Welcome to the 4th episode of our Appreneur Podcasts.
In this series of podcasts, we’ll be bringing you some of the biggest names in the industry and the brightest app developers on the planet to discuss app marketing, monetization and development strategies with you every week.
In this episode, we site down with Rob Woodbridge, founder of UNTETHER.tv and extract (that sounds painful doesn’t it?) some great tactics and strategies that he’s using right now today. You’ll learn:
• How app developers move from hobbyist or dreamer, to successful appreneur
• The fundamentals that must be considered in order to make a long-term go of the mobile app industry
• Where and how to focus the most energy in order to maximize ROI
• the difference between dollars and downloads
• The power of a mailing list
• Some under-utilized app monetization methods
Check out the video and leave your comments and feedback below…
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Download Appreneur Podcast Episode 4 MP3
Download Appreneur Podcast Episode 4 Transcripts
TRANSCRIPTS:
Len: Welcome to this edition of Appreneur Appcast. We are having a great time already today, and it’s going to continue. We have got a great guest for you, as well as today we’ve also got my partner, COO and cofounder of AppClover.com, Matthew Lutz. I am Len Wright, CEO and cofounder as well of AppClover.com. Today we have got Jeff Williams, CEO and founder of Weblance.
Jeff: That’s right, Senior Human Resource Tester this week.
Len: And today we have got a really special guest. We have got Rob Woodbridge, a founder of Untether.tv; a 13-year veteran of the mobile space, which is really hard to find out there now. There are so many newer people, including us, within the mobile space. It’s great to have you aboard today, Rob. I want you to explain a little bit about your background, about Untether.tv and what gap your site serves in the market, and what made you do it.
Rob: Sure. Thanks for having me, guys, I really appreciate this. It’s so odd to be a guest on somebody else’s show when you spend so much time actually getting prepared to be the interviewer. I really appreciate it. I guess I lend a gray hair to this episode, is that right?
Len: I don’t know, I don’t want to get into ages here. — I’m 42.
Rob: So we match up in age very well.
Matt: 38.
Len: That’s a compliment, though, I must look young. It’s the cap, I’m hiding everything. The cap, glasses.
Rob: I love it. I’ve been doing this for a long time; I’ve been involved in the mobile space for a considerable amount of time. Ever since I bought my very first PalmPilot back in the mid-90s, I had jealous envy of the guy next to me who had the Newton, so I made a pact that I was going to buy every new device that ever came out, regardless of how much it cost. I have sunk hundreds of thousands of dollars into technical equipment that now just sits rusting in a basket right over there. I can’t even sell it anywhere, because it’s useless technology.
I’ve spent the last number of years either running a mobile company – I ran a mobile game company for four years. I ran a mobile enterprise software company for four years. Then I kind of stepped away and decided that I wanted to be much more in the knowledge space. I love learning, and that was the one thing that when you’re inside of a software company with a product, you forget what’s out there. I emerged after eight years of running companies. I looked around, and the landscape had changed so much. I just said, “Look, the best way to learn is to learn from everybody else who has been doing this out there.”
I started this thing called Untether.tv about 2 ½ years ago. Since then, I have interviewed 425 mobile entrepreneurs around the world, and have done about 250 podcasts focused on this space. It’s well over 20,000 or 30,000 hours embedded into this space. I’m thankful to be doing this, and in a space that I am so passionate about in mobile and pervasive computing. It’s been a blast.
Len: That’s awesome. We weren’t really just joking about you being the veteran on here. That goes way beyond — that is a great, great foundation to draw from. I’m going to hand it over to Matt. Matt, you can take it and maybe ask him some questions, and take the veil off of some of that knowledge in there so that our audience can learn from it.
Matt: I truly feel like you should be doing the interviewing here, Rob.
Rob: You’ve got to be careful; I don’t know if there’s much knowledge are going to get from here.
Matt: I’ll extract something.
Rob: One something — about 1/10 of it sticks.
Matt: We are aiming for that 1/10. Recently, the three of us – sorry, Jeff, you were not involved in that conversation, that nonetheless — we were chatting. This is where I noticed that we have a lot of similarities in our viewpoints of where the industry is right now and who is basically developing out there. There is a handful of what we refer to as Appreneurs, which are people who are taking this and treating it like a business, and they are really approaching it with marketing and business fundamentals. There are also the hobbyists and the people that are, worse yet, treating it as kind of a get rich quick scheme, hoping they can just basically throw up an app and become the next Angry Birds or whatever. We know that’s not how it happens. To quote you that day, you said, “How on God’s green earth does a developer move from the ranks of hobbyist or a dreamer to successful Appreneur?” That being said, you’re actually interviewing your own self here.
Rob: Don’t use my words against me.
Matt: I told you, you were doing the interviewing. Yes, if you can share a few fundamental things that an Appreneur has to consider to make a long-term go of it, that would be great if you could share that with us.
Rob: Fundamentally, one of the biggest challenges people have is that it’s the lure of the get rich quick. Everybody looks at the corner cases and says, “Angry Birds did it; Instagram just sold for $1 billion.” There are a number of these examples, but then there are successful entrepreneurs who have failed miserably in this space. Look at Milk, which just completely disintegrated underneath them. These guys are veterans in the startup world. It’s not an easy thing to do to start these things.
One of the biggest issues that I see very often around hobbyists versus businesses is that everybody who is a hobbyist seems to invest heavily in the production of the product. I’ve got an idea, this is a world first, this is going to be a market leader idea and I’m going to go out and spend all my money on development. I’m not going to do any testing; I’m not going to do some simple techniques today that allow me to test whether or not this idea can fly. What I’m going to do is I’m just going to hire a developer and I’m going to build it out, because I need an app, and I’m going to launch it.
They often fail. They fail why? Two reasons; one is they didn’t do enough research on the market to see if this is actually something that somebody wants to use, and the second thing is that they probably didn’t save enough money for marketing. Ninety-eight percent of the money that you spend in this space should be toward awareness-making. Then the money you spend in the development is wasted if nobody knows about it, and it will go away. There are very few cases where you are going to get the social umph that happened with an Angry Birds where you were judging platforms, like operating systems, based on whether or not they had Angry Birds on it.
There are very few cases like that. Most people don’t spend enough money on marketing and awareness creating, and they don’t even think about it. They just think, “You know what? I’m going to pick up this app, I’m going to create, I’m going to put it in iTunes and it’s going to sell itself.”
Matt: That’s a great point. This is an argument I use all the time. I use this analogy, and you’ve heard this one: If a tree falls in the woods and there’s no one around, does it make a sound? It’s the same thing about if you build a website, just because you have one, doesn’t mean people know it’s there. You need the traffic sources, you need the marketing to let people know. Exact same thing is going on with apps right now, “If I build it they will come.”
Len: Just because your friend Sally likes your idea, does not mean that you have done your market research. We covered that in another podcast as well. It is a business. You still can — we’re still in that age where I say you can still be sloppy and successful. The wall still has some places to throw things up there that will stick. But now, and more going forward, it’s going to be more important and crucial, really, to you getting found — how much knowledge and how much you’re learning about doing those tactics that get you found in marketing.
Rob: One of the big things that I have found around this is that it’s so noisy in the mobile space right now, in the app space. Just do a search, except for the ones that we know that are household names now — Angry Birds and Instagram, we mentioned them – it’s so noisy that even great ideas get muffled by that noise. There are nuggets of great companies in there somewhere, but they either don’t have the weight, they don’t have the money, they don’t have the social power, they don’t have the connections to be able to rise to the top. Some of the most innovative companies that we’re probably ever going to see that are using mobile as their base are probably going to die, and then maybe be resurrected in a year or so when the timing is right and this whole thing kind of settles down, and we are allowed to see the great companies rise. It’s just so noisy.
Matt: A big part of that — and this is actually a nice little segue into one of the things I want to talk about next — is the fact that so many developers, because of this get in early and just throw as much spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks and see if any of them make money. That just became huge, right? I don’t know how slowly, but we are evolving away from that. Now it’s coming down to quality and better user experiences, and more utility like functionality and stuff in apps. It’s coming down the quality. I think that whole building in volume is no longer like even six months ago, it’s not working like it used to.
To that point, one of the things, again, in the conversation we’ve had in the past is we’ve talked about enterprises and organizations. They can’t just put up an app because they know they need an app. I say this is similar to the whole Facebook phase, “Oh, visit us on Facebook.” Okay. After I do that, what are you going to do? It’s the same thing going on right now, “I have an app.” “Okay, what does it do for me? How does it improve my life?” A lot of organizations and developers in general are just doing it to do it.
That’s a long-winded way to say, when you consider all of this, where do you think the opportunity is for developers moving forward? Where is going to be the next highest ROI on their time and investment to be in it for the long term, not just to make a quick buck?
Rob: Two sides. I suppose if you’re an independent developer looking for opportunities where I think there is going to be a lot of work coming down the road, there is one side. If you are a developer looking to build products that you want to sell to enterprises or sell to consumers, I’ve got some ideas on there. If you are a developer — and they might actually end up at the same spot, which is odd enough — but if you are a developer, this consumer space is very difficult right now. It’s high-volume, very similar ideas; it seems like everybody congregates around an idea like a kids’ soccer team around the ball. The whole team is around that ball, and that’s what it seems like with mobile ideas.
The enterprise is so ripe. I’m talking about big companies; the guys that have to create efficiencies in their business right now where they can’t; there is spaghetti code, there are inefficient processes that have been built. I look at software, and some of these enterprises have just had bad code, and they build bad code on top of that, and then they build code to marry the two. It’s just like this wedding cake of bad code.
Mobile really is an opportunity to remove the cluster around the bad code and just get right to the point. In the states, Barack Obama saw this. He has mandated that every federal department create two applications that facilitate consumer engagement in a much faster way. If there is an inefficient process or a form that you have to fill out, or something you have to send like a photo or something like that, Barack Obama has said, “Go and do this via mobile, because it’s probably the easiest way. Rather than reengineering the organization, let’s just build a layer on top that brings all that information to the top so people can use it quickly.”
Enterprise government, I think there is massive opportunity for development, because they are on the fringe of this space. They are not involved, they are not engaged — they are testing. In Canada, you know that because the government year-end is the end of March; that’s where if they have any excess budget, they spend it as quickly as they can. It’s usually hardware that they spend it on. You see Dell boxes piling up everywhere and Apple boxes. This year around, they started spending it on $25,000 single-source contracts exploring mobile. We’re starting to see a trend in the government that I think is going to be massive.
Matt: That’s interesting; I wasn’t aware that was going on. It tells you ,there are so many people and indicators that say, “Hey, this is the direction things are going.” One of the things to that point, as far as moving forward and where you can probably see more opportunity. This is kind of how we base our entire business, to be honest. You heard of this — everyone refers to mobile as the mobile gold rush. That’s what’s going on. If you’re rewind and look back at time, who made money in the gold rush? It was the people that provided the tools and the picks and all of that stuff. I think there’s a lot of opportunity out there for the people that create services and third-party tools and whatever; if it’s software, if it’s some sort of monitoring in Linux, a review site, whatever it is. There are so many, it’s just a matter of your imagination. How can you help developers? That’s a huge opportunity, too. Yes, sure, absolutely create apps. There’s still a market there as long as the app hits all of the high notes that we talked about already, but also providing tools. That’s huge. Provide service; improve other people’s lives.
Len: Innovation.
Matt: Yes, innovation. I think that’s how, again, that’s who made money in the gold rush. Those are the real people who made it is the people that had the hotels, and the lodging, the food, and the picks and the axes and shovels and all that stuff. Those were the people that made the money. It’s the same thing going on here; history repeats itself.
Len: Also, if you look at the fringe of that wave going on as well, there are different types of careers and innovative ways to be able to profit from the fringe around it as well. I think of one way-out fringe, but I can’t remember — it was in a Third World country somewhere where the villages don’t have electricity, yet people have mobile. What do they do? A new business opportunity for somebody with a bike that collects all of the phones, and then puts it in his basket and rides to the next village that has electricity and plug them all in at night, then delivers them back in the morning. That’s a brand-new way to be able to make money for this person who does this. I read about it and I thought, how many other ways around the fringe of this wave, of this trend, are going to be created for people to be able to have new opportunity? That’s where creativity, ingenuity and innovativeness comes in.
With any wave or surge that comes in, that energy that comes with it is all about creativity. The opportunities here are changing swiftly, but I don’t think they’re going away. More than anything, I think they are being amplified, it’s just that you’ve got to be really smart about where you look at finding them.
Matt: Yes. Not to get too far off topic, but here are a few really, really cool stories that I ran across not that long ago. It’s innovation that people are doing with their apps. Number one is, as we speak right now, technology is being developed to where you can literally, in Third World countries and areas where water is not as plentiful as it is in our countries, you can literally use your mobile device to test the water to see if it’s actually drinkable and stuff like that. Like you’re going to be dipping your phone, is that crazy? This technology is being developed right now. There are apps involved in there, right?
Len: Here’s one for somebody who wants to develop something. I’m a diabetic, and diabetic is a growing market; it’s a huge market. But the testers cost me about $.80 apiece, and I got though quite a few a day. It’s vital for me to do it. What we need is an application that you just take my phone, I have a little piece, I can prick my finger with it, it measures it and I don’t have to take — that would be huge. That’s just one idea. What I’m saying is, look at all of the different places that mobile, as we were talking about, fills a gap and can add functionality, convenience and improvement upon the process that is being used now.
Rob: Len, what we’re talking about here is at some point you’re going to be digesting a pill, and it’s just going to communicate. You will take the pill once a month, and it will communicate when something is wrong. That’s what it’ll tell you. No longer will you have to find a sharp edge and prick yourself.
We’re a little bit off-topic, but that’s a major trend that’s happening right now. In North America, adoption of all of these technologies has come at a voracious rate. If you think about two or three years ago, we weren’t talking about this stuff. We were playing games, it was a task-based content management tool that we had in our hands. We didn’t have this pervasive connectivity. But 10-12 years ago I was in Asia, I was in Thailand, I was in Italy — what did I see? I just saw the tops of everyone’s heads as they were texting. We thought that it was insane. NTT Docomo was making billions of dollars in ringtones and wallpaper for these phones.
When I think about innovation and opportunity, I look at not the countries that have — the countries that have the big screens we’re looking at right now, the countries that have fixed phone lines right now, the countries that have cable to their home, and HD. I’m looking at nations that don’t have this stuff; that don’t have universal education, that don’t have connectivity, that don’t have home phone numbers, that don’t have a bank account, and how all of those countries are innovating far beyond what we’re doing in Canada and the United States. Those guys are the trendsetters for us.
What we saw in the Far East, and then Europe, and then North America that is happening now when it’s coming to mobile payments, mobile wallets for the unbanked. Education is fierce in Africa around mobile, because even feature phones – you’ve got a population that carries feature phones. You want to educate them? That’s the way that you reach them. This is a worldwide phenomenon, and it is brought on by the fact that we have these powerful devices that we carry with us everywhere. It is literally changing every industry.
When you look at an opportunity, it’s a big green field. Every industry is ripe for disruption, and it’s all because of these devices. It’s insane.
Matt: It is. I recently went to Africa and saw firsthand, and spoke to a lot of people that lives were changed because of what’s going on in mobile technology. Like you mentioned, M-banking; now people that before would have to walk miles and miles to go to the bank – again, it’s a Third World country, anything can happen. They could get robbed, they could get whatever carrying their money just to make their deposit, and then they’d come back. They would lose days, right? Now they can do everything via their phones. In addition to that, we talked about the education and stuff. Again, learning new things around better farming practices, better hygiene practices — all of these things are bettering their lives. It’s all because of what they’re holding their hand; that little mobile device. We’re just scratching the surface right now, we haven’t even seen what’s beneath the veneer of what’s about to happen.
Rob: I spoke with a woman who runs a company called Afros in Africa, and it’s a game. It’s a game about human rights. I don’t want to bring this down, but I will show you the monumental impact that this is having. The game is to teach boys, 13-year-old or 12-year-old boys, about human rights and about how men and women are equal. It teaches some harsh lessons. She said that it dawned on her the impact that they were going to have with this game. There are 20 million people who have used this game when she said a boy, who couldn’t have been more than 12 or 13 years old, walked in with this ghostly look on his face. He said, “You know what? I just realized something. I’m a rapist, and I don’t like that anymore.” He had no idea that it was a contravention of human rights. All of a sudden, because of this game, she had turned this boy into realizing exactly what he was doing wrong. In theory, you would hope that he stopped because he had the realization. Most people don’t know. Maybe he didn’t know what he was doing was wrong, because it was just a behavior.
When you hear stories like that you think, “This is not just about games and fun, this is about fundamentally shifting the way that we live, and that people live around the world.” When you bring it back down to North America and opportunities, you know what? Every company out there, large or small, can be disrupted. We have started to see this happening right now as a result of these stupid little devices we carry. It’s crazy. I’m blown away, and I get excited about it.
Matt: That’s an amazing story, and thanks for sharing that. That’s something I’ll probably pass on to other people in passing, because that’s a great one. That right there is an eye-opener. It just shows that literally you can change the world by getting involved at another level. It just goes to how big is your imagination, and what problems are out there that you want to solve. It’s awesome.
Rob: Bringing it back down to the business side when you think about that, is that you have to satisfy that business need. People will embrace this technology. If you can do that, if you can find the one thing they use every day, or the one thing that they have a pain every day, you are going to find a waiting and willing audience.
Len: Yes, find solutions and solve problems.
Matt: This seems kind of weird to jump — there is going to be no segue here that makes sense.
Rob: Have you seen any of my interviews? That’s exactly how they roll, too.
Matt: Let’s talk dollars versus downloads. This is a topic for, again, to bring it back to Appreneurs and stuff like that. I would say personally, and I know that you kind of feel the same way and we’ve all discussed this in the past. Touting your app’s download numbers really only comes down to a few things. I say this is tongue-in-cheek, but it comes down to ego, marketing ploy so that other people that are newer to the industry, the newbies just kind of think, “Okay, downloads equal dollars. If I get one download I get one dollar, so that’s awesome.” It’s more or less a marketing ploy to get people to look up to you. We’re beyond that now. The other thing, I think, is ego. I don’t know if I mentioned that again. It’s ego, marketing ploy, ego – those are the three things that it comes down to.
Jeff: And machismo.
Matt: And machismo, and that’s just a fun word to say. That being said, I guess where we’re exiting right now is where the paid model is the big thing. At that point, a download did mean a dollar for the most part, right? If not more. However, the freemium model came in and took over a little bit. You can still see both. You have a light model for apps, and if you want to upsell, or you want to buy the one without the ads in it, you pay the one dollar or whatever. I guess you have to be a little more creative there, but what do you think is really where we’re heading? What do you think is important for developers to actually focus on? Downloads versus dollars, or where should they actually pay attention to what’s going on?
Rob: I think this is going to be a debate that we continuously go through as this industry evolves. I’m a big fan of the dollar. Developers spend so much time – you out there spend so much time, blood, sweat, energy, relationships, and you pour it all into these applications for deployment. You know what? You charge $.99 or $1.99, or you give it away for free. There is a strategy there, but that is one piece of the strategy. Quite frankly, you’re never going to get the numbers, on the most part, to generate an income from ads — from display ads, or targeted ads or e-mail lists. Don’t go out there thinking that way.
You’ve got to think about how you can build a community of diehard folks who are going to buy your product. I think that you have to create a value around your product so that people are willing to spend the money for it. There are no ifs, and or butts — if you’re in this to make money, if you’re in this for a business, you’ve got to generate an income so that you can go and do this full-time. I’ve spoken with enough entrepreneurs who it’s an afterthought. They think about, “I’ll just get a whole bunch of downloads, and then I will try to figure out how to turn that into revenue.” That is just not an appropriate way to go about business. It’s not like you would rent a store, put a sign on the store, start paying it down, bring in some inventory and then try to figure out what you’re going to sell and how you’re going to make money. No, you do that before you go through this process.
Jeff: I was just thinking, what about the marketplaces now enforcing quality? Is it even going to be possible to go with the freemium model when you really need to develop a powerful app? It costs money to do that.
Rob: You started to see this in my early days in the game space. We were building them from Blackberry, if you can believe it, because they were the only smartphone at the time, really. We were building them, and the average cost to build a game at that point was maybe $30,000. Granted it was Blackberry, they were black-and-white, and it really wasn’t a true smartphone experience like we have today. That number has now ballooned up to $500,000 or $1 million or more. EA Sports spends more than that on their mobile games. There has to be a revenue model affixed with that; you can’t just be building this and selling it for $1.99, it just doesn’t make any sense.
Len: I was just going to say, too, and you touched on it before. It’s not really about downloads as much as it is about user engagement. What are you doing with the downloads that you have? You could have 50 million downloads, but if you only have 10,000 people that are using your product, you only really have a community or user base of 10,000. The quality really comes down, as you were mentioning, the functionality and really hooking them into utilizing the product because they love something about the product. That really takes the planning and the thinking and the strategy beforehand.
Rob: It’s so important. You know, I think of companies that have been successful in this, and they probably made more money offline out of their games, like Angry Birds has made more money on the plush toys and the t-shirts than they have on the game. The game costs $.99. I have a thousand things my kids have bought; they’ve probably spent hundreds of dollars on Angry Birds because of this silly little game. They had a marketing strategy, they had a merchandising strategy behind this, and they realized it very quickly.
For the most part, building an active and engaged community is very important. You wouldn’t believe the disappointment when I talk to developers, and I say, “How many downloads have you had for your app?” It’s a question that everyone wants to know, for some reason. They say, “Well, we’re stuck at 10,000.” Like such disappointment on their face. “I’m embarrassed to tell you.” I think, all those software developers in the 80s and 90s and early 2000 who thought, “Man, I hope I can sell 100 copies. I hope we can get this into 100 people’s hands.” 10,000 people or 1000 people is an incredible number of people. If you can’t make a living off of those guys, go work for the government, you don’t have to be here. Don’t waste anybody’s time.
Matt: Absolutely. We actually know a developer who had, over the course of 18 months, 786 downloads before he sold his app for, I think, $1.6 million. Obviously it wasn’t a $50,000 app, but he had a monetization model built in the back end of it. It’s a matter of thinking it through and treating it like a business, not a hobby, and really figuring out how you’re going to monetize off of this. At the end of the day, economics play a huge role. I will revisit that in a second, because we’ve got another question about that. I think that’s a huge thing to consider, absolutely.
The other thing — we talked about this before, and I think this is a great example. I can’t remember the number, I will let you share that, but the flip book example of how many page flips they’ve had. Okay, what does that mean in terms of revenue? Is it a nickel per flip?
Rob: Yes, a flip board. It’s interesting; it’s a nice app, it’s a beautifully-constructed app and they’re creating these great relationships, and they’re exploring pay walls with the New York Times. When they released that it was like 3.5 billion flips. I kind of equated that to, “How many newspaper pages are being turned right now?” Right now there are probably more than 3.5 billion newspaper pages and magazine pages being turned. Right now. Everybody looks at that industry and says they are in decline, or in the gutter, or newspapers are dying and the media industry is dying. What is the significant number 3.5 billion flips? That’s an ego number. It’s a total ego number. They declined to talk about their revenue. Why? I wonder why — because they’re not making any.
Even when you start to talk about Facebook and their mobile strategies; this is a company that has almost 1,000,000,000 users, and they’re generating $3.5 billion in revenue, which was their last reported year. Those are not good numbers; I don’t want to run a company like that. That’s too much effort for that little amount of revenue. You’ve got to put it all in perspective. Cut through the garbage numbers. Really focus on the ones that are beneficial to your business, and don’t fall for this ego stuff.
Len: Downloads are not going to put you on the beach with a drink.
Rob: No, downloads are going to put you in a job at a desk in a cubicle.
Len: Unless those downloads have a proper strategy of how to be able to turn that into revenue. You know there are many, many ways to be able to do that, but you’ve got to have a strategy.
Matt: To that, this will be a nice little segue — I’ve used the word segue about 30 times today — into the next question. At the end of the day, each one of those downloads is a person, right? Both Len and I come from an online marketing background. We know that one of the number one assets for online marketing, as well as app developing, in my opinion, is your list. That is your number one asset, right? At the end of the day, that is where all your power is. It’s where your relationships are created, it’s where your loyalty is created and all that stuff.
In my opinion, I think 99% of app developers haven’t really adopted that view yet, and they haven’t really started to wrap their heads around it or understand it. I don’t necessarily fault them, it’s that they don’t know. To that point, what are your thoughts on the level of importance of building a list? If you got any ideas or strategies on how a person can actually start to do that.
Rob: We are in complete agreement about the list. Any way that you can help your customers identify themselves to you, I am in full favor of that. I think that a hundred people or ten people on a list that you communicate with regularly is much more valuable than 10,000 downloads to freeloaders that you will never hear from again, that you don’t know, that are transient in your app. It’s very important, and you have to start right away from the very beginning. Your launch strategy, whatever you’re doing. If you’re an app developer and you’re putting out your own app, you have to have a launch strategy. It can be as simple as a one-page, “Notify me when the app is ready or available.” That is so important. Even if you only get 10 names, you have got 10 names on a list. That is the beginning of it.
If you are 8 weeks, or 12 weeks, or 16 weeks away from launching your app, start building your list today. Don’t wait until you are launched. I see so many people that are like, “Okay, our app is out there. Now what?” “Where’s your mailing list?” “We don’t have one.” “Okay, so where is your engagement on the social world?” “Don’t have it. Should we do that?”
Jeff: We actually did that with Weblance. We started a year ago, and we’re probably going to go live here in a couple of months, I hope. I’m not worried about going live. I’ve got thousands on there, I am happy with that. We just did it through a simple blog; we didn’t put a lot of effort into really great content, but it generated a list. Here we are a year later, ready to go.
Matt: Tell people again why they should visit your site for not really great content?
Len: And no product.
Jeff: It’s got terrible content, the first thing you need.
Matt: We’re actually contributors on that site, I take offense to that.
Jeff: It’s getting better every day. In fact, I just posted two articles from AppClover.com; check them out.
Matt: I don’t want your plug right now, actually.
Rob: That’s a big endorsement.
Jeff: The point is, I put more time in development than I do creating content, how about that?
Len: There we go, nice catch there.
Rob: The thing that developers do, quite often, if it’s your own product or you are doing it for somebody else, is you forget to build anticipation. That’s the big thing you want to do. You want to build anticipation so that you launch and you don’t fizzle; so that when you actually go out with your product, there are people waiting in line to buy it. That is one of the key things. It’s also great market research. We talked about identifying a niche in the app world. If you get those people engaged at the beginning, they can help shape the product so that they can’t say no to buying it when it gets launched. That is so important in the way that you build, and the way that you deploy, and the way that you actually get the product out.
The second thing is that everybody I know, that I talk to early on in the days around here, always worked the launch. There are companies that worked — like we’re launching South by Southwest, and we’re driving toward South by Southwest, and we’re launching South by Southwest. It’s like the day after South by Southwest ends, is over, it like, “Now what do we do?” All of their focus was on the launch, not the day after the launch. That’s the other piece.
Matt: Yes, and a launch isn’t a business model. It’s a spike; it’s not sustainable. It doesn’t matter what business you’re talking about, it’s a spike. Period.
Len: What I would like to add, too, is user engagement is really what we’re talking about here to build the loyalty and to build the community and so forth. Each and every single person that you get in there — I know Matt, you were mentioning when we started AppClover, you were saying we’ve got to keep in touch with absolutely everybody. That first 1000 people, keep in touch with them. Make sure that they are regularly hearing from you. It’s the same thing with building this list and building that engagement with your users.
When you get downloads, they’re friends, they are people that actually have bought into the ingenuity that you put out into that space. Develop a relationship with them, as well as reach out and develop relationships with other developers, other people in the space. You can use them to launch with, you can use them to be able to do joint venture with; maybe they send out an announcement for you. The list goes on and on, but it all comes right back to what you said, Rob, and that is user engagement. Each and every person on there, Matt, you said, is a person.
Matt: I think to that point, too, the other thing to keep in mind is that you can’t treat people like they are stepping stones. I am certainly not one of the most polished people in the world, right? But I am authentic. I just kind of talk; you’re a person and I’m a person, and that’s how I communicate with people. I think you need to do the same thing. You need to be not afraid of — you can’t be vulnerable. Well, actually, you can be vulnerable, but you can’t be afraid of making mistakes or whatever. Just reach out to your customers, talk to them, see what they’re thinking. Again, these are people that are going to be a focus group for you, whether they want to or not. Knowingly or not, they’re going to be a focus group for you, so you might as well give them what they want, ask them what they want.
At the end of every single magazine that we do — Appreneur Magazine is our magazine — in the last page there is a survey, because we want to know what people are thinking. What do you want us to do better? What do you hate about us? What do you like about us? To be honest, the things you like about us, it’s great. We love to hear it, but I’m really more curious about what you don’t like about us, because I want to improve. Apps are the same way; you look at all of your user feedback that people leave. You want to look and smile with all of the five-star reviews because it’s great social proof and all that stuff, but at the end of the day, the two-star reviews are what’s going to make your next update better.
Len: Yes, and non-emotionally — sorry, Jeff, I was just going to say — a non-emotional viewpoint when looking at feedback. Feedback is good because it allows you to improve, and improving means more dollars, or it should. Jeff, sorry.
Jeff: No problem. I was just going to say, I’m actually struggling with that right now. I’ve got my list with Weblance. I do want to stay in touch with the folks, but I’m afraid of them hitting their unsubscribe button before I go live. I don’t know what the formula is, how much is too much?
Matt: Honest to God, it’s one of those things, like Len and I have had talks about this. At the end of the day, the people that unsubscribe are going to unsubscribe themselves from your list anyway, and they’re not your users.
Len: They’re not buyers.
Matt: If they’re not working for you, let them take off. They’re not going to buy from you.
Jeff: My home page on my live site is so nice, they haven’t seen it yet.
Len: You’ve fallen in love with your product.
Rob: Yes, you’re a metric guy, right? You’re counting numbers, not value.
Jeff: That’s right.
Matt: To that point of being a metrics guy, we know that Weblance is in the same market as Elance and oDesk. What are those numbers, again, about what they’re doing on just the development side?
Jeff: Oh man, just the technical side. Yes, if you add it all up, it’s like 400 million a month.
Matt: Okay, so there are more than 2000 or 3000 people out there, whatever you have on your list, that are waiting for you and your services.
Jeff: I was proud of that list until you said that.
Len: Really, they may have joined just to get a specific piece of information. They may have joined, Jeff, just follow you, they may be competition that is following you. You don’t know what that unsubscribe is. I would much rather have that person unsubscribe and go on to do what they want to do with somebody else than your list — I have heard of lists of 500 or 600 way out-producing lists of 40,000 or 50,000. There we come right back down to the same old thing is quality and the relationship you have with them. Are they getting true value from being on your list? If they are, they are not going to leave.
Jeff: I can tell you that by being on my list, it’s very emotionally supportive through a difficult development.
Rob: That’s the best line right here.
Len: That’s great, man.
Rob: You know, I have done some testing with this with my own list. I send out e-mails every day. I have sent out sporadic e-mails, I have sent out off-topic e-mails, and I’ve tried out a bunch of things. Every once in a while I get a rash of unsubscribes, and you’ve got left-brain and right-brain, you’ve got emotional and you’ve got analytical. Maybe I shouldn’t have sent that e-mail out, but I’m not going to change. To Matt’s point, I am not going to change my voice or anything about what I’m doing to accommodate a massive list. The folks that stick around at the end of the day are the ones I’m really interested in helping. There have been times – Jeff, you might look at this — when people have unsubscribed, and I get the notification. I am using MailChimp, and they come back and they have unsubscribed, and I’m like, “No, no.” I reach out to them and I say, “You of all people should never unsubscribe from this list. You are screwed; you need this information. Get back on the list.” That’s it. The other guys I put away, but there some that I’m like, “No, no. Read what I’m sending.”
Matt: I take their e-mail address and just resubscribe them – no, I’m just kidding.
Len: It comes right down to when you think about it, because I totally get where you guys are coming from and what you’re saying, because I’ve been there myself. I used to watch all of the time. I would check my list every hour when it was new. What it came down to was I really wanted to leverage my life. Really, when I look at it, leverage counts with, how many people am I having an effect on? Not just how many numbers are in my AWeber account. That sometimes takes me more energy to be able to try to please all of them, whereas a smaller group that is defined and stood up and said, “Yes, I want to be a part of this. I like what you’re doing.” Allows me to focus on them much more clearly, give them what they want, and service their needs to a higher degree than me trying to service everybody.
Jeff: That’s a great point.
Matt: So let’s go to the next natural step is let’s move away from trying to make money…
Len: Segue that one.
Matt: I was trying to use any word but segue.
Jeff: Speaking of the word “the.”
Matt: Again, that’s a huge question is monetization, everyone wants to know how to make money from their apps and all that stuff. At the end of the day, just like any business — I’ve said this before — economics plays a huge role, it has to. It’s a vital role; you can’t survive without money coming in.
That being said, we know there is a handful of standard ways to make money on apps, like in-app purchases, paid ads, advertising and affiliate marketing; a handful of the usual suspects. Are there any revenue streams that are underutilized in your opinion? This could mean what’s going on now, or where you think things are going to start heading for app developers to consider.
Rob: Yes, I think there are the nine or ten standard ways that you can generate income through apps, and you named them. Even affiliate marketing or even bringing toward having people sign up for mailing lists, and pay to play, and pay per click, and all these things we’re seeing right now. But what I hope happens is a little bit different. What I hope is that we start to get into the value-based apps. There’s going to be a stream of apps that comes out that are going to be absolute pay to play. Instead of a mapping app, or GPS app, or a Foursquare type of app that just identifies that you’re in the location, it is going to be these apps that drive you from one spot to the next and actually close the purchase. You as the app maker are going to get a portion of that as a referral fee, or as a commission on that sale. I think there’s going to be an entire industry that is built around this that is going to emerge. If I’m a restaurant in Times Square, it behooves me to basically open up my restaurant as a data point, and allow entrepreneurs to build businesses around filling my seats, or filling the stadium, or filling the movie theater. I think we’re going to start to see entire businesses around the value add for the retailer, which is going to be so key for them to be able to drive revenue.
I think we’re going to elevate beyond this pay to play. I have been very vocal about this: Banner ads do not belong on mobile. Location-based ads in a different format are very effective, but we haven’t found that niche spot yet. I believe that we are going to get fatigue around this freemium model that has emerged very quickly; it’s going to quickly disappear. We might actually go back to the old standby, which is just straight-up purchasing of software. I think it is the layer of services on top of this platform that is going to be just so lucrative. Companies like Gigwalk that are selling excess time. Have you heard of Gigwalk, this company?
Len: No.
Rob: It’s a company that, quite literally, you sign up. If there is a gig — some work — on your way home, where you are or around you, you can actually say, “Yes, I am interested in doing that job.” For example, if somebody needs their laundry picked up from the dry cleaner and you’re around the corner, you basically say, “Yes, I will take that job for $10.” Then you pick it up, and you get paid by PayPal. You drop off laundry if it’s in your neighborhood. Somebody needs their lawn mowed, that kind of stuff; it’s proximity-based or location-based.
Len: That is very cool.
Jeff: I’ve seen somebody do that with walking their dog before.
Matt: I guess this is a great point to illustrate the fact that yes, use your imagination. These are the third-party type things; it’s not just about an app, it’s about the services you can provide. That is a crazy idea.
Len: I would like to add to that, Matt, it actually made me think of the old – it’s still happening today — but the paradigm or the model of network marketing, of referral marketing, of being able to do that. It has incredible power — I’m not for or against, I’m not talking about the whole industry. I’m saying the power of that word of mouth and that proximity marketing in that way is huge with that idea; that is fantastic.
Rob: You know, we started to see car share applications come out. A great statistic that your car basically sits in your way 18 hours a day, so why not make some money off of the excess inventory of time that that car sits there? Rent out your car for an hour or two. You start to see that layer on top of what’s happening in the mobile space. It’s all proximity-based, it’s all highly targeted. These companies are going to be the de facto companies of the future when it comes to renting excess time. I love that — excess inventory, there is an opportunity to turn that into revenue. I think that’s really where we’re going to start seeing this thing shine. There are multiple revenue streams there, so anywhere where there is excess inventory.
We went through this with the eBay generation, right? Where people were selling all of their used clothes and making a living, and recycling all of their lives and their closet every three months. We are going to start to see that with time; we all don’t have a lot of it, and we’re paying for idle assets, so why not get rid of it? Why not rent this stuff out? I like that kind of stuff; that’s what gets me excited.
Len: That goes to the point we were just talking about before about new opportunities springing forth from mobile as we speak, that is a great example.
Matt: I only wear one pair of underwear at a time, so I’m more than happy to…
Len: I’ll pass on that.
Matt: I wear my wife’s, so I have a lot of extra.
Rob: You’ve got to build an app for that, Matt.
Len: There’s an app for that, right?
Rob: Renting underwear, I love it.
Matt: I think that’s a great way to close things off today. I think we’ve covered a lot, and we definitely hit a lot of different ends of spectrums as far as the Appreneur goes. Maybe right now we can kind of talk about some of the things that are going on today, topical right now. Jeff, if you want to jump in and do the news.
Jeff: Yes, I just came across a story this week, and it’s pretty good for folks that want to get into the business that are new. You can learn and write STK from TouchPlus.com – actually, it’s Mobile.TouchPlus.com. Even if you have no plans of being a developer, you’re going to be working with one, so it’s a good idea to at least be able to know if the code you’re getting is pretty good. We talked about that last week as well, code quality. Check that out because you can learn a lot.
The other thing is — you guys remember in 1998, the convertible tablets they had where you flip the screen all the way around the other side, and bingo you have got a tablet? Most people today feel like the iPad is something that is brand-new, but it has actually been around for about 15 years. The one thing that these things are doing now is they are actually motion-controlled. You’re not touching the screen anymore, you are actually manipulating apps and things just by motioning above this. I thought, “What a great window into the future as iPads and things get more powerful.” Do you think that this is going to be something that we’re going to be doing soon, maybe in the next version of iPad is using motion control to control our iPads?
Matt: Why not? You’re seeing it in the Wii, and Xbox Kinect or whatever that one is. There are gaming consoles that are doing it. They literally watch the movements you’re doing while you’re doing yoga and stuff and telling you how to improve. I would imagine there are lots of innovations that are going to happen that change the way we interact with our devices.
Jeff: I have this vision of people on an airplane with turbulence trying to manipulate their apps looking like spastics. Oh, he’s got one, look.
Matt: Hey, look at that fancy thing.
Jeff: There you go.
Rob: I told you I spent a lot of money in useless technology, right?
Matt: Great on a plane.
Jeff: Old school.
Len: You should open a museum.
Rob: This is the demonstration of the original tablet.
Jeff: How long have you had that?
Rob: This is a Veritech; I think they’ve been bankrupt for 10 years or 12 years.
Len: Rob, you should open a technology museum.
Rob: I have spent enough money, I’d have to charge admission to at least recoup some of the cost.
Matt: Why don’t all laptops have that feature?
Rob: It’s pretty incredible; this was state-of-the-art technology back in the late 90s.
Matt: Really quick, if we could go back to — because I think this is important for app developers and Appreneurs to think about. The first thing you talked about was the learning Android SDK, the software development kit and learning how to do that. I think from a developer standpoint, there a lot of people that just do IOS or whatever. They leave money on the table, right? At the end of the day, I don’t know what the sharehold is, like 60% or 70% of Android as far as the smart phone market goes. That is a substantial chunk of change that IOS developers can be leaving on the table if they don’t develop cross-platform. I think that’s another reason to learn.
Jeff: It’s a funny thing, and actually I would be interested to know what Rob has to say about this. Even though the majority of the market is clearly an Android, it looks like the easiest way to make money is with the iPhone, because nobody spends money in Google Play.
Matt: Raving fans, that’s why.
Rob: It’s true. Certainly the numbers for Android are incredible; they dominate when it comes to operating system right now. I don’t think that it will last, I think they’re going to reach a cap and it’s going to diffuse. There are eight mobile operating systems today, and there are going to be many more. Web OS is making its comeback — triumph or not, it is going to be out there for developers to hank around with. The majority of the revenue, somewhere between 80% and 90% of the revenue that is being generated right now in the mobile space is coming from IOS. I would rather be in that camp than the dominant camp on the platform right now. The only people making money, I think, really making money right now out of Android is Google.
Jeff: That’s true.
Matt: If you already have an app developed in IOS, do you think it’s not worth your time to go ahead and convert it?
Rob: I think everything has a time and a place. It’s funny, because it’s neck and neck. If you count the number of apps that are out there in both of these platforms, and the distribution of these apps, and the way that they are doing it — I love Amazon. I’m a huge fan of Amazon; I believe that they understand retail, and that is why they are kicking Google’s ass when it comes to setting up their online store, simply because they understand retail.
No, you can’t ignore Android as a developer. If you look at what something like Instagram did, they were constrained by resources and stayed on IOS until they were ready to go to Android. Once they went to Android, look what happened to their numbers. I don’t know how they monetize it — well they get sold, that’s how they do it. They went from 25 million or 30 million users on IOS, and now they are up to 80 million worldwide users. It’s a storm that happens.
Corner case, granted, but sometimes I make a recommendation. This is going to sound stupid, and I’m not, but I look at it when people ask me, “Where is a great opportunity?” I’m like, “You know what? There are still 80 million Blackberries out there.” They are in dire need of apps for that platform, where you can make a very strategic decision to go in there for a limited amount of time and make a whole lot of money. I know a lot of companies that have done that. They have looked at the app store, and they looked at Google Play, and they have looked at the Blackberry app world and they have said, “What’s missing? We’re going to build that, and boy are we going to make a lot of money.” Guys and make not Angry Birds, but Angry Farm have made hundreds of thousands of dollars doing that. They built a YouTube app because there wasn’t one for Blackberry, monetized it through ads — hundreds of thousands of dollars. The built an Instagram clone because there isn’t one and nobody’s going to make one — hundreds of thousands of dollars. They charge for these apps; $2 or $3 or $4 each. The same thing with whoever builds the Netflix app for Blackberry for a limited amount of time is going to make — if they can, they have to license some of this stuff — but whoever does it is going to make a ton of cash.
You got to decide, is it opportunistic, or is it part of your business? Right now I look at Blackberry, as silly as it may seem, but especially when the new operating system comes out, as an opportunity to capitalize very quickly. It’s a weird way to think of it, but that’s what Blackberry is to me. It’s basically a way to make money. You’ve got to think, where is your opportunity to generate some cash?
Matt: You make a heck of a point, to be honest. I know, tomorrow, Len and I are having talks about Blackberry.
Len: Exactly. That’s a great point, Rob, because I do believe it’s a limited time too, but for that limited time you have 80 million. If you had a niche that had 80 million that was looking for more products.
Rob: They are starving for apps.
Len: You wouldn’t be looking at it going, “I don’t know.” You’d be like, “How quickly can I get into it?” So interesting.
Matt: That’s one of those things that is just right in front of your face, and you don’t think about it until Rob tells you about it.
Rob: The reason, obviously, is it’s RIM, it’s in a declining market. A company like RIM owning 4% to 5% — and I’m not saying that’s happy. From where they were it is a precipitous fall, but that is still a huge market opportunity, and they’re clamoring for stuff. They are underserved.
Matt: Jeff is so excited he just took off.
Rob: He’s like, “Blackberry? I’m out.”
Len: He says, “Blackberry? I’m gone.”
Rob: I’ll tell you, you know what one of the top 10 search driving things that drive people to Untether.tv is Netflix for Blackberry, or Instagram for Blackberry. That is what they’re looking for. These are huge drivers; people are looking for these apps, so anybody out there can do it.
Len: That’s really interesting. That’s a great point. That makes the whole podcast right there, the value that is in there. Here is another tip to go along with that, Rob, and I’m not going to say a lot about it. But we go on about market research, right? If people want to go and start actually searching within that market for different niches that are served in “other areas,” other platforms better and are not served there properly, there may be a huge opportunity to be able to come in and serve that market.
Matt: I can’t wait to write the copy for this podcast.
Rob: “Blackberry is the future according to Rob Woodbridge.”
Matt: I won’t tell them what it is, they have to watch to find out.
Len: You’re back, Jeff. We thought that you ran out and started to develop something for Blackberry.
Jeff: Yes. Sorry, I just lost connection. I am actually so surprised about that Blackberry story, I had no idea that that story was out there in existence. That was shocking.
Rob: There is a lot out there.
Jeff: My first thought is when you was saying there are 80 million, I was thinking, “Wow, those people have no lives.” I didn’t realize there were 80 million people that had no lives, because Blackberry is dead, but I guess I was wrong.
Rob: I am Canadian, and we need RIM to stay as a Canadian company. It’s very important to the Canadian economy — at least it was. It still employs 9000 people. At one point it weighed our stock exchange very heavily; it was skewed towards RIM, everybody owned RIM stock, and now it is under $6 or $5 a share. It’s in the tank, they have terrible leadership. Their two CEOs were terrible for the company. Great to start, full of hubris, but they didn’t see what was happening. This is the result of that.
All that being said, this company is in peril, it is in danger; it is in decline, and there is no essence of a strategy that is going to get them out. I’m not very optimistic about the longevity of this company, but these devices are still out there regardless. RIM needs to change tactics, and do it very quickly. They need to get off the whole smartphone thing. They lost this round; it’s time to realize that and move on. They have the tools to do it, they just don’t have the leadership to be able to effectively implement it.
Matt: So in the short term, you’re saying sell RIM short, right? That’s what you’re saying? You’re giving stock advice.
Rob: One of my companies was so closely entrenched with RIM that we did a lot of meetings very close with their senior management and the CEOs. There was one meeting maybe four years ago, that we came out of — they are in Waterloo, I’m in Ottawa — we flew home. I sold my stock the next day. What we saw was like, “No, we’re not going to survive here.” And we started building for other platforms. It’s been a long time coming; this isn’t news to a lot of people. Yes, if you still have RIM stock…
Len: The thing is, too, is that it uncovers a big opportunity for developers out there, because like we were saying, that market — although maybe it’s going out, you still have a time period in there where they still need to be served. Eighty million is a huge market.
Rob: It is.
Matt: If you could make an extra few hundred grand, why not?
Rob: I’m all for that, trust me.
Jeff: Listen, guys, the next thing that we want to talk about here in the news, because we’re running a little bit long. We’ve got some numbers for you; some market numbers to date. I have already been accused of being a data person. I forget what you called me — a statistics guy. I have got statistics. The average smartphone user will download how many apps this year? What is your best guess?
Len: I already know the answer.
Jeff: You know the answer. Rob, what do you think it is? The average.
Rob: The average — 25?
Jeff: Wow, you’re pretty close. Thirty-seven.
Matt: Can I guess?
Jeff: No, you know the numbers. It’s 37. In 2012, up to date, we have got 36 billion mobile apps will be downloaded, and by 2017 they’re projecting it’s going to be 136 billion mobile apps downloaded. That is an unbelievable number. But actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was higher than that.
Matt: It presents two things top of mind for me. Number one is wow, opportunity. It’s a growing, exploding market. At the same time, it also says people are swarming the market, developers are swarming and competition is going up, so your app is not as easy to be found if you don’t have some sort of exposure campaign or marketing campaign in place and stuff like that. There are two ways of looking at that.
Jeff: Right. It goes on to talk about the average time spent on a smartphone per day is 94 minutes. Their average time spent on their browser is 72 minutes. They are actually spending less time now on the Internet at home than they are on their smart phones, which is unbelievable. 650,000 apps in the Apple store, and 600,000 available in the Google Play store. It is getting big.
Len: It is. It’s surfing this wave, it just keeps getting bigger and bigger. I really don’t think that we’ve seen anything yet. I think that in the fairly near future, I think we are going to see some pretty incredible things with the whole market, and some switching, restructuring and adjusting.
Rob: The big battle now is about app discovery. I think that that’s where this shifts to. Apple bought Chomp for that reason. We’re going to start to see these things start to happen where people can’t find the apps unless they are in the top 50 free, or the top 50 grossing or a featured app, so discovery is going to be key.
Len: That’s why we started AppClover, really. That’s the gap that Matt and I have really seen as well, that’s the next thing. We have competition in the app stores going up, and you continually have more and more coming on each week. The next progression just naturally is higher competition, which means you’ve got to know your stuff more to stand out.
Matt: I say this all the time, a high tide raises all ships. I actually came up with that phrase, I coined it — no. I do believe there is something to it. That’s one of the big areas that Len and I just started doing research and stuff, like, “Man, no one is servicing education or knowledge.” On the development side yes, there are great forums out there and stuff like that. As far as marketing and monetization, the information you would find is a couple years old, which is extinct. It was really hard to find a community that was just dedicated to learning and teaching those strategies. That’s kind of why we were born.
Jeff: Amen, brother.
Len: That’s a good way to be able to close off then, guys. Yes, we went a little bit longer today, but I think it was some great information. I think we have got a jam-packed podcast here for everybody. Everybody out there, I hope you enjoyed it. Please give us your feedback — what you hated, what you liked — so that we can improve upon things as well. You have been watching another edition of the Appreneur Appcast. Jeff, thank you very much — Jeff Williams from Weblance.com, still offering an incredible special out there to the AppClover community. If you sign up for beta on Weblance.com, you are going to get a premium membership for free, roughly a $240 savings. How does that sound for an infomercial there, Jeff?
Jeff: That sounds great.
Matt: Act now.
Len: Act now and you’ll receive… Jeff, thanks again, we appreciate your input. Again, Rob, we thank you so much for being with us today from Untether.tv. Again, that’s Untether.tv to see what Rob is up to. You’ll be seeing a lot more from Rob on AppClover as well in the near future. Again, thank you Rob for being with us today.
Rob: It’s a total pleasure, guys. Thanks for having me.
Len: No problem. From Matthew Lutz, the cofounder, and for myself, Len Wright from AppClover, we really appreciate you being with us. Check out Appreneur Magazine; the new issue is going to rock your clock.
Matt: Also, my dog was with us in the background there the entire time, too. He’s pretty active.
Rob: So quiet; what a great dog.