StartupResources.io — Issue #88
Hi, it’s Jói, and you know what that means! It’s Fri… no wait, Wednesday.
I decided to send this week’s newsletter a little early as a lot of readers are going to be on break for Thanksgiving tomorrow and Friday, and I wouldn’t want the newsletter to compete with the joy of buying cheap electronics on Black Friday.
Also, there are a few really good online deals for Black Friday that I thought you might want to take advantage of, that I wanted to let you know about sooner rather than later.
Tool of the week
Timing | Mac app to track your time automatically
Timing is a beautiful Mac app that automatically tracks your time, including the apps you use, websites you visit, and documents you open. It also lets you account for time away from the computer. Use it either for tracking productivity (as I’ve been doing) or for tracking billable projects, it has really nice features for that as well, automatically tagging certain keywords (e.g. in documents) to certain projects and suggesting stuff to group together on a given task or project.
Tools discovered recently
GrowSurf | Free viral referral contest tool
This is a viral referral contest type of thing, you can do either top N on a leaderboard get a reward, or anybody who refers at least N other folks gets a reward. Looks polished, and it’s completely free.
Instabug | In-App Feedback & Bug reporting tool for iOS/Android
If you’re building an app you may want to look at this for getting feedback and bug reports from your users. Freemium.
Outplanr: Turn to-do lists into daily work plans — www.outplanr.com
This is a project planning tool for teams, that incorporates both tasks and how busy you are based on your calendar. Integrates with other stuff you might use like Asana or Slack or your Google Calendar.
Videolean | Professional online video editor — videolean.com
Looks like a pretty capable online video maker/creator. Filters, templates, text, etc.
vizologi | rethinking business model design — vizologi.com
Collection of business model canvases for tons of existing well-known businesses, and a way to build your own.
Black Friday Discounts and Contests!
Here are some of the best deals I know about that are running this week.
ConvertFox | Might be an Intercom replacement?
Until end of Friday you can get lifetime access to ConvertFox for $49. I signed up yesterday and it looks like a really solid tool, plus they have a lot of interesting stuff on their roadmap that you can look at behind the link.
Contest: $200k+ Worth Of Lifetime Subscriptions and Massive Deals — vy.tc
This is a referral contest running through early next week, with some massive software prizes — lifetime or yearly accounts for useful SaaS like ConvertFox, Hotjar, ahrefs, Leadpages, WebinarJam, Salesflare, Paperform, PixelMe, NinjaOutreach, Vyper, Omnify, Better Proposals, FindThatLead, Plutio, Mailshake, StepShot, Reveal and StickyPassword. Top 5 get the lifetime/yearly accounts and there are large discounts for top 100.
Appsumo Briefcase + Bonuses — appsumo.com
Appsumo calls Briefase the “Netflix for Software” and it’s kind of neat. For $49 you get access to 35 tools (and growing) and they are putting some of their most useful and popular tools into the Briefcase offering. The bonuses they’re offering right now are $50 Amazon credits + $100 AppSumo credits (these are running out soon) and also you’ll get early access to all Appsumo deals for the rest of 2017.
User Feedback — userinput.io | 20% off
Get 20% off at userinput.io with the code blackfriday2017. On-demand feedback from real people on your website or idea.
CrankWheel | Yep it’s my startup | Screen sharing for sales teams — crankwheel.com
Sign up and pay before Friday to get 50% off the entry-level Starter Team plan using the coupon BF17ST, or 30% off other plans with code BF17TD. Unconditional 30-day money back guarantee.
Articles for this week
How to accept payments for your digital products — without losing your mind about taxes 💵 🖥 — timingapp.com
Remember Paddle, which I mentioned in last week’s issue? Here’s an article on how to accept payments for software from someone who’s using it (the author of Timing, listed above) that is quite insightful.
The Ultimate Guide To Reducing Cost Per Acquisition
This is an interesting document with some creative ideas for how to better use retargeting pixels, for example by not triggering the pixel until folks have spent a couple of seconds on your page.
These Are the 7 Deadly Sins of Product-Driven Founders
Good read on stuff you might be doing wrong as a founder, if you’re a product-oriented founder like me.
Side Project Marketing Is the New King
Marketing your thing by giving away another thing that appeals to the same audience.
That’s it for this issue
If you’re celebrating Thanksgiving, I wish you a very happy one and I hope you get lots of turkey (or Tofurkey as the case may be) and have a good time with loved ones. For those of us who don’t have a holiday this week, we can console ourselves by shopping all the online Black Friday deals that we can.
We’re half way to the weekend. I hope you have a fun and productive rest of the week. Until next time!
Cheers,
Jói
