Hey, this is the Daily Overpass, my name is Eric and I make apps! Now today, let's talk
about progressive web apps and the monetization problem!
Ok, so I nearly didn't get to the video today.
It's been a hectic day, I've been running around all day, it's like 10
o clock at night, as you can see it's already dark outside! But I've been thinking about
this question that came in all day long trying to think how to answer it because I'm not
an expert in this field and I'd like to get your guys opinion on this too. So on episode
358 there was a really good comment that came in from Jay mathew who said "hello Eric, I
love your videos and thanks for making them." Thanks Jay - I really appreciate you watching
them! "I too have a small business but in the states and would really like your thoughts
on a question of mine. As announced at google I/O I believe all web browsers now support
PWAs. I have been a native app developer in my past career for years but now thinking
about just learning and making PWAs as I don't have a lot of resources to handle natice apps
and a website. Should i go only PWA/website or have native apps also? I would like your
thoughts on the matter. Thanks". So for me, this is something I think about too. Especially
with all the problems that we have with the app store and it just seem like app stores
are getting more difficult going forward and browsers are just getting so much more capable
of doing things. Like, a lot of the stuff we do for clients, they have to be apps because
we do stuff like bluetooth, the list is getting smaller of things you can't do with a progressive
web app. So bluetooth, something with lots of data processing, which might slow down.
But a lot of the apps that you see out there, they could easily be PWAs. But the one thing
I always hit, because the reason I haven't really jumped into this fully yet is mainly
around the monetisation issue. The monetisation problems. So every google I/O and wwwdc that
comes out, they start talking about the new technologies like, every time there's something
new on Android auto, or when I got the new car I thought, maybe I could do an android
auto app, that would be really cool. Or the google home, doing the speaker, something
on google assistant,that would be really awesome to do something like that, but we always run
into the monetisation problem. Like, how do I make money with that?! It would be kinda
cool as a developer skill to say yeah, I can do stuff on that, but I don't understand how
to make money from it. I mean I could if it was something for clients. If it was a pizza
chain and they wanted to have an assistant app, a google assistant app where you could
say "I wanna order a pizza", that would make sense but I don't have a pizza chain and ads
don't really seem to work there and I'm not sure how in-app purchases work. So there's
always this...that's the reason I don't fully jump into that and I'm kind of late to join
that kind of thing too because I don't wanna waste a lot of time without doing that. Now
progressive web apps, that's not necessarily the case because there are monetisation options
in progressive web apps. You have ads obviously, and you do have other payment options. You
have stripe and paypal and things like that, but you don't have that simplicity of the
in-app purchase or just make the purchase of the app. One of the things I found captivating
about the mobile phone market was that I didn't have to ask people to get their credit card
and enter those details or anything, they already had it linked up to their iTunes account
or to their google play account. Other apps have got them to do that already! So it was
such an easy purchase decision and I like the idea of doing that. I was talking to somebody
just the other day over emails and he was saying that he has moved over to progressive
web apps and he is a html5 game, so all their games were on mobile but they moved them over
to html5, and my first question was - how are you monetising it? And of course it's
done through ads so, you know, they still have ads, the web has ads. But I still have
my fears about ad as a revenue stream. It seems like at some point somebody has to actually
sell something. It's like this big bubble where companies are buying ads so that you
go and...so I might spend money on ads so people will come into my app and my app I
can sell ads so that I would make a little bit of money and then other people make ads
and at some point somebody has to actually buy something, and that's one of the nice
things about having the in-app purchases. But I could be completely wrong about this.
I'm really intrigued by progressive web apps. I have a little bit of fear that, I guess
the fears that I have are fears that I won't be able to monetise it properly, like once
people have to put in their stripe account or their paypal details or give their credit
card out, maybe they might not wanna do that as easily as they would just making a purchase
through the app store. But on the other side, you have the better subscription model, you
could probably charge more because the app store has this expectation that everything
costs 99 cents or a couple of dollars, so that might work out better for you too, and
then the other fear that I have is that at the next google I/O or wwdc, they'll come
up with some new feature that will just be like, oh, we all have to do that. It will
be something so cool that it'll take 3 or 4 years for browsers to catch up with that
kind of functionality. So those are the three fears that I have, but those might be outdated
fears. You never get anywhere by being afraid of anything or being the last one to enter
a sphere, so I'm excited about progressive web apps. Also for the client opportunities.
So, if it's for the client opportunities, i think that's exciting, because I think if
clients come to us and say "we don't necessarily need an app but we need something", because
maybe it's a bit too heavy, the app stores, all that kind of stuff, a progressive web
app is something that they could use. But if it's something to actually monetise for
myself, something that sells something, that's the monetisation problem. i keep running into
that. So my question to you guys out there, i'm hoping you can help Jay with your thoughts
on this matter too because I am obviously not an expert in this matter. So, what are
your thoughts on it? If you're somebody whos making lots of money from progressive web
apps, I would definitely love to hear about it in the comments. or what kind of concerns
do you have about it? Do you jump full on into it? Because it is definitely exciting,
right?! If we could get around this whole app store stuff, that would just be awesome.
anyway, those are my thoughts for today. Jay, I'm sorry that's not a very good answer but
like I said, those are my thoughts on it. Anyway, that's it for today, I'll talk to
you guys again tomorrow!