Add an Email Newsletter Subscribe Form on Medium

Totally free!

Like many writers, I have a Substack account where I maintain my email newsletter. I also have a lot of blog content (Let Go of Being Perfect, Joe Paw Dog, and Blawggers), which I have been slowly moving over to Medium to help me maintain my writing goals for 2023 (and also SEO purposes). But getting a nifty email signup form at the bottom of each published story is kind of a pain.

MidJourney prompt: a photorealistic computer screen sitting on a desk, 4k, hyper realistic, ultra-detailed, 30 small mail envelope icons flying around, — ar 9:16 … this one took me like 10 different tries and variations to get something I wanted

Embedding things into Medium can be tricky. That’s because it relies on Embed.ly, which, on one hand is great because Embed.ly is a dedicated service, but on the other hand, only a certain number of providers are on it.

And when I say “only a certain number of providers” … we don’t have many choices for email newsletter sign ups. At least none of the “major” providers.

I originally signed up for two different services, then quickly dropped them once I realized they cost a monthly (and fairly hefty) fee: https://upscribe.net and https://itemsy.com. I don’t recommend Upscribe at all. Itemsy looks like it is pretty cool, and it only has a one-time fee.

But neither site lets you test drive to see what’s happening before you have to plunk down some cash.

But I did find a free alternative called Buttondown Email. That’s a referral link right there, but since it’s free for the first 100 email subscribers, you probably won’t need to spend anything.

The only negative that I see is that the form has a lot of white space. (And not all the text shows up.) You can see what I mean at the bottom of this story.

All you have to do is copy and paste the link, and press enter! It embeds for you!

• Be sure to go into your Buttondown Email frequently to delete the 100 email subscribers.
• Substack doesn’t let you automate email subscribers (and neither does Medium). It’s all manual importing.
• You can use a Zapier with it for a fee.
• It doesn’t look like you can use it with IFTTT yet.
• I’ve had some issues getting the email autoresponder to work. I assume it’s a bug that will be fixed soon. I worked around it by sending the subscriber to an unlisted page on Medium when clicking the link to confirm. Works perfectly.

Let me know what you think. And please subscribe to my newsletter. :)

This is the MidJourney prompt that I originally had. Take a look at the hands! Apparently still cannot make a good looking hand. MidJourney prompt: the profile of a girl with black hair looking down at her cell phone, cell phone has a website email sign up form, background heavy gaussian blur of the beach, 4k, photorealism, hyper realistic, ultra-detailed, — testp — ar 9:16 — upbeta

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