Hi! This is A Minute Of Overpass. My name is Eric and I make apps. Now, this week I
wanna talk about "How we all need to be Marketers".
Okay, so last week I went to the YouTube creators event in London. So a couple
times a year YouTube will do this like creators day event where they'll invite
people down who have like more than a thousand subscribers to some of these...
some of the big hubs like London and other big cities to just learn a
little bit more about how to better optimize your channel, how to
get more followers all that kind of stuff. So there were people there from
from all over, you know they weren't app developers. I think I was the only
app developer there that they met but people like fashion bloggers,
prank bloggers. They're all different kinds of people who were
getting into the YouTube market and they they were building up their follower
bases and they were just basically trying to make money through
YouTube. Now I don't consider myself to be a YouTuber but I was really
interested in that whole world and I wanted to go down there. First of all, the
reason I was able to go is because our channel has more than like 2,000
subscribers now. And let me just say "Thank you!" because it was really nice to
be able to go and I never say thank you to you guys for subscribing. I really
really appreciate that.
Now my big concern with going to this event was that I was going to be like
the oldest guy there. I kind of thought what if everybody there's like 18 years
old and they're like all Minecraft video guys or whatever and you know I'll be in
there like I'm an app developer in my 40's so that would you know whatever but
luckily that wasn't the case.There were people there who are older than me,
people around my age. A lot of people were younger and they were from all
different niches. Some people fix old cars, other people were like in
fashion.
You know it was really interesting. Now the reason I bring this up because there
were a lot of similarities between these YouTubers and us app developers.
Now the reason I say that is because people getting into YouTube
is like a very crowded market, like they're following their passion. They're
talking about things that they're really interested in, and a lot of them,
speaking with them is like once they get into it they realize how
hard it actually is, like there are some YouTube channels and make it look so
easy like people just you know they'll put out a few videos and they have a
million subscribers and a lot of these people, you know a lot of
people that I met have like a few thousand and there were still
working at it. So they haven't given up on it but they had a little bit of
success and they were working at it. Which is very similar to us app
developers, like we see something like Flappy Birds or the Fart Machine or
something that looks deceptively simple or it is simple to begin with and it
really takes off and then we put out an app or we get into the app market
because we think I could do something like that. I could do something better
than that and once we get into it we realize, actually I have to work at this
a lot more. I mean it's a very crowded market just like the YouTube
market, right? So its you know and I just.... talking to people they start
to realize how much they have, how much self-promotion they have to do, how much
they had to promote their channels and there they started. They knew
the mechanics, they knew how to edit videos, they knew all this kind of stuff
and they knew their content really well, but they have to
learn the marketing side. Which is very similar to a lot of us app developers.
So we put an app out there and we kind of hoped that it would just take off but
it doesn't because it's a crowded market so we really really have to work at it.
We have to learn loads of soft skills, like how do I get this in front of
people. What's going to make people interested. You know when
you look at your screenshots you can't just put the screenshots of the app out
there. You'll have to think what's the thing that will entice them in and how do I get
them to find it? and things like that and you know I just saw so many
similarities. And one of the big thing was, you know I was talking to a
few people, they had this mingling event afterwards. I was talking to a few people
and one of the things I said was "You know for me the hardest thing about
doing the YouTube videos was just getting in front of the camera, like my first
few videos which is like PowerPoint and just talking over it because I was really
really nervous" and everybody else I spoke to said like the
exact same thing. They said oh yeah I know I was so nervous I was such a
nervous wreck and but they pushed through that and it was it was really
really interesting, so you know and a lot of us app developers were either at the
state where
we're just starting an app or we're building an app but we don't want to release it
or we have an app on the market but it's not doing well and we're thinking
oh well I guess I'll just move on to the next thing but that's not the answer
just like this...We live
in a very crowded world where you know there's so much to pay
attention to and if you want to be noticed and if you want your app to be
noticed you have to really work. You have to work to get in front of people. You
have to go whether it's going on Twitter and finding people
who are interested in your topic and tweeting at them or
making a target audience and advertising at the Facebook or whatever.
You have to think about that one thing. Thousands of apps gets
submitted to the app store every day and how do I get mine out there and if
you're releasing an app or if you have one that you're about to release or if
you released one, you have to stop thinking of yourself as just an app
developer and you have to think of yourself as a marketer. The same way
those YouTube people do. The same way the authors do. The same way we all do.
We can't just create it and expect people will find it. We have to
work at it and you know what? It was the same when I was creating my first step. I
mean my first app idea I had, I wrote down like a specification and
it was like I want to do like a body alarm type of thing, like something that
will alert if you're walking late at night, and yeah it was a dumb idea.
I never actually did it but the thing is I wrote that down and then I thought
about it for months and never did anything. I mean I may have
started a few projects coding it but I never went through with it because
having an idea is easy, actually implementing it is hard and when you
implement it and no one downloads it, that's really hard. So you know but just
the thing about going to this event is realizing that there's a
lot of people in the same boat we are. They put something out there,
all of their friends see it.
Everybody knows that they're doing it and they're saying oh yeah well I guess
it didn't work out but they're not giving up.
We just have to push forward on that. They have to keep going and let me tell
you what has an app developer, I know how hard it is, like you may have released an
app and is not doing well,
dude I know what that's like and let me just tell you what I have your back.
I'm rooting for you. You know we all have to stick together. I mean that this
channel, every time I learn something new I'll tell
you about it. I hope you do the same. I hope you start exploring YouTube and
start sharing a different ways that you're marketing your stuff too, because
marketing is what we really have to do. So that's it for this week. It's a bit
rambly, a bit all over the place. I hope that's okay.
Also one thing about this YouTube event is talking to other people as they had
really good video so I have tried to up my game with a better camera. I hope
you've noticed better microphone and well, we'll see how it goes, right? That's
it for this week. I'll talk to you next week!