Under the Radar

00:00:00 ◼   ► Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development.

00:00:04 ◼   ► I'm Mark Orment.

00:00:05 ◼   ► And I'm David Smith.

00:00:06 ◼   ► Under the Radar is never longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.

00:00:11 ◼   ► So today we wanted to talk again about the App Store and about how the App Store is changing

00:00:17 ◼   ► over time and especially around this time when iOS 10 is coming out and things are changing,

00:00:23 ◼   ► and especially this year where it seems like for the first time we're having all of this

00:00:27 ◼   ► change and tumult in the App Store where we're getting subscription model changing, there's

00:00:35 ◼   ► search ads coming, they're purging old apps from the App Store, they're changing app review,

00:00:40 ◼   ► timing, all kinds of things are changing in the App Store.

00:00:42 ◼   ► And all that change recently made me take a look back and do what I love doing most,

00:00:50 ◼   ► which is making a chart.

00:00:51 ◼   ► Of course.

00:00:52 ◼   ► Any time I kind of feel nostalgic or curious, I'll try and make a chart out of that.

00:00:57 ◼   ► And so what I did, and this is a lot of what we're going to start talking about, is an

00:01:00 ◼   ► article I wrote called "Evolving App Store Business Models," which I'll have a link to

00:01:05 ◼   ► in the show notes.

00:01:06 ◼   ► A lot of these things I feel are so easy to get stuck on the way you feel now, and these

00:01:12 ◼   ► slow gradual changes are hard to really pin down for what's actually been happening in

00:01:17 ◼   ► the App Store.

00:01:18 ◼   ► Because it's been quite a while since I submitted my first app.

00:01:22 ◼   ► I think my first app I submitted almost eight years ago, and a lot's changed since then.

00:01:28 ◼   ► And the interesting thing that I found is when I went back to my App Store sales data,

00:01:33 ◼   ► as far back as I had kept it, and honestly I really wish I had my data all the way back

00:01:38 ◼   ► to eight years ago, but I just don't.

00:01:41 ◼   ► Like I consolidated into a new reporting system only three or four years ago, and so I only

00:01:47 ◼   ► have data back then.

00:01:48 ◼   ► But nevertheless...

00:01:49 ◼   ► You should release that.

00:01:50 ◼   ► Oh, it's awful.

00:01:51 ◼   ► It is one of those classic projects, which I'm sure any developer can appreciate, where

00:01:55 ◼   ► it is designed to work for nobody but me.

00:02:00 ◼   ► I do weird things.

00:02:03 ◼   ► It makes no sense to anybody but me, but for me it's perfect.

00:02:06 ◼   ► And I have to run six scripts to get all the data in in the way I like it, but it works

00:02:11 ◼   ► for me.

00:02:12 ◼   ► So I would not recommend...

00:02:15 ◼   ► If you're looking for a sales and reporting system, I'm sure there are many great hosted

00:02:18 ◼   ► providers to do what you want to do.

00:02:21 ◼   ► Don't roll your own.

00:02:22 ◼   ► I can tell you.

00:02:23 ◼   ► It's terrible.

00:02:25 ◼   ► But if you have this data, you can go back and look at it.

00:02:28 ◼   ► The most striking chart, and I think the thing that is most strongly drawn attention to this

00:02:33 ◼   ► article was I did a chart of the percent of my revenue from three different sources, from

00:02:38 ◼   ► an app purchase, from paid sales, and from advertising.

00:02:42 ◼   ► And the truly remarkable thing from that graph is the way that advertising has just been

00:02:48 ◼   ► steadily clawing away at paid sales over the last four years in such a linear and clear

00:02:56 ◼   ► way that when I first saw it, I was like, "Wow, my data's broken.

00:02:59 ◼   ► There's no way there's this linear of a progression.

00:03:02 ◼   ► I'm doing something wrong in my analysis."

00:03:04 ◼   ► But turns out, check the data, this is what it is.

00:03:06 ◼   ► I went from a period in the beginning of 2012 where only about 10% of my revenue came from

00:03:12 ◼   ► advertising, and now it's getting close to about 80% of my revenue comes from advertising.

00:03:19 ◼   ► And interestingly, over that period, in-app purchase in revenue has remained almost constant.

00:03:25 ◼   ► Not quite.

00:03:26 ◼   ► It's certainly gone up and down, but roughly it's been hovering around 15% to 20% of my

00:03:31 ◼   ► revenue.

00:03:33 ◼   ► And that's kind of fascinating to me because it shows how, in sort of stark numbers, how

00:03:38 ◼   ► the App Store has been changing in a way that I kind of feel that this has been changing.

00:03:43 ◼   ► It's kind of the old thing we've talked about for so long about the race to the bottom,

00:03:48 ◼   ► about lack of trials or the death of a paid model or the devaluing of software.

00:03:55 ◼   ► All these things that you could kind of—the things that we talk about as software developers,

00:03:59 ◼   ► I always find it reassuring rather than just kind of wishy-washy talking about things,

00:04:02 ◼   ► to actually look at the numbers and say, "Is that actually true?"

00:04:06 ◼   ► And yeah, as somebody who has been doing this full-time, who's been doing it with a lot

00:04:09 ◼   ► of apps, who's been doing it—probably more importantly, who's tried about every

00:04:15 ◼   ► business model you can think of, the ones that have worked over time has changed.

00:04:20 ◼   ► And the business model now that seems most reliable for me is advertising.

00:04:24 ◼   ► And paid sales are now a vanishingly small percentage of my app.

00:04:28 ◼   ► And even more crazy is when I look at the chart, you can see part of what makes paid

00:04:32 ◼   ► sales so terrible because there's these massive spikes where I launch a new app, big

00:04:37 ◼   ► spike in paid sales, and then it just falls off again.

00:04:40 ◼   ► And that, more than anything else, is the thing that I really don't like about paid

00:04:44 ◼   ► sales and how just volatile that is when you're trying to make a living from it.

00:04:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, we've all—anybody who's ever had a paid app in the store has seen

00:04:52 ◼   ► this exact same pattern before.

00:04:55 ◼   ► If you're lucky, you have the launch where you have a decent spike.

00:04:59 ◼   ► And then no matter what, no matter how lucky you were at launch, it just drops off after

00:05:03 ◼   ► a few days probably at most and starts to level off into basically a slowly declining

00:05:10 ◼   ► plateau after that of sadness and uncertainty.

00:05:15 ◼   ► And what I found is that every time—if I have a paid app, suppose I do a 2.0 or a 3.0,

00:05:21 ◼   ► like a major update, even if they get a lot of press, I might get spikes on that day,

00:05:28 ◼   ► but it's never as high as the initial launch spike.

00:05:31 ◼   ► And every spike you have subsequent to an app's launch is usually smaller than the

00:05:37 ◼   ► one before it, to the point where now even major holidays don't really impact me at

00:05:41 ◼   ► all.

00:05:42 ◼   ► It used to be like Christmas used to be a major sales day, and now paid apps don't

00:05:46 ◼   ► even do that well on Christmas.

00:05:48 ◼   ► It's kind of sad, really, but I guess it does—as you're saying here, it really

00:05:52 ◼   ► does reflect the reality of what people are doing.

00:05:55 ◼   ► Regardless of how we think things should be or how we wish things would be, this shows

00:06:01 ◼   ► what people are actually doing, how people are choosing to spend money or not spend money

00:06:05 ◼   ► in the App Store, I think is very clear here.

00:06:07 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think it speaks to also how—I look at this graph and I think to myself how

00:06:14 ◼   ► glad I am that I've been willing to experiment a lot, because the thing that I think is most

00:06:21 ◼   ► dangerous in the App Store is not being flexible and not trying new things and not moving around,

00:06:28 ◼   ► because there have definitely been times as I've gone through this where I'm like,

00:06:32 ◼   ► "Oh, do I really want to do that?

00:06:33 ◼   ► Do I not want to do that?"

00:06:36 ◼   ► And it's interesting to see so clearly that if I hadn't—if I'd been stuck on one

00:06:41 ◼   ► model, if I'd said, "No, this is how I'm going to sell my software," it just wouldn't

00:06:45 ◼   ► have worked.

00:06:46 ◼   ► If my revenue was just my paid sales number, for example, if that's what I'd stuck to

00:06:51 ◼   ► and committed to, I would be consulted at this point, almost certainly, or I'd be

00:06:56 ◼   ► working a nine-to-five job somewhere.

00:07:00 ◼   ► I would not be able to live on that diminishingly small part of the pie now.

00:07:06 ◼   ► And so by being a little bit flexible on that, it's reassuring that that was the right

00:07:13 ◼   ► choice, because at the end, what I wanted was to be an independent, to be able to make

00:07:17 ◼   ► that software I want to make and then make a living from it.

00:07:21 ◼   ► To do that, it's like, this is what that takes, and this is what that looks like now,

00:07:25 ◼   ► I suppose.

00:07:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, if you look at your graph, the one that's not 100 percent graph, but the

00:07:31 ◼   ► one that's just a pure, spiky graph, it's interesting to note that you basically are

00:07:36 ◼   ► making a pretty similar salary steadily since about 2013.

00:07:41 ◼   ► And if you subtract the advertising from that, you see what I think most developers have

00:07:46 ◼   ► seen since 2013, which is a slowly declining curve and a lot of sadness as things decline

00:07:53 ◼   ► and seemingly can't get back up.

00:07:55 ◼   ► So really, which we're going to talk a little more about, it seems like advertising has

00:08:00 ◼   ► kind of, maybe not saved you, but certainly has been a massive part of your success over

00:08:07 ◼   ► the last few years, and it seems like that is the missing part that a lot of us indies

00:08:13 ◼   ► have not had over the last few years, to keep it steady.

00:08:16 ◼   ► Instead, we only have those paid sale and maybe, if we're lucky, in-app purchase sales

00:08:21 ◼   ► like what you have, but they have about the same shape that your graph has, which is everything

00:08:25 ◼   ► getting harder and harder and harder and money just getting lower and lower over time.

00:08:32 ◼   ► And the willingness to experiment is literally what's making your business now, because

00:08:38 ◼   ► you can experiment with different apps, but if everyone experiments with different apps,

00:08:42 ◼   ► but only one or two payment models, you're missing out on part of the experimentation.

00:08:48 ◼   ► In your case, experimenting with ads and various in-app purchase schemes has really helped

00:08:53 ◼   ► you quite a bit over anybody who just tried to sell an app for a few bucks and hope that

00:08:57 ◼   ► it works, because that can work, but it's certainly a lot harder to make that work,

00:09:01 ◼   ► and I think over time it's working less.

00:09:03 ◼   ► >> Steve- Yeah, and I think it speaks to also something that I've found that's an unintended

00:09:08 ◼   ► benefit of advertising for me is the reliability of the income that it gives.

00:09:15 ◼   ► And that's certainly not to say that it's not the same day to day, and advertising is

00:09:19 ◼   ► notorious for especially the first day of a new financial quarter and especially the

00:09:24 ◼   ► first day of a new year falling off cliffs, because everyone's ad budgets, they spend

00:09:31 ◼   ► them up and then you get to the end of the month, the end of a quarter, and they're like,

00:09:34 ◼   ► "Oh no, we got all this money, let's just spend it," and your rates go up nicely, and

00:09:38 ◼   ► then the first you hit, January, February, March, and then all of a sudden it just falls

00:09:43 ◼   ► off.

00:09:44 ◼   ► So it's not like it's completely reliable, and once you've been through one of those

00:09:46 ◼   ► crazy cliffs once or twice, you kind of know what you're looking at.

00:09:49 ◼   ► But what I find fascinating is on a day to day basis, my sales income from paid things,

00:09:55 ◼   ► where I'm relying on somebody to open their wallet and hand me $2, the variability I found

00:10:02 ◼   ► between that has always been way higher than from advertising base.

00:10:06 ◼   ► And I think it's largely because advertising is functionally a measure, it's like this

00:10:12 ◼   ► rough measure of the engagement of users in my application.

00:10:16 ◼   ► How many times they're opening it, how long they're opening it, it's that overall usage

00:10:20 ◼   ► number, and that number is very stable to a certain point.

00:10:28 ◼   ► You hope your app brings on more users than it loses as you go, so that you need those

00:10:38 ◼   ► downloads at the beginning, and then you have some kind of retention over time, that some

00:10:42 ◼   ► people will stop using your app, and then they're replaced hopefully by new people.

00:10:46 ◼   ► And if that number is gradually working its way up, in order for your income to go down,

00:10:51 ◼   ► obviously the rates can drop, which sometimes happens, but usually they're fairly stable,

00:10:55 ◼   ► and so as a result, your income just becomes fairly flat, because it's only increasing

00:11:01 ◼   ► or decreasing by the very slow adjustments from the amount of new users you get and the

00:11:07 ◼   ► number of users that you're losing.

00:11:10 ◼   ► And so if you have a big spike in new users, it's like, "Yay!"

00:11:13 ◼   ► That won't actually make a big difference to your revenue that day, though.

00:11:18 ◼   ► That spike gets averaged out over the next few months as your daily active sessions,

00:11:25 ◼   ► or whatever the right measure would be, slowly works its way up.

00:11:28 ◼   ► And say you make a change and people don't like it and they leave the app, that'll likely

00:11:35 ◼   ► be offset in the same thing.

00:11:37 ◼   ► That is a gradual decline, and that, as an independent, as somebody who pays my mortgage

00:11:44 ◼   ► with my app revenue, that is so reassuring, this feeling that I don't have to check

00:11:50 ◼   ► my sales report every day and worry that, "Has this been a good weekend?

00:11:57 ◼   ► For a while I had apps that would do really well on Sundays, and sometimes I'd have

00:12:02 ◼   ► a Sunday where my sales just wouldn't be what they were."

00:12:05 ◼   ► And it's like, "Whoa!

00:12:07 ◼   ► There goes 15% of my weekly revenue because it was a holiday or because there was an issue

00:12:14 ◼   ► on the App Store and payments weren't processing for a few hours, which is something that's

00:12:18 ◼   ► happened before."

00:12:19 ◼   ► And you look at those and you're like, "Whoa!

00:12:20 ◼   ► This is really scary!"

00:12:21 ◼   ► But at least with advertising and that kind of a model, and you'd say in some ways subscriptions

00:12:25 ◼   ► have a similar kind of feel to them, but it's lovely to have the sense of these slow increases

00:12:32 ◼   ► and slow decreases over time rather than these huge spikes that are up and down, which are

00:12:36 ◼   ► just so stressful.

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00:14:50 ◼   ► All right, so we've been talking about ads and your transition to a diversified income

00:14:56 ◼   ► stream that includes ads in your apps.

00:14:59 ◼   ► And this got me thinking a while back, you know, maybe I should try ads in Overcast.

00:15:07 ◼   ► Because the problem I was facing, so I wrote this big blog post kind of explaining all

00:15:11 ◼   ► this in more detail, but Overcast has had three business models now.

00:15:18 ◼   ► The first year roughly, it was, I always wanted it to be free up front because I have a lot

00:15:25 ◼   ► of reasons why I want this, why basically market share is more important to me than

00:15:29 ◼   ► total revenue for this app.

00:15:31 ◼   ► I really want maximum market share and I'll try to get enough revenue somehow once I have

00:15:35 ◼   ► that.

00:15:36 ◼   ► So I have the very first year, I have free up front and you get some of the features,

00:15:42 ◼   ► but you don't really get the best features.

00:15:44 ◼   ► Things like smart speed and voice boost and like full playlists and everything.

00:15:47 ◼   ► It was pretty limited and it was really annoying with like how much in the app it was limited.

00:15:52 ◼   ► It basically, it was not a very good app in its limited state.

00:15:57 ◼   ► And yet, the vast majority of my users were using it in that state because most people

00:16:00 ◼   ► didn't buy the one time $5 an app purchase to unlock the cool stuff.

00:16:06 ◼   ► So trying to combat that problem, about a year ago I switched to every feature was free

00:16:13 ◼   ► and you just pay me what you want basically.

00:16:16 ◼   ► I did a monthly subscription, a dollar a month and you could buy it ahead as long as you

00:16:21 ◼   ► wanted.

00:16:22 ◼   ► It was a lot of renewing.

00:16:23 ◼   ► It was the old kind of subscription where it doesn't auto renew.

00:16:25 ◼   ► So you could basically just buy it for five years if you wanted to give me a bunch of

00:16:28 ◼   ► money or just buy it for three months if you wanted to try it out.

00:16:32 ◼   ► But you didn't really get anything for that.

00:16:34 ◼   ► And I was kind of banking on people's goodwill and it did work, just not enough.

00:16:39 ◼   ► It did work enough to get me a little over like I think just about 1.5% or so or 2% roughly

00:16:48 ◼   ► of users to actually pay and subscribe.

00:16:53 ◼   ► But that was not really enough to really bring in meaningful revenue over time.

00:16:58 ◼   ► So instead, I switched about six months ago.

00:17:01 ◼   ► I added a couple of features that had been very highly requested.

00:17:05 ◼   ► The main one of which was dark mode, a whole dark theme of the app.

00:17:09 ◼   ► I added that to the app about six months ago and I added it only for people who were paying

00:17:14 ◼   ► the voluntary patronage.

00:17:16 ◼   ► And that was weird for a number of reasons.

00:17:18 ◼   ► I mean, first of all, now it's still called patronage, but now you get perks.

00:17:23 ◼   ► And so that's a little bit odd.

00:17:25 ◼   ► A lot of people objected to the terminology there and I understand why.

00:17:30 ◼   ► And then a lot of people were mad because people who had bought the original $5 unlock

00:17:35 ◼   ► everything purchase the year earlier were very mad that here was a new feature that

00:17:39 ◼   ► they did not get.

00:17:40 ◼   ► They were extremely mad and I heard from them constantly, even literally for the last six

00:17:44 ◼   ► months.

00:17:45 ◼   ► I stopped, I kept hearing from them.

00:17:47 ◼   ► And so I don't want to make my early customers so mad.

00:17:50 ◼   ► And then the final problem was even that, while it did provide a nice bump to the number

00:17:55 ◼   ► of people who were paying, it didn't provide enough of a bump to make it really a sustainable

00:18:00 ◼   ► good income.

00:18:02 ◼   ► So I could sustain the service on that just barely, but I really need more to both do

00:18:08 ◼   ► what I want to do with it and to justify pouring a lot of my time into it rather than having

00:18:12 ◼   ► to start exploring new projects.

00:18:15 ◼   ► So I decided ads were worth a try because as you said, ads make a lot of sense now.

00:18:22 ◼   ► You know, there's a reason why so much that we consume and use in today's technology

00:18:28 ◼   ► world is ad funded.

00:18:31 ◼   ► There's a big reason for that.

00:18:33 ◼   ► And that is that you basically, anybody can use everything they want for free.

00:18:38 ◼   ► You just have to tolerate these ads.

00:18:40 ◼   ► And most people don't mind ads.

00:18:42 ◼   ► I don't know anybody who loves ads, but most people don't mind.

00:18:46 ◼   ► Most people will take that trade off.

00:18:49 ◼   ► If the trade off is, I would rather not pay, but I'll take ads.

00:18:54 ◼   ► Or you can pay and then you won't see ads.

00:18:57 ◼   ► Most people will choose the ad option there because they don't want to pay.

00:19:01 ◼   ► And that's fine.

00:19:02 ◼   ► It seemed to make a lot of sense.

00:19:04 ◼   ► The main risk to this was of course that here I had this app that is very well regarded by

00:19:10 ◼   ► a lot of people.

00:19:12 ◼   ► It's used by a lot of people, many of whom are very strongly opinionated.

00:19:16 ◼   ► And it looks, you know, it had a good design.

00:19:18 ◼   ► It has a good design.

00:19:19 ◼   ► It looks nice.

00:19:20 ◼   ► And a lot of people were going to see me try ads.

00:19:24 ◼   ► And I've had various opinions of ads over the years.

00:19:27 ◼   ► And again, I don't love them either, but I consider them kind of the acceptable trade

00:19:31 ◼   ► off for what we're doing here.

00:19:34 ◼   ► So I was very, very scared to release this.

00:19:37 ◼   ► This was the most nervous I've ever been about releasing anything since I've done

00:19:41 ◼   ► a 1.0.

00:19:42 ◼   ► And I released it and overall the reaction was better than I expected.

00:19:49 ◼   ► It's not great.

00:19:50 ◼   ► I wouldn't say it's a great reaction.

00:19:52 ◼   ► But I would say it's a lot less horrible than I was predicting and that I was prepared for.

00:19:58 ◼   ► My star rating is in the crapper.

00:20:01 ◼   ► This is the first time Overcast has ever had a star rating below 4.5.

00:20:05 ◼   ► I believe now I'm at 2.5, something like that.

00:20:08 ◼   ► So my rating is destroyed and that's going to hurt me a lot.

00:20:11 ◼   ► I hope that's only temporary.

00:20:13 ◼   ► We will find out.

00:20:14 ◼   ► I'm getting a lot of angry emails and tweets, lots of them.

00:20:18 ◼   ► Lots of people who are not very kind about this change.

00:20:23 ◼   ► But on the other hand, I've gotten a whole lot of people who are totally okay with it

00:20:27 ◼   ► and like that there's no longer this weird difference between special features that patrons

00:20:33 ◼   ► get and this weird terminology of patronage that even though it is also including special

00:20:40 ◼   ► features.

00:20:41 ◼   ► So now I simplified things.

00:20:44 ◼   ► So now you have these ads and if you don't want to see ads, and then down the road I

00:20:48 ◼   ► might add a few little things here, but if you don't want to see ads, you can buy the

00:20:52 ◼   ► annual subscription which is a new auto renewing kind and it's just called Overcast Premium.

00:20:56 ◼   ► So no more patronage wording, no more messing with ideas of good will or charity over in

00:21:04 ◼   ► that area because that was, as I said, problematic for a lot of people.

00:21:08 ◼   ► Now it's just called Premium.

00:21:09 ◼   ► You pay 10 bucks a year, you get ads.

00:21:11 ◼   ► This is a simplification even from the previous subscriptions.

00:21:15 ◼   ► They were a dollar a month so it was $12 a year if you paid annually.

00:21:19 ◼   ► This is even cheaper, $10 a year because it's nice and simple.

00:21:23 ◼   ► And I even adjusted on all the different currencies around the world so that like a lot of the

00:21:26 ◼   ► euro based ones were going to be like 10.50 euro and I said now just 9.99 is fine or 10

00:21:32 ◼   ► even, whatever it is.

00:21:33 ◼   ► So it made it very simple, much clearer wording and a much, honestly, simpler business model.

00:21:40 ◼   ► There's ads in the app.

00:21:41 ◼   ► If you want to get rid of them, you pay me 10 bucks a year.

00:21:43 ◼   ► The amazing thing about this is that I get recurring revenue from anybody who's actually

00:21:48 ◼   ► using the app.

00:21:49 ◼   ► So I'm getting it somewhere, whether it's the ad or whether it's subscriptions, I'm

00:21:52 ◼   ► getting recurring revenue from usage.

00:21:55 ◼   ► And it's exactly what you said earlier, David.

00:21:57 ◼   ► It's like I'm incentivized to keep people using the app and to make the app good enough

00:22:03 ◼   ► that people will keep coming back and using it.

00:22:05 ◼   ► I no longer have an incentive of like what am I going to do to push people over the next

00:22:10 ◼   ► big version or what kind of crazy features can I come up with that'll make people pay

00:22:14 ◼   ► and anger everybody else.

00:22:17 ◼   ► I really just have to make the app better now.

00:22:19 ◼   ► And as long as I do that, I make money from everybody who uses it.

00:22:23 ◼   ► It's not like a massive amount more money, but it is more.

00:22:27 ◼   ► And the ads, it's a little early to say how well the ads are working because it's

00:22:31 ◼   ► only been a few days since I've had them in.

00:22:33 ◼   ► But even in these few days, I've gotten a ton of more subscriptions.

00:22:40 ◼   ► I haven't like doubled or anything, but that might happen, who knows.

00:22:44 ◼   ► I haven't doubled yet, but I certainly have a lot more subscribers.

00:22:49 ◼   ► These are also now all in the new Apple auto-renewing system, so that means a year from now if they

00:22:53 ◼   ► still subscribe, I will get 85% instead of 70% from them, which is a big deal.

00:22:58 ◼   ► And the ads are kind of making up the difference of trying to give me some money for everyone

00:23:04 ◼   ► who's not a subscriber.

00:23:06 ◼   ► And right now the amount of money the ads are making is fairly modest, but it's still

00:23:10 ◼   ► very early and I still could experiment with different placements of the ad, different

00:23:14 ◼   ► formats of ads, things like that.

00:23:17 ◼   ► And I think it's ended up working out.

00:23:21 ◼   ► And I'm going to have to figure out how the heck to make everybody happy enough to stop

00:23:24 ◼   ► giving me one-star reviews and sending me nasty emails because my star rating is, as

00:23:28 ◼   ► I mentioned, down from four and a half to two and a half with a very large volume.

00:23:35 ◼   ► So I don't know about that, but the rest of it seems to be working okay.

00:23:38 ◼   ► Sure.

00:23:39 ◼   ► And the reality is too, it's the awkward thing of so much of this is coming, I think, from

00:23:44 ◼   ► the change in business model.

00:23:48 ◼   ► If the app that you just released were Overcast 1.0, I doubt you would have that same negativity.

00:23:56 ◼   ► That's just the nature of these things where people are like, "Oh, I had this thing.

00:23:59 ◼   ► It's like you were giving me this great app for free with no impingement at all upon me.

00:24:05 ◼   ► Now it's a free app that is impinging on me slightly by showing me ads at the tops of

00:24:10 ◼   ► some of the lists."

00:24:12 ◼   ► And so that change, it feels like you've taken something from me, which you haven't really,

00:24:16 ◼   ► but that's the way it feels, I imagine.

00:24:18 ◼   ► And so over time, I suppose in some ways it's one of the nice things where one day I would

00:24:23 ◼   ► love for the App Store to do a rolling average of reviews.

00:24:26 ◼   ► The next time you do an update, your reviews will reset again, and you can hopefully put

00:24:30 ◼   ► a lot of these one stars behind you and just sort of go from there.

00:24:35 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's really what I'm doing here.

00:24:40 ◼   ► And a lot of people have asked why I didn't release this as part of a bigger 3.0 update,

00:24:46 ◼   ► and I think the results speak for themselves.

00:24:49 ◼   ► If I had released this as part of a whole bunch of other features and changes and a

00:24:53 ◼   ► big push, similar to Apple's headphone jack thing, the story would have been all about

00:24:58 ◼   ► the ads, and the star ratings would have been all about the ads, and the reviews would be

00:25:02 ◼   ► all about the ads.

00:25:04 ◼   ► And I feel like I'm better off making this transition to ad-based now while I'm still

00:25:09 ◼   ► in the 2.x series.

00:25:11 ◼   ► And then when I do a big 3.0 release down the road, hopefully not too far down the road,

00:25:15 ◼   ► but when I do it down the road, the story will already include, like people who write

00:25:20 ◼   ► out overcast, people who review overcast, people who use overcast will all already know,

00:25:25 ◼   ► okay, this app is ad-driven.

00:25:26 ◼   ► So that'll be old news, just like the headphone jack thing on the iPhone this week.

00:25:30 ◼   ► We all knew about it months ago, so now it's old news, and we're all kind of accepting

00:25:33 ◼   ► it and moving on and just evaluating the iPhone on its other merits.

00:25:36 ◼   ► That's how this is going to be, I think, with overcast 3.0, that I'm going to be able to

00:25:41 ◼   ► now do things freely and make the app great on its own merits, and the story won't be

00:25:48 ◼   ► just about the ads when I finally launch it.

00:25:51 ◼   ► And perhaps even moreover, it seems like I imagine, not to speak for you, but there's

00:25:55 ◼   ► a slightly better incentive for you to really put that work into 3.0.

00:25:59 ◼   ► Oh, massively.

00:26:00 ◼   ► Because if it feels more sustainable and viable, it doesn't feel like you're just putting more

00:26:05 ◼   ► time after something that kind of is slowly decaying over time, that you're just kind

00:26:10 ◼   ► of, you put all this effort into a 3.0, all these new features, all these big updates,

00:26:14 ◼   ► and then it's like, it's not actually going to make any difference at the end of the day.

00:26:17 ◼   ► Like you could just leave the app as it is now and hope for the best.

00:26:21 ◼   ► That is entirely correct.

00:26:22 ◼   ► I mean, I was really not in a very good psychological place about the app before I launched the

00:26:27 ◼   ► ads, because revenue was just flat, and flat at not a particularly great level.

00:26:32 ◼   ► And I didn't really know what else to do.

00:26:33 ◼   ► It felt hopeless.

00:26:35 ◼   ► And now I have this big influx of subscribers, and I have this nice little kind of side money

00:26:39 ◼   ► from the ads, and that is amazing.

00:26:43 ◼   ► And that has lit a fire under me.

00:26:44 ◼   ► Now you're totally right.

00:26:46 ◼   ► It has totally turned around my motivation.

00:26:48 ◼   ► I'm not thinking of like, oh, what other apps could I make to make more money?

00:26:51 ◼   ► No.

00:26:52 ◼   ► Now I'm just thinking, how do I make this even more amazing?

00:26:55 ◼   ► And I have had an amazingly productive few days since launching the ads of just making

00:27:02 ◼   ► the app incredibly better, like getting a lot of stuff done on 3.0, working through

00:27:07 ◼   ► navigation changes and making custom animations, and cool stuff like that, that you can kind

00:27:13 ◼   ► of only do if you're making money, or if you think you're going to make money on an app.

00:27:18 ◼   ► Investing into it not just like bullet point features, but like polish and fun new things,

00:27:24 ◼   ► and rethinking some of the design aspects.

00:27:28 ◼   ► And I made the watch app a lot better for 3.0 also.

00:27:32 ◼   ► Now I can think about adding a today widget, and all this, well I guess the now widget

00:27:35 ◼   ► is called widgets, all this stuff that I can now do because there's money coming in,

00:27:40 ◼   ► and at a reasonable rate now that I can be relatively assured of its future.

00:27:46 ◼   ► And that's something I couldn't save before.

00:27:48 ◼   ► And that made me, you know, honestly quite sad.

00:27:51 ◼   ► Pretty much all summer as I watched the sales just kind of flatten.

00:27:54 ◼   ► But now things have turned around, and I am kind of on fire now.

00:27:59 ◼   ► And I'm like plowing through and doing all sorts of great stuff, and it feels great.

00:28:03 ◼   ► And I think in the long run, even though right now it is quite painful to see my rating go

00:28:07 ◼   ► so far down the tubes and to get all these angry messages from people, but I think long

00:28:11 ◼   ► term it will be better for my users overall.

00:28:14 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think the thing that I love so much about this change is like the ads are

00:28:19 ◼   ► what they are.

00:28:20 ◼   ► Like sometimes I feel like we can moralize about them and get all like fancy about it,

00:28:23 ◼   ► but at the end of the day they're just a tool for businesses to make money.

00:28:26 ◼   ► And what I love though is that it lets you, like with the things that you're talking

00:28:30 ◼   ► about, the thing that I love about that is it's allowing you to not have to make this

00:28:34 ◼   ► big case of like, I always hate the 3.0s that feel like it's like everything in the kitchen

00:28:39 ◼   ► sink, right?

00:28:40 ◼   ► It's just, I have to have these, I did all my good features in version one, I can made

00:28:44 ◼   ► up some other stuff for version two.

00:28:46 ◼   ► Version three, here's just everything else I could think of.

00:28:48 ◼   ► It's just an assault by feature checklist.

00:28:50 ◼   ► It's like now you can just say, you know, I'm just going to polish.

00:28:53 ◼   ► I'm just going to keep polishing this and make it better and better and better because

00:28:57 ◼   ► I'm not trying to upsell you on a paid upgrade or I'm not trying to do something like that.

00:29:01 ◼   ► I just want to make the app as like the absolute best it can be and that sounds like an awesome

00:29:06 ◼   ► place for you to be.

00:29:07 ◼   ► It really, oh man, it feels great.

00:29:09 ◼   ► I mean, you've been here before, I'm sure like it feels great.

00:29:12 ◼   ► So I'm just so happy to finally kind of be like, be back in it again and to feel good

00:29:16 ◼   ► about its financial future again.

00:29:18 ◼   ► It's awesome.

00:29:19 ◼   ► All right.

00:29:20 ◼   ► Well, here's hoping it goes well and we're out of time this week.

00:29:24 ◼   ► Thank you everybody for listening and we will talk to you next week.

00:29:27 ◼   ► Bye