0:00:00Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development.
0:00:04I'm Marco Arment.
0:00:05And I'm David Smith.
0:00:06Under the Radar is never longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.
0:00:11So today we wanted to talk a little bit about a couple of different topics, but largely
0:00:15around the theme of shutting something down, and specifically drawing on some of the experiences
0:00:22from this past week where the app Vesper, which was made by Brent Simmons, Dave Whiskas,
0:00:28and John Gruber announced that they are going to be closing down after a several year run
0:00:32of being in the App Store.
0:00:35And they handled that process both really well, and I think that's something that I
0:00:37think we wanted to expound upon a little bit and talk about how to actually walk through
0:00:43closing something down when it's time, you know, the time has come for it to be shut
0:00:47down, how to do it in a classy and good for your users kind of way.
0:00:52And then also they've both written a lot of postmortems and kind of thoughts about the
0:00:57process.
0:00:58And some of them relate to the modern App Store and ways of pricing things and things
0:01:03that may have worked out differently, you know, how if they had approached the app differently,
0:01:07would it have been successful in a different way, that I think are all very relevant to
0:01:12us in our discussion.
0:01:13But I think first the best place to start is just to talk about the way they shut down
0:01:16Vesper.
0:01:17And so, you know, Brent posted and they did sort of this last update, I think it had been
0:01:22quite a while since they had done a previous update, and they did an update, and basically
0:01:25all it does is it adds the ability to export all of your data out of the app.
0:01:29They made the app free so that you, it just became, it's like, why not?
0:01:35And they've turned off the ability to create new sync accounts, which and then their sync
0:01:39service will be going away soon.
0:01:40And overall, when I saw that, I was like, that is just like the classy way to do it.
0:01:45Like they've put in the extra effort, even though necessarily there's not a specific
0:01:50return for this effort, because the app has become now free.
0:01:55They put in the effort to make it so that if you're an existing customer, you're
0:01:58taken care of.
0:01:59And whenever I see something like that, I'm not surprised, given the people who are doing
0:02:03this, but it was a good reminder that there will come a time with all of our products
0:02:07where we have to just, you know, we're probably going to have to turn things off, and it's
0:02:12something probably worth planning for and thinking through.
0:02:15And then, you know, I probably encourage also just being thoughtful about what's best
0:02:19for your customers in that situation.
0:02:21You know, it's an unfortunate reality that in this business, basically nothing is permanent.
0:02:28This is one of the reasons, you know, going back kind of to the big picture for a second,
0:02:32like the possibility for the apps we use and possibly depend on to ultimately shut down
0:02:39or be sold or whatever the case may be to change in a way that either shuts them down
0:02:43completely or that make it so that we can't or don't want to use them anymore really
0:02:47underscores the importance of keeping your data, if possible, in open formats or at least
0:02:54preserving the option like what Vesper did to export into open formats.
0:02:59And there's some discussion too about like whether they are morally obligated to open
0:03:05source it or not.
0:03:07I think in Brent's original post, he made a pretty good case for why like they might
0:03:13open source it, but it's not necessarily a sure thing that they should or need to because
0:03:17like this is really old code because it was originally written for iOS 6.
0:03:22And a lot of it is not particularly useful in the modern era of like modern iOS capabilities
0:03:28that they like.
0:03:29Now, if you're at the same thing today, you'd use way less code.
0:03:31And ultimately, I don't believe that anybody is entitled to the source code of another
0:03:35application if they paid five bucks for it once, two years ago.
0:03:38Like that's to me is just not a thing.
0:03:41I think it's a courtesy if you can open source it, it's kind of interesting a little bit,
0:03:46but it's not the panacea that some people think they need and deserve.
0:03:50And if it's very important to you to have open source stuff if an app is out of business,
0:03:55I think the only way you can actually do that is to use an app that is open source from
0:03:59the beginning.
0:04:00Anyway, so I've gone through a few product transitions myself.
0:04:07The only thing that's actually shut down is the magazine.
0:04:10But who knows what the future will hold there.
0:04:13It's tough, but it's the reality.
0:04:14I mean, Vesper was an app that all of its creators were very clear that they would have
0:04:20liked to have more time to spend working on it.
0:04:22They would have liked for it to continue and to be worth working on, but it didn't bring
0:04:26in enough money to be full time incomes to justify the work that it would have taken
0:04:31to make it really the next level and to make the Mac app and to make everything else it
0:04:35needed.
0:04:36That's just how it goes sometimes.
0:04:38That's just the reality of product development.
0:04:41Sometimes it doesn't work out.
0:04:42And when you're choosing to work on a side project like this was for all three of its
0:04:48developers, it has to somehow justify the time you're putting into it.
0:04:52And in this case also the money that they were paying to host the sync service and to
0:04:57license the font.
0:04:59And so they had ongoing costs.
0:05:01They were faced with the problem of time investment that it needed.
0:05:06And there simply wasn't enough revenue coming in to make it worth it.
0:05:10And that's unfortunate on so many levels for so many reasons, especially with this group
0:05:16of people and with this app because it was a very good app.
0:05:19And these were very high profile developers who they got a lot of good publicity from
0:05:23themselves and others because of their position and because it was a good app.
0:05:27And it still didn't work out.
0:05:28So I think there's a lot we can unpack from this and a lot we can learn from the market
0:05:32today.
0:05:33Yeah, and I think there's something too to be said that it's a very strange thing to
0:05:39say but in a small way I find it slightly encouraging that Vesper didn't work out.
0:05:46And to explain that, what I mean is any project that any of us do, even if it has everything
0:05:52going for it in terms of, there's not a lot of things that you could kind of imagine or
0:05:59draw up that would be like, "Put your app, whatever you're working on, in a better place
0:06:03as a starting off point than I think what Vesper had."
0:06:07But it's a reminder of how even if you have everything going for you and you make something
0:06:12awesome, that's not necessarily going to be enough.
0:06:17And in some ways I find that encouraging because it's a reminder that even having all those
0:06:24things you're not guaranteed success.
0:06:26So even if you don't have those things, you're in some weird way much in the same boat.
0:06:31There's going to be a certain degree of luck about whether it's going to hit the right
0:06:37group, whether you approach things in the right way.
0:06:40And in reading through their postmortems about the experience, it's like there's things
0:06:43that they look back and they made choices that they would do differently now.
0:06:47And they're people who really understand the App Store, who are very smart developers
0:06:51and designers, and they made decisions that in some ways they wish they would have changed
0:06:55too.
0:06:56So in a weird way it's nice to have the humanity of that, of like, "Yeah, it's difficult,
0:07:01it's tough."
0:07:02And it's a good reminder that when I launch things, if they don't work out the way that
0:07:06I might want them to be, that's just the table stakes.
0:07:11That's just the reality of the game, of making software and putting it into a market, that
0:07:15sometimes it's not going to work.
0:07:17And it's also a good reminder too of it's so easy, I think, to discredit.
0:07:22And that's nice for a problem, where when you see someone launch something and they
0:07:28have the big publicity, it's like, "Yeah, that's nice, I suppose, but that's not
0:07:32a guarantee of success either."
0:07:34Ultimately, the work and effort that it will take for something to be successful isn't
0:07:39just based on who you are.
0:07:41There's more to it than that, and that just seems like a good reminder that this is as
0:07:46sad as it is as an event.
0:07:48That's exactly it.
0:07:50I've said for years, and nobody believes me because I'm the beneficiary of publicity
0:07:56because I have an audience, but I've said for years that having a built-in audience
0:08:01or being a "famous developer" or whatever else, it does help you a lot at launch time.
0:08:07It is something that can basically guarantee you a certain minimum level of success at
0:08:13launch.
0:08:14But it is not a substitute for a good product market fit.
0:08:19It is not going to save you from market realities, and it is not really going to help you that
0:08:24much in the long term.
0:08:28In this case, Vesper was a note-taking app, and it did things a little bit differently
0:08:34than other note-taking apps, so it had a couple of unique features and design choices.
0:08:39And also, of course, it looked really nice, but I was using design more in the feature
0:08:42sense there.
0:08:44And they did a whole bunch of custom UI text field jumbling, basically, to work around
0:08:52UI text fields limitations to make it really awesome to do what they wanted to, right before
0:08:57all that stuff became a lot easier.
0:08:59So they had market timing problem number one of they did a whole lot of work to hack around
0:09:07UI text field problems right before the APIs made that unnecessary.
0:09:11They also did a huge amount of design and work, making a clean, simple design-looking
0:09:17app running on iOS 6.
0:09:19And then iOS 7 came in and changed everything about design and made a whole bunch of that
0:09:23stuff easier.
0:09:24Later, they had the issue of when they launched, the third-party notes category was a lot healthier
0:09:31than it is now, because Apple Notes was terrible.
0:09:35And then in the meantime, Apple Notes got really good.
0:09:37It got that big update.
0:09:38Was it iOS 8?
0:09:39>> I think so, yeah.
0:09:41>> With CloudKit?
0:09:42>> I think so, yeah.
0:09:43>> When that came out?
0:09:44Or when it was first using, it dramatically improved the sync system and meant you didn't
0:09:48have to use WebDAV.
0:09:49And I think it was 8.
0:09:50>> Yeah, 8 or 9, whenever it was.
0:09:52You know, Apple Notes got a ton better, like massively so.
0:09:56And to everyone's great surprise, I think, I mean, I don't think anybody expected Apple
0:10:00to ever really care that much about their Notes app and to add the level of features
0:10:04that they did.
0:10:05But anyway, Apple Notes comes out, is awesome, and takes away much of Vesper's market gain,
0:10:12or rather, much of Vesper's purpose in the market, I think.
0:10:15Not all of it, of course, because there's a lot of things that Vesper still did better
0:10:19for a lot of people.
0:10:20But certainly, it took a lot of the wind out of those sales.
0:10:23So it was impacted a lot by the market in general.
0:10:27But also, I think, in John Gruber's post earlier, his big post-mortem about it, I think he just
0:10:33pointed out also that the pricing model was just also fairly outdated.
0:10:38And that's something I think we have a lot to say about here.
0:10:41So originally, a $5 upfront app, no in-app purchase, no recurring revenue stream, just
0:10:45$5 once upfront.
0:10:47Same model I used back in the day for Instapaper, sort of what I used at the beginning of Overcast,
0:10:52but not really.
0:10:53A very popular model, lots of people use it, especially in the early days.
0:10:57And the advantages of that model are plenty.
0:10:58I mean, first of all, it's very, very simple, as we discussed earlier, on earlier episodes
0:11:02about pricing.
0:11:03Implementing paid upfront takes basically no work for the developer.
0:11:07You don't have to do any in-app purchase code.
0:11:09You don't have to do any receipt checking, any restore purchases, anything really.
0:11:13You just kind of set the price on iTunes Connect and that's it.
0:11:16You're done.
0:11:17So there's lots of advantage for the developer.
0:11:18It also takes care of a lot of ambiguities of whether somebody bought it at the right
0:11:21time or whatever.
0:11:23It solves a lot of problems there.
0:11:24It also creates a few problems.
0:11:27There is no clear way to upgrade pricing.
0:11:30People have to pay before they can even see the app.
0:11:33So you have a lot of unhappy people who buy the app, you get their money, and then they
0:11:37kind of don't like it.
0:11:38So it's kind of like kind of unfair.
0:11:40It's not really good for customer satisfaction or your reputation if the app doesn't live
0:11:44up to it and people are unhappy with you.
0:11:47And then, of course, the big problem is that these days it's really hard to get people
0:11:52to pay for apps upfront.
0:11:54That's a big one.
0:11:55And I think we'll talk more about that.
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0:13:41So one thing that I wanted to talk a little bit through is related to this concept of
0:13:48charging $5 upfront.
0:13:50And in my recent experience, it's something that I've sort of started to wrap my hands
0:13:56around is the concept that whenever I'm building something, it is so easy to focus on, say,
0:14:05the first month that the app is going to be in market, that I'm going to build something,
0:14:09I'm going to put it on the app store, and it's going to go out.
0:14:12And my focus and my thinking, both around the design, the development, everything, pricing,
0:14:19marketing, it's all about that first sort of wave.
0:14:23And in many ways, that makes sense.
0:14:24That's logical.
0:14:25Like that is after, you know, say you spend months and months building something, like
0:14:29that first month is really exciting and important to say that first day, you know, seeing yourself,
0:14:33you know, hopefully, you know, zoom up the charts in the app store.
0:14:36Like, that's really cool.
0:14:37But the reality is that sustainable, long-term, viable businesses are not made really at all
0:14:46in that first month, that, in my experience, in order for you to have something that is
0:14:53viable long-term, you have to have a model that will work a year from now, 18 months
0:15:01from now, and have an ongoing component to it that works and does what you need it to
0:15:06do.
0:15:07And that is where I think as I've gone through this, there's so many, I feel like I've had
0:15:14the discussion in my mind and out loud dozens and dozens of times about, "Oh, what's the
0:15:18best model for pricing in the app store?"
0:15:20But at the end of the day, I think the simple, like, question that is probably helpful as
0:15:25we think through these types of things for our own applications is, "How will I make
0:15:30money a year from now doing what I'm doing?"
0:15:34And if you don't have a good answer, then it's probably not a great, you know, setup.
0:15:38And if you actually remember back in one of the early episodes of Under the Radar, we
0:15:43were talking about Activity++, and we were going back and forth on whether it should
0:15:46be free or paid, there was an activity tracking app that I made, and I ended up deciding to
0:15:52do the paid-up front model.
0:15:54And there was a variety of reasons for that, but nevertheless, it was an interesting and
0:15:57recent data point for the same process.
0:16:00And what happened is, I think what I could have predicted would happen, and I was fine
0:16:05with happening, but the first couple weeks, it did very well, I was very happy with it,
0:16:10and then it very quickly just fell down and is now continuing at a stable level, but that
0:16:16stable level is very close to zero.
0:16:20It's not zero, it's, you know, it's just sort of mumbling along on the bottom, but if you
0:16:25look at the, you know, the actual curve of it, it's very, very minimal income at this
0:16:29point, and that particular app was fine, you know, for what I was doing, but there's an
0:16:36example of that problem, of if you can't have a good way of making money down the road,
0:16:42then your business model is always going to be stuck.
0:16:45And I think that is, I think, the most fundamental problem with the paid-up front model that
0:16:49we have right now, because every, it's sort of like, it's almost like the opposite of
0:16:55the marginal cost advantage, you know, where over time, like, once I've made a piece of
0:16:59software, I can sell the next copy for free, essentially, I don't have to build it twice,
0:17:03like, I've made it once and I can keep selling it.
0:17:06And so, you know, the marginal cost of that, each subsequent purchase goes down for me.
0:17:13But in a weird way, acquiring your next customer after you've gotten the first one gets incrementally
0:17:20harder as you go, in some ways necessarily, that you may have that initial burst of people
0:17:28who are interested in it, who are, you know, sort of passionate about what you're doing,
0:17:31or love, in this case, they love Notes apps, or they take lots of notes, like the easy,
0:17:36low-hanging fruit type of customers that you may be able to acquire.
0:17:41But then, each day, you go on from there, if you want to be able to have a sustainable
0:17:46and reliable income stream, you have to have a way of getting more and more people, and
0:17:51you're starting to get farther and farther from your own circles, in terms of if you're,
0:17:56you know, what we were just saying earlier about, well, it's easy if you have a built-in
0:17:59audience, it's like, well, that's great that first week, but that doesn't help you a month
0:18:04later or a year later when everybody in your circle is aware of it, they know about it,
0:18:09they've bought it or have not bought it, or, you know, that's where you find yourself.
0:18:14And so, that's the interesting thing that I've started to try and filter my thinking
0:18:18through around pricing and around business models, is it's not really caring too much
0:18:23about that first period, and thinking almost exclusively about a year from now.
0:18:30And if you're having a good plan for what that looks like, and if you can focus on that,
0:18:36I feel like you're in a much better place, and maybe you're going to discount and lose
0:18:39a bit of potential revenue that first week or so, but overall, you'll make it back dramatically
0:18:46if you have a much better position years down the road, especially if this is something
0:18:49that you want to do long-term.
0:18:51- Exactly, I mean, you know, you have to think about a year from now, because anybody who
0:18:57has ever had a paid app in the store has seen the exact same curve that you've seen on
0:19:03Activity++ and probably many of your other apps, which is like that big long spike, that
0:19:07first couple days or week where it's great, and then just a pretty quick drop, and then
0:19:13kind of a plateau, kind of like an asymptotic curve into zero, basically, where it kind
0:19:18of stays indefinitely low or gets gradually lower if it isn't at zero yet.
0:19:24And I've seen that, I saw that with many of my apps, I saw that with Instapaper, every
0:19:28major version, I saw it with Bugshot, the whole thing, and I saw it with Overcast when
0:19:34I launched, even though it was free, it still had that one-time paid purchase.
0:19:38So it kind of had the same shape, it was just a little bit different dynamic, but same shape
0:19:42of great first couple of months and then gradual decline, and just slowly declining over time.
0:19:48And that's one of the reasons I switched to recurring subscription payments for it, is
0:19:53because subscription payments, it's not easy, it's actually harder to get people to pay
0:19:58that way, but at least the curve is going in the other direction.
0:20:01And it's not even going that far in the direction, and I'm going to have to add more things behind
0:20:06that paywall to make it more healthy than it is now, because right now, basically, what
0:20:11happened with Overcast, as a quick aside here, the patronage model, I was trying to get 5%
0:20:16of users to pay. Before there were any features, when it was just Goodwill-based, I achieved
0:20:23about 1.5%, and it kind of plateaued at that. And so when I added dark mode and file upload,
0:20:31but I think it's mostly about dark mode, just having those two desirable features behind
0:20:35the paywall rather than nothing made it go from about 1.8%, 1.9% to about 3%. But it
0:20:42is now plateauing at about 3%. That rate has stopped growing. And really, I need it to
0:20:47be more like 5% to really sustain this healthily. And so I'm going to have to put more new features
0:20:53behind that. And this is like, just so everyone knows, nothing works perfectly. No matter
0:20:59what we say when we launch something is, here's how we think it's going to go, it doesn't
0:21:04always go that way. And when Vesper launched at $5 up front, they thought that was going
0:21:09to work great, because for many people and for a while it worked okay. But then the market
0:21:14moved over time, they found that, you know, they ran into competition and other issues,
0:21:20and it didn't work out so well in the end. So one thing that I would definitely say is
0:21:25to basically keep your mind and options open on pricing and how you make money, because
0:21:32even if you pick a certain model at the beginning, you will probably have to change that. And
0:21:38what you think is the way to go might not be the way to go one, two, three years from
0:21:43now. You know, I'm now in that point with Overcast where I'm making enough that it's,
0:21:48you know, it's okay, I'm not losing money on it, but I would ideally like to be making
0:21:53more to really justify pouring even more time and resources into it and having a little
0:21:58bit more headroom on the budget. And so I got to figure out something else. Like that's
0:22:04it. I'm not just going to sit here and do nothing, I got to figure out something else.
0:22:07Now the paid up front model I think works really well if your business model is I don't
0:22:14care about next year. And there's lots of legitimate cases where that is true. Like
0:22:18if you're making like a little special utility app that is going to be probably not able
0:22:23to justify a whole bunch of your ongoing time and your ongoing maintenance and ongoing updates,
0:22:27and you're maybe going to have a lot of those, that probably makes more sense to be like,
0:22:31all right, paid up front, it's a simple thing, people are going to like buy it, use it once
0:22:33or twice, and then their need for it will go away or whatever else. That's fine. But
0:22:38if you're trying to make something that's going to be like a productivity app that people
0:22:41are going to ideally use every day for years, you're going to need a different model. Because
0:22:46I think we've seen over and over again that paid up front for that is really hard to make
0:22:50work.
0:22:51Yeah. And I think it's also an interesting, there's some interesting realities I think
0:22:57about the App Store too, and I've noticed these in myself. And this is like a tricky
0:23:02thing to, in some ways I feel embarrassed about talking about it, but I've noticed in
0:23:06my own, when I'm in the App Store, like now, I go to, you know, on my iPhone, I open up
0:23:10the App Store, if I'm looking for an app, and I see that it's paid, I have tremendous
0:23:16reluctance to download it.
0:23:19Me too.
0:23:20And I feel bad about saying that, because I'm a software developer, I'm an indie software
0:23:25developer, like I make my living from people giving me money in the App Store, but I don't
0:23:29want to give anyone else money. And I think the reality about that, which is where it's
0:23:34like, that's kind of in some ways a profound thing to observe about myself, is if I don't
0:23:40want to do it, why would anyone else want to do it and give me money? Like, that's just
0:23:43the experience we've had in the App Store. And you could unpack like thousands of different
0:23:48reasons why that's the case. Why I don't want to pay money for apps in the App Store anymore.
0:23:54You know, maybe I've been burned in the past, there's such incredible competition, there's
0:23:58lots of free alternatives. You know, unless it is an app, essentially, unless the app
0:24:03was made by a friend of mine, or I absolutely have to have it for some reason, I probably
0:24:08won't buy it. I will find a free alternative. And that's just like the reality. And I could
0:24:13have some high minded ideals that, oh no, it's, you know, it devalues software, it makes
0:24:17our craft less special or valuable or whatever you could kind of imagine. But like, that's
0:24:22the reality that when I look at something, I'm like, oh, maybe not, or maybe I don't
0:24:26need it that much. And having that honesty about myself, I think helps me understand
0:24:31my customers better and understand the realities of the store that we're selling in. And that's
0:24:38instructive, I think, that having that feeling of saying, like, you know, if I'm not willing
0:24:42to buy for, you know, pay for software, maybe why should I expect that someone else would?
0:24:48And that leads me to, you know, now increasingly, like my focus is on, you know, free apps and
0:24:53finding ways to make money in those. And I think overall, that's better. Free is great,
0:24:59because it makes it, there was saying earlier, where it gets incrementally harder to find
0:25:06that next customer. In some ways, a free app has the opposite benefit, because it's, as
0:25:10you go, it starts, you know, you get it has a much more frictionless spreading phenomenon
0:25:17where, you know, if someone if someone has your app, they like it, they can tell someone
0:25:21else and there's no cost for that exchange. It's not this like, well, here's this app,
0:25:26I really like it. You know, but there's no but there's not like, but it's a couple bucks.
0:25:31Like there's not this sort of this apology that you have to add to that if you're recommending
0:25:34it to somebody.
0:25:35Yeah, this huge barrier that people have to have to decide whether they want to go over
0:25:38or not. I mean, ideally, you don't want to put big barriers in front of people before
0:25:42they even have seen how good your app is.
0:25:46Exactly. Like, I mean, you you want and I think even there's this funny thought of,
0:25:52I feel like I have to keep in mind that while I'm sitting in my office working in Xcode
0:25:58making something it's so easy to almost to like become precious about my software and
0:26:02to feed to like, overemphasize what it is that some make it feel like it's, you know,
0:26:07I've poured my heart into this. You know, it can you can make you can give it these
0:26:12feelings that aren't really constructive where at the end of the day, it's just it's
0:26:16an app that's going to be going into a store with 2 million other apps. And as special
0:26:21and unique and as much of a special snowflake as you feel like it is, it's probably not
0:26:26as special as you think it actually is. And so being realistic about that and understanding
0:26:31that you know, people aren't going to want to just pay you money because they your app
0:26:36is special, like they won't know it's special. And even if they do know it's special, they
0:26:40may not care.
0:26:41I couldn't have said it better myself. I mean, this is a very competitive market. It's so
0:26:46competitive. There's so many other apps out there. You have to convince people that they
0:26:51need yours. And if there's any barriers in front of that, they're going to cost you dearly.
0:26:58And you have to make money somewhere. And it used to be really easy to just put a paid
0:27:02upfront price on it and that worked pretty well. But that was back when the market was
0:27:06less competitive and people were more exploratory with how they spent their money in the app
0:27:11store. People weren't already like kind of burnt out on spending money on apps to try
0:27:15them out. That worked very well for maybe two years at the beginning of the app store.
0:27:20Now it's different. Now it's harder. It's a mature market. There's way more competition.
0:27:25It's just harder. And it can be done. But it's also going to be very hard to do it in
0:27:31a way that can fund somebody's lifestyle to be a full-time job to work on a basic iOS
0:27:38app that charges a couple bucks. There has to be more to your strategy than that. And
0:27:43it's not easy. And it's getting harder every year. And there is still a market there. But
0:27:48you have to be really savvy at trying to get it. You have to try a lot of things. You have
0:27:55to be willing to challenge lots of assumptions. And you have to be willing to swallow your
0:27:59pride on a lot of this stuff. And it's unfortunate, but that's the reality of a very competitive,
0:28:04low-profit business.
0:28:05>> Yeah. And I think those two things that you just pointed out are the key to all of
0:28:09this. It's being creative and flexible about approaches and then being humble about your
0:28:15approach to things and not overemphasizing or overexaggerating what you're doing.
0:28:20>> Exactly. I mean, I've thought about putting ads in Overcast. That's something I never
0:28:25would have thought of years ago. But now I have a situation where I make no money from
0:28:3097% of the user base. So I could make some possibly even good money from them if I put
0:28:35ads in it. It's something that I was all snobby about before, but now I'm actively considering
0:28:39it because, again, like why should I leave that option off the table, whatever the -- why
0:28:45should I not consider that option because I once found them kind of annoying? Like is
0:28:50it possible to do it well? I don't know. But we could talk about that in a different episode
0:28:54when we have more time. But that's -- you have to consider everything now because it's
0:28:59so competitive. Make no assumptions. All right. And with that, we are out of time. Thanks
0:29:04a lot for listening, everybody. And we will talk to you next week.
0:29:07>> Bye.
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