So, this is 2018. So far, it doesn't look any different. But I have high hopes. So,
this is the Daily Overpass! My name is Eric and I make apps! Now today, let's set
our goals for 2018!
Hey! Happy New Year! Happy 2018! I hope you had a really good break! I mean, I really
enjoyed it! In fact, my favorite news story of the year came over the last
week and a half, which is Apple had to apologize for slowing down older
operating systems after it was found that they were doing that. I
wish I could say I didn't enjoy reading that news story so much, but I think just
after being - after all the trouble they've been giving developers over the
last few months, I just sort of like to see Apple squirm a little bit.
And I'm an Apple user. I use the Mac everyday. I use the iPad everyday. You
know, I've got several iPhones, but I just - I just enjoyed seeing them squirm.
And over the last week, the business has been going up and down,
revenues been peaking and has been falling, it's been very turbulent lately.
In fact, yesterday was like the lowest day for AdMob that I've had in months. I
mean, we're talking going back to July, so it's - yeah, hopefully that's not a trend
going forward. But I'm still optimistic about 2018. Now, I said over the break
that I'm - that I was gonna take the time off and I gave the team the time off. But
like every year, I probably spent every day, I've probably been in this office.
You're just working on the little things here and there, working on the goals for
the next year. I wanted to be more methodical this year thinking about what
do we want to accomplish in 2018 as a company, with the YouTube channel, you
know, different stuff like that. And like I said, before I'm a big believer in new
year's resolutions. it's a good time to to start anew. So, one of the things I was
working on over the last week and a half has been my goal list for the new year.
And I made it as a mindmap here and I basically put it into four different
sections. I've got my personal goal which is do something about this (points belly),
lose some weight, go to the gym, you know that kind of stuff. You know,
Overpass goals yield the direction of the company. Some things I want to try
over the next year on different ways. I want to deal with clients, the new
kind of clients, we want to go after that kind of stuff and team goals. So, things
that I could get the members of my team working on, so things don't get so stale
going forward, it can get very monotonous when we do
the same things over and over again. So, you know, some new things to focus on,
some new skills to learn, stuff like that. But the other section here is the
YouTube channel one. For this channel, I set a number of goals. Last year, at
the beginning of last year or the end of 2016,
my big goal was to do the daily video. So, I was doing the video every week for a
few years and I thought, I wonder if I could do it daily? I mean, we didn't
approve if I was able to do it daily and for the most part I did. I was able to
continue going forward, but there were a lot of things I noticed over the course
of the year that I wanted to improve upon. So I did go, you know, sit down and
think of some goals for the channel over the coming year. I wanted to share
those with you because I think one of the reasons I was able to keep up the
daily video was cuz I told you, guys, all about it. I yelled that first day, on like
the 3rd of January last year, I said, "Okay, from now on, I'm gonna do a daily video!"
And every time I thought about not doing it, I thought, "No, I told you, guys, I would."
So, it was good, continuous to the end of the year. And one of the things I was
thinking about towards the end of last year was do I continue doing it daily or
should I just go back to weekly, or so go to like 3 days a week. Or, you know, am i
spending too much time doing it, that kind of stuff. And a strange thing
happened over the the last week, over this past week of over the break, was
that I kept thinking about things I wanted to tell you about. I kept thinking
about things I wanted to talk about and I think, I've just gotten in a habit of
constantly looking for, you know, looking for relevant things in everything I read,
everything I do and I remember things that happen. You're working in different
places, I think about, "Oh, I can't wait to tell you, guys, about this..." And it was, you
know, and I started making lists of things, I thought, "You know what, we're
gonna continue the daily video going forward." I hope you, guys, don't get too
bored, but we're gonna - we're gonna see how far it
goes until we completely run out of things to talk about. So, that's
one of the new year's resolutions is just to continue doing the daily video.
But I might not beat myself up so much if I miss a day here and there. Like I
did last year. Another one, another goal I have - this is more of a personal
thing, you probably won't even notice this, is to think of topics more in
advance. Some days last year, I didn't know what I was gonna talk about until I
talked about it. I was just- I was - I'll be thinking
all afternoon what I'm going to talk about today, and then I'll come up with
something and then we'll talk about it or I'll just - a question will come in
the comments and we'll talk about that immediately. So now, I'd like to kind of
have at least a few days going forward, but still have the flexibility to be
able to answer questions if they come through. Because a lot of the questions
are really good and things that, you know, I didn't even think about or I
just think they're there. So, I think the answers are so obvious that I don't even -
I don't even think that to bring it up as a topic, but other people do. Like a
question I always get is, "How much do you make per download?"or "How many downloads,
yeah, if you may - if you have a thousand downloads, how much money would you make
from that?" But it's the question doesn't make sense because it's all about how
you're gonna monetize if it's an in-app purchases or through advertising or
whatever. You have to think about the different monetization options and
things like that. But to somebody just coming in that they don't know,
that's actually a legitimate question. And it's difficult to find the
information on. So, answering questions has always been very good. Another
goal and this one's gonna be personally very difficult for me is to
stop saying the weak words and the weak words are like: like, you know, uhm, ah, This is
something that has been pointed out to me several times before that I say those
too often. Especially "you know". You say "you know" too much and I know that. I do.
It's such a bad habit, so I probably already said it several times this video.
But I'm going to try to slow down and think about what I say before I say it,
and stop saying, "you know", "um", "like", and so forth. So, if you catch me on it, let me
know. But I'm gonna try really hard. I always notice when I'm editing the video
afterwards if I've done that. That's gonna be difficult. That's my
personal goal. We're gonna see if we could do that and get better at doing
this on a daily basis. And another one, I wanted to do and I wanted to start this
last year, was to do interviews on the channel. Every video I've done so far has
just been me. It's been me talking about my experiences, you know, how we're doing
things, things we found, doing little tutorials here and there.
But we don't talk a lot to other app developers. I mean, I do
personally, but I would like to do more interviews. Last year, I kept trying. I
don't know if you watch AppMasters with Steve P. Young, we kept trying to set up an
interview situation where we could - where I can interview him on the channel last
year, but because we have the 8-hour time difference season, I think it's in San
Francisco, I'm in England so we have 8 hours that was really difficult to
schedule that in. And we scheduled that several times and missed it. So, you know,
that was an example of doing something more than just me just talking on the on
the videos. Also, I spoken to Martin at How to Make Mobile Games about possibly
doing some some interviews or some collaborations. These are people who I
watch their channels and you learn a lot from, so it'd be good to bring them in
and ask them some questions that I have and things like that. And I also like to
talk to other app developers over the next year, maybe maybe once a week or
once every couple of weeks. I don't have anything booked yet. So, that's how
serious I am about this goal. But to talk to other app developers - and
I'm not talking about the big ones. I thought about maybe I could get
it - maybe I'm could go and visit King or maybe I could talk to the the Head of User
Acquisition at King or one of the big app developers. And I thought - actually
that's not really what I'm interested in. I mean, somebody who can afford to hire a
user acquisition specialist or somebody who has a big company where they could
just focus, they could put as much money as they need to into marketing, that's
not really who I'm interested in talking to. I'm talking - interested in talking to
the developers who are able to with a very small team with very small budgets.
Being able to achieve very big things because that what appeals to me.
So, hopefully and those are my goals for the channel over the next year. I'm gonna
try to realize those goals. But, you know what, I might not. Who knows? We'll
see. But I really appreciate you, guys, watching over the last year. For
those of you who've been with us over last year and for those of you who's
subscribing, we're gonna try to keep this daily video going. I look forward to 2018.
I wish you the best 2018! And that's it for today! We'll talk to you tomorrow!