MICHAEL BALTER TEACHING ONLINE CLASS FOR THE HUDSON VALLEY WRITERS CENTER IN JULY AND AUGUST

Welcome to The New Everything Croton, a collection of all things Croton--our history, our homes, our issues, our businesses, our schools, our houses of worship---in short, EVERYTHING CROTON.

A MESSAGE FROM MICHAEL BALTER:

I wanted to let you know that this summer, over six Thursday evenings in July and August, I will be teaching an online class for the Hudson Valley Writers Center on starting up your own online newsletter. As you may know, I publish two newsletters on the Substack platform, The Croton Chronicle and another one called Words for the Wise (which has been on partial hiatus while I got the Chronicle up and going.)

Some of you with businesses in Croton may already have newsletters, blogs, and other ways of keeping in touch with your customers. But if not, or if you are seeking more flexible platforms, an online newsletter might be something to consider. In the course we will explore platforms other than Substack--there are a number of good ones now--but many of them share Substack's feature that hosting the newsletter is essentially free for the publisher. For example, Substack does not charge anyone to use the platform and publish; but if you decide to have paying subscribers, the platform takes a cut of your proceeds (about 10%) for hosting your publication and processing payments.

In the case of a business wanting to promote itself, which normally would mean putting out a free newsletter, there is no cost to doing it. And if you do want to charge for a service you are providing with the newsletter, there are various subscriber options ranging from all free, all paid, or somewhere in between (the Chronicle uses the last of these business models.)

Also, Substack and some other platforms also allow you to post videos and podcasts. (The Chronicle will begin doing occasional podcasts this summer.)

The address for signing up for the course is given in the graphic below. I am somewhat embarrassed at the photo they chose, taken by my wife on a windy day at Teatown, but I guess writers want to be seen as adventurous free spirits. Btw, if you are not familiar with the Hudson Valley Writers Center, they have lots of great courses and events (readings of all kinds) and I personally know some folks in Croton who have benefited from them. They are based in the old Philipse Manor RR station, with great views of the Hudson (they do a mix of on-site and online courses.)

If you have any questions about the course, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

best, Michael Balter
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