A little over a year ago, I posted that I was taking a hiatus from MDM Deals to think about its future, chiefly what happens to a site dedicated to great deals on fantastic apps…when most of the fantastic apps have switched over to subscription models and no longer have great deals.
Initially I thought the answer could be a membership program in which I find deals for you, negotiate deals with developers, and recommend apps. Then immense technical challenges came, I changed my job, another baby came along, and I realized that I couldn’t give it the time that a membership program needed.
Thus, this post is to announce what most of you already know and have guessed: the end of MDM Deals. For another year or so, the website and content will stick around (so long as technical programs don’t crop up!) and you can still reach me at deals @ mdmdeals.com.
It’s been a great run! Over the 6 years of MDM Deals I curated over 80,000 deals which were viewed over 484,000 times (on this site alone–that doesn’t track visits at all the other channels).
I’ll still be on the internet, of course! You can reach me on Twitter @MarkDMill — and I started a new blog for some new writing that you can check out, The Prepared Expat.
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
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?
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!
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