Developing Perspective

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to Developing Perspective.

00:00:02 ◼   ► Developing Perspective is a podcast discussing news of note in iOS development, Apple, and

00:00:06 ◼   ► the like.

00:00:07 ◼   ► I'm your host, David Smith.

00:00:08 ◼   ► I'm an independent iOS and Mac developer based in Herndon, Virginia.

00:00:10 ◼   ► This is show number 144.

00:00:14 ◼   ► Today is Thursday, September 26th.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Developing Perspective is never longer than 15 minutes, so let's get started.

00:00:19 ◼   ► All right, so I'm going to be talking about a couple of things, mostly coming out of PodRangler,

00:00:25 ◼   ► which is an application and service that I launched.

00:00:28 ◼   ► It was Tuesday of this week.

00:00:30 ◼   ► And so basically, PodWrangler, at a high level,

00:00:33 ◼   ► is a new podcast client that I wrote and developed and published.

00:00:38 ◼   ► And as the name perhaps implies, it's an extension, it's an add-on,

00:00:42 ◼   ► it's something that grew out of the platform that I built

00:00:45 ◼   ► when I deployed FeedWrangler.

00:00:47 ◼   ► Because at its core, what FeedWrangler does is it takes a collection of RSS feeds

00:00:52 ◼   ► and imports them, manages them, organizes them, lets you search them, and so on.

00:00:57 ◼   ► And so once I built that infrastructure,

00:00:59 ◼   ► I kind of had the realization that what I'd also built was

00:01:03 ◼   ► 99% of the back end that I would need for a podcast client.

00:01:07 ◼   ► Because essentially all a podcast client does

00:01:09 ◼   ► is take an RSS feed.

00:01:11 ◼   ► In this case, these have MP3 attachments usually

00:01:15 ◼   ► grouped onto them.

00:01:16 ◼   ► And so you can then use those to download your various podcast

00:01:21 ◼   ► episodes and listen to them.

00:01:22 ◼   ► And so I built all this infrastructure.

00:01:24 ◼   ► So I figured, hey, let's turn it into a podcast client

00:01:27 ◼   ► as well.

00:01:27 ◼   ► And this gives me a couple of things,

00:01:29 ◼   ► these are the topics I'm going to walk through in the show,

00:01:33 ◼   ► for where this app came from, some of the advantages I can do

00:01:36 ◼   ► and the things I'm experimenting with,

00:01:38 ◼   ► and then some of the general thoughts that come out of this

00:01:40 ◼   ► as well.

00:01:41 ◼   ► So at its core, Pod Wrangler is something

00:01:44 ◼   ► that's taking advantage of some existing things

00:01:50 ◼   ► that I've already built.

00:01:51 ◼   ► In terms of a couple of years ago,

00:01:53 ◼   ► actually, I wrote an app called SimpleCasts,

00:01:55 ◼   ► which was a podcast client.

00:01:57 ◼   ► Never really did well.

00:01:58 ◼   ► I launched it, put it out there, tried a lot of things to get onto it.

00:02:02 ◼   ► And I just never had traction.

00:02:03 ◼   ► I'm not entirely sure why, but it just never really hit.

00:02:06 ◼   ► And so eventually I just pulled the app from the store

00:02:09 ◼   ► and moved on to other things.

00:02:12 ◼   ► But I already have all of the laundry.

00:02:15 ◼   ► Essentially, I'd already built a lot of the infrastructure

00:02:17 ◼   ► for what a podcast client would need and what a podcast client would do.

00:02:21 ◼   ► A lot of the really low level, nitty gritty stuff

00:02:23 ◼   ► that you have to work through for dealing

00:02:26 ◼   ► with the exact dynamics of how you handle a call when

00:02:29 ◼   ► it comes in, for example.

00:02:30 ◼   ► And you're picking up and resuming that.

00:02:32 ◼   ► Dealing with interruptions, dealing with background

00:02:34 ◼   ► downloads-- at least at that point,

00:02:35 ◼   ► it wasn't quite the full background downloads

00:02:37 ◼   ► that we have now.

00:02:37 ◼   ► But dealing with file management and download

00:02:40 ◼   ► and all these kinds of issues that had already been solved.

00:02:43 ◼   ► So when the time came for me to build Pod Wrangler,

00:02:46 ◼   ► I was able to take advantage of that and leverage it.

00:02:48 ◼   ► And Pod Wrangler is a very different app

00:02:51 ◼   ► than Simplecast ever was.

00:02:53 ◼   ► though conceptually and at a low level, they're very similar.

00:02:56 ◼   ► And a lot of that is just coming from the fact

00:02:58 ◼   ► that in both cases, they were the podcast app that I wanted.

00:03:02 ◼   ► They're built with my tastes, my preferences, my desires in mind.

00:03:06 ◼   ► And so the natural kind of opinionation that comes out of that

00:03:10 ◼   ► kind of is-- you can see in both apps, if you're

00:03:13 ◼   ► somebody who happened to use SimpleCasts years ago

00:03:16 ◼   ► and then uses powder language today, you'll

00:03:18 ◼   ► feel somewhat familiar.

00:03:20 ◼   ► But one thing, the lesson that I wanted to talk about a little bit

00:03:23 ◼   ► is trying to make sure that you're aware of the things

00:03:26 ◼   ► that you have built up, the resources that you are somewhat

00:03:29 ◼   ► uniquely positioned to have, and being

00:03:31 ◼   ► able to make sure that you think about those

00:03:33 ◼   ► as you go forward and build other things,

00:03:35 ◼   ► and making use of all these things.

00:03:36 ◼   ► So in this case, I had a basic infrastructure

00:03:38 ◼   ► of a podcast client from some previous project

00:03:40 ◼   ► that I've worked on.

00:03:42 ◼   ► I have some new-- all of the new background APIs

00:03:46 ◼   ► were stuff that I've worked on for other apps

00:03:48 ◼   ► that I could take and put into PodWrangler.

00:03:49 ◼   ► I have a syncing back end that was

00:03:51 ◼   ► built as a result of something else, first with feed wrangler.

00:03:54 ◼   ► And so I was able to take all those disparate components

00:03:58 ◼   ► and combine them together in a way that saved me

00:04:00 ◼   ► a lot of time and energy.

00:04:02 ◼   ► And this is just something that I think overall I'd

00:04:05 ◼   ► recommend people look at.

00:04:06 ◼   ► Is you want to look at all the code you've written,

00:04:09 ◼   ► all the things you have, and see if you take those

00:04:12 ◼   ► and combine them in an interesting way,

00:04:14 ◼   ► can you make something else?

00:04:16 ◼   ► Can you take advantage of the various experiences

00:04:18 ◼   ► you've had to make an application, to make software,

00:04:20 ◼   ► to do something that potentially you could do more quickly

00:04:24 ◼   ► or with much less effort than someone else would.

00:04:27 ◼   ► And if you can, that's often a big win

00:04:28 ◼   ► and a competitive thing.

00:04:30 ◼   ► Where I didn't start from scratch to build PodWrangler.

00:04:32 ◼   ► I didn't start from scratch for a lot of the things.

00:04:35 ◼   ► But at the end result is an app that I think--

00:04:37 ◼   ► and I would put it up there to compete

00:04:39 ◼   ► with any of the big guys.

00:04:40 ◼   ► It's different in terms of its philosophy and its user

00:04:43 ◼   ► experience.

00:04:44 ◼   ► I'm not going to win with them on all the different features

00:04:46 ◼   ► that you can do.

00:04:47 ◼   ► But in terms of the user experience,

00:04:49 ◼   ► quality, reliability, those types of things,

00:04:51 ◼   ► I would say I'd put it up there and say it's pretty solid.

00:04:53 ◼   ► A lot of that's coming from being

00:04:54 ◼   ► able to focus on just the new stuff and the user experience

00:04:57 ◼   ► and focusing and polishing and polishing that down,

00:05:01 ◼   ► which I think is kind of interesting and works well.

00:05:03 ◼   ► The second thing I want to talk about is an interesting thing

00:05:05 ◼   ► that I'm trying with PodWrangler that's

00:05:07 ◼   ► a difference than a typical way that I would distribute an app.

00:05:10 ◼   ► And so this has to do with the business model.

00:05:12 ◼   ► This week especially, it seems like there's

00:05:14 ◼   ► been a lot of talk about business models in the App Store

00:05:17 ◼   ► again.

00:05:17 ◼   ► The same thing happens over and over again.

00:05:19 ◼   ► It's not anything particularly new.

00:05:22 ◼   ► A lot of it was coming from RealMac's decision

00:05:24 ◼   ► to backpedal a bit on what they were doing with Clear,

00:05:28 ◼   ► the to-do list manager, where essentially they'd

00:05:30 ◼   ► done a paid upgrade and then they had to undo that

00:05:32 ◼   ► and just give it to everybody for free because of user anger,

00:05:38 ◼   ► I guess.

00:05:39 ◼   ► And it's just increasingly becoming, I would say,

00:05:42 ◼   ► difficult to do.

00:05:45 ◼   ► For a while, there was a model in the App Store

00:05:47 ◼   ► make money was to make anything and put it out there.

00:05:52 ◼   ► Which only sort of was true, but there was a period of time when you could create almost

00:05:56 ◼   ► anything, put it in the store, and it would get attention.

00:05:58 ◼   ► You would be able to have some amount of traction.

00:06:00 ◼   ► I remember the days when the recently updated list in the App Store was one of the big drivers

00:06:06 ◼   ► of launch success because there were just so few apps that in a given day that was actually

00:06:11 ◼   ► useful if you were one of the only two or three apps in your category that launched

00:06:14 ◼   ► that day, that you actually got a lot of traction

00:06:16 ◼   ► and a lot of interest from it.

00:06:18 ◼   ► But now, what that's doing is-- that side of things

00:06:21 ◼   ► is completely gone.

00:06:22 ◼   ► There's a million apps in the App Store.

00:06:24 ◼   ► You're not going to stand out from that.

00:06:26 ◼   ► And then there was a period of time,

00:06:27 ◼   ► I'd say, when the way that most indies approach this

00:06:32 ◼   ► was you'd want to have this big launch.

00:06:35 ◼   ► And the goal in a lot of ways was

00:06:37 ◼   ► you're trying to line up all your publicity, all your press,

00:06:39 ◼   ► all your people.

00:06:40 ◼   ► And so you'd launch, and you have this big push.

00:06:43 ◼   ► And your goal was to fly up the charts and hang out at the top

00:06:46 ◼   ► and to stick yourself there as long as you could before you'd

00:06:50 ◼   ► fall down and make a pretty substantial amount

00:06:54 ◼   ► of your revenue for the application

00:06:56 ◼   ► in that first couple of days, in that first week.

00:06:59 ◼   ► And you could fund a lot of the development from that.

00:07:01 ◼   ► And you'd fall off and settle down.

00:07:03 ◼   ► And then you'd have some amount of recurring revenue.

00:07:07 ◼   ► But a lot of it was based on having a big first spike,

00:07:10 ◼   ► that kind of hit-driven model, which works to some degree today.

00:07:14 ◼   ► But one thing that I've noticed myself and from reports from other developers is that

00:07:18 ◼   ► the amount of volume you can get, even if you get into the top 10, the top five overall

00:07:22 ◼   ► in the store on the paid side, the amount of revenue there is quite a bit smaller than

00:07:27 ◼   ► it used to be.

00:07:28 ◼   ► It used to be you'd be talking about tens of thousands of dollars, and now you're talking

00:07:31 ◼   ► more about thousands of dollars.

00:07:33 ◼   ► And that's awkward as a developer to make a living from this, even if you have a huge

00:07:42 ◼   ► launch, a big splashy thing, that you're not going to be able to necessarily make that

00:07:46 ◼   ► back very easily.

00:07:47 ◼   ► So where does that put us?

00:07:49 ◼   ► With Feed Wrangler, where I've decided to start heading is into more of a subscription

00:07:54 ◼   ► model, where rather than trying to have a big, broad audience, I'm trying to have a

00:07:58 ◼   ► relatively modest, small audience who

00:08:03 ◼   ► has an invested interest in my applications,

00:08:05 ◼   ► and to whom I'm trying to build a relationship over time.

00:08:09 ◼   ► And that every one of these people

00:08:10 ◼   ► essentially gives me $19 a year, and I provide them

00:08:13 ◼   ► with software for that membership,

00:08:15 ◼   ► for that subscription.

00:08:16 ◼   ► And I kind of like that model, that if I

00:08:19 ◼   ► can build that audience to a large enough space

00:08:22 ◼   ► that I can make a living from it,

00:08:24 ◼   ► then I have a very much more narrow business problem

00:08:27 ◼   ► that I'm trying to solve.

00:08:28 ◼   ► I'm trying to keep the small group of people happy.

00:08:33 ◼   ► And if they're happy, my business is doing well.

00:08:35 ◼   ► If they're unhappy, my business is not doing well.

00:08:37 ◼   ► But I only have a few thousand people

00:08:38 ◼   ► that I need to really pay attention to,

00:08:40 ◼   ► rather than trying to think about the millions

00:08:42 ◼   ► and hundreds of millions of people who are in the app store.

00:08:44 ◼   ► And so that's kind of where I head with Feed Wrangler.

00:08:46 ◼   ► And so far, it's going pretty well.

00:08:47 ◼   ► I mean, it's a modest but solid income

00:08:51 ◼   ► that I'm getting from it.

00:08:52 ◼   ► And with PodWrangler, I'm essentially

00:08:54 ◼   ► trying to make that membership even more valuable to them.

00:08:58 ◼   ► Because maybe they're not as interested in RSS

00:09:01 ◼   ► as they used to be.

00:09:02 ◼   ► They jumped off into Feed Wrangler

00:09:05 ◼   ► when Google Reader announced they were going to die.

00:09:07 ◼   ► Turns out they actually never really used Google Reader.

00:09:09 ◼   ► They just wanted to have an option.

00:09:11 ◼   ► And so they're like, oh, maybe next year they

00:09:12 ◼   ► wouldn't have actually renewed.

00:09:14 ◼   ► But maybe they're a big podcast guy.

00:09:15 ◼   ► And so now they have a podcast client

00:09:16 ◼   ► that sort of gets thrown in, bundled in,

00:09:18 ◼   ► with their Feed Wrangler subscription.

00:09:20 ◼   ► So if you're a Feed Wrangler member,

00:09:22 ◼   ► you open up Pod Wrangler, it'll say, hey,

00:09:23 ◼   ► Do you have a feed wrangler account?

00:09:25 ◼   ► Great.

00:09:25 ◼   ► Log in with that, and I'll get you all the features for free.

00:09:29 ◼   ► They're just bundled in.

00:09:30 ◼   ► It's a free app for you with all the features ready to go.

00:09:34 ◼   ► But that created an interesting opportunity for me.

00:09:36 ◼   ► And this is the part that I think is interesting,

00:09:38 ◼   ► is that I'm also taking advantage of the fact

00:09:40 ◼   ► that I was going to build this app anyway for this group of--

00:09:42 ◼   ► the group of people who is the feed wrangler core.

00:09:45 ◼   ► I was going to build it anyway.

00:09:46 ◼   ► And if the app had just launched as a feed wrangler only thing,

00:09:50 ◼   ► it still would have been a useful, reasonable app

00:09:52 ◼   ► that I think I would have made money from in the sense

00:09:54 ◼   ► of enhancing my membership base.

00:09:56 ◼   ► But what I can also do, and what I've done,

00:09:58 ◼   ► is I offer that to everybody.

00:10:00 ◼   ► And so PodWrangler is a free app that anybody can download

00:10:03 ◼   ► and anybody can use.

00:10:05 ◼   ► If you are someone off the street who uses it,

00:10:07 ◼   ► who's not a feed wrangler member,

00:10:09 ◼   ► you have a few limitations that I put on it.

00:10:11 ◼   ► I think it's five subscriptions.

00:10:13 ◼   ► You don't push notifications.

00:10:14 ◼   ► And I'll show iAds inside the application.

00:10:17 ◼   ► But all of that, then you have an in-app purchase

00:10:20 ◼   ► to unlock and remove all that.

00:10:23 ◼   ► But what I love about this approach

00:10:24 ◼   ► is by focusing on nurturing and building my membership core,

00:10:29 ◼   ► I can still have all these other experiments

00:10:32 ◼   ► that I'm running that are free and open to the store.

00:10:34 ◼   ► And if that hits and if that works, then awesome.

00:10:37 ◼   ► Any money I get from free users or from in-app purchase

00:10:40 ◼   ► is just icing on the cake.

00:10:43 ◼   ► Because the cake is what I'm doing with my core memberships.

00:10:45 ◼   ► And so I kind of like this model.

00:10:47 ◼   ► And so it's something that I think is interesting.

00:10:49 ◼   ► And I think we're going to have to, as a group,

00:10:52 ◼   ► as independent developers, I think

00:10:53 ◼   ► we're going to increasingly have to be creative in these kind

00:10:56 ◼   ► of ways to find ways to make good, sustainable livings

00:10:59 ◼   ► in the App Store.

00:11:00 ◼   ► Because it is getting more and more difficult.

00:11:02 ◼   ► And there's a variety of reasons to go into that.

00:11:04 ◼   ► But the reality is that's the world in which we live.

00:11:07 ◼   ► And understanding the business dynamics

00:11:09 ◼   ► behind that, and understanding that we

00:11:11 ◼   ► have to be a bit more creative, it's not quite just--

00:11:14 ◼   ► it's never really been.

00:11:16 ◼   ► But it's especially now, I wouldn't say,

00:11:18 ◼   ► a situation where you build something, you make it good, you make it quality, you put

00:11:21 ◼   ► it out there, and you're going to be able to make a living from it.

00:11:25 ◼   ► That can happen, but it takes a lot of patience, it takes a lot of energy, it's probably going

00:11:28 ◼   ► to take a couple of flops in the beginning before you find the thing, find the niche

00:11:32 ◼   ► that really works for you.

00:11:33 ◼   ► And so that's kind of what I'm trying to do with PodWranglers.

00:11:36 ◼   ► And I'm trying to put, trying to mark capitalized on as broad an audience as possible.

00:11:43 ◼   ► So I'm going from the, with the application, I'm essentially getting money from the sort

00:11:49 ◼   ► of more devoted core of people who are my members.

00:11:52 ◼   ► And then I'm also trying to go for the people who only ever buy free apps, which is quite

00:11:55 ◼   ► a lot of people.

00:11:56 ◼   ► I think there's a lot of people I know, even my own sort of social circles I'll talk about.

00:12:00 ◼   ► They'd be like, "Oh, they know me and they ask what I do."

00:12:03 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh, I say, for example, 'Oh, I make a weather app.'

00:12:05 ◼   ► Oh, what's it called?

00:12:06 ◼   ► Oh, check the weather."

00:12:07 ◼   ► And go into the app store, open it up, they're like, "Oh, it's a couple bucks?

00:12:11 ◼   ► Oh, I only get free apps."

00:12:12 ◼   ► And that's what they say, and that's an understandable place

00:12:15 ◼   ► to be.

00:12:15 ◼   ► I mean, for a lot of people, they don't necessarily

00:12:20 ◼   ► view the app store as a place they want to take

00:12:21 ◼   ► their disposable income and pour it into.

00:12:24 ◼   ► And so I understand that.

00:12:26 ◼   ► It's been unfortunate as someone who makes my living that way.

00:12:29 ◼   ► But I understand that.

00:12:30 ◼   ► And the reality is, I'm just going to have to accept that

00:12:32 ◼   ► and start kitting towards that market in a different way.

00:12:35 ◼   ► And so I just kind of try and build as broad a portfolio

00:12:37 ◼   ► as I can, diversifying in a couple of different business

00:12:40 ◼   ► models.

00:12:41 ◼   ► And hopefully, overall, that'll work pretty well.

00:12:45 ◼   ► So yeah, so that's kind of a couple of things, lessons

00:12:47 ◼   ► I've learned, or things that I'm thinking about.

00:12:49 ◼   ► And so the first one was making sure

00:12:50 ◼   ► that if you take inventory periodically about the things

00:12:53 ◼   ► that you have, the experiences you have,

00:12:54 ◼   ► things that you're specifically uniquely prepared for,

00:12:58 ◼   ► that could potentially be advantages that you

00:13:00 ◼   ► can leverage in other ways.

00:13:02 ◼   ► There are experiences that you happen

00:13:03 ◼   ► to be an expert in a very narrow field.

00:13:05 ◼   ► Maybe you can use that in a way that

00:13:08 ◼   ► helps you differentiate yourself and helps you

00:13:13 ◼   ► make your mark in a more easy way.

00:13:15 ◼   ► And then secondly, being creative about business models,

00:13:17 ◼   ► trying to not think about the outside the box a little bit

00:13:20 ◼   ► and try things and understand that sometimes they'll work,

00:13:22 ◼   ► sometimes they won't.

00:13:23 ◼   ► But overall, I think that's the way

00:13:25 ◼   ► that we're going to have to be as developers going forward.

00:13:28 ◼   ► And probably the last note on that is if you haven't,

00:13:30 ◼   ► if you're listening to this show in something

00:13:32 ◼   ► other than PodWrangler, some people would probably

00:13:35 ◼   ► say shame on you.

00:13:36 ◼   ► I'm not one of those people.

00:13:38 ◼   ► But if you're not, what I'd probably recommend

00:13:40 ◼   ► is go try it.

00:13:40 ◼   ► It's a free app, like I said.

00:13:41 ◼   ► You can go.

00:13:42 ◼   ► If you just subscribe to this and a couple of other podcasts,

00:13:46 ◼   ► you probably wouldn't even hit the five show limit.

00:13:48 ◼   ► Try it.

00:13:49 ◼   ► If you love it, then great.

00:13:50 ◼   ► Sign up for Feed Wrangler.

00:13:51 ◼   ► You get all the features included then.

00:13:53 ◼   ► Or there's a $2 in-app purchase to do it then.

00:13:55 ◼   ► But either way, try it and see what you think.

00:13:57 ◼   ► That's one of those things that I love about having a free app

00:14:00 ◼   ► is that I can ask anybody I want.

00:14:01 ◼   ► Like, hey, why don't you try my app?

00:14:03 ◼   ► And there's no barrier to that other than their time.

00:14:07 ◼   ► So we recommend you give it a try.

00:14:10 ◼   ► I want to lay a random side note.

00:14:11 ◼   ► If you've been following along on the version stats

00:14:14 ◼   ► that I post on my website, david-smith.org/ios-version-stats,

00:14:18 ◼   ► it's kind of exciting to watch.

00:14:19 ◼   ► And I think it's kind of amazing that, as of, I think,

00:14:22 ◼   ► a couple of days ago, we recently hit 50% iOS 7

00:14:26 ◼   ► in my audiobooks app, which is remarkable.

00:14:29 ◼   ► It's only been about a week.

00:14:30 ◼   ► And we've already had about 50% adoption.

00:14:32 ◼   ► So that's awesome.

00:14:33 ◼   ► So definitely be targeting iOS 7 in all your new things.

00:14:36 ◼   ► And that's it for this week.

00:14:37 ◼   ► Happy coding.

00:14:38 ◼   ► I hope you have a great week.

00:14:39 ◼   ► If you need to get a hold of me, @_DavidSmith on Twitter,

00:14:42 ◼   ► david@developingperspective.com.

00:14:44 ◼   ► And otherwise, yeah, happy coding, great week.

00:14:46 ◼   ► And I'll talk to you later.

00:14:47 ◼   ► Bye.