The Cult of Joel Spolsky…

…is a good cult!

In November I went to the 2-day European Software Conference, aka the “We Love Joel Spolsky” conference. Of the various presentations I attended, two started with a Joel quote projected onto the screen in an attactive serif font in nice big letters. A third contained an “as Joel Spolsky said…” quote midway through. In casual conversations, I would discretely time how minutes passed before Joel was mentioned. It was often single digits.

Today I officially join the cult of Joel by including my own Mr Spolsky quote. As Joel said,

“we, personally, like money, here at Fog Creek, and will accept payment in just about any reasonable form customers would like to pay. Credit card, debit card, check, purchase order, cheques drawn on a foreign bank, small coins taped to an index card and mailed to us, Kruggerands, big stones from Yap, as long as it’s not friggin’ CATTLE we’ll accept it in payment. It’s money. Money is why you do this.”

As Poker Copilot sales increased, I became relucant to accept payment through any means other that my “Order Now” page. Joel’s sentiment above, however, reminds me to check my attitude. Sometimes people e-mail me to say, “I’m not comfortable with your ordering process. I don’t want to use a credit card. I don’t want to have a PayPal account. I don’t want to use a third-party payment processor.” In recent weeks I’ve tried to be more accommodating. I’ve also tried to streamline my “unusual orders” process.

PayPal makes this easy. With PayPal I can bill people without a PayPal account. With PayPal I can even process paper orders.

After all, money is highly motivating.