Greetings and Salutations -

The heat wave in Massachusetts is finally over, and my brain is starting to work again! It's amazing how I turn into a limp slug when the temperature nears 100F. I don't know how people do it. I feel like my brain cells all melt into little puddles.

So here's some of the latest updates!


FACEBOOK TESTING
We finished our Facebook testing and found ALL sorts of fascinating things about the way they handle privacy there. Well worth reading through, so you know your data is the way you want it to be. Thank you again to everyone who helped with the testing on this.

http://lisashea.com/workfromhome/marketing/socialnetworking/facebook/privacy/



ANONYMOUS CONTACT FORM
Our strong, supportive community is a key reason that BellaOnline has thrived when so many other sites have collapsed. Remember wz.com? Probably not. :). Countless content sites have come and gone while we continue to provide valuable, personal support to our loyal visitors. A key part of our success is how we look out for and help each other.

While it's ideal for fully graduated editors to email each other with tips and suggestions, we do remind editors that trainees and launchees are still in the "learning stages". If they get emails from their trainer to do task X, but then an email from an editor to do task Y instead, it becomes baffling to them. Editors mean well, but they can often be directly contradicting what the trainee was just asked to do by one of our managers. We want to avoid confusing trainees any more than we already do :).

To see which editors are in training / launch stage, you can use the editor listing. It's under "Fellow Editors" on your main admin menu, and the direct link is here -

http://www.bellaonline.com/content/EditorList.asp

If someone is in training or launch, please don't contact them directly with comments. Again, this can become quite confusing for all involved. Instead, contact the training or launch manager. That way your comments can be integrated properly into the messages that editor is receiving. It could very well be that the manager asked the trainee to do the very thing you are concerned about, for a specific training-related reason.

The contact names are:

Sadhana - training@bellaonline.com
Dianne - launch@bellaonline.com

If for whatever reason you want to submit your note anonymously, BellaOnline wholeheartedly supports that as well. Whether it's an ethical issue, legal issue, or any other reason you want us to know about something, we want to hear from you. We want to do our very best to help you reach your dreams. We would love to hear feedback. The anonymous contact link is here:

http://www.bellaonline.com/misc/contact/mgt.asp

If you want to hear a response, remember, we have no idea who you are :). You'd have to add a note into the comment field. Other than that, though, we are here to listen to whatever it is you want to share.


PHOTO SIZES

For our 10+ years of being on the web we have used a profile photo that is 56 x 83 in size. We have many visitors who are on dial-up systems (yes, they still exist!) and now a large portion are on metered smart phones where large graphics cause large costs. So we want to keep our images, in general, as small as humanly possible.

We are balancing that, though, with the importance of making a personal connection with our readers. The more that our readers connect with us, the more likely they are to return and to buy our ebooks.

We're testing out the idea of a 100x100 profile image. You can see that test here -

http://xbox.bellaonline.com/

Let me know - what do you think? It's still fairly small, so it works well on iPhones and other smart phones. We want to keep it small. But it's also larger than the older image, and a more industry standard size (i.e. square). So that helps our editors keep a consistent image across the many networks they are using.

We'd love to hear your feedback on the idea!

Sincerely,

Lisa Shea, owner
BellaOnline.com

--------------------

Archive of Past Emails -
http://www.bellaonline.com/newsletter/editorassistance

Editor Assistance Site - full of helpful articles and tips!
http://editorassistance.bellaonline.com/

Editor Forum - for community help 24 hours a day
http://forums.bellaonline.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=10

All correspondence between BellaOnline editors is confidential and should not be forwarded or distributed.