business

Shameless Self-Promotion, Beautiful Unique Snowflakes, & Extra Nose Syndrome

Popular opinion among smart, skilled, hard-working people seems to go something like this:

Something is wrong with a society/world that values and rewards outgoing people, who talk up their strengths, over good or even great people who do not.

Ah, self-promotion.

Is there any other skill in the world of which smart, skilled, hard-working people love to boast, “I’m just terrible at it”?

My 7 Principles of Shipping

So! Two days ago, Alex and I launched our Get Off Your Butt And Launch Your First Paying Product online course!

If you were one of the 546 brilliant and thrify people on my Advance Discount List, you would have received a hefty ($100) discount by now, right to your inbox. If you didn’t, well, now’s a great time to sign up.

But enough with the selling. I gotta PREACH!

Pimp your JS Workflow & more

Update! Forgot to add this one to the list below: Wanna kick some interface designing butt? Hit the stacks!, wherein yours truly gets overly excited about research papers. But in a useful way.

Happy Friday, sports racers!

I know I’ve been neglecting you, but no more. Look, I brought you flowers!

The Elephant Is Not Its Trunk — And other reasons to stop fooling yourself, and start marketing

An elephant is long, limber, and slightly tapered. Like a giant roll of cookie dough, but with fewer chocolate chips and a lot more muscles! And an insatiable appetite for peanuts!

Imagine somebody came up to you on the street and announced this proudly to you. 

What would you think of them? Let me take a guess:

First: Wow, ever heard of the Personal Bubble?  

Then: You’re absolutely, flipping, batshit insane. 

Am I right, or am I right?

Elephants are not their trunks. Or their cute little taily-wailies.

My Year of Hustle & the Freckle-aversary

New Year’s resolutions, anyone?

Three hundred and sixty five days ago, I was drinking spiked punch and looking forward to Christmas.

Oh, and spending late, late hours in the office, busting tail to launch our time tracking service, Freckle. And working on our JavaScript performance book. (And later came Twistori Desktop for Macs.)

Even though it was December 2008, it was all part of my plan for 2009: my Year of Hustle.

Google Checkout still unfit for business: I got my money, but would you?

After my rant about my Google Checkout fiasco and its subsequent mass exposure, Google has restored my Checkout account. I received two emails: one, a very 'typical Google' form letter:

Google is Evil, Worse than PayPal: Don't use Google Checkout for your business

The whole saga is worth reading, but just to let you know: here's the latest.

Wanting to offer an alternative to PayPal, we set up a Google Checkout account for people to buy our ebook.

The last email we received about our Google Checkout account was "Helpful tips regarding your first Google Checkout orders" on February 9th.

But a few days ago, I logged in, and this is what greeted me:

Your Questions: Tough-love App Marketing Edition

Jon Trelfa writes in with a nerd dilemma as old as time. Or at least as old as the goddamn "web 2.0" moniker.

I've tried the "if you build it, they will come" model and thus far my great-idea has been sitting with zero hits. I've done the SEO stuff to increase ranking as well; still nothing.

I think there's more to launching a site than just building and SEO - what else would you recommend to help "launch" a website/product more quickly?

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