the_bear

19 ms·

121.
by the_bear 14y ago
That's actually what we thought at first, but there's a problem. Doesn't that encourage our legitimate customers to not use our customer service? If someone is running a political campaign, they can't risk asking us a question because we mi
122.
by the_bear 14y ago
Do you think that Reddit is immoral for allowing many despicable people to hold conversations about despicable topics? This community is normally all about a free and open internet, where companies like Google, Facebook, etc. aren't trying
123.
by the_bear 14y ago
To be clear, we tell customers all the time that they shouldn't use our software. Each customer is worth $10/month, so it's not worth having people on the system that don't belong. This wasn't about the money at all, it was about the preced
124.
by the_bear 14y ago
We received an email from the user outlining their entire business. They weren't the most extreme example of a patent troll (where you can't even tell what company it is) but they didn't seem to have any real products, and their use of the
125.
by the_bear 14y ago
(I work at the Less Annoying CRM) Since a few people have brought up similar points, I'd like to address them here. My gut instinct was to tell the patent troll to fuck off. I still wish we had done that. But that would set a terrible prece
126.
by the_bear 14y ago
Thanks, I'm glad you like the site! You make a lot of good points. Here are some thoughts/questions: Regarding adding social proof to the site, I'm thinking that the non-post pages need a slightly different sidebar with an extra box forsoci
127.
by the_bear 14y ago
That's a great idea. It actually solves a big problem that you might not have even thought about. One of the challenges with having the ads scroll with the page is that it means the ads can't take up much vertical space (because small scree
128.
by the_bear 14y ago
Thanks! I've gone back and forth on the scrolling animation. There's definitely a balancing act between trying not to be annoying and trying to make money. At some point I'll have time to do a real A/B test and come to a more informed decis
129.
by the_bear 14y ago
The first post went up in August 2010. The domain is slightly older than that, but not much. Right now there are one or two posts per week. My mom used to post more regularly but we found that it's more effective to focus on quality rather
130.
by the_bear 14y ago
Thanks, I'll definitely check those out. I've used Commission Junction before with the Groupon affiliate program and the terrible UI drove me away, but now that there's real traffic I guess it's worth giving it another shot. The hardest par
131.
by the_bear 14y ago
There are a two main reasons why I wanted to make the eBook so cheap: 1) Think of the $1 eBook as a minimum viable product. I hypothesized that our visitors would be willing to pay us for premium content, but I wanted to test it first. Give
132.
How I monetized a blog in 30 days: what worked, and what didn't(lessannoyingcrm.com)
25 points by the_bear 14y ago|15 comments
133.
by the_bear 14y ago
I'm also getting a "round peg/square hole" vibe. Google has been telling us for years that the folder metaphor is outdated and we should use search to stay organized. So when I set up desktop sync I ended up with a folder full of hundreds o
134.
by the_bear 15y ago
Yeah, this is only a problem if you're sending a notification on behalf of another user, like if tasks/events/contacts/leads are assigned by one user to another. I'm considering fixing this by auto-forwarding any replies, but then that has
135.
by the_bear 15y ago
My company sends transactional email from a real address as well, but there are some problems with this approach. As the post mentions, we get a ton of email intended for other people (like if we send "John Doe assigned you a task" and the
136.
by the_bear 15y ago
I would imagine that the point is to encourage future entrepreneurs to avoid the two trends pointed out in the post. YCombinator and TechCrunch are both trendsetters, so it makes sense to express skepticism if you have a problem with the ty
137.
by the_bear 15y ago
I had the exact same reaction when reading coverage of the demo day. Hopefully the ideas seem underwhelming because of the last part of Paul Graham's essay. In the "tactics" section he says, "If you want to take on a problem as big as the o
138.
by the_bear 15y ago
In my next blog post, I plan on making up some numbers which strongly disagree with this 90%/6 month figure. That counts as proof, right?
139.
by the_bear 15y ago
There's no way this is true. I agree with the point the OP is trying to make, but inventing stats isn't a good way to make a point (although it's probably a great way to get people to click through to the article).
140.
Why we're taking an un-lean approach with our next project(lessannoyingcrm.com)
2 points by the_bear 15y ago|0 comments
141.
by the_bear 15y ago
Yeah, this seems similar to complaining that Microsoft makes so much money on a PC, but Google doesn't make any money because no one directly pays Google through a Microsoft-owned app store.
142.
by the_bear 15y ago
This is just the tip of the iceberg with DynamoDB's pricing issues. Based on my understanding of how their pricing works, here are two more major issues: -You have to provision throughput for each table individually, so you basically have t
143.
by the_bear 15y ago
We do have an API, but it's very basic right now ( https://www.lessannoyingcrm.com/help/topic/API ). We're more focused on serving traditional small businesses rather than startups, and most small businesses don't even know what an API is.
144.
by the_bear 15y ago
In the post it says that Wishery helps focus on relationships rather that just sales, but it seems like all it does is send Gmail contacts over to MailChimp. Isn't an automated email blast the opposite of a real relationship? Are people rea
145.
by the_bear 15y ago
I don't see why you'd need to use a third party at all for this type of thing. Postmark is designed to increase email deliverability, but if you're only sending emails to yourself, that shouldn't really be an issue. It seems like good ol' s
146.
by the_bear 15y ago
I don't see any pricing info on their site. If this is intended to be free for life, then I guess it's pretty nifty. But it would take about 30 minutes for any web developer to duplicate this functionality, so I hope they don't plan on char
147.
by the_bear 15y ago
In a sense I have the same experience as you. I regularly use little bits of the theory we studied in college, except that I only understand that theory because it was re-taught to me by more experienced programmers at my internships/jobs.
148.
by the_bear 15y ago
I graduated from a pretty good CS program in 2007 without having ever written a single line of HTML, CSS, or javascript. I also didn't use a database at any point in my college classes. I know that computer science is supposed to be about t
149.
by the_bear 15y ago
Agreed. Pricing is too important to let someone else set all the rules. I'm not saying that Stripe did a bad job with their subscription system, but I think it's a mistake to let someone else make all the decisions when it comes to such a c
150.
by the_bear 15y ago
One of the most important and easy ways to avoid frustrating API docs is to check them periodically to make sure nothing is out of date. Last year I started using Amazon's Flexible Payment Service (FPS) and their docs were so out of date th

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