Hi! This is the Daily Overpass, My name is Eric and well.. How do I say it?
I make apps. That's my thing. This week, I'm going to
make it sound spontaneous everyday. I'm going to try to make it- I almost keep
saying the same thing. I'm gonna change it up a little bit. That's my challenge for
myself this week. So, today I want to talk about the new Google Play Policies and
how they're affecting me. But first, I want to show you this cool intro that
was just sent in this morning.
Oh, was that awesome or what? That was actually- a big thanks to Ken York who's in Tokyo. He's an American living in
Tokyo. You see him in the comments as YD Digital. He sent that through to me
this morning and says, "Hey, Eric! You know, you need a new intro!" he said. Send that
through and I was like kind of like more- we were already working on one
coz I thought, when we get to episode 100, we'll do like a new intro.
Because we keep doing it over and over again. So, Sandee, our designer,
she's had it on her to-do list to work on a new one. It was to be really short
but then Ken send that one through, and I just thought it was pretty
awesome. Let me know what you guys think. And thanks very much again, YDdigital
and everything like that. It looks- that's what- so that's
what the logo is. That's what logo is. Today, I want to talk about
Google Play policies and they've changed in the last few weeks. I think
to coincide with Google I/O. There's been so many changes lately with the
Google Play. Anyway, you may have seen a comment up on episode number 91 from
Arsad Rahman, thanks so much Asad- Arsaud- sorry, Arsad for bringing
this up. He said, "Did you check a developer policy that they updated? Seems
like your application Ear Spy violates the policy malicious behavior."
Actually, I had seen it before you brought that up, Arsad. It was one with
these things, where I was going through and looking at the new policies, and
everything which is, I don't do for fun. But you know, and finally I thought, okay
I'll check out to see if there's anything different. Then sure enough
like under malicious behavior, there's this rule there which is it
was for app set monitor and track user behavior. We use firebase analytic.
I thought, well, that kind of applies us. And the first one of the list is: apps
must not present themselves as a spying or secret
surveillance solution. Of course, my biggest app is called Ear Spy so you
know, we have this- my idea for an app was to have something like
a hearing augment, or so that the sound comes in through the speaker, goes out
through the headphones. We have a little graphic equalizer and you can
adjust it. I thought, actually what you could do is if you have
Bluetooth, you could be like- it can be like a spy device. So, we did the
two versions of the app. We have Ear Assist and we have Ear Spy. Ear assist
does okay. It's just like a couple hundred downloads a day. It's
like the hearing aid app. We got ear spy. The Spy App. Exactly the same.
Nothing's different about it, except one's blue and one's red. Ear Spy
gets between, you know, five or six thousand downloads a day. T
That's the one that generates almost all of my revenue. My
heart sank when I read that and my first instinct was to just hope for
the best. I can't say a lot. It's the same way I think
about if I find a mole or something. I just keep an eye on it.
You know, because I already have a few strikes against- we have a
couple strikes against me with Google Play, I thought, actually that's not a
really good policy. Plus, if they suspend it, it's just
gone. So, according to Google Play developer Paul, the console,
they send the things, they check your policies, you have 30 days to comply. If
you're out of the policy, everything. So, this week, I spent- well I did a lot
of work on client work this weekend. I also spent a lot of time trying to
think of new names. I would start- I think of something that rhymed like ear
fly, ear guy or something. Then in the end, we just went with ear agent.
That's what we're doing at the moment. We're going through and renaming it Ear
Agent, which is- it just kills me. Why? Because if you type in spy,
depends on the country that you're in, but in most countries, if you go to Google
Play and type "spy", my app will be the first one. We just rank really well
for that keyword. So, every time there's somebody talks about
Android security issues or spying on users or whatever, if somebody goes to
investigate it, ours will come up first. We don't do any of that stuff. I mean,
all I have is Firebase Analytics and AdMob .Even then, we don't
do anything online. We don't try to transmit any signals or whatever.
It's like, I could go to Toys R Us and find a second toy. This I
shouldn't admit this. But I've seen toys at Toys R Us. Since I put this
app out , that the exact same thing, just for kids. But the language, the
wording of that that policy just scares me. I try to email a few people,
thinking, well maybe if I just take analytics out then that'll
be compliant. And I thought, no- I mean for those of you who've gotten that dreaded
email that says we suspending your app and you go through the appeals process,
it's not the most friendly thing in the world. The time I went through it
before, it was just like you know they'll send one response, yes or no.
I don't think that- I don't know how much thought they put into it. If you go
in and try to just go through the help and just try to get them to to
advise on it, they won't do that .It just says we won't- they don't provide
guidance. You just have to read the policy. It was, do we you bite the
bullet and change it, or do we just hope for the best. So in the end, at first,
I was like we're just gonna hope for the best. I thought that's stupid if they
removed that, if they let's say ,that's too many strikes. They suspend my whole
account then we lose everything. The language games, everything else.
I would be like, I'd be an app developer who only does iPhone apps and
that would really, really suck. We're in the process of changing that.
When I say the process, it should be easy except for this guy here,
is a big localization guy. I had it translated into helpful every
language at Google Play has. A lot of them was- the strings that XML
and the Android app that's easy. Because it's just the name.
But it's all the descriptions and stuff.
Actually it's the same. It doesn't do anything. Oh well, I mean, it does.
It's good and people use it. They'll put in the comments, I use it for
nature. I usually listen to ghost or you know ghost hunting or whatever. Mechanic
fixing mechanics or whatever. They say, I don't actually use it for spying, but, you
know, that's this. That's the sexiness of- that's the
sex appeal of the app. We're going to call it Ear Agent. We went through
loads of different names over the weekend. just trying and we went with ear agent
because then we don't have to change icon, we're going to take
everything that says spy or surveillance or you know eavesdropping.
We're gonna remove all those really great keywords that people-
I mean, to give you an idea what made me think that this was a
really good thing. It's like, I'm not a creepy guy, every time I think
about enhancing this I think, we could have it like, you can upload it to a
website and then you can listen to from remote places and everything.
I thought that's way too creepy. I won't-
I won't do that. It's just, first of all, that it's probably
illegal anyway. It's just like, as a user, I think it's too
creepy. We're always the furthest. You can get away from-
from the- if you have a Bluetooth, maybe you can put it in the next room
the same way you can with the baby monitor, so it doesn't transmit
anything, anything like that. I mean, I've been really careful
with that. But at the same time,, when I tell people about the app you
know I I tell them l was walking- like because
it's kind of embarrassing. Every time I want to make a change to it,
some things just don't really go with the whole theme. So, we're changing this.
I was gonna say a few years ago I've met with a client, one of my early
clients and he was like asking about some my apps. I told him Ear Spy. He
goes, I saw that on your website.What does it do? He was-
he downloaded on his phone. He goes- it was weird to enter. You think I could
hear those people over there? It was the way he hunched his shoulders up and just
sort of did that. It was like this mischievous thing that I thought, maybe
I should keep going with this. I kind of went with the whole creepiness thing,
even though it does the exact same thing as the ear assist does. Which is
just augment your hearing. Anyway, that's what I'm doing now and it pains
me. So, like a week from now, I might have a lot less money. All this
kind of stuff I'm going through now. I made all the changes in this strengths
are config, all the English versions, but I gotta go find some
translators to do all the other ones. The thing is if you go through Google Play,
they have this translation services and they quoted me like, I think
already it's like $1400 and that's like just the descriptions which is
ridiculous I can get- I didn't cost me that much when I got it
done to begin with. S,o anyway, I'll keep you guys posted on how that goes.
If you- and another thing is we have so many- there's so many copycats
like they use the same red and black colors. The same spy thing they put it in
a medical category. The lot of them use the same name, they use the same
description, we have to keep reporting them all the time. Then what am I
going to do I'm going to go ahead and change it, right? It just feels so
counterintuitive, but as I've said before, you don't mess with Google. Anyway, so
my hope is that- because so many reviews, because it has so many
downloads, that it's going to somehow keep up in the rankings
as opposed to where is if it got suspended. And I had to start again, that
would be really bad. I'd have to start all over again with a new keywords and
do all that kind of stuff. And I'll be you know competing against
all my copycats then. Hopefully, everything will be moving up,
kind of see it as in the Mafia movies where the Mafia ,they
literally make all that dirty money from drugs and gambling. And then
they go legit, the new design is going to help me go legit. I'll be less
embarrassed about it and then we could put some new features in there. Hopefully,
just focus on the hearing amplification part.
Anyway, from an ASO point of view I'm crushed from a marketing point of
view, all the stuff, we put out there all the ads. Everything, it's all going to
be have, going to have the wrong name on it. Anyway, we'll
see how that goes. But it's been a- I said last week is a turbulent week. it's
turbulent, it's been a terrific turbulent week over the last week.
That's it for today! Thanks again Ken, for that intro. That new intro, will use that
for a while. Let me know what you guys think of. That and then. That's it!
I'll talk to you guys tomorrow.