The FunkeeBlog

A month ago, I chanced upon a story on TUAW on a Switcher’s Giveaway contest which was happening at MacApper.com. The prizes are amazing - 24 great Mac apps up for grabs, and a T-shirt from InsanelyGreatTees to boot, the first prize worth over $750. Although I did already have TextMate, SuperDuper! (both of which I use daily) and Disco, the rest of the prizes were still incredibly tempting, and I really wanted to enter the contest. All I needed to do was to create a contest entry on why I switched to the Mac. Piece-of-cake…

There is one problem.

My self-imposed deadline for releasing FunkeeStory 1.1 is loooooong overdue, and I really didn’t want to be distracted, spending half a day or more creating an entry to a contest when I really should be completing this new release instead. No new releases means less sales, and the longer I take between releases, the higher the chance of my business failing, with my dreams along with it.

So I continued coding away, trying to erase the memory of that contest from my mind.

But the thought just wouldn’t go away, nagging away at the back of my mind. I thought that I did have a pretty eventful story, since I essentially switched to the Mac so that I can write programs for it. But I continued battling away the thought of spending time on this when I should be coding instead.

Off I went to the public library (that’s where I usually work these days) in the morning about a week later, off to code away and bring FunkeeStory 1.1 closer to the light of day. “Hmm, what happened to the contest, I wonder if its over…”, I thought. The announcement came in - just 36 hours to go till the contest ends.

This time, the itch to write became too strong, too maddening to resist. I had to do something. I don’t even care about winning anymore, I just need to create this entry to ease this itch to write and create.

But, uh, what am I going to submit as an entry?

An essay? Nah, it’ll be too wordy (like this blog post), who’ll read it? ;-) Videos and podcasts are out - i’m in a public library! So I opened up the Applications folder, looking for nothing in particular when it struck me.

I’ll use Keynote to prepare a set of presentation slides!

But then I ran into another problem - i’ve never used Keynote before… But not knowing something never stopped me from trying things out before, so I just fired it up and clicked away.

3 revisions, and hours later, something ugly which resembled a presentation emerged. Now, how will I end this thing?

I thought - If I had just ONE CHANCE in this lifetime to say something to the entire Mac community, what would it be? And the last few slides just came out by itself.

A quick email submission to MacApper just hours before the deadline, and off I go again, back to work! There’s still lots of code to be written (and re-written…).

Fast forward a few weeks…

Last Thursday morning, I woke up, getting ready to get to set off to the library to work again, to find an email from Miles Evans, senior editor of MacApper.com, telling me that my entry for their Switcher’s Giveaway contest is being featured on their website. I didn’t win the first prize, nor the second, but as the entry got chosen as an honourable mention, I won myself a T-shirt, and a chance at $100 if my entry beats the other two entries in a voting contest.

WOOHOO! I checked my web stats, and page hits were coming in from all over the world. Unique visitors to the website and The FunkeeBlog went up to six times the usual amount of traffic received.

A link to my entry even managed to feature on the front page of programming.reddit.com, getting as high as #9 at one point. *faint* My story is getting out there! And I won myself a cool T-shirt! So I guess even if this whole startup fails, at least I can honestly repeat the cliche, that i’ve “been there, done that, and i’ve got the T-shirt”. :-)

More important than a dang-cool T-shirt though, i’m really happy that my story went out. I really hoped that this would expose to the Mac community what its like behind the scenes, being a struggling indie developer, and how every single sale can really go a long way in making sure an app grows and matures. Every sale means I get to feed myself for another day or two, improving the app, and not working for The Man instead, although it will pay a heck of a lot better at this point.

And today, the MacApper Switcher’s Giveaway is now officially over with the conclusion of the Honourable Mentions contest.

The winning entry, by just 4 votes (talk about a close finish!!) is….

Switching to the Mac to be an Indie Mac Developer - A bittersweet true story in 15 slides, by Joe Goh.

Hope you enjoyed both stories.

The End.

Big Thanks

Thanks to the sponsors for providing the wonderful prizes for this contest. I’ll definitely be wearing that T-shirt from InsanelyGreatTees around alot. :-)

Big thanks to Miles Evans @ MacApper for organising this awesome contest, and providing an opportunity for me to bring my story to the world. Cheers mate!

A massive thank you goes out to all of you who has voted for me, and even helped spread the word to your friends about my entry and the contest. THANK YOU!

But the BIGGEST thanks have to be reserved to all the software users and gamers out there, who stood together with the devs and supported their work by paying for the software. Thanks - we won’t be here without you, and its your support that keeps our dreams alive everyday.