Upgrade To YUDU Plus, Get a Laugh

YUDU has partnered with Comic Relief to raise money for Red Nose Day. YUDU will donate £10 to Comic Relief for every YUDU Plus sale this Friday, March 13th. The YUDU team has also agreed to double any money raised along with donning the the big red noses for the day. If you are already a YUDU Plus subscriber, we ask you to donate by visiting Comic Relief’s donation page on its website.

Every two years on Red Nose Day, Comic Relief asks people to “do something funny for money.” We plan to make fools of ourselves as well, but thought this was the best way that we could contribute to the cause.

Comic Relief has been in existence for the last 20 years and has become a leading advocate against poverty in the world. It strives to eliminate poverty and injustice, especially in relation to the youth of the world. As it tagline states, it wants to create “A just world free from poverty”. We believe that is definitely something to “laugh” about.

So what are you waiting for? Get incredible digital publishing tools while supporting a great cause. It doesn’t get any better than that.

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The Evolution of the Newsletter

Company newsletters have been around for years. They act as a marketing vehicle, a way to inform customers and prospects of company news, and as an advertising opportunity for sponsors and partners. While historically they were delivered to your mailbox every month, within the last 10 years they have evolved into eNewsletters. This provides more of an interactive alternative to the paper version.

Many companies are now taking advantage of the latest tools in digital publishing to evolve the newsletter again. Chase Marketing uses YUDU to publish eNewsletters for multiple clients. The Whole Health Expo uses YUDU for its program guide. In these trying economic times, Employment Guide has turned to YUDU to publish digital versions of its employment ad inserts. The Detroit Regional Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council uses YUDU for its monthly newsletters. Monterey, TN has even started publishing its local newspaper, Hilltop Express, on YUDU.

No matter what your business or organization, YUDU can add new life to your newsletters. With the interactivity, the ability to add multimedia and live links, the search engine capabilities, and the ability to embed the publication right on your website, eNewsletters have become relevant again.

What can YUDU do for your newsletter?

When Love Turns Miserable

Author Claudia D. Christian calls herself a “dreamer of miserable love stories”. Her books and short stories are replete with angst, obsession, and irony – enough to brighten any day! As Ms. Christian describes, “I’m a dark romance writer of ANGST who loves vicious villains and impure heroines. Broken hearts are a given. Happy endings optional. Obsession always.”

One other thing that is innovative about Claudia Chrisitan’s approach is her use of YUDU to showcase short stories as a “teaser” edition. This new trend for authors has become an effective tool to showcase their writing to potential readers in “bite-size chunks”.

Amazon.com launched their “Look Inside” feature in 2001 as a way to preview books for sale on the massive book E-tailer’s website. It has grown this feature to even include a full-text preview for a fee. This feature has been a huge hit with both authors and readers alike. It has given readers the ability to get a feel for an author and it has given authors the chance to promote and sell more books.

With tens of thousands of registered users, YUDU can offer authors an instant audience to which they can promote their content. Since our launch in September, we have seen a rapid increase in the number of teaser editions just like Claudia D. Chrisitan’s Fallen on YUDU. With the combination of a passionate audience, search engine optimization, and an easy to use tool set, YUDU makes book promotion simple and effective.

Even if it makes love miserable.

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A Balanced Diet of Chocolate

Of all the experts we have come across, this has to be one of the most delicious. A U.S. company has taken chocolate-loving to whole new level. Donya Marie’s Beyond Chocolate is company that “designs, manufactures and sells ordinary foods turned extra-ordinary with dark chocolate.” It offers everything from dark chocolate enhanced barbecue sauces, Bloody Mary mix, meat rubs, pancake syrup, and more.

Asked why she got into the business, Donya said, “I have always loved dark chocolate, both for its taste and health benefits. My husband and I were looking for a business we could start as our retirement and I felt what better business could there be than chocolate?”. The self-educated dark chocolate expert even writes a blog where she dishes about chocolate, social media, and more.

Recently, Donya was even covered in a McClatchy newspaper article that discussed her innovative use of social media to promote her business. Through the use of Twitter and Facebook, Donya has been able to drive increased interest in her products and increased sales through her website.

Apparently, there is something inherent in chocolate that gets people talking. Now after having sampled her products, we can understand why.

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Take YUDU With You

We have been overwhelmed with the unbelievable response we have received from raving fans around the world. Users have fallen in love with YUDU’s simple ability to create, enhance, and share their expertise with the world. Inevitably, the next question is “how do I put it on my own website?”

At YUDU, we are all about giving experts a voice. It is our mission to give everyday experts the oppportunity to build a following and make money from their expertise. We provide an eMarketplace and library to promote your expertise once you publish. However, if we only made your publications available on our website, it would limit your ability to promote your content.

From the beginning, YUDU was built with freedom in mind. We want experts to be free to publish and promote their content wherever they can. For this reason, we built an embed feature into YUDU.com from our first version. From the publication’s detail page, you click on “Embed this item” and this simple feature produces a small snippet of code based on the size dimensions you input. You simply add that code to your website or blog and voila! You now have a digital publication embedded right on your own website. It works just as it would on YUDU’s own site. In fact, if readers want to view a larger version, they can click on a small link below the publication and it opens in its own window.

We show you a good example of how to embed on our YUDU Pro site, but our users have implemented this feature in many different ways, such as embedding the latest edition of your magazine on a section of the page or making your publication almost the entire front page (while also using our e-mail collection feature). Here is another great example of making your YUDU publication occupy the majority of your front page. Our users have embedded brochures, eBooks, presentations, and more.

Now for a secret tip. While embedding a brochure on your site can offer a pretty impressive way to display content, it also offers you better promotion of that content. Not only will everyone who visits your website see it, but also everyone who visits your site will count towards the page views of that publication in our eMarketplace. When someone s looking for a publication to read, they can click on the “Explore” button on the front page. This takes them to our eMarketplace where the publications are listed by popularity (views). This naturally drives the traffic of the most popular publications up even more.

If you want to share your expertise with the world but don’t want your readers to have to leave your website, embed your publications on your web page using YUDU’s embed feature. You’ll be amazed with the results.

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