Prices pulled from the Amazon Product Advertising API on:
Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.
A bunch of family & friends asked me how we lived through 6 months of enforced home quarantine — I wrote up my top 10 tips. Has nothing to do with deals, but I thought it valuable to share with you to help you out during this time.
Quick update: I am temporarily pausing most of Tech Deals as part of MDM Deals–not because of COVID-19 but because I need some time to figure out how to balance complying with Amazon’s rules while maintaining my values of integrity. Read on to get the full scoop.
You’ll notice that deals today don’t include prices. Unfortunately, I’ve learned that Amazon doesn’t allow prices that could become out of date. I’m looking into solutions, but for now you’ll have to go to the Amazon page to see the price and discount—just trust me that they are big enough discounts to be “fantastic” 🙂..
Thanks to the coronavirus that has hit my city in Asia, my family has been in lockdown for the past few weeks–don’t worry, we’re safe (so far!)–but I’ve taken the extra time to update MDM Deals. Today I’m rolling out brand-new Tech Deals, support for Audiobook Deals, and updates to Book deals! Read on to learn more!
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Brand new! Tech Deals!
On last month’s survey, a vast majority of you said that you’d be interested on seeing deals for tech hardware & accessories, and I am excited to let you know that they are now here! These deals will start slowly as I build out my system, and I’m still rolling this out to all channels, but in the next week you should see tech deals slowly showing up in your feeds.
Guiding principles: There are millions of tech products and accessories and dozens of stores that sell them, so Tech Deals won’t even attempt to be as exhaustive or comprehensive in its coverage as App Deals, but there are still gems I run across each day that I’ll curate for you. Tech Deals will include discounts on things like Apple hardware, cases, cables, speakers, routers, chargers, etc.–basically things that someone in the Apple ecosystem would love and use (so not Samsung computers, Google Home devices, or Amazon Echo speakers).
For those of you who said you’d buy me a coffee for adding in tech deals, well, here ya go！
New: Audiobook Deals
I’m excited to say that I will now be curating audiobook deals on the Apple Bookstore! This will automatically start showing up in your feeds this week. There aren’t nearly as many deals on audiobooks as books, so these will be more rare. For ways to see the deals, see below.
As always, my goal is to serve you, helping you discover awesome apps, books, and gear and save money in the process. If I have served you, I’d love your support to keep this site up and running. You can do that one-time through Buy Me a Coffee or on an ongoing basis through Patreon. Both are awesome.
The survey results are and I’ve been hard at work changing things in light of the results. Today I’m excited to announce the most significant change to MDM Deals to date–a change so big, in fact, that even the tagline of the website has changed. Ready? Drumroll please…
MDM Deals: Discover great deals on fantastic apps and books
Yup, that’s right: movies are gone and books are here. Read on to learn about 3 big changes to MDM Deals:
Bye bye movies
The survey results made abundantly clear that you weren’t so interested in movies. In fact, 80% of you said that you’d be happier without movies, so they’re gone. For the 5% of you who said you’d buy me a coffee for removing books, well…here ya go:
Hello, books
A significant majority of you said that you’d be interested in deals on ebooks–and so I’m excited to start curating ebooks this week! Ebooks will appear tonight on MDMDeals.com and I’ll be rolling them out to all 20+ channels over the course of the week. As always, I’ll do my best as I do to provide filtering options so you can ignore ebook deals if you like. Four other things to note as we get going:
I picked the arbitrary price point of $7.99 to begin curation. There may be occasions where I list books on sale for more than $7.99, but most will be $7.99 or less. I’d love your feedback on if that’s the right price point.
Curation
While there’s only a few million apps on the App Store, there are hundreds of millions of books. That makes deal curation all the more important, it also means my ebook curation will reflect my interests more than my app curation does. For example:
I have no interest or expertise in Romance novels, so you’ll never see those
I love history and biographies, and because my history interests are more about US and China, you’ll see more of that
I’ll do my absolute best to curate to a general audience, so your feedback is super helpful, but you’ll definitely see my interests and personality reflected in ebook curation–for good and bad :-).
Book genres
My present plan is to curate ebooks in the following genres. In alphabetical order:
Biography & memoir
Business & personal finance
Fiction (more rare, mostly best sellers & classics)
History
Lifestyle & home (more rare, but Marie Kondo deserves to be curated)
Mystery & thrillers (more rare, but Tom Clancy deserves appearances)
Non-fiction
Parenting (more rare)
Professional & technical (more rare)
Reference
Religion & spirituality (more rare)
Sci-Fi & fantasy
Science & nature
At present, I intend to NOT curate the following genres:
Cookbooks
Fiction (apart from best-selling or classic works)
Graphic novels
Health, body, & mind
Politics*
Romance
Sports & recreation
Travel & adventure
Wine & food
*I’m interested in politics, but I don’t want to politicize MDM Deals by curating to my interests, nor will I attempt to keep choices “well-balanced,” so I’ll just ignore the category. I will, however, curate biographies of political leaders across the spectrum because we can all learn from the lives of people like Reagan, Clinton, Bush, & Obama.
I really appreciate your feedback on the survey; it has been most helpful identifying ways that MDM Deals can do better going forward. As I have time to grow MDM Deals, here’s my initial priorities for 2020:
Develop ebooks into a full-fledged part of MDM Deals
The launch of something I’m calling Dealworthies, which I can’t wait to tell you about.
Adding paid custom price drop alerts so you can choose to be alerted when a specific item goes on sale
As always, your support of the site is very much appreciated! I run this all in my spare time and give up significant time each day to find and publish the deals for you. If you appreciate what I do, would you buy me a coffee or join my Patreon?
Just a couple days left to win some of the $60 I’m giving away
He’ll me out by taking this 9-question survey on how to improve MDM Deals—it takes an average of 4 minutes and you could win some of the $60 in gift certificates & promo codes I am giving away
There’s some big possible changes to MDM Deals coming up and I’d love your feedback on them! As a thank you, I’m giving away $60 worth of App Store gift cards & promo codes!
I really want to thank the New Year Powerpack for their support of MDM Deals this week. It’s sponsors like them that enable me to get deals to you—Sonix you haven’t checked out their bundle yet, you really out to. Unclutter at 50% individually is a steal—so is Tumult Hype, Taskpaper, Default Folder X, and Sip—and the entire bundle is worth it just for 2 or 3 of those, but you get 11 total handpicked apps
You may have noticed that the Xmas & New Year’s PowerPack was a recommended item on the monster list of Christmas & New Year’s deals — well, after publishing that list, the developer reached out to sponsor MDM Deals and I’m so glad he did, because there’s some really great items in this bundle that you don’t want to miss:
Aeon Timeline – The timeline tool for creative writing, project and case management. Normally $50, now 50% off
Tumult Hype 4 – Create. Animate. HTML5. Standard Edition. Normally $50, now 50% off
Unclutter – Files, Notes & Clipboard Manager for Mac. Normally $20, now 50% off
TaskPaper 3 – Plain text to-do lists for Mac. Normally $25, now 50% off
Better Zip 4 – The Next Generation of Archiving. Normally $25, now 50% off
Sip – Color Picker & Organizer for Mac. Normally $10, now 50% off
Permute 3 – The easiest to use media converter. Normally $15, now 50% off
Path Finder 9 – File Manager for macOS. Normally $36, now 50% off
Mosaic Pro – Effortlessly resize and re-position windows on your Mac. Normally $30, now 50% off
Default Folder X – Enhanced Open and Save dialogs for macOS. Normally $35, now 50% off
HyperFocus – The Distraction Blocker for macOS. Normally $15, now 50% off
Not only is each individual app in the bundle 50% off–already a great deal–but if you buy the entire bundle, you get $311 worth of apps for just $64–that’s a whopping 79% off.
Supercharge your productivity in 2020 with the Xmas & New Year PowerPack. My thanks to the developers of this collection for sponsoring MDM Deals this week!
I did it again—despite sick children, 10kb/sec internet, & travel—I looked through 2,500+ apps on sale for Christmas and curated just the best deals. There’s some great stuff here
Did you know I make no money from App Store affiliate links? Instead, I rely on people like you to keep this site up and running. Would you Buy Me a Coffee?
Follow @MDMDeals on Twitter to see deals; mute hash tags to filter the deals you want!
I just got home after 14 hours of traveling & planes…and there’s no way I can get deals out today. However, I’m hard at work prepping the massive list of Christmas deals, so look for that very soon!
Have I saved you money? Would you keep this site running by Buying Me a Coffee?
I’ve long sought to publish deals to every possible channel that I could, knowing that few people would go out of their way to check my site each day. But after Black Friday took me so long, I decided that I needed to optimize my workflow in order to save time.
The crazy thing is that, because I post around 7,000 deals a year, a ten-second inefficiency adds up to nearly twenty hours over the course of a year. Yikes–that’s half a workweek. With that idea in mind, I looked over my channels and asked–is the way I’m posting to this channel worth the time it takes? Sometimes the answer was yes–like posting manually to Reddit with its over 800 followers–but it was extremely revealing. Here’s some channels I’ve changed:
Twitter – I had been manually editing long tweets to get them under the 280 character limit, but I estimate this took 30-45 seconds per tweet, meaning the yearly cost was 83-124 hours (let’s call it 100). Yikes. I tweaked my system and it’s now fully automated–each tweet won’t have handcrafted perfection and some may now end mid-sentence, but it will save me two and a half work-weeks a year.
Instagram – I had been initiating each post by webhook, but with some clever automation (Zapier is triggered by Pinterest and posts to Buffer which posts to Instagram!), I was able to fully automate this. It will save about 14 hours a year
Savings of 114 hours with some simple changes–not bad! What else needs spring cleaning? Unfortunately, running a time-cost analysis on a lot of channels meant that they just weren’t worth supporting and are now being ended.
WhatsApp – The hardest choice because it is new and growing, but it takes me about 80 hours to post here. Just not worth it unless the number of followers increases massively (feel free to join that group–if it ever starts up again you’ll know!)
Viber, KakaoTalk, Voxer, JioChat, Kik, Google Hangouts – I’ve only had these channels a few weeks, but no one signed up–and supporting them would take 142 hours a year. Nope.
Mastodon – I really want Mastodon to work, but this only gained 5 followers and cost 23 hours a year. Cut.
Flickr – A new channel, but after a few months there’s no followers at a cost of 22 hours a year. Duh.
Line – Fully automated, but after 2 years there’s no followers. No point in keeping it.
LinkedIn – This one was fully automated, but its automation was complicated, kept breaking, and needed constant repair. Probably 8 hours a year of fixes for 8 followers. Definitely not worth it. Ended.
So MDM Deals is now down to “only” 21 channels, but each channel is now fully automated–with the exception of Telegram (I’m testing something!). The total time savings? 389 hours, or nearly ten work-weeks. That’s 2 and a half MONTHS of time saved.
The lesson learned? Bigger and more and better isn’t necessarily better. Some individual channels are now “worse”–but the overall business is now better since I can spend my time finding & curating deals–which only I can do–rather than posting to channels–which computers can do for me. I just wish I had done this sooner for all the time and work it will save me!
Speaking of time and work, I still spend around an hour each day curating deals and I make no money with App Store affiliate links (Apple ended that program). If you appreciate my work every day, I’d love for you to support it via a one-time donation of coffee or ongoing support on Patreon. Thank you!
After a crazy amount of work, MDM Deals 2.3 was launched in time for the monster list of Black Friday & Cyber Monday deals. Welcome to all the new followers and subscribers who found MDM Deals over the holiday! I look forward to helping you discover great deals on fantastic apps and movies.
As MDM Deals has grown and expanded where I’ve published, the amount of time it takes to publish each individual deal has grown, so MDM Deals 2.4 is about optimization so I can spend more time finding deals and less time publishing them.
As such, I need to hear from you if you’d like to follow MDM Deals on one of the following channels. I’m willing to support these channels if enough of you want to use the channel, but there’s no point in supporting them if just a couple folks are there! Join a channel below to show your interest or email me other thoughts
Thanks for your help! I look forward to serving you better!
Mark
P.S. I’m currently enjoying an iced mocha as I work on the site right now, but I make no money to pay for it with App Store affiliate links. Instead, I rely on my followers to support my work and make it worthwhile! So would you Buy Me my next Coffee?
Get 20% off of a $50 App Store & iTunes Gift Card. An excellent way to save 20% on everything on the App Store & iTunes: iCloud Drive, Apple Music, Apple Arcade, TV+, subscriptions, & more
There’s over 6,000 apps that are on sale for Black Friday. I’ve looked through them all, then curated & organized a list of just the best ones. Check it out and spread the word
🆕 The brilliantly designed digital magazine Flipboard now supports MDM Deals, with magazine options for All Deals, iOS, iPad, Mac, Movie, Game, & App Deals!
Due to heavy volume of deals, not all will make today’s email newsletter, but check in at the website and on this Black Friday page to see them all when it goes live in a few hours
I’m glad to announce the safe arrival of my third son—he and mother and doing really well. Light deals today because we’re still in the hospital, but these were too good to pass up. (You’re welcome).
My monster Black Friday deals list is coming up soon—if you haven’t bookmarked the page yet, do so now so you’re ready! Link below
No new deals today because I’m in the hospital with a new baby on the way. Be back as soon as I can—in the meantime, wanna buy my wife a coffee? We’re sure gonna need it the next few days (who am I kidding, months)
In honor of my wife going into labor any day now, MDM Deals 2.3 “bundle of joy” is now live, with support for iPadOS, a better Reddit, 7 new channels, and more. Check it out!
Any day now, my wife will give birth to our third son and I’ve been hard at work getting the rest of this update finished before our little bundle of joy arrives. After lots of effort, it’s here, featuring support for iPadOS, a better Reddit, refinements, movie improvements, 7 new channels to follow, and new ways to support MDM Deals!
Initial support for iPadOS!
Apple separated iPadOS from iOS this summer, and MDM Deals now supports this, separating iOS items from iPadOS items. Here’s what you’ll see new:
Support for iPadOS channels/filters
MDM Deals on Twitter now uses hashtag #iPadOSDeals for items that run only on iPad; you can mute that filter if you don’t have an iPad
iOS & iPadOS RSS feed – This includes all items that can run on iOS OR iPadOS. This is the RSS feed to use if you have an iPhone & iPad
iPadOS RSS feed – This will subscribe you to all apps that run on iPadOS, including universal iOS apps. This is the RSS feed to use if you only have an iPad and what to see all apps that can run on it.
iPadOS exclusive RSS feed – this will subscribe you to apps that ONLy run on iPadOS (excludes “universal” iOS apps). This is an RSS feed to use if you only care about apps that only run on iPad
Note: Apple’s change means that following an iOS channel will no longer include iPad-exclusive apps that do not run on iPhone. I’m working on creating new options so you can get deals all in one place if you own an iPhone and iPad, but it’s pretty complex to do that. In the meantime, the “all deal” options will always include both!
Movie improvements
I dug into the data on movies and found out that none of you buy movies when they’re $9.99 per film. As a result, I will publish deals when the price per film is less than $9.99, unless it’s a movie that never goes on sale or a really fantastic film. You should see fewer movies going forward–but what you see should interest you more.
Also, there’s a new RSS feed if all you care about is movie bundles. Subscribe to the Movie Bundle only RSS feed here.
A better Reddit
The largest community of fans are over on Reddit, so I’ve worked hard to make it a better experience. Here’s the improvements you’ll see!
Everything should look and read better, with the addition of an invisible ASCII character that will prevent the sentences from being all smooshed together.
r/AppDeals – Just apps for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS (excludes games & movies)
r/iOSappdeals – Just apps for iOS (excludes Mac, games, & movies)
r/iosgamedeals – Just games for iOS (excludes apps, Mac, movies)
r/moviedeals – Just movies (excludes iOS, iPadOS, & Mac deals)
Interested in another kind of filtered subreddit? Let me know and I’ll see what I can do!
7 new ways to follow MDM Deals (& improvements to existing)
One of what makes MDM Deals different from other sites is I don’t make you come to my site every day to get the best deals–instead, I publish deals nearly everywhere so that you can get deals coming to you, no matter where on the internet you call home. MDM Deals 2.3 is no exception and comes with new places to get deals!
Improved channels
Apple News – The most elegant way to get deals. I’ve added channels for iPadOS Deals, iOS & iPadOS Deals, App Deals, Game Deals, and iOS & Mac Deals
Pinterest – My fastest-growing community. I’ve added boards for iOS Deals, iPadOS Deals, Mac Deals, Game Deals, and App Deals
Brand new channels
Flipboard – The brilliantly designed digital magazine now supports MDM Deals, with magazine options for All Deals, iOS, iPad, Mac, Movie, Game, & App Deals
Google Hangouts* – The group chat by Google, now with a MDM Deals group chat channel for your convenience. Deals delivered once a day.
KakaoTalk* – One of the most popular messenger apps worldwide, now with a MDM Deals group to find the deals you want. Deals delivered once a day; notifications available.
Viber* – Good ole’ Viber, now with a MDM Deals group for getting deals once a day delivered to you. Set up notifications so you never miss another deal!
Kik* – Recently resuscitated from an untimely end, Kik is back and after tons of work, MDM Deals supports it. Deals are delivered once a day.
JioChat* – Popular in India, but useful around the world, now with a MDM Deals group where deals come in once a day.
Voxer* – Not just for voice messages, you can join this MDM Deals group to get deals coming to you once a day via text.
*Because there is no way to automate these channels, I publish to them manually. If more than 5 people use the channel, I’ll keep them–but if not, it’s not worth the time to manual post there.
Other refinements
RSS subscribers rejoice! Feeds will look much better with the introduction of an invisible ASCII character instead of spaces. The result will be a nice visual break between title and content, whereas it was all smooshed together before
The “Download on the App Store/iTunes” logos have much higher quality AND Mac apps now tell you if it’s on the Mac App Store. Looks way better if I do say so myself
Old download image (left); new on the right
One more thing…
Phew, that was a lot, but there’s one thing more! Since Apple ended the affiliate program, I’ve relied even more on readers like you to support MDM Deals and its continued development. Until now, though, the only way to do that was via a Patreon monthly pledge, but not everyone likes a monthly charges. I get it. That’s why I’m excited MDM Deals is now on Buy Me a Coffee!
This site is coffee-developed and coffee-fueled (in fact, I’ve got a mocha frappe with me right now). If I’ve saved you money or help you discover an app, would you buy me a coffee?
Thanks so much for following and for your support!
Quick bit of news: there will be no deals tomorrow, Wednesday 8/7/19. I normally can arrange my life in such a way to carve out of it a space for finding, curating, and posting deals, but not tomorrow. I should be back Thursday and will catch up then. Thanks!
With MDM Deals 2.2 released, I’m hard at work at expanding into several new channels, including Viber, Skype, KakaoTalk, Voxer, JioChat, and Kik. If you are on any of those platforms, I’d love your help to test publishing deals there! Learn more and sign up on the beta page! My thanks in advance to anyone who helps out with the beta channels!
Best Buy has $50 App Store & iTunes physical & digital gift cards on sale right now for Best Buy members (join for free here). That means you can get the card for just $40—it says limit one per customer but I was able to get two (your results may vary).
I always jump on deals like this because it means you can functionally save 20% on everything else you purchase, including iCloud storage, Apple Music, & subscriptions.
Save more by signing up for the Best Buy credit card—a card I actually have and use—it’ll give you 10% off your first day of purchases and an extra 5% off every other day.
A special limited time offer from Apple: right now if you add funds to your App Store/iTunes account, Apple will give you a 10% bonus for free. US stores only.
Most discounts today weren’t fantastic, so lighter fare (you’re welcome!)—but with your saved time, check out the 9 new channels where you can follow MDM Deals!
I have been SUPER hard at work the last month or so working on MDM Deals 2.2 (codenamed “cheesegrater with wheels”) and I’m excited to release it to you all today! One of the principles that guides me in creating MDM Deals is that I want it to be as seamless as possible for you to get deals–that means publishing them to every social network or channel that presents a good experience and which is technically and financially possible.
There’s a ton of social networks out there–in fact, my list of possible channels for MDM Deals started with over 100 different apps and social networks. Unfortunately, many of them were financially or technically viable for MDM Deals (and some are ones I simply don’t want to support), so I whittled it down a few dozens channels–many of them are in development, but I’m excited to announce that nine new channels are ready for release today–along with updates to five former channels. That means that, altogether, MDM Deals now publishes to twenty-five different channels (so there’s no excuse to not be subscribed somewhere. I mean, seriously).
With no further adieu, here are the nine new channels and five updated channels!
Join the MDM Deals chat group where you receive one message a day that contains all the deals publish that day. It’s secure, neat, and easy, with custom notifications you can set so you never miss a deal as it comes in. Join the WhatsApp group!
The popular photo-sharing service now has a MDM Deals channel! See beautiful app logos, movie artwork, and descriptions alongside the other artists in your stream. Follow the Flickr channel!
Not just for gaming chat, you can join the MDM Deals community to see deals each day in Discord’s beautiful text chat window (no voice…for now?). Join the Discord channel today!
I’ve long had a MDM Deals Facebook Page, but I’m not excited to say there is a MDM Deals Group, a more intimate (and reliable) way of being notified about the same deals on the MDM Deals page. Join the Facebook group today!
The rising social network without the problems of the bigger ones. MDM Deals has its own sphere that you can join–you’ll be invited to join after you click to join the MDM Deals Whaller sphere!
The Slack competitor that’s simpler and cleaner. If you’re already on a Flock team, add MDM Deals to get the deals coming to you there as well! Join MDM Deals on Flock!
The group-chat-focused app is now a place where you can get MDM Deals coming to you automatically each day, right alongside your other chats. Join MDM Deals on GroupMe!
While focused on workplace chat, Chatwork makes it easy to follow multiple groups, so if you use Chatwork, join the MDM Deals group to see deals alongside your existing chats! Join MDM Deals on Chatwork!
A simple and elegant group chat where you can see MDM Deals coming in alongside your existing chats, complete with app logos and previews of links. Join MDM Deals on Fleep!
Updated channels:
Below are channels that have been around, but I’ve recently made updates to improve them. If you’re using these services and haven’t followed MDM Deals on them yet, it’s time to give them another look!
Now with improved, bold titles, hashtags, and a cleaner interface–and still with it’s encrypted chat and custom notifications, Telegram is an even better place to follow MDM Deals. Join the Telegram chat!
One of the newest channels to MDM Deals, it’s one I’m proud to support for its community ownership and privacy focus. Your data isn’t collected, doesn’t go to privacy-destroying companies, and won’t be used to sell ads to you. Follow MDM Deals on Mastodon!
If you use Line, make sure to join the MDM Deals group on Line where you can be notified as deals come in. It’s been updated so deals come in more regularly and reliably, in the background. Join MDM Deals on Line!
One of the more popular MDM Deals channels has just been upgraded to get deals more reliably and regularly. You can still sign up to follow just the boards you want and filter out the rest. Follow MDM Deals on Pinterest!
Porn is gone from Tumblr (yay), but MDM Deals remains–now with improvements to get deals there more reliably and faster (sorry about those gaps in coverage)! Follow the MDM Deals Tumblr!
Facebook Group
Whaller
Chatwork
Fleep
