Design Is a Job

by Brian on April 25, 2012

Design Is a JobMike Monteiro’s short book about successfully running a design business, Design Is a Job, was released by A Book Apart a few weeks back. I bought the ebook version so I could get started reading it right away and finished it over the course of two days. It’s a purposefully short book that I think most readers would recommend to anyone in the “web industry.”

The whole book is written with a slant towards web design but Monteiro constantly reminds you that the lessons can be applied to most client service businesses. A lot of the topics discussed are general in nature: lawyers, contracts, client relations, project management, etc. If you’ve been doing freelance work for any length of time some of these points of discussion will seem like old hat but he has an interesting take on most things so you might come away with new opinions and ideas.

My big wish, when I was done, is that there was more discussion about running a business as a solo developer. Design is a Job has a strong emphasis on doing work as an agency or small firm. Monteiro is the co-founder of Mule Design which, at the time of this post, has 11 employees. A business of that size, as small as it might be, does things in a much different way then I do as an individual. There still isn’t a good guide or book out there that addresses life as a one man army.

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sucks. not working.

by Brian on April 18, 2012

US Golf Courses - Release #1The title of this post is a direct, word-for-word, quote from a review written by one of the users of my US Golf Courses app for the Iphone. In case the name of the app isn’t clear, here’s what it does in a nutshell:

The US Golf Courses app gives you quick and easy access to information for over 13,500 golf courses in the United States. Each listing comes with detailed information about course conditions and contact information. You can get driving directions or call the clubhouse with the push of a button.

I thought now, hot on the heels of that eloquent review, would be a good time to recap the last year of the app’s existence. Since I released US Golf Courses on March 8, 2011 I have published one update and released a free version of the app that is supported by ads. The free version of US Golf Courses was cleverly entitled US Golf Courses Lite.

I’m going to now assault you with stats, graphs and information about my experience.

The Reviews

Here’s a table showing the average review scores for each version of the app:

App Price Version Ratings 5 Stars 1 Star Average
US Golf Courses $0.99 All 12 2 5 2.5 Stars
US Golf Courses $0.99 1.1 7 2 1 3.5 Stars
US Golf Courses Lite Free 1.1 19 5 3 3.5 Stars
  • The 1.0 Version of Lite was never reviewed and was replaced with the 1.1 update shortly after its initial release.
  • The reviewers of the paid 1.0 release were harsh and many complained of a crashing bug I was never able to replicated but still did my best to fix in 1.1. The amount of 1 Star reviews has dropped since 1.1 but that might also be related to the drop in downloads (more on that later).
  • In general, Lite has reviewed much better than the paid version. It’s surprising to me how much more vitriol comes out of people when they have one of their hard-earned dollars on the line.

The Downloads

I’m not going to share specific numbers with you because I’m gutless but just know that the y-axis on this chart is relative so the lines aren’t skewed in any way.

US Golf Courses - Downloads

There is probably no big surprise there. Lite crushes the paid version in downloads. Again, I’m not going to tell you by how much but know that the number of downloads of Lite can be measured in the thousands.

The Dollar, Dollar Bills

Ok, this is the good part you’ve all been waiting for. How many Happy Meals is the Lite version buying me? With those kind of lopsided download numbers you would think the revenue chart would surely be similar, right? Wrong!

US Golf Courses App - Revenue

I can tell you US Golf Courses Lite, with thousands and thousands of downloads, has not even earned what I bill for one hour of my time. Lite is a total financial disaster.

The Conclusion

There are two courses of action. The obvious is to just kill the Lite version from the store right now. Strike it from the record and act as if it never even existed to try and stop it from cannibalizing any more sales of the paid version.

Another option, which I’m trying to investigate more when I can, is to stop using the current ad service running in the Lite version and replace it with ads I sell myself. There’s a chance that the ads currently being served are just plain garbage most of the time and not worth clicking on. If I can find more appealing options that target golfers better I can probably make a few more quarters every year from Lite.

If I make a move one way or the other I will make mention of it here in a future post. Thanks for reading.

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The Best American Sports Writing 2011

by Brian on April 11, 2012

The Best American Sports Writing 2011Yet another sports book! This time it’s a yearly compilation of sports-related articles hand picked by Glenn Stout and a guest editor (in this case, Jane Leavy). I snagged this book when the Kindle version was on sale for $2.99 and read it over the course of a few weeks.

Some of the chosen articles weren’t my particular cup of tea. I would say at least half of them I felt myself just trudging through to get on to the next one, in hopes it would be more to my liking. The great part about a format like this though is that you can pick it up and put it down as you like and never feel obligated to slog through dozens of pages at a time.

A lot of the Amazon reviewers feel like the stories chosen are too downbeat and depressing. I didn’t have a problem with the prevailing downer attitude as much as I did the sports chosen. There are a lot of articles about sports I just don’t care about: BASE jumping, skateboarding, surfing, rowing and swimming to just name a few.

It sounds like the 2011 edition of this book was a little lacking compared to previous years. I’m willing to give them another chance though as the guest editor for 2012 is Michael Wilbon. I love me some Pardon the Interruption so my hope is that Wilbon carries over some of his same sensibilities there to this book.

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WP Word Count Version 1.5 Released

by Brian on April 9, 2012

WP Word Count 1.5I pushed out a small update to my WP Word Count plugin for WordPress this afternoon. It adds the often requested ability to view the word counts for every page and post of a blog at once and not just the top ten as was previously available.

With this release I anticipate the all-time download count for the plugin to hit close to 5,000. I don’t have any real figures for the number of installations the plugin has received but my best guess is that almost 1,000 WordPress blogs are running WP Word Count at the moment.

WP Word Count has been, by far, my most successful plugin… if you define success as something a handful of people seem to use.

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