaign. If this email is just going to you, don’t sweat it.

Okay, hope that tutorial on how to set up blog update emails on Mailchimp was helpful.

Let’s make a subscription box!

There’s a drawback to everything. The Mailchimp form you can use on Blogger is either REALLY wordy or rather ugly. But, I will tell you how to do it:

1. Go to the Audience tab from the Mailchimp home page

2. Choose Sign-up Forms

3. Choose whether you want an embedded form or a pop-up. I think embedded is easier, but up to you.

4. Copy the HTML code and paste it in a widget on your site.

Here’s how the Mailchimp “Horizontal” form (top left) and MailerLite form (just below) look on my old Blogger site. Yes, the Mailerlite one is less ugly. If you hate the Mailchimp one, you can use Hello Bar, which integrates with Mailchimp.

Here’s a sample of two different forms:

That SUBSCRIBE with the little box on the left is Mailchimp form . Below that (and on the right) is the MailerLite form.

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Questions? Comments? Want me to do a post on setting up a MailerLite Campaign? Talk to me in comments!

When you’re a blogger with limited time and resources, keeping up with ALL the different aspects of blogging is hard. Every social media platform handles photos differently and they are always changing their minds! Here’s my Guide to the Best Image Sizes for Social Media in 2021

This post was updated on May 6, 2021 to reflect NEW image size preferences on Twitter!

Why You Should Always Check Your Own Posts

In my post on Things Bloggers Should Worry Less (and More) About, I reminded you to check your blog’s readability on both desktop and mobile.

But as time went by, I forgot to check how my blog preview images looked on social media!

A few years ago, I researched what size and shape was best for blog images. It seemed like most bloggers were using square photos, so I did too.

Recently, I realized that my preview images on Twitter and Facebook were weirdly cropped.

Do you check out your own social media feed? I guess I haven’t recently, because I was surprised to see recently that my Twitter images now looked like this:

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