I’m excited to announce MDM Deals 2.8 “Yikes, that’s better” with a bunch of changes and improvements to make discovering great deals even better. Read about how to Shut Mark up, ads that don’t stink and how to block them, the end of spam, why to trust me, and more

Ads that don’t stink

Ok, let’s face it, the ads that were on the site before were terrible. Spammy and clickbaity with “You’ll never guess what she said to her husband” nonsense that was totally irrelevant to 99.99% of you (there’s always that one person…). The ads stunk, the monetization stunk, and the experience stunk.

I am super excited to let you know that I’ll be using Google Ads on the site now, which allows me more granular control over which ads appear so that they’ll actually be relevant and not clickbait. In my tests, I’ve been really pleased to see ads appear for Parallels 16, Wikibuy, Casetify, and even specific apps on the App Store–rather than distracting from the site, they showed other ways to save money or related apps that might interest you. Yikes, that’s better.

Block ads with impunity

Now, I know a lot of you hate ads and trackers. I do too. But without Apple’s App Store affiliate program–ended over a year ago now–the ads enable me to keep this site free for everyone rather than having it for members only. And when sponsors come to the site, ads will go away–you can thank the sponsors by checking out their product

But I get the adblock thing. So here’s my deal for you: join my Patreon for any amount–even $1/month–and I’ll give you “Adblock Amnesty” so you can block ads without a guilty conscience that you’re preventing me from getting paid for my hard work. I curate around 250 deals a month, so that’s just half a penny a post.

Support via ads or Patreon and we’ll be great! Break the deal and…well, a thousand angry internet goats will haunt your dreams forever as you lose internet karma for denying me hard-earned ad revenue…

So support the site (via ads or Patreon) and have good karma and no goats. See? Way better.

Join the Shut Mark Up campaign

I’m excited to announce a completely revamped Patreon page with more perks for you–and benefits for all MDM Deals fans when we hit certain numbers!

First, EVERY patron now gets access to custom filtered emails, in addition to supporting this site with Adblock Amnesty. As a Patron at any level, you can get one ad-free email each day with just the deals you want. Don’t care about books? Filter those out. Don’t have a Mac? Say goodbye to those. Get rid of everything you don’t want. It’s the best way to get MDM Deals each day–and now its available for Every.Single.Patron.

Second, I’ve fine-tuned the tiers to bring you better perks at lower prices, including an all-new Deal Alerts perk. Maybe you know exactly what app, book, or piece of tech you want to buy and you don’t want to look through the deals every day to see if it went on sale. Now with Deal Alerts, just let me know what you want to buy and I’ll tell you when it goes on sale! This is an exclusive perk for Patrons who pledge as Fan+ or Fan Pro levels! I’m super excited about being able to serve you this extra way!

Third, shut me up about supporting this site! Each day I remind you of what I did to serve you that day, but you can shut me up–and remove ads! When we get 50 patrons I’ll stop those daily reminders and when we get 75 patrons I’ll remove ads site-wide! Your patronage can benefit those who are in a harder spot than you and shut me up all at the same time. Nice.

Fourth, for a limited time only, you can get a special gift from me for your patronage! All patrons on November 5th, 2020 will receive a special MDM Deals sticker. They’re super cool and I can’t wait to get one to you!

The new Patreon. Yikes, that’s way better.

Trust me…no, I mean, really

I can’t tell you how many sites recommend that I trick you into clicking an affiliate link so that when you buy cat food tomorrow, I get affiliate revenue from you.

That’s ridiculous and a complete violation of the principles that guides MDM Deals: it’s not treating you how I want to be treated, it adds friction to your life rather than taking it away, and it violates your trust of me because you don’t know if my curation is for my benefit or for yours.

Today there are two changes I’m announcing to increase your trust and prevent you from clicking on affiliate links so you save time. You come first, not me:

First, all apps will list star ratings if they have them. Previously, if an app only had a few ratings, they wouldn’t appear as I didn’t want to distract you–but I realized that was violating trust. So now, app star ratings will appear no matter what they are. (Unfortunately, Amazon doesn’t allow me to show their ratings and Apple Book ratings are available to me, or else I would include those).

Second, when I use an affiliate link, I will explicitly mention it on each post before the link appears. If there’s no mention of an affiliate link, there is none and I get absolutely nothing from your purchase (become a Patron!) Initially I just had this disclosure on my legal page so I wouldn’t distract you, but I decided that listing it every single time will help you trust me and my curation. Who knows? Maybe someday I can remove affiliate links entirely because there are so many Patrons.

Building trust with you all, even if it hurts my revenue. Yikes, that’s better.

The end of hashtag & flair spam

For a while, MDM Deals on Twitter and the alternate Reddit sub had a spam problem. Some deals, announcements, summary, and sponsors would post not just once–which would be what you’d expect!–but half a dozen times. It was an unfortunate result of my system (I’ll spare the details), but those days are over.

I actually paid someone to develop some code and I’ll spare the details, but it works beautifully. Now, every post will appear just once and all items have hashtags or flair, making for a way way better experience without hashtag and flair spam.

If you’ve left MDM Deals’ Twitter or Reddit because of the spam, try it again. It’s WAY better.

Misc stuff

Some other smaller changes I’ve made–it’s been a busy season!–but aren’t too big:

• Apps from the App Store and StackSocial now use the official app descriptions rather than rewriting my own. I’ll still add my own comments, but no need to reduplicate that work!
• I now support deals for iOS & Mac cross-platform apps where you can pay for it outside the App Stores. This was pretty fun to develop and will enable me to better serve you, as there are some great apps and services that do billing outside the App Store. Yay!
• I now support Amazon product groups instead of singular items. Previously, if Anker had a sale, I had to list every single item which took up a lot of space. Now I can post a link to all their products and give you an overview of them. Should be way better!

Yikes! That’s way better

So that’s a ton of changes and, believe me, a TON of work behind the scenes to make this all possible. Every day I spend tons of time improving MDM Deals, finding deals, and curating just the best for you. If you have ever saved money or discovered something, please support my work on Patreon. It’s better than ever.

You’re the best,

MarkDMill