Hey, this is the Daily Overpass! My name is Eric and I make apps! Now today, I want
to ask, "Is it worth it?"
Alright, so it's a beautiful morning. It's starting to turn a little bit more
from winter into spring, and it's a fantastic day. I thought I'd get out of
the office a little bit, come outside a little bit today. So, over the weekend, I
was watching - over last weekend I was watching a video where they were show
clips of different - one of these motivational ones, you see them all over
the place, and we're showing some clips from Warren Buffett. And he was talking
about his investing strategy where he only invests in things that he knows
really well. Things that he knows who has a good chance of making a return.
And I think, I was watching this and like everything I apply it to being
an app developer. Because one of the things we do as app developers is we're
constantly investing. I talked before a few years ago about how apps are - they're
not just apps something we do because they're fun, although sometimes we look
at apps as an investment. All the time and money I'm putting into this, am
I gonna make that back at least break even or is it just gonna be a sunk cost?
Yesterday, I was talking to a salesperson. It was like a ASO type of
company, so I thought, you know, they pick - I get contacted by a lot of ASO
companies as well, but yeah, might as well hear them out. So, we had a quick
chat and he was talking about some of the ASO strategies. I thought it sounded
pretty good, all the different machine learning techniques they had and
everything. I said, "Oh, that sounds - that sounds pretty good." When we got to the
price it was like - it was like pretty high. I was like, all of these kind of
services, they're really high. The question I had in my mind I could do
with everything else is, if I were to spend this much money would I make the
investment back? So, if I just feel like - so this we're talking like, we're talking
like nearly ten thousand pounds or ten thousand. Yeah, ten thousand pounds it was
a British company. So, we're talking about nearly ten thousand pounds and I
had to think, you know, if I spent ten thousand pounds and I've got back a
hundred thousand, then yeah, that would be a no-brainer. But the thing about
investments is you never know. With Ear Spy, I spent a couple hundred dollars,
oh no, a couple a couple of thousand dollars, you know, like less than
five thousand dollars for both the iPhone and the iOS app. It was, I
went really cheap. Over the years, I add a lots of stuff to it, so you know,
it's constantly evolving and stuff like that. But over the last
five years, it's made what 250 thousand something like that. Now, I have other
apps which I put a lot of time and more time and more money into, which just went
flat. So, it's constantly trying to think about this kind of stuff. Also
today, I have like a lot of interviews scheduled, so you know, I told you I was
gonna hire somebody. I got a lot of interview schedule. It's the same kind of
thing. My worry going into it is that am I gonna make the return back. If I
hire someone, are they gonna double my productivity? Are they gonna have it? It
was gonna be somebody who asked a lot of questions or is it gonna be something
that just like - it's gonna be something that just adds
another cost or is it something that's gonna actually help the company grow. It
should, I mean, it should do the latter if I'm doing my job right. And the thing
about this is, it's so hard to know for certain. If somebody - like if I
hire somebody, it's not as easy as if I hire somebody and I can fill out their
time for more than they make. It's more like can they release enough of my time?
Can they make things run more smoothly? Can they help us increase our income
going forward? And a lot of the type of things we invest in there's no - sometimes
the return we get back on them is not the route that we think. So, like
you learn a new technology which helps you get a job that you weren't expecting
to get, and then you learn a lot of other technologies which don't result in
anything. So, it's always trying to to produce and you know, I'm always
thinking - and one of the reasons why I'm not further along in life than I should
be is that I am a classic over-thinker. I overthink everything (laughs).
This is reason why the Overpass is still just me and my team overseas is
because I overthink everything like I'm doing now. So anyway, let me know
what you, guys, think. I mean, do when you release an app - I know we talked about
before it being, uh, being an investment. What was the big - let me just
ask you this - you don't have to say which app it was, you just give it like a ratio
if you don't want to give the actual price back. But let me know, talking about
the investment you made in an app, like your most successful, how much
if you invested into it and how much have you made back? I mean for me, there's
there's apps like I said I haven't made, that I haven't made back the initial
investment. But they're still on the market. They're still having downloads.
They're still having purchases. There's still some tweaking that needs to be
done, all that kind of stuff. So, I'm just - I'm not saying like in the future what
you're gonna have, but you know, what are some of the big benefits that you've had
over the years? Anyway, that's it for today. Hey, that's it
for this week. I'll talk to you, guys, on Monday!