Short version: I decided to finally take advice I'll give to clients (and anyone else): if you have an audience, you want to get their email addresses so that you can contact them about things that are mutually interesting. After writing approximately four full-length novels worth of blog posts about software businesses, some people seem to be interested in hearing from me about them, but I have no way of knowing who they are or how to get in touch with them unless they contact me directly.<p>So, I thought I'd start an email list. Just asking for email addresses seemed kind of boring, though, so I recorded a 45 minute video on improving the first run experience of software. (Something crazy like 40 ~ 60% of users will abandon an application after their first use of it. Track that stat and work on it and it will go down, which will make users happier and improve business results. For the topic treated at length, see the video.)<p>Feel free to ask questions.
It's pretty easy to give my address to someone who has earned my trust by building up a large deal of social capital. He has a fair amount of professional reputation to lose if he doesn't do what he says ("send you something interesting every few weeks").<p>And what if I'm wrong? What--maybe I have to click "spam" a few times? I mean, really--I sign up to a lot more dubious things than this.
I love how you are doing this literally the day after your microconf talk on collecting emails. On a side note you have an unhealthy obsession with red sweatshirts.
> <i>Something crazy like 40 ~ 60% of users will abandon an application after their first use of it. Track that stat.</i><p>Any recommendations on how to do this for desktop software? Especially for the Mac App Store, where I basically get NO info about my users?
You should put the name "patio11" on the landing page. I saw the page, thought "maybe, not sure". After I saw the comments and realized this was you (patio11) I thought "heck yeah!" and signed up as fast as I could.