Hi, this is the daily overpass, my name is Eric and I make apps!
Now today I wanna talk about how to maximize your earnings for your app!
Alright, so I'm back in the office today, it was yesterday that I spent the entire day
travelling for just a few hours of meetings!
And it was kinda nice, it's nice to get out of the office once in a while, but it's also
nice to just be back in the office.
I mean, it's nice to be in the office when you don't have a boss, I should say.
When you have a boss it's a completely different thing, you feel like there's someone looking
over your shoulder all the time, but it's nice when you have a place to just sit and
get on with what you're doing.
So today what I wanna do is answer a couple of questions that have come in over the last
few days.
The first one comes from Abby Dabby - by the way, when I answer questions, it's always
my opinion, it's not fact.
It's based on experience, so let me just put that out there.
I can say something, it doesn't mean it's 100% right, it's just 100% right as far as
I'm concerned.
So the first one comes from Abby Dabby, it says "make a video about how to maximize -", by
the way, I love it when you just tell me what to do, don't ask, just tell me, I respect
that, so.
"Make a video about how to maximize earnings from app.
I have app with a lot of downloads but revenue is very low."
Now this is a good problem to have!
One of the reasons why I always focus on downloads and we talk about downloads so often is because
that's like the first hurdle you need to get over.
And people have asked me about it, saying "Yeah, it's all well and good to have lots
of downloads, but what does that mean in terms of the bottom line, and in terms of revenue",
and they could be linked or not be linked, but I always think about it like if you have
a restaurant and it was unpopular and nobody walked in the doors, you don't sit there and
say "I don't understand why nobody's ordering the fish", your problem is getting people
in!
So if you have an app where people are downloading it and they're using it but you're not making
the revenue yet, then that's a really good problem to have.
You're getting the traffic which is what you need.
So now you have to think about - to switch analogies from restaurants to shops - you
have to think about how you're gonna put things in the app to get people to download them,
and this is a lot of trial and error, a lot of analytics, a lot of testing things.
So just like if I walked into a shop and I walked back out again because I can't find
what I'm looking for or nothing looks appealing, that's kind of the shop owners thing.
So the shop owner needs to think about how to display things, how to put things in the
right lighting or the right display, what goes on the end, all that kind of stuff.
And that's due to a lot of trial and error, which is the way that I think about it, that's
if you're going for the in-app purchase route in terms of monetising, which I'm going more
and more in that way because it's just been mostly advertising so far.
So start doing that, think about your users, how they come in and try to change different
things on the buttons.
You might have a button in the setting in the menu - this is what I did.
On my ear spy one I had, to make the purchases you had to go to the menu and then add features,
then it would give you the things you could buy, which people may or may not even see
that, so I moved that 'add features' as a button right on the front page, and then the
purchases just went up about three times, so about a 300% increase on sales which is
good.When I say 300% it's not world shattering because it went from making like £10 a day
to £30 a day for one of those in app purchases, but that's still really good.
So there's lots of things you can do there when you look at your app, and in terms of
in-app purchase.
And also think about ads - are you showing enough ads?
I know when I bring this up people say "I don't wanna irritate my users", and I hear
this all the time.
In fact, one of my favourite reviews - one of my favourite bad reviews - on the apps
is "I like this app, it's really good but it has too many ads".
And the reason that's my favourite review is because that's the exact same critique
I have of watching walking dead, or homeland, watching anything on television, it's like
"I like it, but I hate the ad breaks", but that's why it's free, that's why we don't
have to pay for it!
If I wanted to go buy the box set, I would pay that little bit extra, I would do that
'in-app purchase' if you will.
So people are always gonna complain about the ads and you have that fine balance.
You don't wanna show so many ads that they don't use the app anymore, but you don't wanna
show none because then you're not able to monetise it.
So at the end of the day, you need to be able to support your app, you know, people coming
in.
One thing I haven't tried yet, and I know it's been around for a while, is native ads.
And people have said "native ads are a game-changer" and all that kind of stuff, I just haven't
really used it yet, that's another thing to look at.
So you've got the in-app purchases, you've got advertisements or buy the pro version,
all that kind of stuff.
But it's a really good problem to have, getting the downloads is the first problem.
When you get people coming in then you need to think about showing the advertisements,
and not just advertisements, maybe rewarded videos or something like that, which have
a higher ECTM, but you still need a lot of ads in order to make a decent revenue off
of that.
So that was the first question, I hope that helps, if you have any follow up questions
let me know!
The other question I wanted to answer, I wasn't just gonna do this one because it's a bit
self-indulgent.
Abduaziz Kayumov said "Hi Eric, what does the overpass logo mean?
There are two lines and something like a water pipe...You should make a video about how to
design app logos."
I'm not the best with logos.
Now that Overpass logo up there, I know you guys give me such a hard time about it but
it's an overpass.
I'm gonna put up a picture of an overpass.
It's like you're standing underneath it and it goes up over you, like this.
And this was back in 2003 and I'd read something that you don't wanna use too many colours
for the printer and stuff like that, which is probably not relevant today, but I know
a lot of people don't realise that's what it is.
Even my kids, after years said "I didn't know that was actually supposed to be a bridge",
but that's what it is.
And the whole name Overpass, I mentioned this yesterday, when I found the name Overpass
I was trying to think of different names and I was typing in 'bridge' and all this kind
of stuff and I went into word thesaurus and just was typing in 'bridge' and 'satellite'
and all these different things that symbolise outsourcing or whatever, because that's what
I wanted to do, and then 'overpass' came up, and I thought "ooh, that sounds like a good
name".
And I looked at companies houses to see if it was registered, I looked at the domain
name, and I couldn't believe that nobody in the UK had registered that company name and
i thought"this is fantastic, what are the odds?!"
And then years later I found out that in England they don't actually use the word overpass,
they call it a flyover, which is kind of strange because all over the rest of the world they
use the term overpass, at least in English-speaking countries, but not in the UK, it's called
a flyover.
So I've been in meetings with people, like company owners, and they'll be like "so Eric,
I thought what we could do is, our two companies, our company and overdrive can work together"
and I say "it's overpass", "what?!", "It's overpass, it's not overdrive", "oh ok".
Or they'll call it 'overpath', and it really confuses people.
So I don't get that they don't get the logo but a lot of people don't like the logo, and
I've been told several times that it needs to be redesigned, and I just think, dude I
like it.
I'm gonna keep it until it becomes a problem!
So anyway, that's it for today, I will talk to you guys tomorrow!