jerrell

I've been using SendOwl for a few years now to sell music education eBooks and albums directly through my website.

I can't recommend it highly enough.

Here are a few things I like:

- It works 100% reliably, has never let me down

- The checkout process is easy and neat from the customer's perspective

- Supports PayPal and Stripe which is the ideal imho

- Integrates with all popular email providers so you can do product-specific followup sequences with bonus gifts, etc. after purchase

- Provides simple support for running an affiliate program

- Support it absolutely superb: personal, swift and effective

- They handled the EU VAT mess better than anyone else I saw

- Monthly fees are very reasonable, I think I pay just $20-30/month

- It's easy to issue refunds and/or re-issue download link emails if you need to, so customer support can be handled quickly for those things

- You can create product bundles to support multiple products or discounted versions of products. After trying e-junkie and Clickbank before SendOwl, I can't tell you how much easier this feature alone made my life!

- You can do upsells/cross-sells during (or after) checkout

- They've been continually improving and extending the features offered in substantial ways - but without making a total mess of things.

- The reporting/analytics is simple but effective.

- In integrates effortlessly with e-commerce in Google Analytics so your sales (including dollar amounts) just show up in GA automatically.

Okay, that turned out to be more than a few things. I love SendOwl.

There's a wide variety of tests and information about "tone deafness" out there. This NIH one is actually one of the better tests, though it does suffer from the problems mentioned in comments already - that it assumes familiarity with a particular set of melodies.

Tone deafness is a real condition (it's a subset of the more general condition "amusia") but is often confused with learned musical abilities, particularly being able to sing in tune. True tone deafness is something (which most studies agree) only 1-3% of the general population suffer from.

If you are truly tone deaf you will be unable to really enjoy or appreciate music. For that reason many people take these tests and declare them "too easy" but if the test is well designed it should be easy for 99% of people. This is an example of people misusing the phrase "tone deaf" to mean "not skilled in music".

If anybody would like to try some other tests for tone deafness (some good, some terrible, and disclaimer: one made by me) I wrote up a summary of the most popular ones online here: http://www.easyeartraining.com/learn/tone-deaf-tests-online/

Wow. I cannot believe the pettiness of comments here. VLC is a fantastic media player, and I'm quite appalled to see the conversation here dominated by such little gripes. VLC plays media more reliably than any other program I've tried, on Windows, Linux or Mac OS X. And whether or not you consider it perfect, reaching the 2.0 milestone is something to be lauded, not bitched about.

Seems like the modularity would help on the marketing side: people will be much more receptive to BERG Cloud product #2 if it connects to a device already in their living room. I think this is probably true whether or not there's a technological reason why it needs to.

I was immediately won over by "FLAC", "Scrobbling" and "Speedy"! I've been struggling with iTunes and Songbird for a while now on OS X, and a replacement would be very welcome.

I've been enjoying using Enqueue for a day or so now. My only gripe so far is that I expected to see Play/Pause controls in the option-click/right-click menu of the dock icon. My keyboard's media keys just launch iTunes and I'd like an easy way to pause the music when on a different desktop to the Enqueue UI.

Really interesting idea.

One issue I was conscious of while reading the description: I'm not sure the intersection between the early adopter cohorts for different markets would be very large. There is a certain mindset involved, sure, but people need to also be passionate enough about the subject or pain point to bother with bleeding edge products.

If you try to just sign up as many people as possible who self-identify with the early adopter mindset, it may take a while before you have broad enough coverage of interests in that audience for it to be useful to startups outside the core "tech for techies" market.

That's a nice idea!

To be honest though, my concern about bookcases is more about accessibility and DRM than it is about the physical and aesthetic value.

There is something special about physically browsing shelves, but what really worries me is that my collection of books will have no single 'library' containing them in 20 years - whether physical or electronic.

Heading to a gig for 7:30 so can't stay long - but looking forward to it!

I'm surprised not to see anybody mention Nozbe.

It's been around quite a while as a web app, and does a great job of balancing simplicity with functionality and features. The web interface is excellent for just letting you get on with what you want to do - i.e. things work just as you'd expect, and there are no frustrating UI punishments for doing things 'the wrong way'. The iPhone counterpart has recently had a major overhaul and is now just as slick and easy to use.

It's pretty hacker friendly, too - for example, you can export all your task info to a plaintext file, edit it however you like, and later re-import. There's a simple syntax for adding new tasks with metadata by email or Twitter.

I'd highly recommend giving it a try.

I very much like the idea of producing webapps rather than iPhone apps in my business, and I think they could probably provide all the functionality I require.

For me the catch is monetisation. With the App Store, this is clear: I release paid apps. With webapps... Advertising seems viable, except that my apps need to work offline (and may solely be used in that way), which as far as I know scuppers the advertising approach. So what's the alternative? Set up a paywall and require users to login to get the webapp in the first place? That seems to defeat the point somewhat.

Anyone have bright ideas or links to clever thinking on the subject?

AppMiner.com and iApper.com are both showing listings. A Google search shows up some other sites, but the mentions seem to have disappeared now.

I have submitted a bug report, but I'm not sure if I can expect much response.

As far as I know, these sites are already 'misbehaving' by scraping the App Store info, and Apple seems to turn a blind eye - will they bother plugging security holes in an interface which is already being abused?

Like a lot of Tim Ferriss' advice, this is superb - with a pinch of salt.

The core message is inspirational and, I think, a good one. But it's up to the reader to decide how best to apply it to their own life.

That said, I look forward to the day when I can apply the tips from this post in a literal way! ;)

a) Published: 2

b) Paid/Free: 1 paid, and a free 'lite' version of it

c) Marketing: Fair bit of effort (AdWords, AdMob, traditional + web PR, social media). Have seen little measurable effect.

d) Income: >$50k in year one.

App is for a particular topic in music education. Broadly speaking it's quite niche, but to a musician audience it's widely relevant.

Since it is a specialised education app I priced it at $7.99. I think this is the right choice, but haven't experimented with the price point much.

Income was boosted maybe 40% by being featured on the App Store (New & Noteworthy) for a few days.

About to finally release a second (paid) app - I think it's a stronger offering, but it will be interesting to see if it does anything like as well as the first!

There are some App Store sales advantages which stem from simply having sold a large number of copies. For example:

1. More ratings (shown as numbers next to 1-5 star ratings) - Help convince potential buyers that your app is significant

2. More reviews - advantage as with #1, but also higher chance of having at least 1 review in a larger number of countries.

3. Recommendations in iTunes - On the iTunes interface to the App Store, users are shown 'People who bought X also bought Y'-type recommendations. High sales increase the chance of your app featuring in these.

So by getting in early, you sell copies through being the main/only product choice in your area. Then, when competitor apps arrive there are some residual advantages like these which place you ahead of the pack.

Definitely have to agree with those saying "get out" - obviously we don't know all the circumstantial details and it may not be practical to leave immediately, but if you're somebody who enjoys working on side projects and keeping yourself occupied and excited outside your 9-5, you'll probably never be happy working for this company. Better to get out before you commit any further.

I've recently started a company out of a hobby project while working for my day-to-day employer and they've never raised an eyebrow about any of it - it's one of the things I value most about my current job. DeusExMachina, your story is a real reminder of how important this has become to me - thanks for sharing.