Hey, this is the Daily Overpass. My name is Eric and I make apps.
Now today, I want to talk about the biggest problem that Indie App
Developers face.
Hey! Happy Friday! So, hey, do you like the new haircut? Right, nice and smooth. This is
almost army. This is almost what I look like in the army.
Except you know, I was thinner back then and younger, less gray hair.
Alright, today I want to talk about the biggest problem that Indie app
developers face. But first, coz this is Friday, we'll try a new segment. I want to
do a movie review. Just maybe we could do this regularly, so do a
movie review. So last weekend, I went and saw the movie Baby Driver with
Kevin Spacey, Jamie Foxx and all this stuff. It was like, I just got the new car
and it's going to see a movie about a fast car that really appealed to me.
I really liked the movie. It was, you know, it was good acting, good music,
it was a lot of you know, car chases were perfect. Just a fun
night out. But I'm gonna have to give it one star. I'm two thumbs down and
here's the reason why. Before the movie started there were a lot of ads.
And there's always a lot of ads. But you know, it's time I put my foot down.
It kind of just- you know, I like the movie but it's just- because of
the ads, I have to give it one star. It just sort of you know, I'm sorry but
that's just the way it is. Get rid of the ads and then I'll give it five stars.
Now for those of you out there, you know, my Indie developer friends, those
of you who say, this is the reason why I don't put ads in my application. Alright,
I want you to stand tall. I want you cuz you're standing on principle.
You're not gonna put ads in your app. You're just gonna just go for
the perfect experience, right? So you'd stand tall, you pause the video, you walk
over to the mirror, look yourself straight, you lift your chin up high and
just smack yourself across the face. I mean, really give it a good whack!
I mean, you know that's not the way you should be thinking. The fact of
the matter is, is that people- you know, people in reviews, they will
complain about everything. I mean, if you've ever seen- have you ever gone
on Amazon to buy something and then you see like five star reviews to five star
review, and you like one-star review and the guy
complaints about the fact that it was delivered late, like it was really
great product, so you know, changed my life but it would arrive two
days late, so I'm gonna have to give it one star. Sometimes, these things
are just outside of your control. I mean I get reviews, I get bad reviews about I
being too many ads, right? So, they- it's worth
complaining about, but it's not worth spending a dollar on to get
rid of them. Alright, some people say the app
is really good, but there's too many ads. And that's- it's a very small percentage.
But I've also gotten bad reviews on you know, that Google Play doesn't
allow in-app purchases in their country. I think that's in Iran. For some reason, I
don't have in-app purchases over there. But that's outside my control, but still,
gives me a bad review. There's a lot of things like that just gave me bad
reviews. And the fact of the matter is, that advertisements are everywhere.
They're in every, you know, there are things that are free. That's what makes
them free.There are things that we pay for. So you go to the movies, you see ads.
You get a DVD, you see ads. You buy a magazine,
it's full of ads, even though you paid for the magazine or a newspaper or
whatever, right? In fact, it's getting to the point where and I think it's gonna
get worse. I think we're gonna look back at this age and think, you know what,
they were like, oh, not nearly as many ads back in 2017.And I know this might sound
ridiculous but you just want- yeah I mean, it's almost like when you look outside,
if you go through London, it's like ads everywhere. And you think,
every flat surface that doesn't have an ad on it, is either for one of
two reasons. Either one, nobody's thought of putting an ad there or two they're
not allowed to put an ad there. So you know, clients all the time say to
me you know I really don't like ads. You know, I go- well we could do an ad so
how are you gonna monetize this thing? They'll say well I really don't like ads.
And I said, dude, nobody likes ads. I've never met one single person who likes
ads. But they get things paid for. When you watch- so I watch baseball
all the time, not so much in the last month because the San Diego Padres, my
team are doing really, really bad. But you know, sometimes in the early mornings,
coming to work at 4 o'clock, I could catch the last few innings of a
a night game in San Diego. Because it's in the night and you know,
just watching it on on the internet, you just mind how many ads.
They'll be like, every time there's a change in innings or there's a pitching
change, they go to the ad break so they go to commercial. They come back, and as
the announcer- you know, "It's a beautiful day out here in Petco Park," all
this stuffing, our next batter is so and so, and there'll be a little
banner at the bottom that says, you know, Carl's Jr., extra value meals now on
sale or something like that. And then they'll be in
the middle of talking, "So it's a long fly ball out to center field and he's
caught it one away. Looking for the next new Ford car and
truck? Check out your local Ford dealer. Sale is on now! Our next batter is..."
They'll just go by, they'll just say this, the announcers will say that. So you've
got- so right there. And this is- the reason I bring this up is because that's
interstitial, the commercial, the banner, the banner. And the native ads which is the guy
just talking. So ads are everywhere and you might say well that's
America. But like over here, you know, you don't have ads in the middle of the game
but you do have logos on on jerseys and things like that, which you don't have in
the States. Advertisements are everywhere. Now, let's go back. But this
is not what I want to talk about. I don't want to talk about like my my tirade on
ads. What I want to talk about is the problems of being an app in the app
developer. Now there is a one huge benefit to be an Indie app developer,
which is that you can move a lot quicker. You much more nimble and you don't have
to argue with anybody. You don't have to justify anything. If you have an idea, you
could just implement it. You don't have to deal it with fragile egos. You don't
have to worry about hurt feelings or anything like that.
You're on your own, you know, you just duck and weave and do what you want to
do. But you really need two people. I don't- not necessarily two people, but you
need to mentalities. You need the artist and you need the business person. So
you can't- so we know lots of indie developers who have a nice mix between
the two of them. You don't want to have too much of one and not enough of the
other. So a lot of times what I see a lot, is Indie app developers who worked
long time on their app, they don't want to go live. They want it
to be perfect so they just make sure that everything's right.They'll say,
hey, how's that app coming along?- oh, it's you know- we just- I had a
change of mind, so we're gonna change a bunch of stuff. We're gonna change the
designer, we change everything like that. And then we'll put it
live. so probably another six months. And now the other side, you got
the business of people who are just constantly, you know, we need to go live
now. It doesn't matter, it doesn't have to be perfect. Let's put everything live.
The fact of the matter is, you can't be too much of either one of those
people. But you have to be enough of either of them. So a business person will
completely ruin an application or you know a project. A business person will
say, you know, if somebody's completely busy, how are we gonna make money focus?
They're gonna say, you know, let's put an ad here, here and here. Then we
worded that. Let's use those and let's use a native ad over here. Let's put
ads everywhere we can and completely ruin the experience for the user.
And then once the app goes live, you know, and it would go live whether it's ready
or not, because it's important we need to start making money for this thing. Every
day we waste, we're spending money, right? And then once it goes live, it's like
where do we put up next? Let's just start churning them out. Let's get the factory
going. Wait. What's ah.. What's popular in the App Store? Oh, let's do
what they're doing over there. I don't understand why it's popular.
Let's just do that, let's just copy them. Let's copy them. So like
a completely business focus is not gonna
help you. But on the other side, the artist can completely ruin the business
because the artist wants everything to be perfect. Or you know, they want
to you know, they don't want to ruin something by having too
many advertisements in it or they don't want to monetize it too much. They you
know they don't want to work on marketing it. They don't want to
go live or- and I say this, I know that might be
unfair for me to say, but we're not just developer. When I was developing
for companies, stuff like that, you had to pry the code from my cold dead git
repository. I was constantly like, I think I need another day. I think- I
know this- no we need to go live. It's fine. You know, I think
this could be better. I think this needs to be improved. Now these are like pilot-
okay, take it, take it, take it! So yeah. If you're like really passionate about
making them the perfect experience, a lot of times you'll never go live. Because
you're just- you just want everything to be perfect.
It's also, you as an artist, you don't want to to promote everything too
much. It's your own work. You're the biggest critic of it, right?
Like you see all the places which are not right. Then an example
of this is, if you ever hear somebody playing guitar and they're just like
blown away, but I think we know you don't know how to play guitar and they just go
(humming sounds) and they'll play it and then you go, that's really, really good! And they go
yeah, but I always mess up that note and you're like what note? Because
they're thinking about the little thing that they notice where nobody else
notices it. Or maybe like in a room full of a hundred people, two people might
notice it. So you kind of need to be both. You can't just be one or the
other. You know, this is something I struggle with a lot ,especially when we
put out the first app because I was completely in the dark about how much
marketing we needed. How much promotion. I talked about ads but it's
not just about ads. If you've ever worked with- like one thing, you look at
Hollywood. So Hollywood, you know most of the time, actors need to get
agents because actors are focused on their craft or engine. They're focused on
acting, they're not focused on telling everyone how great they are. They kind of
need somebody else to do that. I noticed this a lot with with applications too.
Like a lot of times people will hire an ASO person because or they'll hire
someone to do the marketing for them because they're, you know,
aware of all of the shortcomings of their application and
stuff like that. So in this whole you know the dichotomy of being- if
you're gonna be an Indie developer- and by the way, I would prefer to be an Indie
developer than working with somebody else. Like I don't want like a business
guy around, that I have to argue with all the time.
But you see, this dichotomy all the time in all kinds of
different areas, like again, let's go back to the Hollywood model. If you
you know lots of movies that are, you know, they're not focused on making money,
they win lots of awards. But they don't make any money. You see other movies
that are focused entirely on making money, but not on the story, there's no
art involved, that'll just you know, they're geared towards the big
blockbuster, or selling toys or whatever. It's the happy
medium that you're looking for. So, the biggest problem that indie app developers
have, in my opinion, now, you might disagree with me. Just let me know if you
disagree with me. The biggest problem any developers have
is that they're indeed- they're independent
It's also the biggest benefit they have. But you have to find that right mix/
You have to be split personalities. You have to approach the marketing side and
the monetization side with a different mentality as you do as the artist side.
Otherwise, you're never gonna make it work. That's my opinion. Anyway, boy,
that went on for a while today. That's it for today. I'll talk to you guys, tomorrow.
Monday. I'll talk to you guys, Monday.