Okay and welcome back to video two of BlueCloudSelect. Let's
dive right into it.
Question #9: Hi, should be grateful to know what if any
views the team has on subscription bookstore/newsletter apps. Been toying with
the idea of a sub newsletter for industry I work in for awhile but not sure if
it would work or if such things best left to email delivery. Many thanks.
[:31]
Answer #9
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First and foremost a subscription model is
awesome for a variety of reasons and I think the app, building a subscription
into the app is an awesome idea. However, it is not good to use the app as your
[unclear :48] meaning you don't want to build the subscription around your app
for two reasons. One, it's really hard to convert lots of people to become
subscribers in apps. Just the behavior of people don't necessarily like
subscriptions in apps. Secondly, is that you have to pay 30% out to Apple or
Android for doing that. So it's a lot better to build your subscription model
on your website and then use the app to parse out the content. Does that make sense? A good example is
Spotify. If you sign up for Spotify in the app, they get 30% less than if you
sign up for Spotify on their website. Now if you log in through Facebook for
either one, you get the same account, same information, but they just lose out
on that much money by doing it in the app. They really push you to go online.
·
What I would say is if you're going to do a
subscription is go sign up or go set it up on the web and then build your app
to allow people who have subscriptions to access the content. We're looking to
build something like that for BlueCloudSelect. So if you're a member of
BlueCloudSelect and you have your log in information, you can use that to log
in into a BlueCloud app and see all our videos, see the Facebook group and all
that sort of stuff, but it's definitely a web offering. The app is just an
extension for iPad or iPhone or whatever it may be, but it's a terrific model.
Question #10: How can we help you? After watching video 2
of July 2015 I realized how much time and knowledge you're sharing and helping
with our businesses. Can we help you by leaving a testimonial on Facebook or
your website, sharing your articles on social media? How can we give back to
you?
Answer #10:
·
Thank you so much! I appreciate that. It's
great. This is one of my favorite things to do and I can't tell you how
grateful I am to be able to help this many people.
·
What you can do if you do feel you want to make
a difference is go help somebody else who is struggling in the app business.
There are so many people out there and there's so many people in our own group
who are writing the questions we get and everyone here wants, they want to be
successful. They want to do something so the number one thing you can do is you
can reach out and say "who has a problem today". Post on the Facebook
group "who has a problem. Let's see if we can answer it" and just
start to comment. That's the number one thing you can do. Just help more people
be more successful.
·
The second thing you can do is share more of
what's working for you on the Facebook group. That's a lot to ask and I'm not
expecting anyone to do this. I try to do it as often as I can, but it's a
little different for me. The more you can share, especially things that are working
or things you figured out with the group, every one will win and this kind of
goes back to the post I did on Facebook awhile back, a couple weeks ago about
helping people is the biggest business growth you can do. That is one thing,
sharing your secrets is a great, I mean if I hadn't shared my secrets I never
would have built BlueCloud.
·
Third, selfishly tell more people to join
BlueCloudSelect. The bigger we can get this community, the cooler and more fun
it's going to be. I would love this thing to be the defacto community of the
app world and that's what we're trying to do so just tell other people, however
you want to do that.
·
Fourth and most importantly, just make awesome
apps. Have stuff to talk about. Make really cool things so you can come share
it with us. That's what this is all about because at the end of the day, none
of this is really about me. It's all about the community and helping each other
out because if we don't do this, then we're never going to be able to get to
where we want to go so making awesome stuff is always the number one way to be
able to share more.
·
Thanks for the comment. I really appreciate
that.
Question #11: Once your app has been rejected, do you
collect a black mark and will this affect future updates or your potential to
be featured? Thanks. [5:00]
Answer #11:
·
It's hard to say in terms of do you get kind of
a black mark on your app. I've heard differing whatever responses about that
from both people at Apple and Google all the way down to individuals like all
of us here. No one really knows to be perfectly honest. It's more about the
reviewer than anything else. That's kind of what I learned the most.
·
It definitely won't affect your ability to be
featured, but it also depends on the type of app rejection you get. Like if
it's a trademark infringement or the functionality isn't very good, you're
probably not going to get featured anyway, but I've seen many apps featured. My
friend Ed who sits next to me, I'm an investor in his company, he's been
featured nine times now and they've also been rejected a handful of times for
different functionality issues. That's definitely not a problem.
·
Communication helps. If you have a track record
of communicating and trying to solve the problem for the reviewer in the review
notes, that definitely helps mitigate any sort of black mark or issues that may
come up in the future.
Question #12: Thanks for a great content first of all. It
really helps a lot. I have a question to you about analytics. Is there a chance
you can make an overview of what it is exactly? Which metrics do you pay most
attention to, how do you tackle it and interpret it? Basically how and what
data do you find the most important and where to find it? If you answered or
spoke about it in your earlier videos, let me know which month it was and that
will be great. [6:36]
Answer #12:
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What I want to do, I think last month we put out
the launch module that I did. I built this like 25 day course. It's a huge
course and I haven't erased it for some reason, but we did launch one and I
have an analytics module in that. I'm just going to release that because that
has probably the most detailed analytics downloaded. It doesn't matter if
you're a beginner or the most advanced person. You'll get a lot out of that.
You can expect to see that. We'll put that up.
·
In terms of when we discussed it, most months we
discuss it. We are currently trying to slice up all the videos so that it's
searchable by topic, by tag and all that. We're doing that as we speak so
hopefully you'll be able to search for analytics questions and you'll get to
see that clip.
·
The bonus module, like I said, we'll put that in
here.
·
Honestly, check out Flurry or Google Analytics
sites. They have huge amounts of tutorials. Specifically what you want to look
for is like all the demographic information, where is your traffic coming from,
who are your users and look at things in terms of like how long did they stay
in your app and why did they leave. Instead of saying what data do I look for,
think about what questions do I want answered. So what questions do you want
answered? Probably why don't people stick around? How long do people stick
around in my app? Who is downloading my app? What parts of my app are they
using? What part of the app are they not using? Then you can answer those
questions using data. That's typically how you want to think of analytics. How
do I answer questions? What I will also say is that the data, the quality of
data you get will come from the quality of the set up you have and that comes
from the set up and I go through all that in the bonus module, but that's
probably going to be your best bet to get all the answers you want.
Question #13: Thanks for all the great information. You
rock. Here's my question. I am fast approaching 10,000 downloads daily via my
photo and video app portfolio and I am eager to bring my app business to the
next level. You mentioned about doing ad direct deals and I really want to know
how should I go about doing it. I am using only admob now and the payout seems
to be pretty low for 10,000 downloads daily. I am also ready to explore
Facebook App Installs. Do you have any in depth resources that you can point me
to on learning paid advertising for apps? Thank you so much and have a great
day. [9:02]
Answer #13:
·
Like I said, first of all, that's awesome that
you're getting that many downloads. It's kind of a tricky thing. We'll use
photo apps as an example, any utility apps that doesn't have a very strong
monetization. I don't know what your LTD is on this and I don't know enough to
make a very detailed explanation, but when it comes to admob and doing direct
deals, it's not as quite straight forward as a game network where you can
clearly see who is converting and who is not. Admob is so much inventory, there's
so many platforms. It's actually more about optimizing your admob campaigns
versus direct deals because they have so much fill that it's often not even
about the apps themselves in the direct deals. It's about the geo-location, how
well it serves. Things like that can make a big difference especially on the
banners as oppose to interstitials. So what I would do is I would go and you
can optimize it, maybe you've already done this. It's a one click thing and I
would also go through and I would optimize your categories and just take your
best bet. If you don't have Google Analytics installed on your app, you should
install that next time because then you can sync the analytics to your admob
account and that's when you get all the information you need to know about who
is my best advertiser and what's my best traffic coming from and things like
that.
·
If you want to do a direct deal, the best way to
do it instead of going through admob is you basically do it directly, kind of
an old school direct deal where you would email the partners division of Kabam
or Zinga or Game of War or whoever and you'd say "here's my information.
Here's what I'm converting at. Here's my numbers that you need to know".
You might not have their direct ECPM because I'm not positive you can get ad
level or advertiser level information yet in admob. That may have changed.
Pitch them on the amount that you have on your demographic information and you
ask them to get a better deal. What you'll do is they'll send you the creative
and then you'll put that in as if it's its own ad network. So you can put that
in as a house ad. You can put the graphic in and then you can wrap it your own
affiliate language which they'll give you which they'll track through whatever
system, admob or whatever system they have and then they'll kind of do the
billing through them.
·
Whether or not you're going to make a ton more
money, I have no idea. It really depends on the kind of deal you get and the
way it can all work out, but that's one way to do it that kind of bypasses
admob because you just use their platform as opposed to trying to go through
the ad networks, which they make it a little harder to do than someone like
[unclear 12:00] or chartbooster or something like that.
·
Finally identify your demographic information
and then match to the best advertisers you can think of. Honestly, it's going
to come down to the big games are always going to win because they are broadly
appealing and they pay out the best and that dictates ECPM more than almost
anything else on the long term.
·
Now I didn't mention Facebook ads because if
you're getting 10,000 organic downloads a day, you probably don't want to try
to spend your money on Facebook ads unless you have a very specific photo app
that you can go out. For example, if you are catering to a very specific type
of photographer or a very specific type of user where the Facebook users are
going to monetize like three or four apps better. That's something to think
about, but if I were you, I wouldn't really worry about the Facebook ads yet
unless you have very specific function that you can match to a very specific
audience that they will monetize from. Otherwise it's just going to be a very
difficult way to, you're not going to move the needle that much relatively speaking
unless you have like specific parts of your app that is like an $19 in app
purchase that is directly related to some person that wants to see that type of
stuff.
·
I hope that helps with the direct deals and
honestly a lot of it just comes down to optimizing your admob platform.
Question #14: Hi. I'm having a hard time
organizing/planning my business. I have like 50 different things running in my
head at once. I was wondering how you make a plan for your business and follow
it. For example, do you set up a road map for the year with the apps you will
make or do you just look at two weeks ahead and decide on what apps to make as
you go? Also when you're releasing apps do you just launch and forget or do you
keep following up with old apps while releasing new ones at the same time and
how do you keep track of this? [14:07]
Answer #14:
·
I completely empathize with you. This is like
probably the bane of my, it's also the reason why I've made the most money and
it's also the reason why I've lost money because I'm very, very similar. It's a
blessing and a curse. Hopefully I can help you just based on my own experience.
·
I have a few different things. I set up daily,
weekly, monthly and yearly goals, which sounds like a lot. It sounds like
overkill, but I've also learned that if I don't do this, I end up doing a
million different things. That's how I am. Daily goals will be what are the two
things I want to get done today? Like if I get these two things done, does my
business move forward? Like at the end of this day, if these two things are
done, is my day better? Yes or no. If the answer is yes, those are the two
things I do. Everything else doesn't matter if I get it done. Weekly is the
same thing. I do what are the three things that if I got done this week, my
business would get better. Monthly, same deal. That's how I organize it my own
self. Yearly is like if I accomplish that this year will my life move forward?
What do I need to look back at? It's not necessarily I want to make 'x' amount
of money. It's more about what skills do I have or what processes do I have in
place? What's something that's repeatable that's going to be a really big win
for me later on when a bigger opportunity shows up? When it comes to organizing
it and planning it and having all of those million things going on in your
head, the best thing you can do is just pick one or two things and break it
down to daily, weekly, monthly, yearly or quarterly or whatever you want to do,
but always make it very, very few things and just get those things done.
·
For me personally, setting personal goals has
been like ten times as important as setting business goals. If I sit out and I
say I want to make $6 million this year. I want to have 5 million people on my
website. I want to sell all my apps or I want to buy 50 portfolios or whatever.
I tend to not really respond well to that. I don't feel that deep down, but if
I do personal stuff where I'm like "I want to get in this kind of
fitness" or "I really want to make sure that I give gratitude for 15
minutes every day to improve my sense of faith or whatever it may be for me,
those goals translate into much, much, much bigger successes on both a personal
and business side than if I try to do business goals. If you're anything like
me, which it sounds like you might be, I would urge you to do that. Instead of
focusing on your goals, these things that have to do with numbers and that are
highly mechanical and achievement oriented production type, start setting your
goals in terms of measurable, but on things that make you feel better, thing
that allow you to feel more calmed down and more focused and more relaxed.
Things like "I'm going to meditate for 15 minutes a day". This is
going to happen and you are naturally just going to take all the energy your
brain has and it's going to start to build in the right places because you are
much more in line with yourself. That's just me. I'm just sharing that because
I hope it helps somebody if they're having the same issues.
·
In terms of apps, yeah I used to release tons of
apps, both because that was my natural state and also because I didn't know.
Nobody knew. We had no idea what would happen if you just kept releasing apps
and it seemed to be working really, really well, but now it's not really like
that at all. It's not about how many apps you have in the store. It's about how
many good apps do you have in the store? How many ROI positive apps do you have
in the store? That's the name of the game and so I just wrote a blog post on
this. You can find it on the blog and I can't remember what I called it. It's
like engineers versus marketers and it's the idea of we used to be like let's
just put more apps in the app store. Let's just dump them all in there and see
which ones rise to the top and that's going to pay for everyone's ride and now
it's more along the terms of let's go out and find where the opportunities are
first and then build apps to feed those opportunities and that is the complete
opposite mindset of an ADD person like myself or someone who doesn't have
organization at the top of their priority list because it's free range for us.
We can just say "all we've got to do is just multiply and scale and go a
million miles an hour and make a million different things and it doesn't have
to be good. We just have to do a lot of them and do them really fast" and
in situations like that we can be really successful. Now unfortunately that's
like 2% of business over the course of our lifetimes. It's these crazy flash
markets.
·
What I would recommend for you is if you have
all this stuff going on, focus on the opportunity first. Focus on the demand.
How can you guarantee that what you're going to build is going to get the
downloads? Instead of saying I'm going to build something and then I'm going to
go try to figure it out, that's what makes you go build something else because
the sooner you build it and it doesn't get downloads, you're like I've got to
go build three more to see if those get downloads. That's the problem and
you've got to focus on "I'm going to go find downloads. I'm going to go
find people that want my app and then I'm going to go build it after I
guarantee that I know that it's out there" because if you build an app and
it does start to get a lot of downloads from the start, you're going to be way
more inclined to focus on that and stay on that one app and that's going to
make your whole business just better organized, more efficient, and you're
going to make a whole lot more money
doing that.
·
Read the blog post and you'll see what I'm
talking about. Finally the last piece of this is you've got to recognize it.
You've got to recognize that if you've got a lot of things going on in your
head and you're not getting everything dialed in, you have to just own up and
asking on a place like this is a great place to start and say like I'm not sure
I like this. I can do a million things at once. For a long period of life I
took pride in that. I loved that I could write 15,000 words a day and I could
produce ten apps in like three hours and I thought it was so great that I could
do that, but now I realize that might be my natural state, but that doesn't
necessarily mean that's the right thing for me or for my business and so what I
realize is I have to spend way more time planning and not constantly doing
stuff even though I love working and executing. If I do that all the time, I
end up spending all my time on crap that doesn't end up working out versus if I
spend all my time just planning and making sure everything is organized and
okay. When I do decide to do something that one time, it's done the right way
and it's the right thing to do and it moves the business forward. I don't focus
on like the results of my effort. I don't look at it and be like "if I
work this hard, I'm going to get this done" and "how big can I get
this? How much can I do". It's more about "if I can only do one thing
today, how do I guarantee that it's the right thing to do and asking yourself
that question every morning will really change the way you run your business. It'll
change the way you think when you have to always prove to yourself and
guarantee yourself that your effort is being put in the right place. I think
everyone could benefit from that type of thinking in the app store when there's
a million different places to go, a million different opportunities. When you
start asking yourself "If I'm only going to do one thing today, only one
action, can I guarantee that this is the right action". It's like you're
running a hedge fund. Is this the right investment of your time and the more
you do that, the more you will get good at just doing one thing at a time and
it's always right.
·
I'll leave with a great story about Jay Z who
famously will say no like a thousand times before he says yes once and my buddy
was talking to him and he said "is this true" and he's like
"yeah because when I say yes, I want to make sure I'm right" and
that's a very powerful thing to think about and so my challenge to you and to
anyone listening now as I keep rambling on about this, when you do do an action
or when you decide to do something, make sure you can justify it and you have
proof that this is the right thing to do and the more you can do this, it's
going to change your life. I can promise you that.
Anyway, thanks so much guys. Check out the analytics videos.
I think you'll really like them. I will talk to you later.
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