I’m so very, very tickled with myself!  lol.  After much wailing, gnashing of teeth, deskpounding with palm and forehead, many cups of coffee and a couple of unprovoked snarks at DH, (poor guy), I’ve finally, finally managed to get the newsletter software operational. 

I’m warning you…it ain’t pretty.  The subscription landing pages are standard, right out of the box, with colours apparently chosen by the software designer’s lovable, but horribly colour-blind chinchilla, but it’s operational, and that’s what counts.  In the coming weeks I’ll see about making them prettier.  Of course, it will be too late for many of you, blinded by the terminal ugliness of the present subscription pages, and for that I apologize in advance. 

Act now!  Sign up for the IndieNorth newsletter and see the retina scorching ugliness now, before I fix it and it’s nothing but a distant memory!

—–> Newsletter Subscription Page <——

Just thought I’d take a sec to talk about some of the feature pages, linked in the navigation bar above.

Home:  Well, y’know.  It brings you back to the front page of the blog.

About:  Again, you get it, right?  I’ll fill it up with all kinds of tantalizing tidbits about me, about indienorth and about where I’d like to take it.

Advertise:  Eventually I’ll open up advertising on the site.  When I do, it will be affordable.  Really…I mean it.  I’m not here to get rich.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  I’d love to get rich.  But not through advertising.  It’s not my ‘thing’.

Contact Us:  Ummm…

Downloads:  I really feel that cross promotion is the way to go when it comes to promoting indie businesses.  In the downloads section I’ll put some indienorth buttons and banners, for anyone who wants to promote indienorth on their site.  I’ll also be making up some downloadable “business” cards and maybe even some flyers.  The more ways we can get the word out about IndieNorth, the more people will come and see all the fabulous Canadian businesses featured here.

Friends:  This is a directory of Canadian Indie Business Links.  Feel free to drop me a line and I’ll add yours.

Happenings:  I would love to set up a calendar of Canadian Indie events here.   Events could be craft shows, concerts, seminars, online chats, meetups, trade shows…just about anything to do with indie business, really.  This section is ready to go at anytime.  If you know of an event that fits the bill, let me know and I’ll post it right away, and put a blog post up letting people know to check the Happenings section.  I”l also Twitter it, and post info on the IndieNorth Facebook page.

Newsletter:  I was really hoping to have this set up and figured out already, but I don’t.  It’s on my pressing to-do list.  When I finally get it working, I’ll update about once a week or so, keeping subscribers posted on the people who were featured, Happenings, Indie businesses in the news and upcoming sales.  And more.  If when I figure out my newsletter software.

Sales:  If you’re running a sale on your website, drop me a line and let me know about it.  I’ll do a little blog post about it, and I’ll post the sale on the Sales page for the duration.  I’d need to know the nature of the sale, and how long it will run.  That’s it.  This area is ready to go too, so if you’re ready, so am I.  Again, I’ll twitter about the sale, and post info on our Facebook page as well.

Sweeps:  I’m very exited at the thought of offering contests through IndieNorth, maybe once a month, maybe even more often.  I’m not quite ready to go with this yet, but if you have any ideas or suggestions, I’m open to hearing them.  I know for a fact that contests can generate a lot of buzz on the internet, but I want to be sure we’re in a place where there’s a real benefit for the “giftor”, in terms of increased traffic to their website, and hopefully increased sales.  I’m thinking on it. 

So, that should explain things a bit more clearly.  As always, feel free to leave comments, questions or suggestions below, or drop me a line at: beth@indienorth.com

I got tired of only having the one post up, so here’s another.  So far I’m still on track to a February First release date, and everything is going swimmingly.  This week I’ll be working on filling out the pages that are linked at the top.

I had to change the red background in the header.  I looooove red, but on a Canadian business site it looked like I was about one step away from using a beaver or a caribou as a logo.  Not exactly the look and feel I was trying to achieve. 

In the meantime, check out our “Friends” link.  It’s filling up fast with all kinds of fabulous Canadian Indie Businesses.  Have a business you’d like to see posted in the link section?  drop me a line at: beth@indienorth.com and I’ll check it out.

See you in a bit!

Hi there!  We’re just working out the kinks!  We plan to be up and running on February 1st, 2009.

See you then!