Wordzen is ending service and transitioning to a “bring your own editor” model
It’s with a heavy heart that I’ll be shutting down Wordzen’s “regular service” on May 17, 2019. I’ve tried to make Wordzen work as a a businesses over the last several years, but it never got the traction it needed to be a sustainable operation. Wordzen has incurred monthly losses since day one, and I can’t figure out how to make it profitable.
I will be transitioning Wordzen to a “bring your own editor” model. Wordzen will be a free platform by which you and your editor can submit emails and have edited emails pushed back to your Gmail account. You are free to find and hire whomever you wish to handle your email. When you “Wordzen” an email, your editor will be notified, and the editor can then log in to Wordzen to edit/write your email.
If you don’t have someone who can serve as your editor, like a personal assistant, virtual assistant, or secretary, you can make arrangements with one of Wordzen’s former editors or hire somebody new.
The Wordzen staff editors
Below are their first names and email addresses of the editors who we’ve cultivated over time, and who you’ve likely seen as the person performing your edits.
Feel free to reach out to them and make whatever arrangement makes sense for you and the editor.
Peg, peg@wordzen.com (aka Gayle)
Steve, steve@wordzen.com
Cyndyl, cyndyl@wordzen.com
Elora, elora@wordzen.com
Christine, christine@wordzen.com
How to set your personal editor for your account
Just go to wordzen.com/talk.
- If not already logged in, log in with the Gmail account you wish to use with Wordzen.
- Click the “gear” icon in the upper right.
- Set the “My personal editor” field to the email address of the person you wish to handle your email.
- Click “Save”.
- Your personal editor will now be notified whenever you submit an email, either with the Wordzen Chrome extension or the Wordzen Add-on. The personal editor will be given a link by which he/she can write and edit your email. Your personal editor does not need to sign up for Wordzen and create an account. After the email is edited, you, the user, will receive an email notification, just like when a Wordzen staff editor handled an email.
If I’m hiring a personal editor, why do I still need Wordzen?
Even though you have to now hire your own editor, it will still be useful to use Wordzen as the software platform by which you and your personal editor communicate. Wordzen will allow you to submit an email directly to your editor from inside Gmail, and Wordzen will allow you to record yourself talking from your phone, and then submit that audio to your editor. Your editor will then be presented with a useful interface by which to write and edit your email, and then Wordzen will send that email back to your Gmail account, either as a DRAFT for you to review or by sending the email for you.
Without Wordzen, imagine the workflow. You might forward an email to your editor to handle. Your editor might then call you on the phone (gasp!) to ask how you want the email handled. Then the editor would reply to your forward with a rough draft of the email. You would pass it back and forth until it’s correct. Once it’s ready, you would copy/paste that email out of the conversation between you and your editor, and into a new conversation with the actual intended recipient, and at the same time clean up the back and forth with the editor at the top that you don’t want the recipient to see, and then send it. That’s a lot of work and prone to mistakes.
Ending subscription payments
If you have an active Stripe-based subscription with Wordzen, I’ll be canceling it on the last day of service, May 17, 2019. If you would like a prorated refund based on the unused time for the month, reply to this email to let me know. Otherwise, I’ll assume that you’re okay with us just cancelling the recurring billing so you don’t incur any future charges. For most users, the amount we’ve spent servicing an account far exceeds the monthly fees we’ve been collecting. If you have any questions, let me know.