The end of … “You’ve got mail!”

These Posts will continue (at least for a while) … the excerpts and full posts are and will continue to be at: www.ImagesOfOldHawaii.com.

However, the subscriptions and email notifications through MailChimp will end, soon.  This will not necessarily be a weaning process, more like cold turkey.

In the past, I have been charged varying amounts from MailChimp to send the email notification of the daily posts.  Prior to when I stopped (after 8 ½-years of posting), I paid between $20 and $40 per month.  That was fine.

When I recently restarted, the fee from MailChimp was a little over $50 per month.  Again, doable.

However, the challenge with my present subscription with MailChimp is that it covers 30,000 emails per month.  If I exceed that, it is an additional $10 per every additional 300 emails.

I have almost email 1,500 subscribers (and its growing daily); for a 30-day month, that is 45,000 emails per month.

For the past few weeks I have been reaching out to MailChimp trying to get something like my prior subscription rate – based on the number of subscribers, not the total number of emails.

To allow for more emails per month, the next level of service from MailChimp costs almost $300 per month. 

I do not have a reasonable resolution.

At one time, I considered monetizing these posts.  However, over the years it became clear to me that the goal was never about making money, it was about learning about the place that I live and sharing what I learn.

So, I am not going to charge – that is counter-productive and flies in the face of the whole intent.  I am also not going to ask for ‘donations’ – that is the same thing (so don’t send any money).

I concluded that I need to cancel the email subscription component of this process and cancel my relationship with MailChimp.

Nothing else really changes.

The excerpts and full posts are at: www.ImagesOfOldHawaii.com.  New posts are programed for publication at 12:01 am (HST) each day.

If you want to keep seeing daily historical posts from me, you will need to change your habit and go to that website (and not rely on the email reminder).

In addition, excerpts and links to the full posts are on:

• my company Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Hookuleana
• my personal Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/peter.t.young.hawaii and
• my LinkedIn page https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-t-young-64986825.

The auto-posting to these other sites is not fail-safe.  Just this morning, both Facebook and LinkedIn did not get the message.  So, I manually posted there.

Again, if you really want to see these, the most assured way to get the latest is going to www.ImagesOfOldHawaii.com.

If you are not used to going directly to www.ImagesOfOldHawaii.com, it is really simple:

• Once you click the link, you will get to the home page.  The three most recent posts are there – on the left is today’s post, the middle is yesterday’s and the right has the post from day before.
• Every day, the new post will fill the left position and the others will shift to the right.
• The site has the ability to look at prior posts – go to “Archive” – and from there you see older posts and/or you can do a word search, depending on what you want to look for.

Over the years, I have seen that the Facebook algorithms support those that engage in the posts.

If you occasionally Like, Comment or otherwise engage, you are more likely to see future posts.  Those that simply read and move on have been known to have future posts not show up in their feed.

I am sorry about dropping this email service; I hope you understand.

Thanks,

Peter.

PS.  Again, if you want to continue to read the daily posts, I encourage you to go directly to www.ImagesOfOldHawaii.com (after 12:01 am (HST) each day for the latest post).