Hey this is the Daily Overpass, my name is Eric and I make apps. Now today, let's
talk about how we're always working on shaky ground.
This morning I read an article on the Forbes website that was published a few days ago about the
shooting at YouTube a few weeks ago. It was called demonetization in
YouTube or something like that. I'll put a link to it in the comments.
But it was a really good article all about how there's a sense of entitlement
about YouTube demonetizing some people's videos when they work very hard
on them and they feel like the ground has been pulled up from
underneath them, but I mean, one person obviously took it more
seriously than others because they went in and started shooting at YouTube.
But it was all about the sense of entitlement and all this kind of stuff,
and I thought it was a really good article, a very good commentary,
especially for us as app developers because a lot of what we do, we don't
really know, I mean we are at the beck and call of Google a lot of the times
too, or Apple or whatever, app 11 or whichever ad network we happen to be
using, and a lot of times I get emails from people saying AdMob
has disabled me or they're limiting the amount of money I can make -
all this kind of stuff. What should I do? We could talk about a few different
things - how to get your users up and get downloads up, everything like
that, but sometimes we are on we are shaky ground,
there's nothing more you could do, you have to try something else,
which is not really very good. Every time I show you guys
my revenue, and I've done it a couple times in the past where I say how much
I've made on the different ad networks, everything like that,
part of me hesitates because I don't want you to think
that it's easy to do and also that it's permanent. One of the
things I'm always conscious of is that that could go away at any point. I
left a stable, secure job, well as stable and secure as jobs could go, to
do something on my own where I realized that I'm on shaky ground all the time.
The app market could go away, my ads could
stop making me money, lots of different stuff could happen. The same
was with youtubers and stuff like that, you know. It doesn't
always go up and up and up, there's gonna be peaks and valleys, and
Google could change their mind at any moment. And all the time I think
about the digital, I'm old enough to remember - well we're all old
enough to remember, photos, you know, film. But when we had photo mats and
everything like that, you'd take your film in to be developed and entire
industries were disrupted by the digital camera and industries are being
disrupted all the time. When I worked in the corporate environments I
worked with a lot of people who thought their jobs were totally safe and secure,
and there have been times where I saw mass layoffs or a lot of
redundancies go through, and people were just not prepared that the
rug was swept out from underneath them and they thought they were on safe,
secure, solid ground, but nobody is. Because things could change all the time.
One of the things about working for myself is I realize this and I know this
at all times. Always trying to learn, always trying to improve, always
trying to think, what's going to be next? If this fails, where do we go to next?
A lot of times I say, somebody asked a few weeks ago, why don't I just focus
on passive income? And I'm so glad he said on passive income and not
just apps, because we don't know if apps are gonna continue to make money.
I mean, hopefully they will - I've got a lot of
chips on the table and that's what I'm putting most of my energy into, but I'm
also very aware of the fact that some new technology could come
along and we could be doing something else. It could be a new platform
that's more open than Android or the app store, sorry Google
Play or the App Store. Android is pretty much open and I always have to
realize, and you always have to realize too, that we are operating on shaky
ground. The nice thing about taking control of
your future and actually embracing the fact that we work on shaky ground
that there is no safety net underneath us,
that we're always ready to fight if we have to, we're ready to go
out there and find a job if we need to. We are always prepared and we're always
trying to be marketable and always trying to be ready for the worst to
happen. Whereas if we were nice fat and comfortable working in a big office we
might not see it coming before it hits us and we're just completely out
on the street, unskilled, not ready and just talking about how unfair it is. So
anyway, I guess I've been a bit negative today, it's just kind of my thoughts
today, what do you guys think? What do you think about the
future of the app market for one? Do you think it's gonna keep going on for ever
and ever? Do you think it will evolve like the web has evolved or do you think
that something new will come along? Like machine learning, something like that.
In 5 years time all of our apps are gonna look old and
outdated I imagine, but you know there'll be something new that comes along,
probably still be mobile phones though - that's just too convenient, at least
in my opinion. So what do you guys think? What do you think the future brings?
Anyway, that's it for today I'll talk to you tomorrow.