Allan & Steve are the chubby founders of LessEverything. This is their blog, hear them rant, praise, give advice and talk about Just Stuff, Less Accounting, Lovd by Less, More Honey, Less Memories, Code, Business, Design, Marketing
A few weeks ago I tweeted...
Then someone responded...
Their link went to this page...
I received the shirt and tweeted this...
Now I have a cool shirt and I feel cool cause it was free.
I love my shirt, T-Shirt Outlet Rocks!
Do you want to be a member of the Awesome ‘Stache Club? Follow this link to find out how: http://lesseverything.com/staches
We launched some pretty neat features in Less Accounting today.
Design Changes
Allan has been a busy beaver trying to look at every angle of Less Accounting to see where moving a pixel this way or that way might have an impact for folks. I hope you find the changes and welcome as I do.
Tagging System
You can now add tags/keywords to expenses, invoices and deposits and filter reports based on these tags. If you use the Wesabe importer then you’ll be pleased to know that your tags from Wesabe will be imported along with your data.
Unlimited Users
Invite as many people as you want to join your business. The more the merrier.
More Less Accounting
Up until now you had no choice of what features you want or don’t want, well now you do! We have created three packages so you can chose the right amount of Less Accounting (and price) that works for you. The features you know and love are available in the middle tier package called “Less Accounting.” We have a trimmed down version called “Even Less Accounting” which is just expenses, invoices and a few reports. Just the barest of essentials. For people that need a bit more we created “More Accounting” this is where most new features will go. We started out by creating the ability to reconcile bank statements. This is a More Accounting feature only. Look for more More accounting features to come in the next few months.
Revised Pricing
Well it had to happen sooner or later, with the creation of the new packages, “Even Less” and “More,” the price of Less Accounting has gone up. Instead of $19.95 Less Accounting now costs $20.00 per month. We think you’ll survive.
Pricing Structure *| Package | Price |
|---|---|
| Even Less Accounting | $12.00/month |
| Less Accounting | $20.00/month |
| More Accounting | $24.00/month |
*There is still a free version available.
More To Come
If you think this stuff is cool, just wait. In the coming weeks and months we will be creating features that we are so excited about we’ve wet our pants multiple time thinking about. I don’t want to reveal too much here but can you say ”....” on second thought I won’t reveal anything here. But Less Accounting is about to become the Accounting software that everyone uses.
We just released a new open source plugin for rails called Less Reverse Captcha. This is another way of doing captchas. This reverse captcha plugin does not require the user to do anything. Instead it has a hidden form field that won’t be filled out by people (because it’s hidden) but will be filled out by bots. If the field has a value the model won’t validate. That’s it, easy peasy. This plugin is similar to Erik Peterson’s negative_captcha plugin. The big differences being that the Less plugin acts at the model layer, not the controller and so only needs two lines of code to make work, one for the helper method and one in the model. This plugin is already in use in Lovd By Less and now can be used in your app too!
The default error messages is configurable and obscure: “You can not create this because you are the sux.”
It’s easy to use:
new.html.erb
<= flash[:notice] %>
<%= error_messages_for :comment %>
<% form_for @comment do |form| %>
<%= form.text_area :comment %>
<%= less_reverse_captcha_field :comment %>
<%= submit_tag %>
<% end %>
comments_controller.rb
def create
@comment = Comment.create params[:comment]
if @comment.new_record?
render :action=>'index'
else
redirect_to comments_path
end
end
comment.rb
class Comment < ActiveRecord::Base
validates_less_reverse_captcha
That’s it!
- Jason Fried - be simplistic
- Gary Vaynerchuk - love everyone, be everywhere
- Kathy Sierra - help your users kick ass
- Seth Godin - everything you do is marketing
no real reason to make this graphic besides a laugh.
I worked at my family's car washes growing up. My family opened one of the oldest car washes in America in 1953. My Dad didn't just make us wash cars, he showed us things and made us think. He made us visit car washes on vacations and he would point out the things that made them great and made them fail. My Dad is the best teacher/business person I know.
Here are some things I learned from car washes that translate into this web industry we love so much.
- The Car Wash Lesson: The cleanest part of the vehicle needed to be the windshield, especially the drivers side. Who cares how clean the rims are if you have a dirty windshield. It's all the driver sees and they're reminded of it every time they get into the car.
- The Web Lesson: The most important page of your web app is the page users see first. The landing page, the front page, the dashboard -- whatever the user sees first.
- The Car Wash Lesson: You gotta vacuum cars and clean up dirty snot tissues to get to be in charge. I vacuumed cars (the lowest job on the totem pole) for years before I got to finish the car and make tips.
- The Web Lesson: You might have to do an unpaid internship and or an apprenticeship to get to the place you want to be.
- The Car Wash Lesson: Don't nickel and dime people. My Dad's car washes were the most expensive in town, but you got the best wash in town. The cheap customers are usually the pickiest and the rudest.
- The Web Lesson: Charge a fair rate with clients and they'll respect you for it. Don't squeeze them for every penny, play fair and just, but give them their money's worth. Always be upfront about your pricing even if you're the most expenses.
- The Car Wash Lesson: On rainy days, park employees' cars around the wash like they are customers' cars. This is called "bait", people are attracted to crowds. If people drive past a car wash that is empty they assume its closed.
- The Web Lesson: Seed social communities before you launch them, have 20+ people start using the social network adding content and making the site feel alive.
- The Car Wash Lesson: It's harder to complain to a face than to a business. My Dad would talk personally to every upset customer, he was a hands on operator. My Dad responds to upset customers with "What can I do to make you happy again?"
- The Web Lesson: With any web app you're going to get negative feedback. Respond to the user like they're a friend and watch their heart melt.
- The Car Wash Lesson: My Dad always ran a tight ship and didn't grow his car washes unless he had to. He didn't hire operational managers so he could take extended vacations. He always said "most of the time when you're thinking about expanding you're doing it out of ego instead of need."
- The Web Lesson: Don't make any decision out of ego, especially decisions with a price tag.
- The Car Wash Lesson: Too much road signage is usually worse than none.
- The Web Lesson: People will visually block out the important stuff if you surround it with crap.
- The Car Wash Lesson: Your car wash chemicals are more important than your equipment. You can't have a clean car without the right chemistry.
- The Web Lesson: Who cares about the technology or the code base if your UI sucks. You can't have a successful app without an easy UI.
- The Car Wash Lesson: The more money you borrow the higher the monthly payment back to the bank. So in turn you have to wash more cars to be successful.
- The Web Lesson: Wanna raise the bar of success for your app? Take a couple million in funding.
Did you know you can follow Allan and Steve on Twitter? It’s true! Here are our twitter pages:
If you signup you can follow us and get regular zany updates.
Our applications have twitter accounts too:
September 24th, 2008
Reasons People Don't Actually Read Your Blog, part ii
written by Steven Bristol
In response to our post about why people might not be reading your blog, Eugen Minciu wrote his thoughts.
My thoughts about Eugen’s thoughts about Allan’s thoughts:
I am afraid that he missed the point entirely and also illustrated the problem. The real problem isn’t that posts are too long or readers are too dumb, the real problem is that posts aren’t interesting enough. I gladly look for forward to Cringely’s post every week. When it comes, I set aside 10 – 15 minutes to read it. I read every word and I don’t skim. Because it’s INTERESTING. If you have something to say and can say it well, then take as much type as you need. But have more respect for me and don’t waste my time with your self-indulgent blather. Use the fewest number of characters to make your well written point.
He makes a few comparisons that I’d like to address:
- College: One has a real reason to be there and it’s not entertainment.
- Books: No one expects a book to take five minutes. But getting to the end of a non-fiction book and wishing the author had just written a five minute blog post happens way too often.
- Films: The expectation is that they last longer than five minutes. I usually will sit past five minutes, but if it still sucks after 15, I bail. Same for documentaries.
- Newspapers are exactly what one should be striving for. Short (hopefully), well written posts about one subject that can be read quickly while still absorbing all the information. There is no expectation that everyone will read the whole newspaper; people just read the parts they are INTERESTED in.
Do you see the pattern here? It’s about respecting your reader’s time (and expectations) and giving them something of value that they will come back for. I’m sure Eugen tackled all these points by the end of his post, but the truth is it was too long and not interesting enough to keep me. I started skimming and then when I didn’t see anything except the same long winded point, I decided to stop reading. (That’s not true, I did skim all the way to the end, something I can no longer do with Steve Yegge posts.)
Here at Less, we tend to crank out A LOT of work, especially for such a small shop. The reason we’re able to do this is because we work ALL THE TIME. As evidenced by this video:
Sure, you might have a few subscribers, but do people actually read your content?
People like software that’s easy to use. Software that has a low pain threshold. The same is true about blogs. Your blog should be about your reader, not about your ego.
Here are some mistakes authors make when writing blog posts:
1) They have no personality and their writing is reflective of this.
2) Their posts are too long and filled with fluff. I could go on and on about this point. There are a million, billion things to say about people who take up space on the page as thought their adwords revenue is based on the number of characters they use. There are also countless examples of blogs that are way, way, way to wordy. Sometime one word will work better than writing a whole paragraph. Do I really need to say more about this?! Wake up people I am trying to tell you something here.
3) Their posts are pure vanilla and contain no opinion on the topic. Unless you are reporting the news, give your opinion, that is why people are reading you.
Still don't get it?
Who has 15 minutes to spend reading a long post?
Who wants to wade through the fluff to find your point?
If you have a point, make it clear and don't be ashamed of your view.
Make your writing an example of good UI. Make it thoughtful, filled with expressive language and to the point.
If you do these things, I guarantee you will have as many readers as we do. Which is two. You and a guy in Slobozia with an internet connection so whacked that the only pages he can load are this one and TechCrunch. Poor guy.
For my training class last week I put together some links that might be useful to people that are new to rails. I thought I would share these links here too.
Git tool: SVN tool: Rails google group: Rails google group for core: Documentation sites: Less Everything Products:- http://lessaccounting.com/
- http://getmorehoney.com/
- http://lessprojects.com/
- http://lessmemories.com/
- http://lovdbyless.com/
- http://weallhatequickbooks.com/
- http://www.lessfriends.com/
- #rails
- #rails-contrib
- #lovdbyless (where I can almost always be found)
There's been quite a bit of talk about ChoiceTweets.com, which is a site that you can grab a person's tweet and have it printed on a shirt. You can grab any public tweet. Cool right? So here's the issue, tweets are copyrighted so this violates copyright laws. There's been some really angry people ranting about how the site should be shut down and alot of mean things have been said about ChoiceTweets. But really who should give a rat's ass? You're not stealing blog content, your not stealing their code, its a stupid tweet. But let me ask... Do you care if someone wears a shirt with your tweet on it? I sure don't. In fact let me buy you a shirt that says "Hey everybody, @LessAllan is so charming I wanted his name on my shirt! He's the greatest and oddly handsome too!" Want the shirt? Let me know.
So really when did we become so self-involved that we care about things like? Who or what taught us to be so uptight about such a legal clusterfuck? Why do we put up such a fight over the dumbest things? Point is, ChoiceTweets shouldn't be breaking the copyright laws but why do we care so much about it?
Related Twitter Links
@choicetweets
@alexknowshtml
@lessallan (me)
I want to be able to see my local radar with one click of the button.
We have the smartest and the most clever accountant in the world. So we asked him to write an article about starting a business and the accounting setup needed. Here's what he wrote, it's solid advice from an accountant that saves us tons of money.
1. KISS. Keep it simple starting out. The simplest form of entity for running your first business is called a sole proprietorship. This form of ownership requires NO special communication or filings to the Internal Revenue Service until you start paying employees.
2. As a sole proprietor you are the owner/entity which might require only to acquire an occupational license if your county or municipality mandates one. As the owner, you are also liable to remit all state or city tax collections on retail or wholesale sales your business collects. Service businesses and most cross state sales are exempt from state tax collections.
3. If you are concerned about personal liability as a sole proprietorship then do the cheapest and simplest thing which is to buy a personal liability umbrella policy. The best way to avoid liability is to learn your trade well and keep accurate records on LessAccounting .
4. Concentrate on building your business not communicating with the IRS. As a sole proprietor, the IRS will not even know you exsist until after you file your first personal income tax return. This return will include a Schedule C which communicates all of the sales and expenses you recorded in LessAccounting on your business. These sales and expenses do not have to be in a separate bank account as mandated by the LLC or Incorporation format. The sole proprietor losses offset your day job's income to provide a possible tax refund.
5. Over 90% of small businesses fail or change ownership within the first five years. Plan your business to thrive but if it fails under a sole proprietor you simply stop doing business. No communication or special forms with the IRS, no additional taxes to get your investment returned and no high accounting fees to close out your entity. Simply file a final Schedule C with your next personal return. KISS.
6. How do you get paid as a sole proprietorship? Simply take the money out as a draw. No payroll taxes or quarterly forms needed. Most startups lose money for the first several years, so keep your day job to pay your living expenses.
7. After you pass the five year hurdle, then you can talk with a CPA about another entity type that might save you taxes. Again a simple bookkeeping entry transfers all of the business assets from the sole proprietorship into the new entity without any tax penalties. Then quit your day job to celebrate your new livelyhood.
I think this 2 minute documentary says it all...