LetterPop

So are you confused a little bit about what that “publish” button is on the Create Page between the email button and print button? The publish button is also found in your My Account Page under your My Newsletters tab.

One wife of a LetterPop! co-founder rolling her eyes exclaimed, “I don’t get it. What is the publish thing about?” (She wasn’t the only one who asked, so her husband is not picking on her.)

Well, here is the short of it. Right now, all of our beta users receive a LetterPop! account that includes a “profile page.” It looks like this, guynameddave. A profile page is a place where you can put a picture of yourself, write a little bit about yourself, link to your blog, and link to your published public newsletters.

Here’s how it works. You create an exceedingly creative newsletter (or announcement or mini-photo album or whatever) and save it. From either the Create Page or your My Newsletters Page, click on the “Publish Button”. Your newsletter is now published, i.e. you think it looks great and you want to do things with it. Now, if you want your beautiful creation to be visible to everyone who visits your profile page you need to click the “Make Public” link next to your newly published newsletter on your My Newsletters Page.

Why? And cannot you make this more intuitive? Good questions. Well maybe you want to use LetterPop! as a sort of mini-blog or website. Maybe you are a Real Estate Agent or High School Teacher and want to update people regularly in newsletter fashion. A LetterPop! profile page is the perfect solution! And, yes, we are working on smoothing out publishing public newsletters on your profile. For now, though, practice!

First, some of you were having trouble mailing newsletters because the buttons that were supposed to appear in “Step 3″ weren’t there. That has been fixed.

Second, some of you are still having trouble mailing newsletters. Here’s a quick tutorial:

1. First, create a great looking newsletter.
2. Then, go to your address book. Use the Quick Add link to add some contacts. We’ll be adding address importing soon.
3. Click the checkbox next to each contact you want to add to a mailing list then click the green add button (looks like a plus sign) beneath your contact list.
4. A new contact list is created on the right side. Name it and save it.
5. Now you can send newsletters to those contacts simply by clicking the envelope icon next to the contact list name.

Keep those suggestions and error reports coming in. You guys are really helping out! Thanks a bunch.